SIMPLE SOULS

When, with his usual bantering smile, Claude entered the small dining-room he found that la compagnie, as Françoise called it, comprised René—the hero of what seemed to his friends a most remarkable adventure—Madame Fresneau and her husband, Madame Offarel, the wife of a sous-chef de bureau in the Ministère de la Guerre, and her two daughters, Angélique and Rosalie. All these good people were seated around the mahogany table on mahogany chairs, the horsehair seats of which were glossy with the wear of years. This suite formed part of the original household effects of the avoué of Vouziers, and owed its marvellous state of preservation to the care bestowed upon it by its present owners. A portable stove, fixed upon the hearth, did not tend to improve the air in the somewhat small apartment, though it testified to the housewife's habits of thrift. Emilie would have no wood fires except in René's room. A lamp suspended by a brass chain illumined the circle of heads that was turned towards the visitor as he entered and cast a feeble light upon the yellow flowers of the wall-paper, relieved here and there by a piece of old china. The lamp-light revealed more clearly to the new arrival the feelings expressed in the faces of the different occupants of the room. Likes and dislikes are not so easily concealed by those who move in humble circles—there the human animal is less tamed, less accustomed to the mask continually worn in more polite society. Emilie held out her hand to Claude—an unusual thing for her to do—with a happy smile upon her lips, and a look of joy in her brown eyes, her whole being expressing the sincere pleasure she felt at seeing someone whom she knew to be interested in her brother.

'Doesn't his coat fit him beautifully?' she asked impetuously, before Larcher had taken a chair or even exchanged a word of greeting with the other visitors.

René, it was true, was a perfect specimen of the creature so seldom seen in Paris—a handsome young man. At twenty-five the author of the 'Sigisbée' was still without a wrinkle on his brow, while the freshness of his complexion and the look of purity in his clear blue eyes told of a virgin soul and a mind unsullied by the world. He bore a great resemblance to the medallion, but little known, which David, the sculptor, has left of Alfred de Musset in his youth, though René's wealth of hair, his fair and already full beard, and his broad shoulders gave him an air of health and strength wanting in the somewhat effeminate and almost too frail appearance of the great poet. His eyes, generally serious, spoke at that moment of simple and unalloyed happiness, and Emilie's admiration was justified by an innate grace that revealed itself in spite of the levelling effect of a dress-coat. In her tender solicitude the loving sister had even thought of gold studs and links for his shirt-front and cuffs, and had bought them out of her savings at a jeweller's in the Rue de la Paix, after a secret conference with Claude. She had fastened his white tie with her own fingers, and had bestowed as much care upon him that evening as when, fourteen years ago, she had superintended the toilet of this idolised brother for his first communion.

'Poor Emilie,' said René, with a smile that disclosed two splendid rows of teeth; 'you must excuse her, Claude; I am her only weakness.'

'Well! So you are dragging René into dissipation too, eh?' cried Fresneau, as he shook hands with Larcher. The professor was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a great head of hair just beginning to turn grey, and an unkempt beard. Spread out before him, and covered with pencil notes, were some large sheets of paper—the exercises he brought home to correct. He gathered them up, saying, 'Lucky man! You've got rid of this terrible job! Will you take a thimbleful just to warm you?' he asked, holding up a decanter half filled with brandy, which was always left on the table after coffee had been served—the family sitting here in preference to moving into the salon, a room in the front of the house used only on grand occasions. 'Or a cigarette?' he added, offering Claude a bowl filled with tobacco.

Claude thanked him with a deprecatory smile and turned to bow to the three lady visitors, not one of whom offered him her hand. The mother, who scratched her head every now and then with one of her knitting-needles, was busily at work upon a blue woollen stocking, and her two daughters were engaged upon some embroidery. Madame Offarel's hair was quite white, and her face deeply wrinkled; through the round glasses that she managed to balance somehow or other on her short nose there flashed a glance of deep hatred upon Claude. Angélique, the elder of the two girls, repressed a smile as she heard the writer make a slight slip in his pronunciation; with her black eyes, that shot swift sideward glances, with her blushes that came as readily as her smiles, she belonged to the numerous family of shy but mocking females. Rosalie, the younger of the two sisters, had returned Claude's salute without raising her eyes, black as her sister's, but filled with a sweet, timid expression. A few minutes later she stole a glance from beneath her long lashes at René, and her fingers trembled as her needle followed the tracing for the embroidery. She bent her head still lower until her chestnut hair shone in the lamp-light.

Not a whit of this by-play had been lost upon Claude. He was well acquainted with the habits and disposition of ces dames Offarel, as Fresneau called them in his provincial way. They had probably arrived at about seven o'clock, soon after dinner. Old Offarel, after having accompanied them here from the Rue Bagneux, had gone on to the Café Tabourey, at the corner of the Odéon, where he conscientiously waded through all the daily papers. Claude had long guessed that Madame Offarel cherished the idea of a marriage between Rosalie and René; he suspected his young friend of having encouraged these hopes by an innate taste for the romantic, and it was only too evident that Rosalie had been captivated by the mental qualities and physical attractions of the poet. He, Claude Larcher, knew well enough, too, that he himself was both liked and feared by the girl. She liked him because he was devoted to René, and feared him because he was dragging the latter into a fresh current of events. To this innocent child, as well as to all the members of this small circle, the soirée at Madame Komof's seemed like a fairy expedition to distant and unexplored lands. In each of them it conjured up chimerical hopes or foolish fears. Emilie Fresneau had always cherished the most ambitious dreams for her brother, and she now pictured him leaning against a mantelpiece reciting verses in the midst of a crowd of duchesses, and beloved by a 'Russian princess.' These two words expressed the highest form of social superiority that her mind was capable of imagining. Rosalie was the victim of the keenest perspicacity—that of the woman who loves. Although she reproached herself for her folly, René's eyes frightened her with the joy they expressed, and that joy was at going into a world which she, almost his betrothed, could not enter. A bond, stronger than Claude had imagined, already united them, for secret vows had been exchanged by the pair one spring evening in the preceding year. René was then still unknown. She had him to herself. When by her side he thought all things charming; without her, all was insipid. To-day, her confidence disturbed by unconscious jealousy, she began to see what dangerous comparisons threatened her love. With her home-made dresses that spoilt the beauty of her figure, with her ready-made boots in which her dainty feet were lost, with her modest white collars and cuffs, she felt herself grow small by the side of the grand ladies whom René would meet. That was why her fingers trembled and why a vague terror shot through her heart, causing it to beat quicker, whilst the professor pressed Claude to drink a glass of liqueur and to make himself a cigarette.

'I assure you it's excellent eau-de-vie, sent me from Normandy by one of my pupils. Really not? You used to be so fond of it once. Do you remember when we gave lessons at Vanaboste's? Four hours a day, Thursdays included, corrections to be done at home, for a hundred and fifty francs a month! And yet how happy we were in those days! We had a quarter of an hour's interval between the classes, and I remember the little café we used to go to in the Rue Saint-Jacques to get a glass of this eau-de-vie to keep us going. You used to call it hardening the arteries, under the pretence that a man is only as old as his arteries, and that alcohol diminishes their elasticity.'

'I was twelve years younger then,' said Claude, as he laughed at the other's reminiscences, 'and had no rheumatism.'

'It can't be very good for one's health,' interposed Madame Offarel with some asperity, 'to go out nearly every night; and these big dinners, with their fine wines and highly-seasoned dishes, impoverish the blood terribly!'

'Don't be absurd,' said Emilie, interposing; 'we have had the honour of Monsieur Larcher's company to dinner, and you would be surprised to see what a modest meal he makes. And people can afford to go to bed a little late when they are free to sleep long in the morning. René tells us that it is so delightfully quiet in your house,' she added, addressing the writer.

'Yes, so it is. I happened to come across some rooms in an old house in the Rue de Varenne, and I find that at present I am the only tenant in the place. When the blinds are drawn I can fancy it is the middle of the night. I can hear nothing but the ringing of the bells in a convent close by and the roar of the city far, far away.'

'I have always heard it said that one hour's sleep before midnight is worth more than two afterwards,' broke in the old lady, exasperated by Claude's imperturbability. She was incensed against him without knowing exactly why—this feeling being inspired less by the influence he exercised upon René than by deep natural antipathy. She felt that she was being studied by this individual with the inquisitorial eyes, perfect manners, and unfathomable smiles. His presence produced in her a feeling of uneasiness that found vent in sharp words. She therefore added, 'Besides, Monsieur René cannot have such rest here. At what time will this Countess's soirée be over?'

'I don't know,' replied Claude, amused by the ill-concealed rancour of his adversary; 'the "Sigisbée" will be performed about half-past ten, and I suppose we shall sit down to supper about half-past twelve or one.'

'Monsieur René will be in bed about two o'clock, then,' rejoined Madame Offarel, with the visible satisfaction of an aggressive person bringing forward an irrefutable argument; 'and as Monsieur Fresneau goes out about seven, and Françoise begins to potter about at six——'

'Come, come, once in a way!' exclaimed Emilie with some impatience, cutting short the other's words. She feared the old lady's indiscreet tongue, and changed the topic by flattering her pet mania. 'You have not told us whether Cendrillon came back for good?'

Cendrillon was a grey cat presented by Madame Offarel to a young man named Jacques Passart, a teacher of drawing, between whom and the sous-chef de bureau a friendship had sprung up, born of their mutual taste for aquarelles. These were the two family vices—a love for painting in the husband, who daubed his canvases even in his office; and a love of cats in the wife, who had had as many as five such boarders in her flat—a ground floor like that of the Fresneaus, also with its bit of garden. Jacques Passart, who nursed an unrequited affection for Rosalie, had so often gone into rhapsodies over the pretty ways of Cendrette or Cendrinette, as Madame Offarel called her, that he had been presented with the animal. After a stay of three months in the room occupied by Passart on a fifth floor in the Rue du Cherche-Midi, Cendrillon had become a mother. Out of her three kittens two had been killed, and, doubtlessly thinking the third in danger, she had run away with it. Passart had been afraid to speak of his loss, but two days later Madame Offarel heard a scratching at the garden door.

'That's strange,' she said, verifying the number of her cats—one of which was lying at full length on the counterpane of her bed, another on the only sofa, and a third on the marble chimney-piece. 'They are all here, and yet I hear a scratching.' She opened the door, and Cendrillon walked in, purring, arching her back, and rubbing her head against her old mistress with a thousand pretty little ways that charmed the good lady. The next morning Cendrillon had once more vanished. This visit, rendered more mysterious by the avowal Passart had been obliged to make of his negligence, had on the previous day been the sole theme of Madame Offarel's conversation, and the fact that she had not even alluded to the circumstance that evening revealed more than her epigrams the importance attached by Rosalie's mother to René's entry into society.

'Ah! Cendrillon,' she replied, her ill-humour tinged with the enthusiasm evoked by the mention of the dear creature. 'I don't suppose Monsieur René remembers anything about it?' Upon a sign of reassurance from the young man that he had not forgotten the interesting event, she continued: 'Well, she came back this morning, carrying her little one in her mouth, and laid it at my feet like an offering, with such a look in her eyes! The day before she had come to see whether I still cared for her, and now she came to ask me to take her kitten too. It's better to bestow one's affections upon animals than upon human beings,' she added, by way of conclusion; 'they are much more faithful.'

'What a wonderful trait of instinct!' cried Fresneau, beginning once more to disfigure his exercises with cabalistic signs. 'I will make a note of it for my class.' The poor man, a real Jack-of-all-trades in his profession, taught philosophy in a preparatory school for B.A.'s, Latin in another, history in another, and even English, which he could scarcely pronounce. In this way he had contracted the habit, peculiar to old schoolmen, of holding forth at length at every possible opportunity. This marvellous return of Cendrillon to her native hearth was a text to be elaborated ad infinitum. He went on telling anecdote after anecdote, and forgetting his exercises—to all appearances. The excellent man, so weak that he had never been able to keep a class of ten boys in order, was a marvel of observation where his wife was concerned. Whilst his pencil was running over the margins of the sheets of foolscap he had distinctly perceived Madame Offarel's hostility. From Emilie's tone of voice, too, it was clear to him that she was somewhat uneasy as to the turn that such a conversation might take. So the professor prolonged his monologue in order to give the nerves of the sour-tempered bourgeoise time to steady themselves. He was not called upon to play his part long, for there came another ring at the bell.

'That's papa!' exclaimed Rosalie; 'it must be a quarter to ten.' She, too, had suffered from her mother's show of temper towards Claude and René, and the arrival of her father, which was the signal for departure, seemed like a deliverance—to her, too, for whom parting from the Fresneaus was generally an ordeal. But she knew her mother, and felt, by instinct rather than by reasoning, how mean and distasteful the bitterness of her remarks must seem to René. There were only too many reasons why he should no longer care for their company. She therefore rose as her father entered the room. M. Offarel was a tall, withered-looking man, with one of those pinched faces that irresistibly remind one of the immortal type of Don Quixote; an aquiline nose, hollow temples, a harshly drawn mouth, and, to crown all, one of those receding brows the wrinkles and bumps of which represent so many chimerical fancies and false ideas within. To his innocent mania for aquarelles he added the ridiculous weakness of incessantly talking about his imaginary complaints.

'It's very cold to-night,' were his first words, and, addressing his wife, he added, 'Adelaide, have you any tincture of iodine in the house? I am sure I shall have my attack of rheumatism in the morning.'

'Is your cab warmed?' asked Emilie, turning to Claude.

'Oh, yes,' replied the writer, pulling out his watch; 'and I see that it's time to get into it, if we don't want to be late.' Whilst he was taking leave of the little circle René disappeared through the door that led from the dining-room to his bedroom without bidding anyone good night.

'He has probably only gone to get his coat,' thought Rosalie; 'he cannot possibly have gone without saying good-bye, especially as he has not looked at me at all to-night.' She went on with her work whilst Fresneau received the sous-chef de bureau with the same questions he had put to his friend: 'Just a thimbleful to keep the cold out?'

'Only a suspicion,' answered Offarel.

'That's right,' rejoined the professor, 'you are not like Larcher, who despised my eau-de-vie!'

'Monsieur Larcher!' observed the other. 'Don't you know his usual drink? Why'—he added, in a lower key, and prudently looking towards the passage—'I read an article in the paper only this evening that shows him up well.'

'Tell us all about it, petit père,' exclaimed Madame Offarel, dropping her work for the first time that evening, and artlessly allowing her rancorous feelings to betray themselves as openly as her simple affection for her cat.

'It appears,' said the old man, emphasising his words, 'that wherever Monsieur Larcher appears, they offer him blood to drink instead of tea or other things.'

'Blood!' exclaimed Fresneau, taken aback by this astounding statement. 'What for?'

'To sustain him, of course,' said Madame Offarel quickly; 'didn't you notice his face? What a life he must lead!'

'It also appears,' continued Offarel, anxious to gratify that low taste for senseless gossip peculiar to a bourgeois as soon as he gets hold of one of the innumerable calumnies to which well-known men are exposed—'it appears that he lives surrounded by a court of women who adore him, and that he has discovered an infallible method of making whatever he writes a success. He has a dozen copies of his proofs struck off at once, and takes one to each of the ladies he knows. They spread them out on their knees, and "Mon petit Larcher here, and mon petit Larcher there—you must alter this and you must cut out that." So he alters this and he cuts out that, and the ladies imagine that they have written his work for him.'

'I am not at all surprised,' said Madame Offarel; 'he looks like a bold deceiver.'

'I must confess,' replied Fresneau, 'that I don't like his writings much; but as for being a deceiver—that's another matter. My dear Madame Offarel, I assure you he's a perfect child. How it amuses me when the newspapers say that he knows women's hearts! I've always found him in love with the worst creatures on earth, whom he conscientiously believed to be angels, and who deceive him and fool him as much as they please. René told us the other day that he spends his time in dallying with little Colette Rigaud, who plays in the "Sigisbée"—a false hussy who'll worm his last shilling out of him.'

'Hush!' exclaimed Emilie, entering just in time to hear the end of this little speech, and placing her hand on her husband's lips. 'Monsieur Claude is a friend of ours, and I won't have him discussed. My brother desires to be excused for not saying "good night" to you all,' she added; 'they hadn't noticed that it was so late, and left in a hurry. And when am I to have that drawing of the last scene in the "Sigisbée?"' she asked, turning to the sous-chef de bureau.

'It's a bad time of year for water-colours,' replied the latter; 'it gets dark so soon, and we are overwhelmed with work—but you shall have it. Why, what's the matter, Rosalie? You are quite white.'

The poor girl was indeed suffering tortures on finding that René had left her without so much as a look or a word. A great lump rose in her throat, and her eyes filled with tears. She had strength enough, however, to repress her sobs and to reply that she was overcome by the heat of the stove. Her mother darted a look at Emilie containing such a direct reproach that Madame Fresneau turned away her eyes involuntarily.

 She, too, was deeply grieved; for, although she had always been opposed to this marriage, which was quite out of keeping with the ambitious plans she vaguely cherished for her brother, she loved Rosalie. When the mother and her two daughters had put on their bonnets and were at last ready to go, Emilie's feelings led her to embrace Rosalie more affectionately than was her wont. She was quite ready to pity the girl's sufferings, but that pity was not entirely devoid of a sad kind of satisfaction at seeing René's manifest indifference, and as the door closed behind her visitors she turned to Françoise with unalloyed joy in her honest brown eyes.

'You will take care not to make any noise in the morning, won't you?'

'No more than a mouse,' replied the girl.

'And you too, my big beauty,' she said to her husband, on entering the dining-room, where the professor was once more at his exercises. 'I have told Constant to get up and dress quietly,' adding, with a proud smile, 'what a triumph for René to-night, provided that these grand folks don't turn up their noses at his verse! But I'm sure they'll not do that; his poetry is too good—almost as good as he is himself!'

'It is to be hoped that all these fine ladies will not spoil him as you do,' exclaimed Fresneau, 'for it would end by his losing his head. No, no,' he went on, in order to flatter his wife's feelings, 'it is a pleasure to see how modest he is, even in success.'

And Emilie kissed her husband tenderly for those words.