To begin with he almost broke the pegs off in hanging up his hat and muffler. Then he threw himself violently into a chair, and brought his fist down on the table, while tossing away the newspaper.
“Do you think I read their fearful lies?” he cried.
Then he gave vent to the anger raging within him. “Did ever anyone hear,” he cried, “of masters making such fools of their people? For two whole hours I’ve been waiting for my pay! There were ten of us in the office kicking our heels there. Then at last Monsieur Manoury arrived in a cab. Where he had come from I don’t know, and don’t care, but I’m quite sure it wasn’t any respectable place. Those salesmen are all a parcel of thieves and libertines! And then, too, the hog actually gave me all my money in small change!”
Robine expressed his sympathy with Logre by the slight movement of his eyelids. But suddenly the hunchback bethought him of a victim upon whom to pour out his wrath. “Rose! Rose!” he cried, stretching his head out of the little room.
The young woman quickly responded to the call, trembling all over.
“Well,” shouted Logre, “what do you stand staring at me like that for? Much good that’ll do! You saw me come in, didn’t you? Why haven’t you brought me my glass of black coffee, then?”
Gavard ordered two similar glasses, and Rose made all haste to bring what was required, while Logre glared sternly at the glasses and little sugar trays as if studying them. When he had taken a drink he seemed to grow somewhat calmer.
“But it’s Charvet who must be getting bored,” he said presently. “He is waiting outside on the pavement for Clemence.”
Charvet, however, now made his appearance, followed by Clemence. He was a tall, scraggy young man, carefully shaved, with a skinny nose and thin lips. He lived in the Rue Vavin, behind the Luxembourg, and called himself a professor. In politics he was a disciple of Hebert.[*] He wore his hair very long, and the collar and lapels of his threadbare frockcoat were broadly turned back. Affecting the manner and speech of a member of the National Convention, he would pour out such a flood of bitter words and make such a haughty display of pedantic learning that he generally crushed his adversaries. Gavard was afraid of him, though he would not confess it; still, in Charvet’s absence he would say that he really went too far. Robine, for his part, expressed approval of everything with his eyes. Logre sometimes opposed Charvet on the question of salaries; but the other was really the autocrat of the coterie, having the greatest fund of information and the most overbearing manner. For more than ten years he and Clemence had lived together as man and wife, in accordance with a previously arranged contract, the terms of which were strictly observed by both parties to it. Florent looked at the young woman with some little surprise, but at last he recollected where he had previously seen her. This was at the fish auction. She was, indeed, none other than the tall dark female clerk whom he had observed writing with outstretched fingers, after the manner of one who had been carefully instructed in the art of holding a pen.
[*] Hebert, as the reader will remember, was the furious
demagogue with the foul tongue and poisoned pen who edited
the Pere Duchesne at the time of the first French
Revolution. We had a revival of his politics and his journal
in Paris during the Commune of 1871. — Translator.
Rose made her appearance at the heels of the two newcomers. Without saying a word she placed a mug of beer before Charvet and a tray before Clemence, who in a leisurely way began to compound a glass of “grog,” pouring some hot water over a slice of lemon, which she crushed with her spoon, and glancing carefully at the decanter as she poured out some rum, so as not to add more of it than a small liqueur glass could contain.
Gavard now presented Florent to the company, but more especially to Charvet. He introduced them to one another as professors, and very able men, who would be sure to get on well together. But it was probable that he had already been guilty of some indiscretion, for all the men at once shook hands with a tight and somewhat masonic squeeze of each other’s fingers. Charvet, for his part, showed himself almost amiable; and whether he and the others knew anything of Florent’s antecedents, they at all events indulged in no embarrassing allusions.
“Did Manoury pay you in small change?” Logre asked Clemence.
She answered affirmatively, and produced a roll of francs and another of two-franc pieces, and unwrapped them. Charvet watched her, and his eyes followed the rolls as she replaced them in her pocket, after counting their contents and satisfying herself that they were correct.
“We have our accounts to settle,” he said in a low voice.
“Yes, we’ll settle up tonight,” the young woman replied. “But we are about even, I should think. I’ve breakfasted with you four times, haven’t I? But I lent you a hundred sous last week, you know.”
Florent, surprised at hearing this, discreetly turned his head away. Then Clemence slipped the last roll of silver into her pocket, drank a little of her grog, and, leaning against the glazed partition, quietly settled herself down to listen to the men talking politics. Gavard had taken up the newspaper again, and, in tones which he strove to render comic, was reading out some passages of the speech from the throne which had been delivered that morning at the opening of the Chambers. Charvet made fine sport of the official phraseology; there was not a single line of it which he did not tear to pieces. One sentence afforded especial amusement to them all. It was this: “We are confident, gentlemen, that, leaning on your lights[*] and the conservative sentiments of the country, we shall succeed in increasing the national prosperity day by day.”
[*] In the sense of illumination of mind. It has been
necessary to give a literal translation of this phrase to
enable the reader to realise the point of subsequent
witticisms in which Clemence and Gavard indulge.
— Translator.
Logre rose up and repeated this sentence, and by speaking through his nose succeeded fairly well in mimicking the Emperor’s drawling voice.
“It’s lovely, that prosperity of his; why, everyone’s dying of hunger!” said Charvet.
“Trade is shocking,” asserted Gavard.
“And what in the name of goodness is the meaning of anybody ‘leaning on lights’?” continued Clemence, who prided herself upon literary culture.
Robine himself even allowed a faint laugh to escape from the depths of his beard. The discussion began to grow warm. The party fell foul of the Corps Legislatif, and spoke of it with great severity. Logre did not cease ranting, and Florent found him the same as when he cried the fish at the auctions — protruding his jaws and hurling his words forward with a wave of the arm, whilst retaining the crouching attitude of a snarling dog. Indeed, he talked politics in just the same furious manner as he offered a tray full of soles for sale.
Charvet, on the other hand, became quieter and colder amidst the smoke of the pipes and the fumes of the gas which were now filling the little den; and his voice assumed a dry incisive tone, sharp like a guillotine blade, while Robine gently wagged his head without once removing his chin from the ivory knob of his cane. However, some remark of Gavard’s led the conversation to the subject of women.
“Woman,” declared Charvet drily, “is the equal of man; and, that being so, she ought not to inconvenience him in the management of his life. Marriage is a partnership, in which everything should be halved. Isn’t that so, Clemence?”
“Clearly so,” replied the young woman, leaning back with her head against the wall and gazing into the air.
However, Florent now saw Lacaille, the costermonger, and Alexandre, the porter, Claude Lantier’s friend, come into the little room. In the past these two had long remained at the other table in the sanctum; they did not belong to the same class as the others. By the help of politics, however, their chairs had drawn nearer, and they had ended by forming part of