第49章 VI(7)

While the declining glory of perfumery was about to send forth its setting rays, a star was rising with feeble light upon the commercial horizon. Anselme Popinot was laying the corner-stone of his fortune in the Rue des Cinq-Diamants. This narrow little street, where loaded wagons can scarcely pass each other, runs from the Rue des Lombards at one end, to the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher at the other, entering the latter opposite to the Rue Quincampoix, that famous thoroughfare of old Paris where French history has so often been enacted. In spite of this disadvantage, the congregation of druggists in that neighborhood made Popinot's choice of the little street a good one. The house, which stands second from the Rue des Lombards, was so dark that except at certain seasons it was necessary to use lights in open day. The embryo merchant had taken possession, the preceding evening, of the dingy and disgusting premises. His predecessor, who sold molasses and coarse sugars, had left the stains of his dirty business upon the walls, in the court, in the store-rooms. Imagine a large and spacious shop, with great iron-bound doors, painted a dragon-green, strengthened with long iron bars held on by nails whose heads looked like mushrooms, and covered with an iron trellis-work, which swelled out at the bottom after the fashion of the bakers'-shops in former days; the floor paved with large white stones, most of them broken, the walls yellow, and as bare as those of a guard-room. Next to the shop came the back-shop, and two other rooms lighted from the street, in which Popinot proposed to put his office, his books, and his own workroom. Above these rooms were three narrow little chambers pushed up against the party-wall, with an outlook into the court; here he intended to dwell. The three rooms were dilapidated, and had no view but that of the court, which was dark, irregular, and surrounded by high walls, to which perpetual dampness, even in dry weather, gave the look of being daubed with fresh plaster. Between the stones of this court was a filthy and stinking black substance, left by the sugars and the molasses that once occupied it. Only one of the bedrooms had a chimney, all the walls were without paper, and the floors were tiled with brick.

Since early morning Gaudissart and Popinot, helped by a journeyman whose services the commercial traveller had invoked, were busily employed in stretching a fifteen-sous paper on the walls of these horrible rooms, the workman pasting the lengths. A collegian's mattress on a bedstead of red wood, a shabby night-stand, an old-

fashioned bureau, one table, two armchairs, and six common chairs, the gift of Popinot's uncle the judge, made up the furniture. Gaudissart had decked the chimney-piece with a frame in which was a mirror much defaced, and bought at a bargain. Towards eight o'clock in the evening the two friends, seated before the fireplace where a fagot of wood was blazing, were about to attack the remains of their breakfast.

"Down with the cold mutton!" cried Gaudissart, suddenly, "it is not worthy of such a housewarming."

"But," said Popinot, showing his solitary coin of twenty francs, which he was keeping to pay for the prospectus, "I--"

"I--" cried Gaudissart, sticking a forty-franc piece in his own eye.

A knock resounded throughout the court, naturally empty and echoing of a Sunday, when the workpeople were away from it and the laboratories empty.

"Here comes the faithful slave of the Rue de la Poterie!" cried the illustrious Gaudissart.

Sure enough, a waiter entered, followed by two scullions bearing in three baskets a dinner, and six bottles of wine selected with discernment.

"How shall we ever eat it all up?" said Popinot.

"The man of letters!" cried Gaudissart, "don't forget him. Finot loves the pomps and the vanities; he is coming, the innocent boy, armed with a dishevelled prospectus--the word is pat, hein? Prospectuses are always thirsty. We must water the seed if we want flowers. Depart, slaves!" he added, with a gorgeous air, "there is gold for you."

He gave them ten sous with a gesture worthy of Napoleon, his idol.

"Thank you, Monsieur Gaudissart," said the scullions, better pleased with the jest than with the money.

"As for you, my son," he said to the waiter, who stayed to serve the dinner, "below is a porter's wife; she lives in a lair where she sometimes cooks, as in other days Nausicaa washed, for pure amusement.

Find her, implore her goodness; interest her, young man, in the warmth of these dishes. Tell her she shall be blessed, and above all, respected, most respected, by Felix Gaudissart, son of Jean-Francois Gaudissart, grandson of all the Gaudissarts, vile proletaries of ancient birth, his forefathers. March! and mind that everything is hot, or I'll deal retributive justice by a rap on your knuckles!"

Another knock sounded.

"Here comes the pungent Andoche!" shouted Gaudissart.