Des vagues mugissantes.”
“Mais comment ferez vous, l’Abbé,
Ma Doué,
Mais comment ferez vous, l’Abbé,
Si l’Ennemi nous trouble?”
“Une seule fois je vous bénirai,
Les Bleus bénirai double!”
Closing the study door behind her, Stephen thoughtfully climbed the stairs to her bedroom.
XXXIII
I
With the New Year came flowers from Valérie Seymour, and a little letter of New Year’s greeting. Then she paid a rather ceremonious call and was entertained by Puddle and Stephen. Before leaving she invited them both to luncheon, but Stephen refused on the plea of her work.
“I’m hard at it again.”
At this Valérie smiled. “Very well then, à bientôt. You know where to find me, ring up when you’re free, which I hope will be soon.” After which she took her departure.
But Stephen was not to see her again for a very considerable time, as it happened. Valérie was also a busy woman—there are other affairs beside the writing of novels.
Brockett was in London on account of his plays. He wrote seldom, though when he did so he was cordial, affectionate even; but now he was busy with success, and with gathering in the shekels. He had not lost interest in Stephen again, only just at the moment she did not fit in with his brilliant and affluent scheme of existence.
So once more she and Puddle settled down together to a life that was strangely devoid of people, a life of almost complete isolation, and Puddle could not make up her mind whether she felt relieved or regretful. For herself she cared nothing, her anxious thoughts were as always centred in Stephen. However, Stephen appeared quite contented—she was launched on her book and was pleased with her writing. Paris inspired her to do good work, and as recreation she now had her fencing—twice every week she now fenced with Buisson, that severe but incomparable master.
Buisson had been very rude at first: “Hideous, affreux, horriblement English!” he had shouted, quite outraged by Stephen’s style. All the same he took a great interest in her. “You write books; what a pity! I could make you a fine fencer. You have the man’s muscles, and the long, graceful lunge when you do not remember that you are a Briton and become—what you say? ah, mais oui, self-conscious. I wish that I had find you out sooner—however, your muscles are young still, pliant.” And one day he said: “Let me feel the muscles,” then proceeded to pass his hand down her thighs and across her strong loins: “Tiens, tiens!” he murmured.
After this he would sometimes look at her gravely with a puzzled expression; but she did not resent him, nor his rudeness, nor his technical interest in her muscles. Indeed, she liked the cross little man with his bristling black beard and his peppery temper, and when he remarked apropos of nothing: “We are all great imbeciles about nature. We make our own rules and call them la nature; we say she do this, she do that—imbeciles! She do what she please and then make the long nose.” Stephen felt neither shy nor resentful.
These lessons were a great relaxation from work, and thanks to them her health grew much better. Her body, accustomed to severe exercise, had resented the sedentary life in London. Now, however, she began to take care of her health, walking for a couple of hours in the Bois every day, or exploring the tall, narrow streets that lay near her home in the Quarter. The sky would look bright at the end of such streets by contrast, as though it were seen through a tunnel. Sometimes she would stand gazing into the shops of the wider and more prosperous Rue des Saints Pères; the old furniture shops; the crucifix shop with its dozens of crucified Christs in the window—so many crucified ivory Christs! She would think that one must surely exist for every sin committed in Paris. Or perhaps she would make her way over the river, crossing by the Pont des Arts. And one morning, arrived at the Rue des Petits Champs, what must she suddenly do but discover the Passage Choiseul, by just stepping inside for shelter, because it had started raining.
Oh, the lure of the Passage Choiseul, the queer, rather gawky attraction of it. Surely the most hideous place in all Paris, with its roof of stark wooden ribs and glass panes—the roof that looks like the vertebral column of some prehistoric monster. The chocolate smell of the patisserie—the big one where people go who have money. The humbler, student smell of Lavrut, where one’s grey rubber bands are sold by the gram and are known as Bracelets de caoutchouc. Where one buys première qualité blotting paper of a deep ruddy tint and the stiffness of cardboard, and thin but inspiring manuscript books bound in black, with mottled, shiny blue borders. Where pencils and pens are found in their legions, of all makes, all shapes, all colours, all prices; while outside on the trustful trays in the Passage, lives Gomme Onyx, masquerading as marble, and as likely to rub a hole in your paper. For those who prefer the reading of books to the writing of them, there is always Lemerre with his splendid display of yellow bindings. And for those undisturbed by imagination, the taxidermist’s shop is quite near the corner—they can stare at a sad and moth-eaten flamingo, two squirrels, three parrots and a dusty canary. Some are tempted by the cheap corduroy at the draper’s, where it stands in great rolls as though it were carpet. Some pass on to the little stamp merchant, while a few dauntless souls even enter the chemist’s—that shamelessly anatomical chemist’s, whose wares do not figure in school manuals on the practical uses of rubber.
And up and down this Passage Choiseul, pass innumerable idle or busy
