“What! You have not dined? But stop here, doctor; don’t go. You shall have whatever we can give you, for, of course, you will understand that we won’t eat much.” However, he made excuses and refused, but she persisted, and said:
“You really must stop; at times like this people like to have friends near them, and, besides that, perhaps you will be able to persuade my husband to take some nourishment; he must keep up his strength.”
The doctor bowed, and, putting down his hat, said:
“In that case, I will accept your invitation, Madame.”
She gave Rosalie, who seemed to have lost her head, some orders, and then sat down, “to pretend to eat,” as she said, “to keep the ‘doctor’ company.”
The soup was brought in again, and Monsieur Chenet took two helpings. Then there came a dish of tripe, which exhaled a smell of onions, and which Madame Caravan made up her mind to taste.
“It is excellent,” the doctor said, at which she smiled, and, turning to her husband, she said:
“Do take a little, my poor Alfred, only just to get something into your stomach. Remember that you have got to pass the night watching by her!”
He held out his plate, docilely, just as he would have gone to bed if he had been told to, obeying her in everything without resistance and without reflection, and, therefore, he ate. The doctor helped himself three times, while Madame Caravan, from time to time, fished out a large piece on the end of her fork, and swallowed it with a sort of studied inattention.
When a salad bowl full of macaroni was brought in, the doctor said:
“By Jove! That is what I am very fond of.” And this time Madame Caravan helped everybody. She even filled the children’s saucers, which they had scraped clean, and who, being left to themselves, had been drinking wine without any water, and were now kicking each other under the table.
Chenet remembered that Rossini, the composer, had been very fond of that Italian dish, and suddenly he exclaimed:
“Why! that rhymes, and one could begin some lines like this:
‘The Maestro Rossini
Was fond of macaroni.’
Nobody listened to him, however. Madame Caravan, who had suddenly grown thoughtful, was thinking of all the probable consequences of the event, while her husband made bread pellets, which he put on the tablecloth, and looked at with a fixed, idiotic stare. As he was devoured by thirst, he was continually raising his glass to his lips, and the consequence was that his senses, already rather upset by the shock and grief, seemed to dance about vaguely in his head, which was heavy from the laborious process of digestion which had begun.
Meanwhile, the doctor, who had been drinking away steadily, was getting visibly drunk, and Madame Caravan herself felt the reaction which follows all nervous shocks. She was agitated and excited, and although she had been drinking nothing but water, she felt her head rather confused.
By and by, Chenet began to relate stories of deaths, that appeared funny to him. In the suburbs of Paris, which are full of people from the provinces, one meets with the indifference toward death, even of a father or a mother, which all peasants show; a want of respect, an unconscious callousness which is common in the country, and rare in Paris. Said he:
“Why, I was sent for last week to the Rue du Puteaux, and when I went, I found the sick person (and there was the whole family calmly sitting near the bed) finishing a bottle of liqueur of aniseed, which had been bought the night before to satisfy the dying man’s fancy.”
But Madame Caravan was not listening; she was continually thinking of the inheritance, and Caravan was incapable of understanding anything.
Soon Rosalie served coffee, which had been made very strong, to keep up their courage, and as every cup was well dosed with cognac, it made all their faces red, and confused their ideas still more. To make matters still worse, Chenet suddenly seized the brandy bottle and poured out “a drop just to wash their mouths out with,” as he termed it, for each of them. Then, without speaking any more, overcome, in spite of themselves, by that feeling of animal comfort which alcohol affords after dinner, they slowly sipped the sweet cognac, which formed a yellowish syrup at the bottom of their cups.
The children had gone to sleep, and Rosalie carried them off to bed. Then, Caravan, mechanically obeying that wish to forget oneself which possesses all unhappy persons, helped himself to brandy again several times, and his dull eyes grew bright. At last the doctor rose to go, and seizing his friend’s arm, he said:
“Come with me; a little fresh air will do you good. When you are in trouble, you must not stick to one spot.”
The other obeyed mechanically, put on his hat, took his stick, and went out, and both of them went arm-in-arm toward the Seine, in the starlight night.
The air was warm and sweet, for all the gardens in the neighbourhood are full of flowers at that season of the year, and their scent, which is scarcely perceptible during the day, seems to awaken at the approach of night, and mingles with the light breezes which blow upon them in the darkness.
The broad avenue, with its two rows of gaslamps, which extend as far as the Arc de Triomphe, was deserted and silent, but there was the distant roar of Paris, which seemed to have a reddish vapour hanging over it. It was a kind of continual rumbling, which was at times answered by the whistle of a train at full speed, in the distance, travelling to the ocean through the provinces.
The fresh air on the faces of the two men rather overcame them at first, made the doctor lose his equilibrium a little, and increased Caravan’s giddiness, from which he had suffered since
