is a painter!”
“An artist! I knew it!” M. Bernard exclaimed in his turn (and the hairs of his wig stood upright with fright). “An artist!!! But” (turning to the concierge) “did you not make any inquiries about this gentleman? Did you not know what he did?”
“Lord, sir, he gave me five francs for my luck-penny; how was I to imagine that——”
“When you have done,” began the owner of the easel, but M. Bernard adjusted his spectacles on his nose with aplomb.
“Sir,” said he, “since you have no furniture you cannot move it in. I am legally entitled to decline a lodger who brings no guarantee.”
“And how about my word?” the artist inquired with dignity.
“It is no equivalent for furniture. You can look for lodgings somewhere else. Durand shall give you back your luck-penny.”
“Eh?” cried the dumbfounded concierge, “I paid it into the savings-bank.”
“But I cannot find another lodging all in a minute,” objected he of the hat. “Let me have a day’s shelter, at any rate.”
“Go to the hotel,” returned M. Bernard. “By-the-by,” he added quickly as a sudden thought struck him, “I will let you have the room furnished if you like. My insolvent lodger’s things are up there. Only the rent, as you know, in such cases is paid in advance.”
“The question is how much you want for the den,” said the artist, seeing there was no other way out of it.
“But it is a very good room; the rent will be twenty-five francs a month, under the circumstances. You pay in advance.”
“So you have said already; the phrase hardly deserves the honour of an encore.” He fell to fumbling in his pockets. “Have you change for five hundred francs?”
“Eh? what?” exclaimed his amazed landlord.
“Oh, well, call it half a thousand, then. Have you never seen such a thing before?” continued the artist, waving the note before the eyes of landlord and concierge. The latter appeared to lose his balance completely at the sight.
“I will give you change,” M. Bernard began respectfully. “There will only be twenty francs to take, since Durand is giving you back your luck-penny.”
“He may keep it,” said the artist, “on condition that he will come up every morning to tell me the day of the week, the day of the month, the quarter of the moon, and what kind of a day it is, and what form of government we are living under.”
“Oh, sir!” cried old Durand, bowing to an angle of ninety degrees.
“All right, my good fellow, you will act as my almanack. And in the meantime you will help my commissionaire with the moving in.”
“I will send you your receipt directly, sir,” added the landlord. And that very evening Marcel the painter was installed as M. Bernard’s new lodger. Schaunard had fled, and his garret was transformed into a palace.
The said Schaunard, meanwhile, was beating up Paris for money.
Schaunard had elevated borrowing into a fine art. Foreseeing that it might be necessary to “oppress” foreigners, he had learned the requisite formulæ for borrowing five francs in every language under the sun. He had made a profound study of the whole repertory of ruses by which the precious metals are wont to escape their pursuers. No pilot is better acquainted with the state of the tides than he with the times of low and high water; which is to say, the days when his friends and acquaintances were sure to be in funds. So much so, indeed, that if he were seen entering any particular house, people would say, not “There is M. Schaunard,” but, “To-day is the first, or the fifteenth of the month.” Partly to facilitate the collection of this kind of tithe which he levied when hard up, partly to spread it evenly over the area of persons capable of meeting the call, Schaunard had drawn up alphabetical lists of all his acquaintances, and tabulated them under the headings of quarters and arrondissements. Opposite each name he set down the highest possible sum that he could expect to borrow in proportion to the owner’s means, the dates when he was in funds, a time-table of meals, together with the probable bill of fare. Schaunard kept besides a little set of books in perfect order, in which he entered all the sums that he borrowed down to the most minute fractions, for he had no mind to burden himself with debt beyond a certain figure, and the amount of that figure still hung on the pen of an uncle in Normandy whose property he was one day to inherit. So soon as Schaunard owed twenty francs to any one individual, he stopped borrowing and repaid the money in a lump, even if he had to borrow from others to whom he owed smaller amounts. In this way he always kept up a certain credit on the market, which credit he was pleased to style his “floating debt,” and as it was known that he invariably paid his debts so soon as his resources permitted him to do so, people were very ready to oblige him whenever they could.
But to-day, since eleven o’clock in the morning when he started out to scrape together those seventy-five indispensable francs, he had only succeeded in making up one poor little five-franc piece. This had been done with the collaboration of the letters M V and R on his famous list; all the rest of the alphabet was passing through a precisely similar crisis, and this brought his quest to an end.
By six o’clock a ferocious appetite was ringing the dinner-bell within, and he had reached the Barrière du Maine, where the letter U was domiciled. Schaunard had a serviette ring in U’s establishment, whenever there were serviettes. The porter called after him as he went past.
“Where are you going, sir?”
“Up to M. U——.”
“He is out.”
“And madame?”
“She is out too. They went out to dinner and left a message with me for one of their friends who was sure to come this evening, they said. In fact they were expecting you, and this is the address they left with me,” added the porter, holding out a scrap of paper.
Schaunard read these words in his friend U’s handwriting:—
“Gone to dine with Schaunard, Rue—Come and look us up.”
“Well, well,” thought he as he went away, “when chance comes in pretty tricks he plays!”
Then Schaunard bethought himself of a little eating-house only a few steps away, where he had made a meal once or twice before for a trifling sum. To this establishment, known to lower Bohemia as La Mère Cadet, he now betook himself. La Mère Cadet, half tavern, half restaurant, situated in the Chaussée du Maine, is patronised largely by carters of the Orléans Road with a sprinkling of cantatrices from Montparnasse and first walking gentlemen from Bobino’s. In summer the place is crammed with young aspirants from studios round about the Luxembourg, literary gentlemen unknown to fame, and scribblers attached to more or less mysterious journals, who flock to La Mère Cadet, famous for stewed rabbit, genuine sauerkraut and a thin white wine with a smack of brimstone.
Two or three stunted trees spread a few sickly green leaves over the heads of diners in the establishment; and beneath the shadow of these shrubs, known to frequenters of La Mère Cadet as “the grove,” Schaunard now took his place.
“My word! what must be, must!” said he to himself. “Now for a blow-out, a private jollification all to myself.”
And without more ado, he called for soup, a half portion of sauerkraut and two half portions of stewed rabbit; having remarked that in this case two halves are greater than the whole by at least a quarter.
His order attracted the attention of a young person in white, with a wreath of orange blossoms in her hair; she wore dancing slippers, and a veil of imitated imitation floated over a pair of shoulders which might have been suffered to preserve their incognito. She was a singer from the Théâtre Montparnasse, where the wings are entrances, as one may say, of La Mère Cadet’s kitchen. The lady having stepped in for refreshments between the acts of Lucia di Lammermoor was taking a half-cup