“He may be of noble birth, and yet have pulled the doorlatch,” cried Desroches. “It has been known!”
“No,” Boucard insisted, in the midst of laughter, “I maintain that he was a brewer in 1789, and a colonel in the time of the Republic.”
“I bet theatre tickets round that he never was a soldier,” said Godeschal.
“Done with you,” answered Boucard.
“Monsieur! Monsieur!” shouted the little messenger, opening the window.
“What are you at now, Simonnin?” asked Boucard.
“I am calling him that you may ask him whether he is a colonel or a porter; he must know.”
All the clerks laughed. As to the old man, he was already coming upstairs again.
“What can we say to him?” cried Godeschal.
“Leave it to me,” replied Boucard.
The poor man came in nervously, his eyes cast down, perhaps not to betray how hungry he was by looking too greedily at the eatables.
“Monsieur,” said Boucard, “will you have the kindness to leave your name, so that M. Derville may know—”
“Chabert.”
“The Colonel who was killed at Eylau?” asked Huré, who, having so far said nothing, was jealous of adding a jest to all the others.
“The same, monsieur,” replied the good man, with antique simplicity. And he went away.
“Whew!”
“Done brown!”
“Poof!”
“Oh!”
“Ah!”
“Boum!”
“The old rogue!”
“Ting-a-ring-ting!”
“Sold again!”
“Monsieur Desroches, you are going to the play without paying,” said Huré to the fourth clerk, giving him a slap on the shoulder that might have killed a rhinoceros.
There was a storm of catcalls, cries, and exclamations, which all the onomatopeia of the language would fail to represent.
“Which theatre shall we go to?”
“To the opera,” cried the head clerk.
“In the first place,” said Godeschal, “I never mentioned which theatre. I might, if I chose, take you to see Madame Saqui.”
“Madame Saqui is not the play.”
“What is a play?” replied Godeschal. “First, we must define the point of fact. What did I bet, gentlemen? A play. What is a play? A spectacle. What is a spectacle? Something to be seen—”
“But on that principle you would pay your bet by taking us to see the water run under the Pont Neuf!” cried Simonnin, interrupting him.
“To be seen for money,” Godeschal added.
“But a great many things are to be seen for money that are not plays. The definition is defective,” said Desroches.
“But do listen to me!”
“You are talking nonsense, my dear boy,” said Boucard.
“Is Curtius’ a play?” said Godeschal.
“No,” said the head clerk, “it is a collection of figures—but it is a spectacle.”
“I bet you a hundred francs to a sou,” Godeschal resumed, “that Curtius’ Waxworks forms such a show as might be called a play or theatre. It contains a thing to be seen at various prices, according to the place you choose to occupy.”
“And so on, and so forth!” said Simonnin.
“You mind I don’t box your ears!” said Godeschal.
The clerks shrugged their shoulders.
“Besides, it is not proved that that old ape was not making game of us,” he said, dropping his argument, which was drowned in the laughter of the other clerks. “On my honor, Colonel Chabert is really and truly dead. His wife is married again to Comte Ferraud, Councillor of State. Madame Ferraud is one of our clients.”
“Come, the case is remanded till tomorrow,” said Boucard. “To work, gentlemen. The deuce is in it; we get nothing done here. Finish copying that appeal; it must be handed in before the sitting of the Fourth Chamber, judgment is to be given today. Come, on you go!”
“If he really were Colonel Chabert, would not that impudent rascal Simonnin have felt the leather of his boot in the right place when he pretended to be deaf?” said Desroches, regarding this remark as more conclusive than Godeschal’s.
“Since nothing is settled,” said Boucard, “let us all agree to go to the upper boxes of the Français and see Talma in Nero. Simonnin may go to the pit.”
And thereupon the head clerk sat down at his table, and the others followed his example.
“Given in June eighteen hundred and fourteen
(in words),” said Godeschal. “Ready?”
“Yes,” replied the two copying-clerks and the engrosser, whose pens forthwith began to creak over the stamped paper, making as much noise in the office as a hundred cockchafers imprisoned by schoolboys in paper cages.
“And we hope that my lords on the Bench
,” the extemporizing clerk went on. “Stop! I must read my sentence through again. I do not understand it myself.”
“Forty-six (that must often happen) and three forty-nines,” said Boucard.
“We hope
,” Godeschal began again, after reading all through the document, “that my lords on the Bench will not be less magnanimous than the august author of the decree, and that they will do justice against the miserable claims of the acting committee of the chief Board of the Legion of Honor by interpreting the law in the wide sense we have here set forth
—”
“Monsieur Godeschal, wouldn’t you like a glass of water?” said the little messenger.
“That imp of a boy!” said Boucard. “Here, get on your double-soled shanks-mare, take this packet, and spin off to the Invalides.”
“Here set forth
,” Godeschal went on. “Add in the interest of Madame la Vicomtesse
(at full length) de Grandlieu
.”
“What!” cried the chief, “are you thinking of drawing up an appeal in the case of Vicomtesse de Grandlieu against the Legion of Honor—a case for the office to stand or fall by? You are something like an ass! Have the goodness to put aside your copies and your notes; you may keep all that for the case of Navarreins against the Hospitals. It is late. I will draw up a little petition myself, with a due allowance of ‘inasmuch,’ and go to the Courts myself.”
This scene is typical of the thousand delights which, when we look back on our youth, make us say, “Those were good times.”
At about one in the morning Colonel Chabert, self-styled, knocked at the door of Maître Derville, attorney to the Court of First Instance in the Department of the
