Desrolles was delighted to find his ancient den still standing. How well he remembered the little wine shop on the ground floor, the bright-coloured bottles in the windows, the odour of brandy within, the blouses sitting on the benches, against the wall, squabbling loudly over dominoes, or playing écarteé with the limpest and smallest of cards.
He inquired in the wine-shop if there was une chambre de garçon—a bachelor’s room—to be had upstairs.
“There is always room for a bachelor,” answered the buxom female behind the counter. “Yes, there is a pretty little room on the fifth story, all that there is of the most commodious, où monsieur aurait toutes ses aises.”
Desrolles shrugged his shoulders dubiously.
“The fifth story!” he exclaimed. “Do you think my legs are as young as they were twenty years ago?”
“Monsieur looks full of youth and activity,” said the woman.
“Does La Veuve Chomard still keep the house?”
Alas, no. The widow Chomard had departed some nine years ago to the narrowest of houses in the cemetery of Mount Parnassus. The present proprietor was a gentleman in the commerce of wines, and also the proprietor of the shop.
That made nothing, Desrolles told the woman. All he wanted was a comfortable room on the first or second floor.
Unhappily the chambrette de garçon on the fifth stage was the only unoccupied room in the house, and after some hesitation Desrolles followed an ancient female of the portress species up the dirty old staircase, and into the chambrette.
“That gives upon the new boulevard,” said the portress, opening a small window. “C’est crádnement gaie. It is awfully lively!”
Desrolles looked down upon the broad new street, with its omnibuses, and wagons, and builders’ trollies circulating up and down—its monstrous scaffolding, and lofty ladders, and workmen dangling between earth and sky, with an appearance of being in immediate peril of death.
The room was small, but to Desrolles’ eye it looked snug. There were comfortable stuff curtains to the mahogany bedstead, curtains to the window, a carpet on the red tiled floor, a hearth on which a wood fire might burn cheerily, a cupboard for firewood, and a bureau with a lock and key, in which a man might put away a bottle or two for occasional use.
“It’s an infernal way up,” he said. “A man might as well live on the top of the gate of St. Denis. But I must make it serve. I am a staunch Conservative. I like old quarters.”
Of old the house had been free and easy in its habits. A lodger could come in at any hour he liked with his pass key. Desrolles made an inquiry or two of the portress as to the present rule. He found that the old order still obtained. The present proprietor was un bon enfant. He asked nothing of his lodgers but that they should pay him his rent, and not embroil themselves with the police.
Desrolles flung down the small valise which contained all his worldly gear, paid the portress a month’s rent in advance, and went out to enjoy his Paris. That enchantress had him in her clutch already. He made up his mind by this time that he would defer his journey southward for a few weeks; perhaps until after the procession of the Boeuf Gras had delighted the lively inhabitants of the liveliest city in the world.
He went back to his old haunts, loved twenty years ago, and always remembered with fondness. He found many changes, but the atmosphere was still the same. Absinthe was the one great novelty. That murderous stimulant had not attained a universal popularity at the beginning of the Second Empire. Desrolles took to absinthe as an infant takes to the gracious fountain heaven has provided for its sustenance. He renounced brandy in favour of the less familiar poison. He found plenty of new companions in his old haunts. They were not the same men, but they had the same habits, the same vices; and Desrolles’ idea of a friend was a bundle of sympathetic wickedness. He found men to gamble with and drink with, men whose tongues were as foul as his own, and who looked at life in this world and the next from the same standpoint.
His brutal nature sank even to a lower depth of brutality in such congenial company. Money gave him a temporary omnipotence. He was spending it with royal recklessness, believing himself secure against all future evils, when one morning chance flung an English newspaper in his way, and he read the report of John Treverton’s first appearance at the Bow Street Police-court.
The paper was more than a week old. The adjourned inquiry must have been held a day or two ago. Desrolles sat staring at the page in a half stupid wonderment, his brain bemused with absinthe, trying to consider what effect this arrest of John Treverton might exercise upon his own fortunes.
There was no mention of his own name in the report. So far he was entirely ignored. So far he felt himself safe.
Yet there was no knowing what might not happen. An investigation of this kind once commenced, might extend its ramifications in the widest directions.
“It is a pity,” Desrolles said to himself. “The business was so comfortably settled. It must be the parson’s son, that young coxcomb I saw in Devonshire, who has set the thing moving again.”
His life in Paris suited him, it was indeed the only kind of life
