Suddenly a great stone came hurtling through the air and struck the ground near Germinie’s head; at the same moment she heard the painter’s voice shouting: “Don’t be afraid! that’s your chair.”
One and all laid their handkerchiefs on the ground by way of tablecloth. Eatables were produced from greasy papers. Bottles were uncorked and the wine went round; the glasses were rested against tufts of grass, and they fell to upon bits of pork and sausages, with slices of bread for plates. The painter cut boats out of paper to hold the salt, and imitated the orders shouted out by waiters in a café. “Boum! Pavillon! Servez!” he cried. The company gradually became animated. The open air, the patches of blue sky, the food and drink started the gayety of the table in full blast. Hands approached one another, mouths met, coarse remarks were whispered from one to another, shirt sleeves crept around waists, and now and then energetic embraces were attended by greedy, resounding kisses.
Germinie drank, and said nothing. The painter, who had taken his place by her side, felt decidedly chilly and embarrassed beside his extraordinary neighbor, who amused herself “so entirely inside.” Suddenly he began to beat a tattoo with his knife against his glass, drowning the uproar of the party, and rose to his knees.
“Mesdames!” said he, with the voice of a parakeet that has sung too much, “here’s the health of a man in hard luck: myself! Perhaps it will bring me good luck! Deserted, yes, mesdames; yes, I’ve been deserted! I’m a widower! you know the kind of widower, razibus! I was struck all of a heap. Not that I cared much for her, but habit, that old villain, habit! The fact is I’m as bored as a bedbug in a watch spring. For two weeks my life has been like a restaurant without a pousse-café! And when I love love as if it had made me! No wife! That’s what I call weaning a grown man! that is to say, since I’ve known what it is, I take off my hat to the curés: I feel very sorry for them, ’pon my word! No wife! and there are so many of ’em! But I can’t walk about with a sign: Vacant man to let. Inquire within. In the first place it would have to be stamped by M’sieu le Préfet, and then, people are such fools, it would draw a crowd! All of which, mesdames, is intended to inform you, that if, among the people you have the honor of knowing, there should happen to be one who’d like to make an acquaintance—virtuous acquaintance—a pretty little left-handed marriage—why she needn’t look any farther! I’m her man—Victor-Médéric Gautruche! a homebody, a genuine house-ivy for sentiment! She has only to apply at my former hotel, La Clef de Sûreté. And gay as a hunchback who’s just drowned his wife! Gautruche, called Gogo-la-Gaiété, egad! A pretty fellow who knows what’s what, who doesn’t beat about the bush, a good old body who takes things easy and who won’t give himself the colic with that fishes’ grog!” With that he took a bottle of water that stood beside him and hurled it twenty yards away. “Long live the walls! They’re the same to papa that the sky is to the good God! Gogo-la-Gaiété paints them through the week and beats them on Monday!2 And with all that not jealous, not ugly, not a wife-beater, but a real love of a man, who never harmed one of the fair sex in his life! If you want physique, parbleu! I’m your man!”
He rose to his feet and, drawing up his wavering body, clad in an old blue coat with gilt buttons, to its full height, removing his gray hat so as to show his perspiring, polished, bald skull, and tossing his old plucked gamin’s head, he continued: “You see what it is! It isn’t a very attractive piece of property; it doesn’t help it to exhibit it. But it yields well, it’s a little dilapidated, but well put together. Dame! Here I am with my little forty-nine years—no more hair than a billiard ball, a witchgrass beard that would make good herb-tea, foundations not too solid, feet as long as La Villette—and with all the rest thin enough to take a bath in a musket-barrel. There’s the bill of lading! Pass the prospectus along! If any woman wants all that in a lump—any respectable person—not too young—who won’t amuse herself by painting me too yellow—you understand, I don’t ask for a Princess of Batignolles—why, sure as you’re born, I’m her man!”
Germinie seized Gautruche’s glass, half emptied it at a draught and held out the side from which she had drunk to him.
At nightfall the party returned on foot. When they reached the fortifications, Gautruche drew a large heart with the point of his knife on the stone, and all the names with the date were carved inside.
In the evening Gautruche and Germinie were upon the outer boulevards, near Barrière Rochechouart. Beside a low house with these words, in a plaster panel: Madame Merlin. Dresses cut and tried on, two francs, they stopped at a stone staircase of three steps leading into a dark passage, at the end of which shone the red light of an Argand lamp. At the entrance to the passage, these words were printed in black on a wooden sign:
Hotel of the Little Blue Hand.
XLIX
Médérie Gautruche was one of the wenching, idling, vagabond workmen who make their whole life a Monday. Filled with the love of wine, his lips forever wet with the last drop, his insides as thoroughly lined with tartar as an old wine cask, he was one of those whom the Burgundians graphically call boyaux rouges.3 Always a little tipsy, tipsy from yesterday when he had
