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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Romance of Youth by Francois Coppee, v2
+#46 in our series The French Immortals Crowned by the French Academy
+#2 in our series by Francois Coppee
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+Title: A Romance of Youth, v2
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+Author: Francois Coppee
+
+Release Date: April, 2003  [Etext #3959]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Romance of Youth by Francois Coppee, v2
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+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+A ROMANCE OF YOUTH
+
+By FRANCOIS COPPEE
+
+
+
+BOOK 2.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+AMEDEE MAKES FRIENDS
+
+Meanwhile the allegorical old fellow with the large wings and white
+beard, Time, had emptied his hour-glass many times; or, to speak plainer,
+the postman, with a few flakes of snow upon his blue cloth coat, presents
+himself three or four times a day at his customers' dwelling to offer in
+return for a trifling sum of money a calendar containing necessary
+information, such as the ecclesiastical computation, or the difference
+between the Gregorian and the Arabic Hegira; and Amedee Violette had
+gradually become a young man.
+
+A young man!  that is to say, a being who possesses a treasure without
+knowing its value, like a Central African negro who picks up one of
+M. Rothschild's cheque-books; a young man ignorant of his beauty or
+charms, who frets because the light down upon his chin has not turned
+into hideous bristles, a young man who awakes every morning full of hope,
+and artlessly asks himself what fortunate thing will happen to him
+to-day; who dreams, instead of living, because he is timid and poor.
+
+It was then that Amedee made the acquaintance of one of his comrades--he
+no longer went to M. Batifol's boarding-school, but was completing his
+studies at the Lycee Henri IV--named Maurice Roger.  They soon formed an
+affectionate intimacy, one of those eighteen-year-old friendships which
+are perhaps the sweetest and most substantial in the world.
+
+Amedee was attracted, at first sight, by Maurice's handsome, blond, curly
+head, his air of frankness and superiority, and the elegant jackets that
+he wore with the easy, graceful manners of a gentleman.  Twice a day,
+when they left the college, they walked together through the Luxembourg
+Gardens, confiding to each other their dreams and hopes, lingering in the
+walks, where Maurice already gazed at the grisettes in an impudent
+fashion, talking with the charming abandon of their age, the sincere age
+when one thinks aloud.
+
+Maurice told his new friend that he was the son of an officer killed
+before Sebastopol, that his mother had never married again, but adored
+him and indulged him in all his whims.  He was patiently waiting for his
+school-days to end, to live independently in the Latin Quarter, to study
+law, without being hurried, since his mother wished him to do so, and he
+did not wish to displease her.  But he wished also to amuse himself with
+painting, at least as an amateur; for he was passionately fond of it.
+All this was said by the handsome, aristocratic young man with a happy
+smile, which expanded his sensual lips and nostrils; and Amedee admired
+him without one envious thought; feeling, with the generous warmth of
+youth, an entire confidence in the future and the mere joy of living.  In
+his turn he made a confidant of Maurice, but not of everything.  The poor
+boy could not tell anybody that he suspected his father of a secret vice,
+that he blushed over it, was ashamed of it, and suffered from it as much
+as youth can suffer.  At least, honest-hearted fellow that he was, he
+avowed his humble origin without shame, boasted of his humble friends the
+Gerards, praised Louise's goodness, and spoke enthusiastically of little
+Maria, who was just sixteen and so pretty.
+
+"You will take me to see them some time, will you not?"  said Maurice,
+who listened to his friend with his natural good grace.  "But first of
+all, you must come to dinner some day with me, and I will present you to
+my mother.  Next Sunday, for instance.  Is it agreeable?"
+
+Amedee would have liked to refuse, for he suddenly recalled--oh!  the
+torture and suffering of poor young men! that his Sunday coat was almost
+as seedy as his everyday one, that his best pair of shoes were run-over
+at the heels, and that the collars and cuffs on his six white shirts were
+ragged on the edges from too frequent washings.  Then, to go to dinner in
+the city, what an ordeal!  What must he do to be presented in a drawing-
+room?  The very thought of it made him shiver.  But Maurice invited him
+so cordially that he was irresistible, and Amedee accepted.
+
+The following Sunday, then, spruced up in his best-what could have
+possessed the haberdasher to induce him to buy a pair of red dog-skin
+gloves?  He soon saw that they were too new and too startling for the
+rest of his costume--Amedee went up to the first floor of a fine house on
+the Faubourg St. Honore and rang gently at the door on the left.  A young
+and pretty maid--one of those brunettes who have a waist that one can
+clasp in both hands, and a suspicion of a moustache--opened the door and
+ushered the young man into a drawing-room furnished in a simple but
+luxurious manner.  Maurice was alone, standing with his back to the fire,
+in the attitude of master of the house.  He received his friend with warm
+demonstrations of pleasure.  Amedee's eyes were at once attracted by the
+portrait of a handsome lieutenant of artillery, dressed in the regimental
+coat, with long skirts, of 1845, and wearing a sword-belt fastened by two
+lion's heads.  This officer, in parade costume, was painted in the midst
+of a desert, seated under a palm-tree.
+
+"That is my father," said Maurice.  "Do I not resemble him?"
+
+The resemblance was really striking.  The same warm, pleasant smile, and
+even the same blond curls.  Amedee was admiring it when a voice repeated
+behind him, like an echo:
+
+"Maurice resembles him, does he not?"
+
+It was Madame Roger who had quietly entered.  When Amedee saw this
+stately lady in mourning, with a Roman profile, and clear, white
+complexion, who threw such an earnest glance at her son, then at her
+husband's portrait, Amedee comprehended that Maurice was his mother's
+idol, and, moved by the sight of the widow, who would have been beautiful
+but for her gray hair and eyelids, red from so much weeping, he stammered
+a few words of thanks for the invitation to dinner.
+
+"My son has told me," said she, "that you are the one among all his
+comrades that he cares for most.  I know what affection you have shown
+him.  I am the one who should thank you, Monsieur Amedee."
+
+They seated themselves and talked; every few moments these words were
+spoken by Madame Roger with an accent of pride and tenderness, "My son
+.  .  my son Maurice."  Amedee realized how pleasant his friend's life
+must be with such a good mother, and he could not help comparing his own
+sad childhood, recalling above all things the lugubrious evening repasts,
+when, for several years now, he had buried his nose in his plate so as
+not to see his father's drunken eyes always fastened upon him as if to
+ask for his pardon.
+
+Maurice let his mother praise him for a few moments, looking at her with
+a pleasant smile which became a trifle saddened.  Finally he interrupted
+her:
+
+"It is granted, mamma, that I am a perfect phoenix," and he gayly
+embraced her.
+
+At this moment the pretty maid announced, "Monsieur and Mesdemoiselles
+Lantz," and Madame Roger arose hastily to receive the newcomers.
+Lieutenant-Colonel Lantz, of the Engineer Corps, was with Captain Roger
+when he died in the trench before Mamelon Vert; and might have been at
+that time pleasant to look upon, in his uniform with its black velvet
+breastplate; but, having been promoted some time ago to the office, he
+had grown aged, leaning over the plans and draughts on long tables
+covered with rules and compasses.  With a cranium that looked like a
+picked bird, his gray, melancholy imperial, his stooping shoulders, which
+shortened still more his tightly buttoned military coat, there was
+nothing martial in his appearance.  With his head full of whims, no
+fortune, and three daughters to marry, the poor Colonel, who put on only
+two or three times a year, for official solemnities, his uniform, which
+he kept in camphor, dined every Sunday night with Madame Roger, who liked
+this estimable man because he was her husband's best friend, and had
+invited him with his three little girls, who looked exactly alike, with
+their turned-up noses, florid complexions, and little, black, bead-like
+eyes, always so carefully dressed that one involuntarily compared them to
+three pretty cakes prepared for some wedding or festive occasion.  They
+sat down at the table.
+
+Madame Roger employed an excellent cook, and for the first time in his
+life Amedee ate a quantity of good things, even more exquisite than Mamma
+Gerard's little fried dishes.  It was really only a very comfortable and
+nice dinner, but to the young man it was a revelation of unsuspected
+pleasures.  This decorated table, this cloth that was so soft when he put
+his hand upon it; these dishes that excited and satisfied the appetite;
+these various flavored wines which, like the flowers, were fragrant--what
+new and agreeable sensations!  They were quickly and silently waited upon
+by the pretty maid.  Maurice, seated opposite his mother, presided over
+the repast with his elegant gayety.  Madame Roger's pale face would light
+up with a smile at each of his good-natured jokes, and the three young
+ladies would burst into discreet little laughs, all in unison, and even
+the sorrowful Colonel would arouse from his torpor.
+
+He became animated after his second glass of burgundy, and was very
+entertaining.  He spoke of the Crimean campaign; of that chivalrous war
+when the officers of both armies, enemies to each other, exchanged
+politenesses and cigars during the suspension of arms.  He told fine
+military anecdotes, and Madame Roger, seeing her son's face excited with
+enthusiasm at these heroic deeds, became gloomy at once.  Maurice noticed
+it first.
+
+"Take care, Colonel," said he.  "You will frighten mamma, and she will
+imagine at once that I still wish to enter Saint-Cyr.  But I assure you,
+little mother, you may be tranquil.  Since you wish it, your respectful
+and obedient son will become a lawyer without clients, who will paint
+daubs during his spare moments.  In reality, I should much prefer a horse
+and a sword and a squadron of hussars.  But no matter!  The essential
+thing is not to give mamma any trouble."
+
+This was said with so much warmth and gentleness, that Madame Roger and
+the Colonel exchanged softened looks; the young ladies were also moved,
+as much as pastry can be, and they all fixed upon Maurice their little
+black eyes, which had suddenly become so soft and tender that Amedee did
+not doubt but that they all had a sentimental feeling for Maurice, and
+thought him very fortunate to have the choice between three such pretty
+pieces for dessert.
+
+How all loved this charming and graceful Maurice, and how well he knew
+how to make himself beloved!
+
+Later, when they served the champagne, he arose, glass in hand, and
+delivered a burlesque toast, finding some pleasant word for all his
+guests.  What frank gayety!  what a hearty laugh went around the table!
+The three young ladies giggled themselves as red as peonies.  A sort of
+joyous chuckle escaped from the Colonel's drooping moustache.  Madame
+Roger's smile seemed to make her grow young; and Amedee noticed, in a
+corner of the dining-room, the pretty maid, who restrained herself no
+more than the others; and when she showed her teeth, that were like a
+young puppy's, she was charming indeed.
+
+After the tea the Colonel, who lived at some distance, near the Military
+School, and who, as the weather was fine, wished to walk home and avoid
+the expense of a cab, left with his three marriageable daughters, and
+Amedee in his turn took his departure.
+
+In the ante-chamber, the maid said to Maurice, as she helped him on with
+his topcoat.
+
+"I hope that you will not come in very late this evening, Monsieur
+Maurice."
+
+"What is that, Suzanne?"  replied the young man, without anger, but a
+trifle impatiently.  "I shall return at the hour that pleases me."
+
+As he descended the stairs ahead of Amedee, he said, with a laugh
+
+"Upon my word!  she will soon make her jealousy public."
+
+"What!"  exclaimed Amedee, glad that his companion could not see his
+blushes.
+
+"Well, yes!  Is she not pretty?  I admit it, Violette; I have not, like
+you, the artlessness of the flower whose name you bear.  You will have to
+resign yourself to it; you have a very bad fellow for a friend.  As to
+the rest, be content.  I have resolved to scandalize the family roof no
+longer.  I have finished with this bold-faced creature.  You must know
+that she began it, and was the first to kiss me on the sly.  Now, I am
+engaged elsewhere.  Here we are outside, and here is a carriage.  Here,
+driver!  You will allow me to bid you adieu.  It is only a quarter past
+ten.  I still have time to appear at Bullier's and meet Zoe Mirilton.
+Until tomorrow, Violette."
+
+Amedee returned home very much troubled.  So, then, his friend was a
+libertine.  But he made excuses for him.  Had he not just seen him so
+charming to his mother and so respectful to the three young ladies?
+Maurice had allowed himself to be carried away by his youthful
+impetuosity, that was all!  Was it for him, still pure, but tormented by
+the temptations and curiosity of youth, to be severe?  Would he not have
+done as much had he dared, or if he had had the money in his pocket?
+To tell the truth, Amedee dreamed that very night of the pretty maid
+with the suspicion of a moustache.
+
+The next day, when Amedee paid his visit to the Gerards, all they could
+talk of was the evening before.  Amedee spoke with the eloquence of a
+young man who had seen for the first time a finger-bowl at dessert.
+
+Louise, while putting on her hat and getting her roll of music--she gave
+lessons now upon the piano in boarding-schools--was much interested in
+Madame Roger's imposing beauty.  Mamma Gerard would have liked to know
+how the chicken-jelly was made; the old engraver listened with pleasure
+to the Colonel's military anecdotes; while little Maria exacted a precise
+description of the toilettes of the three demoiselles Lantz, and turned
+up her nose disdainfully at them.
+
+"Now, then, Amedee," said the young girl, suddenly, as she looked at
+herself in a mirror that was covered with flyspecks, "tell me honestly,
+were these young ladies any prettier than I?"
+
+"Do you see the coquette?"  exclaimed Father Gerard, bursting into
+laughter without raising his eyes from his work.  "Do people ask such
+questions as that, Mademoiselle?"
+
+There was a general gayety, but Amedee blushed without knowing why.
+Oh!  no, certainly those three young ladies in their Savoy-cake skirts
+and nougat waists were not as pretty as little Maria in her simple brown
+frock.  How she improved from day to day!  It seemed to Amedee as if he
+never had seen her before until this minute.  Where had she found that
+supple, round waist, that mass of reddish hair which she twisted upon the
+top of her head, that lovely complexion, that mouth, and those eyes that
+smiled with the artless tenderness of young flowers?
+
+Mamma Gerard, while laughing like the others, scolded her daughter a
+little for her attack of feminine vanity, and then began to talk of
+Madame Roger in order to change the conversation.
+
+Amedee did not cease to praise his friend.  He told how affectionate he
+was to his mother, how he resisted the military blood that burned in him,
+how graceful he was, and how, at eighteen years, he did the honor of the
+drawing-room and table with all the manner of a grand seigneur.
+
+Maria listened attentively.
+
+"You have promised to bring him here, Amedee," said the spoiled child,
+with a serious air.  "I should like very much to see him once."
+
+Amedee repeated his promise; but on his way to the Lycee, for his
+afternoon class, he recalled the incident of the pretty maid and the name
+of Zoe Mirilton, and, seized with some scruples, he asked himself whether
+he ought to introduce his friend to the young Gerard girls.  At first
+this idea made him uneasy, then he thought that it was ridiculous.  Was
+not Maurice a good-hearted young man and well brought up?  Had he not
+seen him conduct himself with tact and reserve before Colonel Lantz's
+daughters?
+
+Some days later Maurice reminded him of the promised visit to the
+Gerards, and Amedee presented him to his old friends.
+
+Louise was not at home; she had been going about teaching for some time
+to increase the family's resources, for the engraver was more red-faced
+than ever, and obliged to change the number of his spectacles every year,
+and could not do as much work as formerly.
+
+But the agreeable young man made a conquest of the rest of the family by
+his exquisite good-nature and cordial, easy manner.  Respectful and
+simple with Madame Gerard, whom he intimidated a little, he paid very
+little attention to Maria and did not appear to notice that he was
+exciting her curiosity to the highest pitch.  He modestly asked Father
+Gerard's advice upon his project of painting, amusing himself with the
+knickknacks about the apartments, picking out by instinct the best
+engravings and canvases of value.  The good man was enchanted with
+Maurice and hastened to show him his private museum, forgetting all about
+his pipe--he was smoking at present a Garibaldi--and presented him his
+last engraving, where one saw--it certainly was a fatality that pursued
+the old republican!--the Emperor Napoleon III, at Magenta, motionless
+upon his horse in the centre of a square of grenadiers, cut down by grape
+and canister.
+
+Maurice's visit was short, and as Amedee had thought a great deal about
+little Maria for several days, he asked his friend, as he conducted him a
+part of the way:
+
+"What did you think of her?"
+
+Maurice simply replied, "Delicious!"  and changed the conversation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+DREAMS OF LOVE
+
+Solemn moment approached for the two friends.  They were to take their
+examinations for graduation.  Upon the days when M. Violette--they now
+called him at the office "Father Violette," he had grown so aged and
+decrepit--was not too much "consoled" in the cafe in the Rue du Four, and
+when he was less silent and gloomy than usual, he would say to his son,
+after the soup:
+
+"Do you know, Amedee, I shall not be easy in my mind until you have
+received your degree.  Say what they may, it leads to everything."
+
+To everything indeed!  M. Violette had a college friend upon whom all the
+good marks had been showered, who, having been successively schoolmaster,
+journalist, theatrical critic, a boarder in Mazas prison, insurance
+agent, director of an athletic ring--he quoted Homer in his harangue--at
+present pushed back the curtains at the entrance to the Ambigu, and
+waited for his soup at the barracks gate, holding out an old tomato-can
+to be filled.
+
+But M. Violette had no cause to fear!  Amedee received his degree on the
+same day with his friend Maurice, and both passed honorably.  A little
+old man with a head like a baboon--the scientific examiner--tried to make
+Amedee flounder on the subject of nitrogen, but he passed all the same.
+One can hope for everything nowadays.
+
+But what could Amedee hope for first?  M. Violette thought of it when he
+was not at his station at the Rue du Four.  What could he hope for?
+Nothing very great.
+
+Probably he could enter the ministry as an auxiliary.  One hundred francs
+a month, and the gratuities, would not be bad for a beginner!
+M. Violette recalled his endless years in the office, and all the trouble
+he had taken to guess a famous rebus that was celebrated for never having
+been solved.  Was Amedee to spend his youth deciphering enigmas?
+M. Violette hoped for a more independent career for his son, if it were
+possible.  Commerce, for example!  Yes!  there was a future in commerce.
+As a proof of it there was the grocer opposite him, a simpleton who
+probably did not put the screws on enough and had just hanged himself
+rather than go into bankruptcy.  M. Violette would gladly see his son in
+business.  If he could begin with M. Gaufre?  Why not?  The young man
+might become in the end his uncle's partner and make his fortune.  M.
+Violette spoke of it to Amedee.
+
+"Shall we go to see your uncle Sunday morning?"
+
+The idea of selling chasubles and Stations of the Cross did not greatly
+please Amedee, who had concealed in his drawer a little book full of
+sonnets, and had in his mind the plan of a romantic drama wherein one
+would say "Good heavens!" and "My lord!"  But first of all, he must
+please his father.  He was glad to observe that for some time M. Violette
+had interested himself more in him, and had resisted his baneful habit
+somewhat.  The young man offered no resistance.  The next day at noon he
+presented himself at the Rue Servandoni, accompanied by his father.
+
+The "dealer in pious goods" received them with great good-humor.  He had
+just come from high mass and was about to sit down at the table.  He even
+invited them to follow his example and taste of his stewed kidneys, one
+of Berenice's triumphs, who served the dinner with her hands loaded with
+rings.  The Violettes had dined, and the father made known his desire.
+
+"Yes," said Uncle Isidore, "Amedee might enter the house.  Only you know,
+Violette, it will be another education to be learned over again.  He must
+begin at the very beginning and follow the regular course.  Oh!  the boy
+will not be badly treated!  He may take his meals with us, is not that
+so, Berenice?  At first he would be obliged to run about a little, as I
+did when I came from the province to work in the shop and tie up
+parcels."
+
+M. Violette looked at his son and saw that he was blushing with shame.
+The poor man understood his mistake.  What good to have dazzled M. Patin
+before the whole University by reciting, without hesitation, three verses
+of Aristophanes, only to become a drudge and a packer?  Well!  so Amedee
+would yawn over green boxes and guess at enigmas in the Illustration.
+It had to be so.
+
+They took leave of Uncle Isidore.
+
+"We will reflect over it, Monsieur Gaufre, and will come to see you
+again."
+
+But Berenice had hardly shut the door upon them when M. Violette said to
+his son:
+
+"Nothing is to be expected of that old egotist.  Tomorrow we will go to
+see the chief of my department, I have spoken of you to him, at all
+events."
+
+He was a good sort of fellow, this M. Courtet, who was head clerk, though
+too conceited and starched up, certainly.  His red rosette, as large as a
+fifty-cent piece, made one's eyes blink, and he certainly was very
+imprudent to stand so long backed up to the fireplace with limbs spread
+apart, for it seemed that he must surely burn the seat of his trousers.
+But no matter, he has stomach enough.  He has noticed M. Violette's
+pitiful decline--"a poor devil who never will live to be promoted."
+Having it in his power to distribute positions, M. Courtet had reserved a
+position for Amedee.  In eight days the young man would be nominated an
+auxiliary employe at fifteen hundred francs a year.  It is promised and
+done.
+
+Ugh!  the sickening heat from the stove!  the disgusting odor of musty
+papers!  However, Amedee had nothing to complain of; they might have
+given him figures to balance for five hours at a time.  He owed it to M.
+Courtet's kindness, that he was put at once into the correspondence room.
+He studied the formulas, and soon became skilful in official politeness.
+He now knew the delicate shades which exist between "yours respectfully"
+and "most respectfully yours;" and he measured the abyss which separates
+an "agreeable" and "homage."
+
+To sum it all up, Amedee was bored, but he was not unhappy; for he had
+time to dream.
+
+He went the longest way to the office in the morning, while seeking to
+make "amour" rhyme with "jour" without producing an insipid thing; or
+else he thought of the third act of his drama after the style of 1830,
+and the grand love scene which should take place at the foot of the
+Montfaucon gallows.  In the evening he went to the Gerards, and they
+seated themselves around--the lamp which stood on the dining-room table,
+the father reading his journal, the women sewing.  He chatted with Maria,
+who answered him the greater part of the time without raising her eyes,
+because she suspected, the coquette!  that he admired her beautiful,
+drooping lids.
+
+Amedee composed his first sonnets in her honor, and he adored her, of
+course, but he was also in love with the Lantz young ladies, whom he saw
+sometimes at Madame Roger's, and who each wore Sunday evenings roses in
+her hair, which made them resemble those pantheons in sponge-cake that
+pastry-cooks put in their windows on fete days.
+
+If Amedee had been presented to twelve thousand maidens successively,
+they would have inspired twelve thousand wishes.  There was the servant
+of the family on the first floor, whose side-glance troubled him as he
+met her on the staircase; and his heart sank every time he turned the
+handle of the door of a shop in the Rue Bonaparte, where an insidious
+clerk always forced him to choose ox-colored kid gloves, which he
+detested.  It must not be forgotten that Amedee was very young, and was
+in love with love.
+
+He was so extremely timid that he never had had the audacity to tell the
+girl at the glove counter that he preferred bronze-green gloves, nor the
+boldness to show Maria Gerard his poems composed in her honor, in which
+he now always put the plural "amours," so as to make it rhyme with
+"toujours," which was an improvement.  He never had dared to reply to the
+glance of the little maid on the second floor; and he was very wrong to
+be embarrassed, for one morning, as he passed the butcher's shop, he saw
+the butcher's foreman put his arm about the girl's waist and whisper a
+love speech over a fine sirloin roast.
+
+Sometimes, in going or coming from the office, Amedee would go to see his
+friend Maurice, who had obtained from Madame Roger permission to install
+himself in the Latin Quarter so as to be near the law school.
+
+In a very low-studded first-floor room in the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince,
+Amedee perceived through a cloud of tobacco-smoke the elegant Maurice in
+a scarlet jacket lying upon a large divan.  Everything was rich and
+voluptuous, heavy carpets, handsomely bound volumes of poems, an open
+piano, and an odor of perfumery mingled with that of cigarettes.  Upon
+the velvet-covered mantel Mademoiselle Irma, the favorite of the master
+of the apartment, had left the last fashionable novel, marking, with one
+of her hairpins, where she had left off reading.  Amedee spent a
+delightful hour there.  Maurice always greeted him with his joyful,
+kind manner, in which one hardly minded the slight shade of patronage.
+He walked up and down his room, expanding his finely moulded chest,
+lighting and throwing away his cigarettes, seating himself for two
+minutes at the piano and playing one of Chopin's sad strains, opening a
+book and reading a page, showing his albums to his friend, making him
+repeat some of his poems, applauding him and touching lightly upon
+different subjects, and charming Amedee more and more by his grace and
+manners.
+
+However, Amedee could not enjoy his friend much, as he rarely found him
+alone.  Every few moments--the key was in the door--Maurice's comrades,
+young pleasure-seekers like himself, but more vulgar, not having his
+gentlemanly bearing and manners, would come to talk with him of some
+projected scheme or to remind him of some appointment for the evening.
+
+Often, some one of them, with his hat upon his head, would dash off a
+polka, after placing his lighted cigar upon the edge of the piano.  These
+fast fellows frightened Amedee a little, as he had the misfortune to be
+fastidious.
+
+After these visitors had left, Maurice would ask his friend to dinner,
+but the door would open again, and Mademoiselle Irma, in her furs and
+small veil--a comical little face--would enter quickly and throw her arms
+about Amedee's neck, kissing him, while rumpling his hair with her gloved
+hands.
+
+"Bravo!  we will all three dine together."
+
+No!  Amedee is afraid of Mademoiselle Irma, who has already thrown her
+mantle upon the sofa and crowned the bronze Venus de Milo with her otter
+toque.  The young man excuses himself, he is expected at home.
+
+"Timid fellow, go!"  said Maurice to him, as he conducted him to the
+door, laughing.
+
+What longings!  What dreams!  They made up all of poor Amedee's life.
+Sometimes they were sad, for he suffered in seeing his father indulge
+himself more and more in his vice.  No woman loved him, and he never had
+one louis in his pocket for pleasure or liberty.  But he did not
+complain.  His life was noble and happy!  He smiled with pleasure as he
+thought of his good friends; his heart beat in great throbs as he thought
+of love; he wept with rapture over beautiful verses.  The spectacle of
+life, through hope and the ideal, seemed to him transfigured.  Happy
+Amedee!  He was not yet twenty years old!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A GENTLE COUNSELLOR
+
+One sombre, misty, winter morning, as Amedee lingered in his bed, his
+father entered, bringing him a letter that the wife of the concierge had
+just brought up.  The letter was from Maurice, inviting his friend to
+dinner that evening at seven o'clock at Foyots, to meet some of his
+former companions at the Lycee Henri IV.
+
+"Will you excuse me for not dining with you this evening, papa?"  said
+Amedee, joyfully.  "Maurice Roger entertains us at a restaurant."
+
+The young man's gayety left him suddenly when he looked at his father,
+who had seated himself on the side of the bed.  He had become almost
+frightful to look at; old before his time, livid of complexion, his eyes
+bloodshot, the rebellious lock of hair straggling over his right temple.
+Nothing was more heartbreaking than his senile smile when he placed his
+bony trembling hands upon his thighs.  Amedee, who knew, alas, why his
+father had reached such a pass, felt his heart moved with pity and shame.
+
+"Are you suffering to-day?"  asked the young man.  "Would you prefer that
+we should dine together as usual?  I will send word to Maurice.  Nothing
+is easier."
+
+"No, my child, no!"  replied M. Violette, in a hollow tone.  "Go and
+amuse yourself with your friends.  I know perfectly well that the life
+you lead with me is too monotonous.  Go and amuse yourself, it will
+please me--only there is an idea that troubles me more than usual--and
+I want to confide it to you."
+
+"What is it then, dear papa?"
+
+"Amedee, last March your mother had been dead fifteen years.  You hardly
+knew her.  She was the sweetest and best of creatures, and all that I can
+wish you is, that you may meet such a woman, make her your companion for
+life, and be more fortunate than I, my poor Amedee, and keep her always.
+During these frightful years since your mother's death I have suffered,
+do you see?  suffered horribly, and I have never, never been consoled.
+If I have lived--if I have had the strength to live, in spite of all, it
+was only for you and in remembrance of her.  I think I have nearly
+finished my task.  You are a young man, intelligent and honest, and you
+have now an employment which will give you your bread.  However, I often
+ask myself--oh, very often--whether I have fulfilled my duty toward you.
+Ah!  do not protest," added the unhappy man, whom Amedee had clasped in
+his arms.  "No, my poor child, I have not loved you sufficiently; grief
+has filled too large a place in my heart; above all, during these last
+few years I have not been with you enough.  I have sought solitude.  You
+understand me, Amedee, I can not tell you more," he said, with a sob.
+"There are some parts of my life that you must ignore, and if it grieves
+you to know what I have become during that time, you must never think of
+it; forget it.  I beg of you, my child, do not judge me severely.  And
+one of these days, if I die-ah!  we must expect it--the burden of my
+grief is too heavy for me to bear, it crushes me!  Well, my child, if I
+die, promise me to be indulgent to my memory, and when you think of your
+father only say: 'He was very unhappy!'"
+
+Amedee shed tears upon his father's shoulder, who softly stroked his
+son's beautiful hair with his trembling hands.
+
+"My father, my good father!"  sobbed Amedee, "I love and respect you with
+all my heart.  I will dress myself quickly and we will go to the office
+together; we will return the same way and dine like a pair of good
+friends.  I beg of you, do not ask me to leave you to-day!"
+
+But M. Violette suddenly arose as if he had formed some resolution.
+
+"No, Amedee," said he, firmly.  "I have said what I had to say to you,
+and you will remember it.  That is sufficient.  Go and amuse yourself
+this evening with your friends.  Sadness is dangerous at your age.  As
+for myself, I shall go to dine with Pere Bastide, who has just received
+his pension, and has invited me more than twenty times to come and see
+his little house at Grand Montrouge.  It is understood; I wish it.  Now
+then, wipe your eyes and kiss me."
+
+Having tenderly embraced his son, M. Violette left the room.  Amedee
+could hear him in the vestibule take down his hat and cane, open and
+close the door, and go down the stairs with a heavy step.  A quarter of
+an hour after, as the young man was crossing the Luxembourg to go to the
+office, he met Louise Gerard with her roll of music in her hand, going to
+give some lessons in the city.  He walked a few steps beside her, and the
+worthy girl noticed his red eyes and disturbed countenance.
+
+"What is the matter with you, Amedee?"  she inquired, anxiously.
+
+"Louise," he replied, "do you not think that my father has changed very
+much in the last few months?"
+
+She stopped and looked at him with eyes shining with compassion.
+
+"Very much changed, my poor Amedee.  You would not believe me if I told
+you that I had not remarked it.  But whatever may be the cause--how shall
+I say it?--that has affected your father's health, you should think of
+only one thing, my friend; that is, that he has been tender and devoted
+to you; that he became a widower very young and he did not remarry; that
+he has endured, in order to devote himself to his only child, long years
+of solitude and unhappy memories.  You must think of that, Amedee, and
+that only."
+
+"I never shall forget it, Louise, never fear; my heart is full of
+gratitude.  This morning, even, he was so affectionate and kind to me--
+but his health is ruined; he is now a weak old man.  Soon--I not only
+fear it, but I am certain of it--soon he will be incapable of work.
+I can see his poor hands tremble now.  He will not even have a right to a
+pension.  If he could not continue to work in the office he could hardly
+obtain a meagre relief, and that by favor only.  And for long years I can
+only hope for an insufficient salary.  Oh! to think that the catastrophe
+draws near, that one of these days he may fall ill and become infirm,
+perhaps, and that we shall be almost needy and I shall be unable to
+surround him with care in his old age.  That is what makes me tremble!"
+
+They walked along side by side upon the moist, soft ground of the large
+garden, under the leafless trees, where hung a slight penetrating mist
+which made them shiver under their wraps.
+
+"Amedee," said she, looking at the young man with a serious gentleness,
+"I have known you from a child, and I am the elder.  I am twenty-two;
+that makes me almost an old maid, Amedee, and gives me the right to scold
+you a little.  You lack confidence in life, my friend, and it is wrong at
+your age.  Do you think I do not see that my father has aged very much,
+that his eyesight fails, that we are much more cramped in circumstances
+in the house than formerly?  Are we any the more sad?  Mamma makes fewer
+little dishes and I teach in Paris, that is all.  We live nearly the same
+as before, and our dear Maria--she is the pet of us all, the joy and
+pride of the house-well, our Maria, all the same, has from time to time a
+new frock or a pretty hat.  I have no experience, but it seems to me that
+in order to feel really unhappy I must have nobody to love--that is the
+only privation worth the trouble of noticing.  Do you know that I have
+just had one of the greatest pleasures of my life?  I noticed that papa
+did not smoke as much as usual, in order to be economical, poor man!
+Fortunately I found a new pupil at Batignolles, and as soon as I had the
+first month's pay in my pocket I bought a large package of tobacco and
+put it beside his work.  One must never complain so long as one is
+fortunate enough to keep those one loves.  I know the secret grief that
+troubles you regarding your father; but think what he has suffered, that
+he loves you, that you are his only consolation.  And when you have
+gloomy thoughts, come and see your old friends, Amedee.  They will try to
+warm your heart at the fireside of their friendship, and to give you some
+of their courage, the courage of poor people which is composed of a
+little indifference and a little resignation."
+
+They had reached the Florentine Terrace, where stand the marble statues
+of queens and ladies, and on the other side of the balustrade, ornamented
+with large vases, they could see through the mist the reservoir with its
+two swans, the solitary gravel walks, the empty grass-plots of a pale
+green, surrounded by the skeletons of lilac-trees, and the facade of the
+old palace, whose clock-hands pointed to ten.
+
+"Let us hasten," said Louise, after a glance at the dial.  "Escort me as
+far at the Odeon omnibus.  I am a little late."
+
+As he walked by her side he looked at her.  Alas!  Poor Louise was not
+pretty, in spite of her large eyes, so loving but not coquettish.  She
+wore a close, ugly hat, a mantle drawn tightly about her shoulders,
+colored gloves, and heavy walking-shoes.  Yes, she was a perfect picture
+of a "two francs an hour" music-teacher.  What a good, brave girl!  With
+what an overflowing heart she had spoken of her family!  It was to earn
+tobacco for her father and a new frock for her pretty sister that she
+left thus, so early in the misty morning, and rode in public conveyances,
+or tramped through the streets of Paris in the mud.  The sight of her,
+more than what she said, gave the weak and melancholy Amedee courage and
+desire for manly resolutions.
+
+"My dear Louise," said he, with emotion, "I am very fortunate to have
+such a friend as you, and for so many years!  Do you remember when we
+used to have our hunts after the bearskin cap when we were children?"
+
+They had just left the garden and found themselves behind the Odeon.  Two
+tired-out omnibus horses, of a yellowish-white, and showing their ribs,
+were rubbing their noses against each other like a caress; then the horse
+on the left raised his head and placed it in a friendly way upon the
+other's mane.  Louise pointed to the two animals and said to Amedee,
+smilingly:
+
+"Their fate is hard, is it not?  No matter!  they are good friends, and
+that is enough to help them endure it."
+
+Then, shaking hands with Amedee, she climbed lightly up into the
+carriage.
+
+All that day at the office Amedee was uneasy about his father, and about
+four o'clock, a little before the time for his departure, he went to M.
+Violette's office.  There they told him that his father had just left,
+saying that he would dine at Grand Montrouge with an old friend; and
+Amedee, a trifle reassured, decided to rejoin his friend Maurice at the
+Foyot restaurant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+BUTTERFLIES AND GRASSHOPPERS
+
+Amedee was the first to arrive at the rendezvous.  He had hardly
+pronounced Maurice Roger's name when a voice like a cannon bellowed out,
+"Now then! the yellow parlor!" and he was conducted into a room where a
+dazzling table was laid by a young man, with a Yankee goatee and
+whiskers, and the agility of a prestidigitateur.  This frisky person
+relieved Amedee at once of his hat and coat, and left him alone in the
+room, radiant with lighted candles.
+
+Evidently it was to be a banquet.  Piled up in the centre of the table
+was a large dish of crayfish, and at each plate--there were five--were
+groups of large and small glasses.
+
+Maurice came in almost immediately, accompanied by his other guests,
+three young men dressed in the latest fashion, whom Amedee did not at
+first recognize as his former comrades, who once wore wrinkled stockings
+and seedy coats, and wore out with him the seats of their trousers on the
+benches of the Lycee Henri IV.
+
+After the greetings, "What! is it you?"  "Do you remember me?"  and a
+shaking of hands, they all seated themselves around the table.
+
+What! is that little dumpy fellow with the turned-up nose, straight as an
+arrow and with such a satisfied air, Gorju, who wanted to be an actor?
+He is one now, or nearly so, since he studies with Regnier at the
+Conservatoire.  A make-believe actor, he puts on airs, and in the three
+minutes that he has been in the room he has looked at his retrousse nose
+and his coarse face, made to be seen from a distance, ten times in the
+mirror.  His first care is to inform Amedee that he has renounced his
+name Gorju, which was an impossible one for the theatre, and has taken
+that of Jocquelet.  Then, without losing a moment, he refers to his
+"talents," "charms," and "physique."
+
+Who is this handsome fellow with such neat side-whiskers, whose finely
+cut features suggest an intaglio head, and who has just placed a lawyer's
+heavy portfolio upon the sofa?  It is Arthur Papillon, the distinguished
+Latin scholar who wished to organize a debating society at the Lycee,
+and to divide the rhetoric class into groups and sub-groups like a
+parliament.  "What have you been doing, Papillon?"  Papillon had studied
+law, and was secretary of the Patru Conference, of course.
+
+Amedee immediately recognized the third guest.
+
+"What! Gustave!"  exclaimed he, joyously.
+
+Yes!  Gustave, the former "dunce," the one they had called "Good-luck"
+because his father had made an immense fortune in guano.  Not one bit
+changed was Gustave!  The same deep-set eyes and greenish complexion.
+But what style!  English from the tips of his pointed shoes to the
+horseshoe scarfpin in his necktie.  One would say that he was a horse-
+jockey dressed in his Sunday best.  What was this comical Gustave doing
+now?  Nothing.  His father has made two hundred thousand pounds' income
+dabbling in certain things, and Gustave is getting acquainted with that
+is all--which means to wake up every morning toward noon, with a bitter
+mouth caused from the last night's supper, and to be surprised every
+morning at dawn at the baccarat table, after spending five hours saying
+"Bac!" in a stifled, hollow voice.  Gustave understands life, and, taking
+into consideration his countenance like a death's-head, it may lead him
+to make the acquaintance of something entirely different.  But who thinks
+of death at his age?  Gustave wishes to know life, and when a fit of
+coughing interrupts him in one of his idiotic bursts of laughter, his
+comrades at the Gateux Club tell him that he has swallowed the wrong way.
+Wretched Gustave, so be it!
+
+Meanwhile the boy with the juggler's motions appeared with the soup,
+and made exactly the same gestures when he uncovered the tureen as Robert
+Houdin would have made, and one was surprised not to see a bunch of
+flowers or a live rabbit fly out.  But no!  it was simply soup, and the
+guests attacked it vigorously and in silence.  After the Rhine wine all
+tongues were unloosened, and as soon as they had eaten the Normandy sole-
+oh!  what glorious appetites at twenty years of age!--the five young men
+all talked at once.  What a racket!  Exclamations crossed one another
+like rockets.  Gustave, forcing his weak voice, boasted of the
+performances of a "stepper" that he had tried that morning in the Allee
+des Cavaliers.  He would have been much better off had he stayed in his
+bed and taken cod-liver oil.  Maurice called out to the boy to uncork the
+Chateau-Leoville.  Amedee, having spoken of his drama to the comedian
+Gorju, called Jocquelet, that person, speaking in his bugle-like voice
+that came through his bugle-shaped nose, set himself up at once as a man
+of experience, giving his advice, and quoting, with admiration, Talma's
+famous speech to a dramatic poet: "Above all, no fine verses!"  Arthur
+Papillon, who was destined for the courts, thought it an excellent time
+to lord it over the tumult of the assembly himself, and bleated out a
+speech of Jules Favre that he had heard the night before in the
+legislative assembly.
+
+The timid Amedee was defeated at the start in this melee of conversation.
+Maurice also kept silent, with a slightly disdainful smile under his
+golden moustache, and an attack of coughing soon disabled Gustave.
+Alone, like two ships in line who let out, turn by turn, their volleys,
+the lawyer and the actor continued their cannonading.  Arthur Papillon,
+who belonged to the Liberal opposition and wished that the Imperial
+government should come around to "a pacific and regular movement of
+parliamentary institutions," was listened to for a time, and explained,
+in a clear, full voice the last article in the 'Courrier du Dimanche'.
+But, bursting out in his terrible voice, which seemed like all of
+Gideon's trumpets blowing at once, the comedian took up the offensive,
+and victoriously declared a hundred foolish things--saying, for example,
+that the part of Alceste should be made a comic one; making fun of
+Shakespeare and Hugo, exalting Scribe, and in spite of his profile and
+hooked nose, which should have opened the doors of the Theatre-Francais
+and given him an equal share for life in its benefits, he affirmed that
+he intended to play lovers' parts, and that he meant to assume the
+responsibility of making "sympathetic" the role of Nero, in Britannicus.
+
+This would have become terribly tiresome, but for the entrance upon the
+scene of some truffled partridges, which the juggler carved and
+distributed in less time than it would take to shuffle a pack of cards.
+He even served the very worst part of the bird to the simple Amedee, as
+he would force him to choose the nine of spades.  Then he poured out the
+chambertin, and once more all heads became excited, and the conversation
+fell, as was inevitable, upon the subject of women.
+
+Jocquelet began it, by speaking the name of one of the prettiest
+actresses in Paris.  He knew them all and described them exactly,
+detailing their beauties like a slave-dealer.
+
+"So little Lucille Prunelle is a friend of the great Moncontour--"
+
+"Pardon me," interrupted Gustave, who was looking badly, "she has already
+left him for Cerfbeer the banker."
+
+"I say she has not."
+
+"I say that she has."
+
+They would have quarrelled if Maurice, with his affable, bantering air,
+had not attacked Arthur Papillon on the subject of his love-affairs; for
+the young advocate drank many cups of Orleanist tea, going even into the
+same drawing-rooms as Beule and Prevost-Paradol, and accompanying
+political ladies to the receptions at the Academie Francaise.
+
+"That is where you must make havoc, you rascal!"
+
+But Papillon defends himself with conceited smiles and meaning looks.
+According to him--and he puts his two thumbs into the armholes of his
+vest--the ambitious must be chaste.
+
+"Abstineo venere," said he, lowering his eyes in a comical manner, for he
+did not fear Latin quotations.  However, he declared himself very hard to
+please in that matter; he dreamed of an Egeria, a superior mind.  What he
+did not tell them was, that a dressmaker's little errand-girl, with whom
+he had tried to converse as he left the law-school, had surveyed him from
+head to foot and threatened him with the police.
+
+Upon some new joke of Maurice's, the lawyer gave his amorous programme in
+the following terms:
+
+"Understand me, a woman must be as intelligent as Hypatia, and have the
+sensibility of Heloise; the smile of a Joconde, and the limbs of an
+Antiope; and, even then, if she had not the throat of a Venus de Medicis,
+I should not love her."
+
+Without going quite so far, the actor showed himself none the less
+exacting.  According to his ideas, Deborah, the tragedienne at the Odeon
+--a Greek statue!--had too large hands, and the fascinating Blanche
+Pompon at the Varietes was a mere wax doll.
+
+Gustave, after all, was the one who is most intractable; excited by the
+Bordeaux wine--a glass of mineral water would be best for him--he
+proclaimed that the most beautiful creature was agreeable to him only for
+one day; that it was a matter of principle, and that he had never made
+but one exception, in favor of the illustrious dancer at the Casino
+Cadet, Nina l'Auvergnate, because she was so comical!  "Oh! my friends,
+she is so droll, she is enough to kill one!"
+
+"To kill one!"  Yes! my dear Monsieur Gustave, that is what will happen
+to you one of these fine mornings, if you do not decide to lead a more
+reasonable life--and on the condition that you pass your winters in the
+South, also!
+
+Poor Amedee was in torture; all his illusions--desires and sentiments
+blended--were cruelly wounded.  Then, he had just discovered a deplorable
+faculty; a new cause for being unhappy.  The sight of this foolishness
+made him suffer.  How these coarse young men lied!  Gustave seemed to him
+a genuine idiot, Arthur Papillon a pedant, and as to Jocquelet, he was as
+unbearable as a large fly buzzing between the glass and the curtain of a
+nervous man's room.  Fortunately, Maurice made a little diversion by
+bursting into a laugh.
+
+"Well, my friends, you are all simpletons," he exclaimed.  "I am not like
+you, thank fortune!  I do not sputter over my soup.  Long life to women!
+Yes, all of them, pretty and otherwise!  For, upon my word, there are no
+ugly ones.  I do not notice that Miss Keepsake has feet like the English,
+and I forget the barmaid's ruddy complexion, if she is attractive
+otherwise.  Now do not talk in this stupid fashion, but do as I do;
+nibble all the apples while you have teeth.  Do you know the reason why,
+at the moment that I am talking to the lady of the house, I notice the
+nose of the pretty waitress who brings in a letter on a salver?  Do you
+know the reason why, just as I am leaving Cydalize's house, who has put
+a rose in my buttonhole, that I turn my head at the passing of Margoton,
+who is returning from the market with a basket upon her arm?  It is
+because it is one other of my children.  One other!  that is a great
+word!  Yes, one thousand and three.  Don Juan was right.  I feel his
+blood coursing in my veins.  And now the boy shall uncork some champagne,
+shall he not?  to drink to the health of love!"
+
+Maurice was cynical, but this exposition of his philosophy served a good
+purpose all the same.  Everybody applauded him.  The prestidigitateur,
+who moved about the table like a schoolboy in a monkey-house, drew the
+cork from a bottle of Roederer--it was astonishing that fireworks did not
+dart out of it--and good-humor was restored.  It reigned noisily until
+the end of the repast, when the effect was spoiled by that fool of a
+Gustave.  He insisted upon drinking three glasses of kummel--why had they
+not poured in maple sirup?--and, imagining that Jocquelet looked at him
+askance, he suddenly manifested the intention of cutting his head open
+with the carafe.  The comedian, who was very pale, recalled all the
+scenes of provocation that he had seen in the theatre; he stiffened in
+his chair, swelled out his chest, and stammered, "At your orders!"
+trying to "play the situation."  But it was useless.
+
+Gustave, restrained by Maurice and Amedee, and as drunk as a Pole,
+responded to his friend's objurgations by a torrent of tears, and fell
+under the table, breaking some of the dishes.
+
+"Now, then, we must take the baby home," said Maurice, signing to the
+boy.  In the twinkling of an eye the human rag called Gustave was lifted
+into a chair, clothed in his topcoat and hat, dressed and spruced up,
+pushed down the spiral staircase, and landed in a cab.  Then the
+prestidigitateur returned and performed his last trick by making the
+plate disappear upon which Maurice had thrown some money to pay the bill.
+
+It was not far from eleven o'clock when the comrades shook hands, in a
+thick fog, in which the gaslights looked like the orange pedlers' paper
+lanterns.  Ugh!  how damp it was!
+
+"Good-by."
+
+"I will see you again soon."
+
+"Good-night to the ladies."
+
+Arthur Papillon was in evening dress and white cravat, his customary
+attire every evening, and still had time to show himself in a political
+salon on the left side, where he met Moichod, the author of that famous
+Histoire de Napoleon, in which he proves that Napoleon was only a
+mediocre general, and that all his battles were gained by his
+lieutenants.  Jocquelet wished to go to the Odeon and hear, for the tenth
+time, the fifth act of a piece of the common-sense school, in which the
+hero, after haranguing against money for four acts in badly rhymed verse,
+ends by marrying the young heiress, to the great satisfaction of the
+bourgeois.  As to Maurice, before he went to rejoin Mademoiselle Irma at
+the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, he walked part of the way with Amedee.
+
+"These comrades of ours are a little stupid, aren't they?"  said he to
+his friend.
+
+"I must say that they almost disgust me," replied the young man.
+"Their brutal way of speaking of women and love wounded me, and you too,
+Maurice.  So much the worse!  I will be honest; you, who are so refined
+and proud, tell me that you did not mean what you said--that you made a
+pretence of vice just to please the others.  It is not possible that you
+are content simply to gratify your appetite and make yourself a slave to
+your passions.  You ought to have a higher ideal.  Your conscience must
+reproach you."
+
+Maurice brusquely interrupted this tirade, laughing in advance at what he
+was about to say.
+
+"My conscience?  Oh, tender and artless Violette; Oh, modest wood-flower!
+Conscience, my poor friend, is like a Suede glove, you can wear it
+soiled.  Adieu!  We will talk of this another day, when Mademoiselle Irma
+is not waiting for me."
+
+Amedee walked on alone, shivering in the mist, weary and sad, to the Rue
+Notre-Dame-des-Champs.
+
+No! it could not be true.  There must be another love than that known to
+these brutes.  There were other women besides the light creatures they
+had spoken of.  His thoughts reverted to the companion of his childhood,
+to the pretty little Maria, and again he sees her sewing near the family
+lamp, and talking with him without raising her eyes, while he admires her
+beautiful, drooping lashes.  He is amazed to think that this delicious
+child's presence has never given him the slightest uneasiness; that he
+has never thought of any other happiness than that of being near her.
+Why should not a love like that he has dreamed of some day spring up in
+her own heart?  Have they not grown up together?  Is he not the only
+young man that she knows intimately?  What happiness to become her
+fiancee!  Yes, it was thus that one should love!  Hereafter he would flee
+from all temptations; he would pass all his evenings with the Gerards;
+he would keep as near as possible to his dear Maria, content to hear her
+speak, to see her smile; and he would wait with a heart full of
+tenderness for the moment when she would consent to become his wife.
+Oh!  the exquisite union of two chaste beings!  the adorable kiss of
+two innocent mouths!  Did such happiness really exist?
+
+This beautiful dream warmed the young man's heart, and he reached his
+home joyous and happy.  He gave a vigorous pull to the bell, climbed
+quickly up the long flights of stairs and opened the door to their
+apartment.  But what was this?  His father must have come home very late,
+for a stream of light shines under the door of his sleeping-room.
+
+"Poor man!"  thought Amedee, recalling the scene of the morning.
+"He may be ill.  Let us see."
+
+He had hardly opened the door, when he drew back uttering a shriek of
+horror and distress.  By the light of a candle that burned upon the
+mantel, Amedee had caught sight of his father extended upon the floor,
+his shirt disordered and covered with blood, holding in his clenched
+right hand the razor with which he had cut his throat.
+
+Yes! the union of two loving hearts had at last taken place.  Their love
+was happiness on earth; but if one of the two dies the other can never be
+consoled while life lasts.
+
+M. Violette never was consoled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THORNS OF JEALOUSY
+
+Now Amedee had no family.  The day after his father's death he had a
+violent rupture with M. Isidore Gaufre.  Under the pretext that a suicide
+horrified him, he allowed his niece's husband to be carried to the
+cemetery in a sixth-class hearse, and did not honor with his presence
+the funeral, which was even prohibited from using the parish road.
+But the saintly man was not deterred from swallowing for his dinner that
+same day, while thundering against the progress of materialism, tripe
+cooked after the Caen fashion, one of Berenice's weekly works of art.
+
+Amedee had now no family, and his friends were dispersed.  As a reward
+for passing his examinations in law, Madame Roger took her son with her
+on a trip to Italy, and they had just left France together.
+
+As to the poor Gerards, just one month after M. Violette's death, the old
+engraver died suddenly, of apoplexy, at his work; and on that day there
+were not fifty francs in the house.  Around the open grave where they
+lowered the obscure and honest artist, there was only a group of three
+women, in black, who were weeping, and Amedee in mourning for his father,
+with a dozen of Gerard's old comrades, whose romantic heads had become
+gray.  The family was obliged to sell at once, in order to get a little
+money, what remained of proof-sheets in the boxes, some small paintings,
+old presents from artist friends who had become celebrated, and the last
+of the ruined knickknacks--indeed, all that constituted the charm of the
+house.  Then, in order that her eldest daughter might not be so far from
+the boarding-school where she was employed as teacher of music, Madame
+Gerard went to live in the Rue St.-Pierre, in Montmartre, where they
+found a little cheap, first-floor apartment, with a garden as large as
+one's hand.
+
+Now that he was reduced to his one hundred and twenty-five francs, Amedee
+was obliged to leave his too expensive apartment in the Rue Notre-Dame-
+des-Champs, and to sell the greater part of his family furniture.  He
+kept only his books and enough to furnish his little room, perched under
+the roof of an old house in the Faubourg St.-Jacques.
+
+It was far from Montmartre, so he could not see his friends as often as
+he would have liked, those friends whom grief in common had made dearer
+than ever to him.  One single consolation remained for him--literary
+work.  He threw himself into it blindly, deadening his sorrow with the
+fruitful and wonderful opiate of poetry and dreams.  However, he had now
+begun to make headway, feeling that he had some thing new to say.  He had
+long ago thrown into the fire his first poems, awkward imitations of
+favorite authors, also his drama after the style of 1830, where the two
+lovers sang a duet at the foot of the scaffold.  He returned to truth and
+simplicity by the longest way, the schoolboy's road.  Taste and
+inclination both induced him to express simply and honestly what he saw
+before him; to express, so far as he could, the humble ideal of the poor
+people with whom he had lived in the melancholy Parisian suburbs where
+his infancy was passed; in a word, to paint from nature.  He tried,
+feeling that he could succeed; and in those days lived the most beautiful
+and perfect hours of his life--those in which the artist, already master
+of his instrument, having still the abundance and vivacity of youthful
+sensations, writes the first words that he knows to be good, and writes
+them with entire disinterestedness, not even thinking that others will
+see them; working for himself alone and for the sole joy of putting in
+visible form and spreading abroad his ideas, his thoughts-all his heart.
+Those moments of pure enthusiasm and perfect happiness he never could
+know again, even after he had nibbled at the savory food of success and
+had experienced the feverish desire for glory.  Delicious hours they
+were, and sacred, too, such as can only be compared to the divine
+intoxication of first love.
+
+Amedee worked courageously during the winter months that followed his
+father's death.  He arose at six o'clock in the morning, lighted his lamp
+and the little stove which heated his room, and, walking up and down,
+leaning over his page, the poet would vigorously begin his struggle with
+fancies, ideas, and words.  At nine o'clock he would go out and breakfast
+at a neighboring creamery; after which he would go to his office.  There,
+his tiresome papers once written, he had two or three hours of leisure,
+which he employed in reading and taking notes from the volumes borrowed
+by him every morning at a reading-room on the Rue Rorer-Collard; for he
+had already learned that one leaves college almost ignorant, having, at
+best, only learned how to study.  He left the office at nightfall and
+reached his room through the Boulevard des Invalides, and Montparnasse,
+which at this time was still planted with venerable elms; sometimes the
+lamplighter would be ahead of him, making the large gas-jets shoot out
+under the leafless old trees.  This walk, that Amedee imposed upon
+himself for health's sake, would bring him, about six o'clock, a
+workman's appetite for his dinner,--in the little creamery situated in
+front of Val-de-Grace, where he had formed the habit of going.  Then he
+would return to his garret, and relight his stove and lamp, and work
+until midnight.  This ardent, continuous effort, this will-tension kept
+in his mind the warmth, animation, and excitement indispensable for
+poetical production.  His mind expanded rapidly, ready to receive the
+germs that were blown to him by the mysterious winds of inspiration.
+At times he was astonished to see his pen fill the sheet so rapidly that
+he would stop, filled with pride at having thus reduced to obedience
+words and rhythms, and would ask himself what supernatural power had
+permitted him to arm these divine wild birds.
+
+On Sundays, he had his meals brought him by the concierge, working all
+day and not going out until nearly five o'clock in the afternoon, to dine
+with Mamma Gerard.  It was the only distraction that he allowed himself,
+or rather the only recompense that he permitted himself.  He walked
+halfway across Paris to buy a cake in the Rue Fontaine for their dessert;
+then he climbed without fatigue, thanks to his young legs, to the top of
+Montmartre, lighted by swinging lamps, where one could almost believe
+one's self in the distant corner of some province.  They would be waiting
+for him to serve the soup, and the young man would seat himself between
+the widow and the two orphans.
+
+Alas, how hard these poor ladies' lives had become!  Damourette, a member
+of the Institute, remembered that he had once joked in the studios with
+Gerard, and obtained a small annual pension for the widow; but it was
+charity--hardly enough to pay the rent.  Fortunately Louise, who already
+looked like an old maid at twenty-three, going about the city all day
+with her roll of music under her black shawl, had many pupils, and more
+than twenty houses had well-nigh become uninhabitable through her
+exertions with little girls, whose red hands made an unendurable racket
+with their chromatic scales.  Louise's earnings constituted the surest
+part of their revenue.  What a strange paradox is the social life in
+large cities, where Weber's Last Waltz will bring the price of a four-
+pound loaf of bread, and one pays the grocer with the proceeds of
+Boccherini's Minuet!
+
+In spite of all, they had hard work to make both ends meet at the
+Gerards.  The pretty Maria wished to make herself useful and aid her
+mother and sister.  She had always shown great taste for drawing, and her
+father used to give her lessons in pastel.  Now she went to the Louvre to
+work, and tried to copy the Chardins and Latours.  She went there alone.
+It was a little imprudent, she was so pretty; but Louise had no time to
+go with her, and her mother had to be at home to attend to the housework
+and cooking.  Maria's appearance had already excited the hearts of
+several young daubers.  There were several cases of persistent sadness
+and loss of appetite in Flandrin's studio; and two of Signol's pupils,
+who were surprised hovering about the young artist, were hated secretly
+as rivals; certain projects of duels, after the American fashion, were
+profoundly considered.  To say that Maria was not a little flattered to
+see all these admirers turn timidly and respectfully toward her; to
+pretend that she took off her hat and hung it on one corner of her easel
+because the heat from the furnace gave her neuralgia and not to show her
+beautiful hair, would be as much of a lie as a politician's promise.
+However, the little darling was very serious, or at least tried to be.
+She worked conscientiously and made some progress.  Her last copy of the
+portrait of that Marquise who holds a pug dog in her lap, with a ribbon
+about his neck, was not very bad.  This copy procured a piece of good
+luck for the young artist.
+
+Pere Issacar, a bric-a-brac merchant on the Quay Voltairean--an old-
+fashioned Jew with a filthy overcoat, the very sight of which made one
+long to tear it off--approached Maria one day, just as she was about to
+sketch a rose in the Marquise's powdered wig, and after raising a hat
+greasy enough to make the soup for a whole regiment, said to her:
+
+"Matemoiselle, vould you make me von dozen vamily bordraits?"
+
+The young girl did not at first understand his abominable language, but
+at last he made her comprehend.
+
+Every thing is bought nowadays, even rank, provided, of course, that one
+has a purse sufficiently well filled.  Nothing is simpler!  In return for
+a little money you can procure at the Vatican--second corridor on your
+right, third door at the left--a brand-new title of Roman Count.  A
+heraldic agency--see advertisement--will plant and make grow at your will
+a genealogical tree, under whose shade you can give a country breakfast
+to twenty-five people.  You buy a castle with port-holes--port-holes are
+necessary--in a corner of some reactionary province.  You call upon the
+lords of the surrounding castles with a gold fleur-de-lys in your cravat.
+You pose as an enraged Legitimist and ferocious Clerical.  You give
+dinners and hunting parties, and the game is won.  I will wager that your
+son will marry into a Faubourg St.-Germain family, a family which
+descends authentically from the Crusaders.
+
+In order to execute this agreeable buffoonery, you must not forget
+certain accessories--particularly portraits of your ancestors.  They
+should ornament the castle walls where you regale the country nobles.
+One must use tact in the selection of this family gallery.  There must be
+no exaggeration.  Do not look too high.  Do not claim as a founder of
+your race a knight in armor hideously painted, upon wood, with his coat
+of arms in one corner of the panel.  Bear in mind the date of chivalry.
+Be satisfied with the head of a dynasty whose gray beard hangs over a
+well-crimped ruff.  I saw a very good example of that kind the other day
+on the Place Royale.  A dog was just showing his disrespect for it as I
+passed.  You can obtain an ancestor like this in the outskirts of the
+city for fifteen francs, if you haggle a little.  Or you need not give
+yourself so much trouble.  Apply to a specialist, Pere Issacar, for
+instance.  He will procure magnificent ancestors for you; not dear
+either!  If you will consent to descend to simple magistrates, the price
+will be insignificant.  Chief justices are dirt cheap.  Naturally, if you
+wish to be of the military profession, to have eminent clergy among your
+antecedents, the price increases.  Pere Issacar is the only one who can
+give you, at a reasonable rate, ermine-draped bishops, or a colonel with
+a Louis XIV wig, and, if you wish it, a blue ribbon and a breast-plate
+under his red coat.  What produces a good effect in a series of family
+portraits is a series of pastels.  What would you say to a goggle-eyed
+abbe, or an old lady indecently decolletee, or a captain of dragoons
+wearing a tigerskin cap (it is ten francs more if he has the cross of St.
+Louis)?  Pere Issacar knows his business, and always has in reserve
+thirty of these portraits in charming frames of the period, made
+expressly for him in the Faubourg St.-Antoine, and which have all been
+buried fifteen days and riddled with shot, in order to have the musty
+appearance and indispensable worm holes.
+
+You can understand now why the estimable Jew, in passing through the
+Louvre for his weekly promenade, took an interest in little Maria copying
+the charming Marquise de Latour.  He was just at this time short of
+powdered marquises, and they are always very much in demand.  He begged
+the young woman to take her copy home and make twelve more of it,
+varying, only the color of the dress and some particular detail in each
+portrait.  Thus, instead of the pug dog, marquise No. 2 would hold a King
+Charles spaniel, No. 2 a monkey, No. 3 a bonbon box, No. 4 a fan.  The
+face could remain the same.  All marquises looked alike to Pere Issacar;
+he only exacted that they should all be provided with two black patches,
+one under the right eye, the other on the left shoulder.  This he
+insisted upon, for the patch, in his eyes, was a symbol of the eighteenth
+century.
+
+Pere Issacar was a fair man and promised to furnish frames, paper, and
+pastels, and to pay the young girl fifteen francs for each marquise.
+What was better yet, he promised, if he was pleased with the first work,
+to order of the young artist a dozen canonesses of Remiremont and a half-
+dozen of royal gendarmes.
+
+I wish you could have seen those ladies when Maria went home to tell the
+good news.  Louise had just returned from distributing semiquavers in the
+city; her eyes and poor Mother Gerard's were filled with tears of joy.
+
+"What, my darling, "said the mother, embracing her child, "are you going
+to trouble yourself about our necessaries of life, too?"
+
+"Do you see this little sister?"  said Louise, laughing cordially.
+"She is going to earn a pile of money as large as she is herself.  Do you
+know that I am jealous--I, with my piano and my displeasing profession?
+Good-luck to pastel!  It is not noisy, it will not annoy the neighbors,
+and when you are old you can say, 'I never have played for anybody.'"
+
+But Maria did not wish them to joke.  They had always treated her like a
+doll, a spoiled child, who only knew how to curl her hair and tumble her
+frocks.  Well, they should see!
+
+When Amedee arrived on Sunday with his cake, they told him over several
+times the whole story, with a hundred details, and showed him the two
+marquises that Maria had already finished, who wore patches as large as
+wafers.
+
+She appeared that day more attractive and charming than ever to the young
+man, and it was then that he conceived his first ambition.  If he only
+had enough talent to get out of his obscurity and poverty, and could
+become a famous writer and easily earn his living!  It was not
+impossible, after all.  Oh, with what pleasure he would ask this
+exquisite child to be his wife!  How sweet it would be to know that she
+was happy with, and proud of, him!  But he must not think of it now,
+they were too poor; and then, would Maria love him?
+
+He often asked himself that question, and with uneasiness.  In his own
+heart he felt that the childish intimacy had become a sincere affection,
+a real love.  He had no reason to hope that the same transformation had
+taken place in the young girl's heart.  She always treated him very
+affectionately, but rather like a good comrade, and she was no more
+stirred by his presence now than she was when she had lain in wait with
+him behind the old green sofa to hunt Father Gerard's battered fur hat.
+
+Amedee had most naturally taken the Gerard family into his confidence
+regarding his work.  After the Sunday dinner they would seat themselves
+around the table where Mamma Gerard had just served the coffee, and the
+young man would read to his friends, in a grave, slow voice, the poem he
+had composed during the week.  A painter having the taste and inclination
+for interior scenes, like the old masters of the Dutch school, would have
+been stirred by the contemplation of this group of four persons in
+mourning.  The poet, with his manuscript in his right hand and marking
+the syllables with a rhythmical movement of his left, was seated between
+the two sisters.  But while Louise--a little too thin and faded for her
+years--fixes her attentive eyes upon the reader and listens with avidity,
+the pretty Maria is listless and sits with a bored little face, gazing
+mechanically at the other side of the table.  Mother Gerard knits with a
+serious air and her spectacles perched upon the tip of her nose.
+
+Alas! during these readings Louise was the only one who heaved sighs of
+emotion; and sometimes even great tear-drops would tremble upon her
+lashes.  She was the only one who could find just the right delicate word
+with which to congratulate the poet, and show that she had understood and
+been touched by his verses.  At the most Maria would sometimes accord the
+young poet, still agitated by the declamation of his lines, a careless
+"It is very pretty!" with a commonplace smile of thanks.
+
+She did not care for poetry, then?  Later, if he married her, would she
+remain indifferent to her husband's intellectual life, insensible even to
+the glory that he might reap?  How sad it was for Amedee to have to ask
+himself that question!
+
+Soon Maria inspired a new fear within him.  Maurice and his mother had
+been already three months in Italy, and excepting two letters that he had
+received from Milan, at the beginning of his journey, in the first flush
+of his enthusiasm, Amedee had had no news from his friend.  He excused
+this negligence on the part of the lazy Maurice, who had smilingly told
+him, on the eve of departure, not to count upon hearing from him
+regularly.  At each visit that Amedee paid the Gerards, Maria always
+asked him:
+
+"Have you received any news from your friend Maurice?"
+
+At first he had paid no attention to this, but her persistency at length
+astonished him, planting a little germ of suspicion and alarm in his
+heart.  Maurice Roger had only paid the Gerards a few visits during the
+father's lifetime, and accompanied on each occasion by Amedee.  He had
+always observed the most respectful manner toward Maria, and they had
+perhaps exchanged twenty words.  Why should Maria preserve such a
+particular remembrance of a person so nearly a stranger to her?  Was it
+possible that he had made a deep impression, perhaps even inspired a
+sentiment of love?  Did she conceal in the depths of her heart, when she
+thought of him, a tender hope?  Was she watching for him?  Did she wish
+him to return?
+
+When these fears crossed Amedee's mind, he felt a choking sensation, and
+his heart was troubled.  Happy Maurice, who had only to be seen to
+please!  But immediately, with a blush of shame, the generous poet chased
+away this jealous fancy.  But every Sunday, when Maria, lowering her
+eyes, and with a slightly embarrassed voice, repeated her question, "Have
+you received any news from Monsieur Maurice?"  Amedee felt a cruelly
+discouraged feeling, and thought, with deep sadness:
+
+"She never will love me!"
+
+To conquer this new grief, he plunged still more deeply into work; but he
+did not find his former animation and energy.  After the drizzling rain
+of the last days of March, the spring arrived.  Now, when Amedee awoke,
+it was broad daylight at six o'clock in the morning.  Opening his mansard
+window, he admired, above the tops of the roofs, the large, ruddy sun
+rising in the soft gray sky, and from the convent gardens beneath came a
+fresh odor of grass and damp earth.  Under the shade of the arched
+lindens which led to the shrine of a plaster Virgin, a first and almost
+imperceptible rustle, a presentiment of verdure, so to speak, ran
+through the branches, and the three almond trees in the kitchen-garden
+put forth their delicate flowers.  The young poet was invaded by a sweet
+and overwhelming languor, and Maria's face, which was commonly before his
+inner vision upon awakening, became confused and passed from his mind.
+He seated himself for a moment before a table and reread the last lines
+of a page that he had begun; but he was immediately overcome by physical
+lassitude, and abandoned himself to thought, saying to himself that he
+was twenty years old, and that it would be very good, after all, to enjoy
+life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A BUDDING POET
+
+It is the first of May, and the lilacs in the Luxembourg Gardens are in
+blossom.  It has just struck four o'clock.  The bright sun and the pure
+sky have rendered more odious than ever the captivity of the office to
+Amedee, and he departs before the end of the sitting for a stroll in the
+Medicis garden around the pond, where, for the amusement of the children
+in that quarter, a little breeze from the northeast is pushing on a
+miniature flotilla.  Suddenly he hears himself called by a voice which
+bursts out like a brass band at a country fair.
+
+"Good-day, Violette."
+
+It is Jocquelet, the future comedian, with his turned-up nose, which cuts
+the air like the prow of a first-class ironclad, superb, triumphant,
+dressed like a Brazilian, shaved to the quick, the dearest hope of
+Regnier's class at the Conservatoire-Jocquelet, who has made an enormous
+success in an act from the "Precieuses," at the last quarter's
+examination--he says so himself, without any useless modesty--Jocquelet,
+who will certainly have the first comedy prize at the next examination,
+and will make his debut with out delay at the Comedie Francaise!  All
+this he announces in one breath, like a speech learned by heart, with his
+terrible voice, like a quack selling shaving-paste from a gilded
+carriage.  In two minutes that favorite word of theatrical people had
+been repeated thirty times, punctuating the phrases: "I!  I!  I!  I!"
+
+Amedee is only half pleased at the meeting.  Jocquelet was always a
+little too noisy to please him.  After all, he was an old comrade, and
+out of politeness the poet congratulated him upon his success.
+
+Jocquelet questioned him.  What was Amedee doing?  What had become of
+him?  Where was his literary work?  All this was asked with such
+cordiality and warmth of manner that one would have thought that
+Jocquelet was interested in Amedee, and had a strong friendship for him.
+Nothing of the, sort.  Jocquelet was interested in only one person in
+this world, and that person was named Jocquelet.  One is either an actor
+or he is not.  This personage was always one wherever he was--in an
+omnibus, while putting on his suspenders, even with the one he loved.
+When he said to a newcomer, "How do you do?"  he put so much feeling into
+this very original question, that the one questioned asked himself
+whether he really had not just recovered from a long and dangerous
+illness.  Now, at this time Jocquelet found himself in the presence of an
+unknown and poor young poet.  What role ought such an eminent person as
+himself to play in such circumstances?  To show affection for the young
+man, calm his timidity, and patronize him without too much haughtiness;
+that was the position to take, and Jocquelet acted it.
+
+Amedee was an artless dupe, and, touched by the interest shown him, he
+frankly replied:
+
+"Well, my dear friend, I have worked hard this winter.  I am not
+dissatisfied.  I think that I have made some progress; but if you knew
+how hard and difficult it is!"
+
+He was about to confide to Jocquelet the doubts and sufferings of a
+sincere artist, but Jocquelet, as we have said, thought only of himself,
+and brusquely interrupted the young poet:
+
+"You do not happen to have a poem with you--something short, a hundred or
+a hundred and fifty lines--a poem intended for effect, that one could
+recite?"
+
+Amedee had copied out that very day, at the office, a war story, a heroic
+episode of Sebastopol that he had heard Colonel Lantz relate not long
+since at Madame Roger's, and had put into verse with a good French
+sentiment and quite the military spirit, verse which savored of powder,
+and went off like reports of musketry.  He took the sheets out of his
+pocket, and, leading the comedian into a solitary by-path of sycamores
+which skirted the Luxembourg orangery, he read his poem to him in a low
+voice.  Jocquelet, who did not lack a certain literary instinct, was very
+enthusiastic, for he foresaw a success for himself, and said to the poet:
+
+"You read those verses just like a poet, that is, very badly.  But no
+matter, this battle is very effective, and I see what I could do with it-
+with my voice.  But what do you mean?"  added he, planting himself in
+front of his friend.  "Do you write verses like these and nobody knows
+anything about them?  It is absurd.  Do you wish, then, to imitate
+Chatterton?  That is an old game, entirely used up!  You must push
+yourself, show yourself.  I will take charge of that myself!  Your
+evening is free, is it not?  Very well, come with me; before six o'clock
+I shall have told your name to twenty trumpeters, who will make all Paris
+resound with the news that there is a poet in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques.
+I will wager, you savage, that you never have put your foot into the Cafe
+de Seville.  Why, my dear fellow, it is our first manufactory of fame!
+Here is the Odeon omnibus, get on!  We shall be at the Boulevard
+Montmartre in twenty minutes, and I shall baptize you there, as a great
+man, with a glass of absinthe."
+
+Dazzled and carried away, Amedee humored him and climbed upon the outside
+of the omnibus with his comrade.  The vehicle hurried them quickly along
+toward the quay, crossed the Seine, the Carrousel, and passed before the
+Theatre-Francais, at which Jocquelet, thinking of his approaching debut,
+shook his fist, exclaiming, "Now I am ready for you!"  Here the young men
+were planted upon the asphalt boulevard, in front of the Cafe de Seville.
+
+Do not go to-day to see this old incubator, in which so many political
+and literary celebrities have been hatched; for you will only find a
+cafe, just like any other, with its groups of ugly little Jews who
+discuss the coming races, and here and there a poor creature, painted
+like a Jezebel, dying of chagrin over her pot of beer.
+
+At the decline of the Second Empire--it was May 1, 1866, that Amedee
+Violette entered there for the first time--the Cafe de, Seville passed
+for, and with reason too, one of the most remarkable places in Paris.
+For this glorious establishment had furnished by itself, or nearly so,
+the eminent staff of our third Republic!  Be honest, Monsieur le Prefet,
+you who presided at the opening of the agricultural meeting in our
+province, and who played the peacock in your dress-coat, embroidered in
+silver, before an imposing line of horned creatures; be honest and admit,
+that, at the time when you opposed the official candidates in your
+democratic journal, you had your pipe in the rack of the Cafe de Seville,
+with your name in white enamel upon the blackened bowl!  Remember,
+Monsieur le Depute, you who voted against all the exemption cases of the
+military law, remember who, in this very place, at your daily game of
+dominoes for sixty points, more than a hundred times ranted against the
+permanent army--you, accustomed to the uproar of assemblies and the noise
+of the tavern--contributed to the parliamentary victories by crying, "Six
+all!  count that!"  And you too, Monsieur le Ministre, to whom an office-
+boy, dating from the tyrants, still says, "Your excellency," without
+offending you; you also have been a constant frequenter of the Cafe de
+Seville, and such a faithful customer that the cashier calls you by your
+Christian name.  And do you recall, Monsieur the future president of the
+Council, that you did not acquit yourself very well when the sedentary
+dame, who never has been seen to rise from her stool, and who, as a joker
+pretended, was afflicted with two wooden legs, called you by a little
+sign to the desk, and said to you, not without a shade of severity in her
+tone: "Monsieur Eugene, we must be thinking of this little bill."
+
+Notwithstanding his title of poet, Amedee had not the gift of prophecy.
+While seeing all these negligently dressed men seated outside at the Cafe
+de Seville's tables, taking appetizers, the young man never suspected
+that he had before him the greater part of the legislators destined to
+assure, some years later, France's happiness.  Otherwise he would have
+respectfully taken note of each drinker and the color of his drink, since
+at a later period this would have been very useful to him as a mnemonical
+method for the understanding of our parliamentary combinations, which are
+a little complicated, we must admit.  For example, would it not have been
+handy and agreeable to note down that the recent law on sugars had been
+voted by the solid majority of absinthe and bitters, or to know that the
+Cabinet's fall, day before yesterday, might be attributed simply to the
+disloyal and perfidious abandonment of the bitter mints or blackcurrant
+wine?
+
+Jocquelet, who professed the most advanced opinions in politics,
+distributed several riotous and patronizing handshakes among these future
+statesmen as he entered the establishment, followed by Amedee.
+
+Here, there were still more of politics, and also poets and literary men.
+They lived a sort of hurly-burly life, on good terms, but one could not
+get them confounded, for the politicians were all beard, the
+litterateurs, all hair.
+
+Jocquelet directed his steps without hesitation toward the magnificent
+red head of the whimsical poet, Paul Sillery, a handsome young fellow
+with a wide-awake face, who was nonchalantly stretched upon the red
+velvet cushion of the window-seat, before a table, around which were
+three other heads of thick hair worthy of our early kings.
+
+"My dear Paul," said Jocquelet, in his most thrilling voice, handing
+Sillery Amedee's manuscript, "here are some verses that I think are
+superb, and I am going to recite them as soon as I can, at some
+entertainment or benefit.  Read them and give us your opinion of them.
+I present their author to you, Monsieur Amedee Violette.  Amedee, I
+present you to Monsieur Paul Sillery."
+
+All the heads of hair, framing young and amiable faces, turned curiously
+toward the newcomer, whom Paul Sillery courteously invited to be seated,
+with the established formula, "What will you take?"  Then he began to
+read the lines that the comedian had given him.
+
+Amedee, seated on the edge of his chair, was distracted with timidity,
+for Paul Sillery already enjoyed a certain reputation as a rising poet,
+and had established a small literary sheet called La Guepe, which
+published upon its first page caricatures of celebrated men with large
+heads and little bodies, and Amedee had read in it some of Paul's poems,
+full of impertinence and charm.  An author whose work had been published!
+The editor of a journal!  The idea was stunning to poor innocent
+Violette, who was not aware then that La Guepe could not claim forty
+subscribers.  He considered Sillery something wonderful, and waited with
+a beating heart for the verdict of so formidable a judge.  At the end of
+a few moments Sillery said, without raising his eyes from the manuscript:
+
+"Here are some fine verses!"
+
+A flood of delight filled the heart of the poet from the Faubourg
+St.-Jacques.
+
+As soon as he had finished his reading, Paul arose from his seat, and,
+extending both hands over the carafes and glasses to Amedee, said,
+enthusiastically:
+
+"Let me shake hands with you!  Your description of the battle-scene is
+astonishing!  It is admirable!  It is as clear and precise as Merimee,
+and it has all the color and imagination that he lacks to make him a
+poet.  It is something absolutely new.  My dear Monsieur Violette, I
+congratulate you with all my heart!  I can not ask you for this beautiful
+poem for La Guepe that Jocquelet is so fortunate as to have to recite,
+and of which I hope he will make a success.  But I beg of you, as a great
+favor, to let me have some verses for my paper; they will be, I am sure,
+as good as these, if not better.  To be sure, I forgot to tell you that
+we shall not be able to pay you for the copy, as La Guepe does not
+prosper; I will even admit that it only stands on one leg.  In order to
+make it appear for a few months longer, I have recently been obliged I I8
+to go to a money-lender, who has left me, instead of the classical
+stuffed crocodile, a trained horse which he had just taken from an
+insolvent circus.  I mounted the noble animal to go to the Bois, but at
+the Place de la Concorde he began to waltz around it, and I was obliged
+to get rid of this dancing quadruped at a considerable loss.  So your
+contribution to La Guepe would have to be gratuitous, like those of all
+the rest.  You will give me the credit of having saluted you first of
+all, my dear Violette, by the rare and glorious title of true poet.  You
+will let me reserve the pleasure of intoxicating you with the odor that a
+printer's first proofs give, will you not?  Is it agreed?"
+
+Yes, it was agreed!  That is to say, Amedee, touched to the depths of his
+heart by so much good grace and fraternal cordiality, was so troubled in
+trying to find words to express his gratitude, that he made a terrible
+botch of it.
+
+"Do not thank me," said Paul Sillery, with his pleasant but rather
+sceptical smile, "and do not think me better than I am.  If all your
+verses are as strong as these that I have just read, you will soon
+publish a volume that will make a sensation, and--who knows? --perhaps
+will inspire me first of all with an ugly attack of jealousy.  Poets are
+no better than other people; they are like the majority of Adam's sons,
+vain and envious, only they still keep the ability to admire, and the
+gift of enthusiasm, and that proves their superiority and is to their
+credit.  I am delighted to have found a mare's nest to-day, an original
+and sincere poet, and with your permission we will celebrate this happy
+meeting.  The price of the waltzing horse having hardly sufficed to pay
+off the debt to the publisher of La Guepe, I am not in funds this
+evening; but I have credit at Pere Lebuffle's, and I invite you all to
+dinner at his pot-house; after which we will go to my rooms, where I
+expect a few friends, and there you will read us your verses, Violette;
+we will all read some of them, and have a fine orgy of rich rhymes."
+
+This proposition was received with favor by the three young men with the
+long hair, a la Clodion and Chilperic.  As for Violette, he would have
+followed Paul Sillery at that moment, had it been into the infernal
+regions.
+
+Jocquelet could not go with them, he had promised his evening to a lady,
+he said, and he gave this excuse with such a conceited smile that all
+were convinced he was going to crown himself with the most flattering of
+laurels at the mansion of some princess of the royal blood.  In reality,
+he was going to see one of his Conservatoire friends, a large, lanky
+dowdy, as swarthy as a mole and full of pretensions, who was destined
+for the tragic line of character, and inflicted upon her lover Athalie's
+dream, Camille's imprecations, and Phedre's monologue.
+
+After paying for the refreshments, Sillery gave his arm to Amedee, and,
+followed by the three Merovingians, they left the cafe.  Forcing a way
+through the crowd which obstructed the sidewalk of the Faubourg
+Montmartre he conducted his guests to Pere Lebuffle's table d'hote,
+which was situated on the third floor of a dingy old house in the Rue
+Lamartine, where a sickening odor of burnt meat greeted them as soon as
+they reached the top of the stairs.  They found there, seated before a
+tablecloth remarkable for the number of its wine-stains, two or three
+wild-looking heads of hair, and four or five shaggy beards, to whom Pere
+Lebuffle was serving soup, aided by a tired-looking servant.  The name
+under which Sillery had designated the proprietor of the table d'hote
+might have been a nickname, for this stout person in his shirt-sleeves
+recommended himself to one's attentions by his bovine face and his
+gloomy, wandering eyes.  To Amedee's amazement, Pere Lebuffle called the
+greater part of his clients "thou," and as soon as the newcomers were
+seated at table, Amedee asked Sillery, in a low voice, the cause of this
+familiarity.
+
+"It is caused by the hard times, my dear Violette," responded the editor
+of 'La Guepe' as he unfolded his napkin.  "There is no longer a
+'Maecenas' or 'Lawrence the Magnificent.'  The last patron of literature
+and art is Pere Lebufle.  This wretched cook, who has perhaps never read
+a book or seen a picture, has a fancy for painters and poets, and allows
+them to cultivate that plant, Debt, which, contrary to other vegetables,
+grows all the more, the less it is watered with instalments.  We must
+pardon the good man," said he, lowering his voice, "his little sin--
+a sort of vanity.  He wishes to be treated like a comrade and friend by
+the artists.  Those who have several accounts brought forward upon his
+ledger, arrive at the point of calling him 'thou,' and I, alas!  am of
+that number.  Thanks to that, I am going to make you drink something a
+little less purgative than the so-called wine which is turning blue in
+that carafe, and of which I advise you to be suspicious.  I say,
+Lebuffle, my friend here, Monsieur Amedee Violette, will be, sooner or
+later, a celebrated poet.  Treat him accordingly, my good fellow, and go
+and get us a bottle of Moulins-Vent."
+
+The conversation meanwhile became general between the bearded and long-
+haired men.  Is it necessary to say that they were all animated, both
+politicians and 'litterateurs', with the most revolutionary sentiments?
+At the very beginning, with the sardines, which evidently had been
+pickled in lamp-oil, a terribly hairy man, the darkest of them all, with
+a beard that grew up into its owner's eyes and then sprung out again in
+tufts from his nose and ears, presented some elegiac regrets to the
+memory of Jean-Paul Marat, and declared that at the next revolution it
+would be necessary to realize the programme of that delightful friend of
+the people, and make one hundred thousand heads fall.
+
+"By thunder, Flambard, you have a heavy hand!"  exclaimed one of the
+least important of beards, one of those that degenerate into side-
+whiskers as they become conservative.  "One hundred thousand heads!"
+
+"It is the minimum," replied the sanguinary beard.
+
+Now, it had just been revealed to Amedee that under this ferocious beard
+was concealed a photographer, well known for his failures, and the young
+man could not help thinking that if the one hundred thousand heads in
+question had posed before the said Flambard's camera, he would not show
+such impatience to see them fall under the guillotine.
+
+The conversation of the men with the luxuriant hair was none the less
+anarchical when the roast appeared, which sprung from the legendary
+animal called 'vache enragee'.  The possessor of the longest and thickest
+of all the shock heads, which spread over the shoulders of a young story
+writer--between us, be it said, he made a mistake in not combing it
+oftener--imparted to his brothers the subject for his new novel, which
+should have made the hair of the others bristle with terror; for the
+principal episode in this agreeable fiction was the desecration of a dead
+body in a cemetery by moonlight.  There was a sort of hesitation in the
+audience, a slight movement of recoil, and Sillery, with a dash of
+raillery in his glance, asked the novelist:
+
+"Why the devil do you write such a story?"
+
+The novelist replied, in a thundering tone:
+
+"To astonish the bourgeoisie!"
+
+And nobody made the slightest objection.
+
+To "astonish the bourgeoisie" was the dearest hope and most ardent wish
+of these young men, and this desire betrayed itself in their slightest
+word; and doubtless Amedee thought it legitimate and even worthy of
+praise.  However, he did not believe--must we admit his lack of
+confidence?--that so many glorious efforts were ever crowned with
+success.  He went so far as to ask himself whether the character and
+cleverness of these bourgeoisie would not lead them to ignore not only
+the works, but even the existence, of the authors who sought to
+"astonish" them; and he thought, not without sadness, that when La Guepe
+should have published this young novelist's ghostly composition, the
+unconquerable bourgeoisie would know nothing about it, and would continue
+to devote itself to its favorite customs, such as tapping the barometer
+to know whether there was a change, or to heave a deep sigh after
+guzzling its soup, saying, "I feel better!"  without being the least
+astonished in the world.
+
+In spite of these mental reservations, which Amedee reproached himself
+with, being himself an impure and contemptible Philistine, the poet was
+delighted with his new friends and the unknown world opening before him.
+In this Bohemian corner, where one got intoxicated with wild excesses and
+paradoxes, recklessness and gayety reigned.  The sovereign charm of youth
+was there, and Amedee, who had until now lived in a dark hiding-place,
+blossomed out in this warm atmosphere.
+
+After a horrible dessert of cheese and prunes, Pere Lebuffle's guests
+dispersed.  Sillery escorted Amedee and the three Merovingians to the
+little, sparsely furnished first floor in the Rue Pigalle, where he
+lived; and half a dozen other lyric poets, who might have furnished some
+magnificent trophies for an Apache warrior's scalping-knife, soon came to
+reenforce the club which met there every Wednesday evening.
+
+Seats were wanting at the beginning, but Sillery drew from a closet an
+old black trunk which would hold two, and contented himself, as master of
+the house, with sitting from time to time, with legs dangling, upon the
+marble mantel.  The company thus found themselves very comfortable; still
+more so when an old woman with a dirty cap had placed upon the table, in
+the middle of the room, six bottles of beer, some odd glasses, and a
+large flowered plate upon which was a package of cut tobacco with
+cigarette paper.  They began to recite their verses in a cloud of smoke.
+Each recited his own, called upon by Sillery; each would rise without
+being urged, place his chair in front of him, and leaning one hand upon
+its back, would recite his poem or elegy.  Certainly some of them were
+wanting in genius, some were even ludicrous.  Among the number was a
+little fellow with a cadaverous face, about as large as two farthings'
+worth of butter, who declared, in a long speech with flat rhymes, that an
+Asiatic harem was not capable of quenching his ardent love of pleasure.
+A fat-faced fellow with a good, healthy, country complexion, announced,
+in a long story, his formal intention of dying of a decline, on account
+of the treason of a courtesan with a face as cold as marble; while, if
+the facts were known, this peaceable boy lived with an artless child of
+the people, brightening her lot by reducing her to a state of slavery;
+she blacked his boots for him every morning before he left the house.
+
+In spite of these ridiculous things, there were present some genuine
+poets who knew their business and had real talent.  These filled Amedee
+with respect and fear, and when Sillery called his name, he arose with a
+dry mouth and heavy heart.
+
+"It is your turn now, you newcomer!  Recite us your 'Before Sebastopol.'"
+
+And so, thoroughbred that he was, Amedee overcame his emotion and
+recited, in a thrilling voice, his military rhymes, that rang out like
+the report of a veteran's gun.
+
+The last stanza, was greeted with loud applause, and all the auditors
+arose and surrounded Amedee to offer him their congratulations.
+
+"Why, it is superb!"
+
+"Entirely new!"
+
+"It will make an enormous success!"
+
+"It is just what is needed to arouse the public!"
+
+"Recite us something else!--something else!"
+
+Reassured and encouraged, master of himself, he recited a popular scene
+in which he had freely poured out his love for the poor people.  He next
+recited some of his Parisian suburban scenes, and then a series of
+sonnets, entitled "Love's Hopes," inspired by his dear Maria; and he
+astonished all these poets by the versatility and variety of his
+inspirations.
+
+At each new poem bravos were thundered out, and the young man's heart
+expanded with joy under this warm sunshine of success.  His audience vied
+with each other to approach Amedee first, and to shake his hand.  Alas!
+some of those who were there would, later, annoy him by their low envy
+and treason; but now, in the generous frankness of their youth, they
+welcomed him as a master.
+
+What an intoxicating evening!  Amedee reached his home about two o'clock
+in the morning, his hands burning with the last grasps, his brain and
+heart intoxicated with the strong wine of praise.  He walked with long
+and joyful strides through the fairy scene of a beautiful moonlight, in
+the fresh morning wind which made his clothes flutter and caressed his
+face.  He thought he even felt the breath of fame.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Dreams, instead of living
+Fortunate enough to keep those one loves
+Learned that one leaves college almost ignorant
+Paint from nature
+The sincere age when one thinks aloud
+Upon my word, there are no ugly ones (women)
+Very young, and was in love with love
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of A Romance of Youth, v2
+by Francois Coppee
+
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