“Don’t you recognise us?” said Hussonnet.
This was the name of the young man with the moustaches.
“Why—” stammered Dussardier.
“Don’t play the fool any further,” returned the other. “We know that you are, just like ourselves, a law-student.”
In spite of their winks, Dussardier failed to understand. He appeared to be collecting his thoughts; then, suddenly:
“Has my case been found?”
Frederick raised his eyes, feeling much discouraged.
Hussonnet, however, said promptly:
“Ha! your case, in which you keep your notes of lectures? Yes, yes, make your mind easy about it!”
They made further pantomimic signs with redoubled energy, till Dussardier at last realised that they had come to help him; and he held his tongue, fearing that he might compromise them. Besides, he experienced a kind of shamefacedness at seeing himself raised to the social rank of student, and to an equality with those young men who had such white hands.
“Do you wish to send any message to anyone?” asked Frederick.
“No, thanks, to nobody.”
“But your family?”
He lowered his head without replying; the poor fellow was a bastard. The two friends stood quite astonished at his silence.
“Have you anything to smoke?” was Frederick’s next question.
He felt about, then drew forth from the depths of one of his pockets the remains of a pipe—a beautiful pipe, made of white talc with a shank of blackwood, a silver cover, and an amber mouthpiece.
For the last three years he had been engaged in completing this masterpiece. He had been careful to keep the bowl of it constantly thrust into a kind of sheath of chamois, to smoke it as slowly as possible, without ever letting it lie on any cold stone substance, and to hang it up every evening over the head of his bed. And now he shook out the fragments of it into his hand, the nails of which were covered with blood, and with his chin sunk on his chest, his pupils fixed and dilated, he contemplated this wreck of the thing that had yielded him such delight with a glance of unutterable sadness.
“Suppose we give him some cigars, eh?” said Hussonnet in a whisper, making a gesture as if he were reaching them out.
Frederick had already laid down a cigar-holder, filled, on the edge of the wicket.
“Pray take this. Goodbye! Cheer up!”
Dussardier flung himself on the two hands that were held out towards him. He pressed them frantically, his voice choked with sobs.
“What? For me!—for me!”
The two friends tore themselves away from the effusive display of gratitude which he made, and went off to lunch together at the Café Tabourey, in front of the Luxembourg.
While cutting up the beefsteak, Hussonnet informed his companion that he did work for the fashion journals, and manufactured catchwords for L’Art Industriel.
“At Jacques Arnoux’s establishment?” said Frederick.
“Do you know him?”
“Yes!—no!—that is to say, I have seen him—I have met him.”
He carelessly asked Hussonnet if he sometimes saw Arnoux’s wife.
“From time to time,” the Bohemian replied.
Frederick did not venture to follow up his enquiries. This man henceforth would fill up a large space in his life. He paid the lunch-bill without any protest on the other’s part.
There was a bond of mutual sympathy between them; they gave one another their respective addresses, and Hussonnet cordially invited Frederick to accompany him to the Rue de Fleurus.
They had reached the middle of the garden, when Arnoux’s clerk, holding his breath, twisted his features into a hideous grimace, and began to crow like a cock. Thereupon all the cocks in the vicinity responded with prolonged cock-a-doodle-doos.
“It is a signal,” explained Hussonnet.
They stopped close to the Théâtre Bobino, in front of a house to which they had to find their way through an alley. In the skylight of a garret, between the nasturtiums and the sweet peas, a young woman showed herself, bareheaded, in her stays, her two arms resting on the edge of the roof-gutter.
“Good-morrow, my angel! good-morrow, ducky!” said Hussonnet, sending her kisses.
He made the barrier fly open with a kick, and disappeared.
Frederick waited for him all the week. He did not venture to call at Hussonnet’s residence, lest it might look as if he were in a hurry to get a lunch in return for the one he had paid for. But he sought the clerk all over the Latin Quarter. He came across him one evening, and brought him to his apartment on the Quai Napoleon.
They had a long chat, and unbosomed themselves to each other. Hussonnet yearned after the glory and the gains of the theatre. He collaborated in the writing of vaudevilles which were not accepted, “had heaps of plans,” could turn a couplet; he sang out for Frederick a few of the verses he had composed. Then, noticing on one of the shelves a volume of Hugo and another of Lamartine, he broke out into sarcastic criticisms of the romantic school. These poets had neither good sense nor correctness, and, above all, were not French! He plumed himself on his knowledge of the language, and analysed the most beautiful phrases with that snarling severity, that academic taste which persons of playful disposition exhibit when they are discussing serious art.
Frederick was wounded in his predilections, and he felt a desire to cut the discussion short. Why not take the risk at once of uttering the word on which his happiness depended? He asked this literary youth whether it would be possible to get an introduction into the Arnoux’s house through his agency.
The thing was declared to be quite easy, and they fixed upon the following day.
Hussonnet failed to keep the appointment, and on three subsequent occasions he did not turn up. One Saturday, about four o’clock, he made his appearance. But, taking advantage of the cab into which they had got, he drew up in front of the Théâtre Français to get a box-ticket, got down at a tailor’s shop, then at a dressmaker’s, and wrote notes in the doorkeeper’s lodge. At last they came to the Boulevard Montmartre. Frederick
