第4章

OLD HOUSE, OLD PEOPLE, OLD CUSTOMS

Weary of himself, Godefroid attempted one day to give a meaning to his life, after meeting a former comrade who had been the tortoise in the fable, while he in earlier days had been the hare.In one of those conversations which arise when schoolmates meet again in after years, --a conversation held as they were walking together in the sunshine on the boulevard des Italiens,--he was startled to learn the success of a man endowed apparently with less gifts, less means, less fortune than himself; but who had bent his will each morning to the purpose resolved upon the night before.The sick soul then determined to imitate that simple action.

"Social existence is like the soil," his comrade had said to him; "it makes us a return in proportion to our efforts."Godefroid was in debt.As a first test, a first task, he resolved to live in some retired place, and pay his debts from his income.To a man accustomed to spend six thousand francs when he had but five, it was no small undertaking to bring himself to live on two thousand.

Every morning he studied advertisements, hoping to find the offer of some asylum where his expenses could be fixed, where he might have the solitude a man wants when he makes a return upon himself, examines himself, and endeavors to give himself a vocation.The manners and customs of bourgeois boarding-houses shocked his delicacy, sanitariums seemed to him unhealthy, and he was about to fall back into the fatal irresolution of persons without will, when the following advertisement met his eye:--"To Let.A small lodging for seventy francs a month; suitable for an ecclesiastic.A quiet tenant desired.Board supplied; the rooms can be furnished at a moderate cost if mutually acceptable.

"Inquire of M.Millet, grocer, rue Chanoinesse, near Notre-Dame, where all further information can be obtained."Attracted by a certain kindliness concealed beneath these words, and the middle-class air which exhaled from them, Godefroid had, on the afternoon when we found him on the quay, called at four o'clock on the grocer, who told him that Madame de la Chanterie was then dining, and did not receive any one when at her meals.The lady, he said, was visible in the evening after seven o'clock, or in the morning between ten and twelve.While speaking, Monsieur Millet examined Godefroid, and made him submit to what magistrates call the "first degree of interrogation.""Was monsieur unmarried? Madame wished a person of regular habits; the gate was closed at eleven at the latest.Monsieur certainly seemed of an age to suit Madame de la Chanterie.""How old do you think me?" asked Godefroid.

"About forty!" replied the grocer.

This ingenuous answer threw the young man into a state of misanthropic gloom.He went off and dined at a restaurant on the quai de la Tournelle, and afterwards went to the parapet to contemplate Notre-Dame at the moment when the fires of the setting sun were rippling and breaking about the manifold buttresses of the apsis.

The young man was floating between the promptings of despair and the moving voice of religious harmonies sounding in the bell of the cathedral when, amid the shadows, the silence, the half-veiled light of the moon, he heard the words of the priest.Though, like most of the sons of our century, he was far from religious, his sensibilities were touched by those words, and he returned to the rue Chanoinesse, although he had almost made up his mind not to do so.

The priest and Godefroid were both surprised when they entered together the rue Massilon, which is opposite to the small north portal of the cathedral, and turned together into the rue Chanoinesse, at the point where, towards the rue de la Colombe, it becomes the rue des Marmousets.When Godefroid stopped before the arched portal of Madame de la Chanterie's house, the priest turned towards him and examined him by the light of the hanging street-lamp, probably one of the last to disappear from the heart of old Paris.

"Have you come to see Madame de la Chanterie, monsieur?" said the priest.

"Yes," replied Godefroid."The words I heard you say to that workman show me that, if you live here, this house must be salutary for the soul.""Then you were a witness of my defeat," said the priest, raising the knocker of the door, "for I did not succeed.""I thought, on the contrary, it was the workman who did not succeed;he demanded money energetically."

"Alas!" replied the priest, "one of the great evils of revolutions in France is that each offers a fresh premium to the ambitions of the lower classes.To get out of his condition, to make his fortune (which is regarded to-day as the only social standard), the working-man throws himself into some of those monstrous associations which, if they do not succeed, ought to bring the speculators to account before human justice.This is what trusts often lead to."The porter opened a heavy door.The priest said to Godefroid:

"Monsieur has perhaps come about the little suite of rooms?""Yes, monsieur."