some red drapery, which appeared to Hyacinth extraordinarily magnificent; the principal ornament of the salon was a group of small and highly decorated cups, on a tray, accompanied by gilt bottles and glasses, the latter still more diminutive — the whole intended for black coffee and liqueurs. There was no carpet on the floor, but rugs and mats, of various shapes and sizes, disposed themselves at the feet of the chairs and sofas; and in the sitting-room, where there was a wonderful gilt clock, of the Empire, surmounted with a “subject” representing Virtue receiving a crown of laurel from the hands of Faith, Madame Poupin, with the aid of a tiny stove, a handful of charcoal, and two or three saucepans, carried on a triumphant cuisine. In the windows were curtains of white muslin, much fluted and frilled, and tied with pink ribbon.
Chapter VII
“I AM SUFFERING extremely, but we must all suffer, so long as the social question is so abominably, so iniquitously neglected,” Poupin remarked, speaking French, and rolling toward Hyacinth his salient, excited-looking eyes, which always had the same proclaiming, challenging expression, whatever his occupation or his topic. Hyacinth had seated himself near his friend’s pillow, opposite the strange young man, who had been accommodated with a chair at the foot of the bed.
“Ah, yes; with their filthy politics, the situation of the pauvre monde is the last thing they ever think of!” his wife exclaimed, from the fire. “There are times when I ask myself how long it will go on.”
“It will go on till the measure of their imbecility, their infamy, is full. It will go on till the day of justice, till the reintegration of the despoiled and disinherited, is ushered in with an irresistible force.”
“Oh, we always see things go on; we never see them change,” said Madame Poupin, making a very cheerful clatter with a big spoon in a saucepan.
“We may not see it, but they’ll see it,” her husband rejoined. “But what do I say, my children? I do see it,” he pursued. “It’s before my eyes, in its luminous reality, especially as I lie here — the revendication, the rehabilitation, the rectification.”
Hyacinth ceased to pay attention, not because he had a differing opinion about what M. Poupin called the avenement of the disinherited, but, on the contrary, precisely on account of his familiarity with that prospect. It was the constant theme of his French friends, whom he had long since perceived to be in a state of chronic spiritual inflammation. For them the social question was always in order, the political question always abhorrent, the disinherited always present. He wondered at their zeal, their continuity, their vivacity, their incorruptibility; at the abundant supply of conviction and prophecy which they always had on hand. He believed that at bottom he was sorer than they, yet he had deviations and lapses, moments when the social question bored him, and he forgot not only his own wrongs, which would have been pardonable, but those of the people at large, of his brothers and sisters in misery. They, however, were perpetually in the breach, and perpetually consistent with themselves, and, what is more, with each other. Hyacinth had heard that the institution of marriage in France was rather lightly considered, but he was struck with the closeness and intimacy of the union in Lisson Grove, the passionate identity of interest: especially on the day when M. Poupin informed him, in a moment of extreme but not indiscreet expansion, that the lady was his wife only in a spiritual, transcendental sense. There were hypocritical concessions and debasing superstitions of which this exalted pair wholly disapproved. Hyacinth knew their vocabulary by heart, and could have said everything, in the same words, that on any given occasion M. Poupin was likely to say. He knew that “they,” in their phraseology, was a comprehensive allusion to every one in the world but the people — though who, exactly, in their length and breadth, the people were was less definitely established. He himself was of this sacred body, for which the future was to have such compensations; and so, of course, were the Frenchman and his consort, and so was Pinnie, and so were most of the inhabitants of Lomax Place and the workmen in old Crookenden’s shop. But was old Crookenden himself, who wore an apron rather dirtier than the rest of them and was a master-hand at “forwarding,” but who, on the other side, was the occupant of a detached villa in Kentish Town, with a wife known to have secret aspirations toward a page in buttons? Above all, was Mr. Vetch, who earned a weekly wage, and not a large one, with his fiddle, but who had mysterious affinities of another sort, reminiscences of a phase in which he smoked cigars, had a hat-box, and used cabs, besides visiting Boulogne? Theophilus Vetch had interfered in his life, atrociously, in a terrible crisis; but Hyacinth, who strove to cultivate justice in his own conduct, believed he had acted conscientiously and tried to esteem him, the more so as the fiddler evidently felt that he had something to make up to him, and had treated him with marked benevolence for years. He believed, in short, that Mr. Vetch took a sincere interest in him, and if he should meddle again would meddle in a different way: he used to see him sometimes looking at him with the kindest eyes. It would make a difference, therefore, whether he were of the people or not, inasmuch as in the day of the great revenge it would only be the people who should be saved. It was for the people the world was made: whoever was not of them was against them; and all others were cumberers, usurpers, exploiters, accapareurs, as M. Poupin used to say. Hyacinth had once put the question directly to Mr. Vetch, who looked at him a while through the fumes of his eternal pipe, and then said, “Do you think I’m an aristocrat?”
“I didn’t know but you were a bourgeois,” the young man answered.
“No, I’m neither. I’m a Bohemian.”
“With your evening dress, every night?”
“My dear boy,” said the fiddler, “those are the most confirmed.”
Hyacinth was only half satisfied with this, for it was by no means definite to him that Bohemians were also to be saved; if he could be sure, perhaps he would become one himself. Yet he never suspected Mr. Vetch of being a “spy” though Eustache Poupin had told him that there were a great many who looked a good deal like that: not, of course, with any purpose of incriminating the fiddler, whom he had trusted from the first and continued to trust. The middle-class spy became a very familiar type to Hyacinth, and though he had never caught one of the infamous brotherhood in the act, there were plenty of persons to whom, on the very face of the matter, he had no hesitation in attributing the character. There was nothing of the Bohemian, at any rate, about the Poupins, whom Hyacinth had now known long enough not to be surprised at the way they combined the socialistic passion, a red-hot impatience for the genera] ratification, with an extraordinary decency of life and a worship of proper work. The Frenchman spoke, habitually, as if the great swindle practiced upon the people were too impudent to be endured a moment longer, and yet he found patience for the most exquisite “tooling,” and took a book in hand with the deliberation of one who should believe that everything was immutably constituted. Hyacinth knew what he thought of priests and theologies, but he had the religion of conscientious craftsmanship, and he reduced the boy, on his side, to a kind of prostration before his delicate, wonderworking fingers. “What will you have? J’ai la main parisienne,” M. Poupin would reply modestly, when Hyacinth’s admiration broke out; and he was good enough, after he had seen a few specimens of what our hero could do, to inform him that he had the same happy conformation. “There is no reason why you shouldn’t be a good workman, il ri a que fait” and his own life was practically governed by this conviction. He delighted in the use of his hands and his tools, arid the exercise of his taste, which was faultless, and Hyacinth could easily imagine how it must torment him to spend a day on his back. He ended by perceiving, however, that consolation was, on this occasion, in some degree conveyed by the presence of the young man who sat at the foot of the bed, and with whom M. Poupin exhibited such signs of acquaintance as to make our hero wonder why he had not seen him before, nor even heard of him.
“What do you mean by an irresistible force?” the young man inquired, leaning back in his chair, with raised arms and his interlocked hands behind him, supporting his head. M. Poupin had spoken French, which he always preferred to do, the insular tongue being au immense tribulation to him; but his visitor spoke English, and Hyacinth immediately perceived that there was nothing