CHAPTER X.
'LA JEUNE FRANCE.'
If this were not a veracious history, in the customary order of eventsas they occur in the construction of fiction, the reader should havegone straight from the quick and gracious acceptance of O'Hoolohan'sproposal of marriage to the old-fashioned formula of ringing thewedding-bells, and leaving the united pair to the enjoyment of thehoneymoon, with the tag: 'If they don't live happy, may we!' That wouldbe the artistic conclusion. But we are copying from nature, and have nopretensions to art. And O'Hoolohan's nature was one of surprises. Thatphenomenally-constituted being had been very busy secretly prosecutingresearches into the manner in which the girl he had recognised in theMorgue had come by her death, and the mode in which her body had beendisposed of.
A great city like Paris, with its never-ending rush of activities, islike to a whirlpool. It is always in surging motion; the figures thatrise to the surface for awhile and attract a passing notice as theycircle giddily round are thought no more of, when they sink from view,than the flotsam and jetsam sucked into the oblivion of the Maelstr?m.
Marguerite (for it was she) had run her course, and nine days after shehad disappeared from the haunts that knew her she was forgotten. How shehad died was never ascertained; but there was narrow scope forconjecture. It was only too evident that she had committed suicide. Inthe multitude of her facile acquaintances she had met one for whom shehad conceived a real attachment. He pretended to reciprocate it, and hedid, seemingly, until his student's career was finished, and he hadreceived his doctor's degree, and was summoned to his home in theprovinces to begin his dull professional life. The consecratedpreliminary to that in France is to marry a neighbour's daughter with asnug dowry, who has been provided of long date by the prudence of familycouncils, tenacious of tradition. The youthful doctor duly led hisdestined help-meet to the altar, and by the same act consigned hererring sister in Paris, whose very existence she had never suspected, tothe cold Seine and the nameless burial-pit.
That is no novelty in the Latin Quarter, nor will ever be while woman,degraded soever though she be, is not utterly heartless.
The deserted Marguerite _had_ committed suicide. She had sallied out inthe blackness of midnight, when the quays were silent and lonely, and,watching her opportunity till the policemen and roysterers andrag-pickers were distant, she had stealthily clambered the parapet of abridge and dropped into the river. That must have been the end. So ithad been settled over pipes and cards and Strasburg beer in the_brasseries_ of the Boulevard St. Michel; and so, truly, it might--nay,must have been.
O'Hoolohan had learned this from a knot of premature cynics in the caf?of _la Jeune France_, where he had been in the habit of calling in amongother gay resorts of the district to pick up what information he couldon a matter that affected him much, for under his stone-like, soldierlyexterior there were hidden springs of tenderness.
The caf? which is called after young France is much affected by thosepromising pillars of the future, the students of law and medicine,especially the latter, who reside in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Alight, varied of blue and red, blazes like a pharos over its portals toentice the customers. It lies to the right a few hundred yards up theBoulevard St. Michel, as it is entered from the side of the quays. Heremay be seen congregated, after dinner-hour in the evening--under thewarm chandeliers in the winter, out in the fresh air of thethoroughfare in the finer season--the future Berryers and Lamballes ofthe most civilized nation in the world. Only they do not look like italways, carelessly chatting behind their modest glasses of beer, oftenfrom amid the clouds of incense floating from cheap cigars, or theequally economic _caporal_ tobacco. A gay and spacious caf? it is; welllit, well furnished with softly-padded cushions, and lined with rows ofmirrors reflecting the intellectual group around busily engaged wastingthe hours in everything but the study of comparative anatomy or thesubtleties of the Code Napoleon. Dominoes and picquet are more in voguethan jurisprudence, and the only books which are read by the novices ofthe learned professions who frequent the place are woman's looks, andfolly--the loss of time and money--invariably all they teach them.
The night before that on which O'Hoolohan paid his last visit toO'Hara's chambers, the soldier of fortune had sauntered into the caf?early, but it was almost deserted. It was the _mi-car?me_, that oasis inmid-Lent for the Paris student, when he avenges himself for the enforcedabstinence from his usual enjoyments by the indulgence in riot in theinterval of saturnalia allowed by custom. The habitu?s of the YoungFrance were not there. They were dancing merrily in one disguise orother at the ball-room higher up in the same boulevard, the Closerie desLilas.
Why, it may be asked, did not O'Hoolohan go to the ball-room where hehad first seen her whose fate he was inquiring into? and why, knowingthat she was dead, did he seek to know more?
The one answer may serve for both questions. He looked upon himselfalready as a member of Captain Chauvin's household. He would notdishonour her he loved by showing himself in any of the notorious hauntsof loose womankind now that he was her accepted suitor. But having cometo the inevitable conclusion that Marguerite was the lost sister ofBerthe's friend, Caroline, he was anxious to obtain some memorial ofher, and, if possible, to rescue her remains from the _fosse commune_,and put over them a simple tomb. He was emotional, was this batteredcampaigner, who had buffeted about the world so much, and had aninfinite pity for human weakness--and chiefly for the weaknesses ofmaidenhood beset by temptation. He hung about the caf? until groupsreturning from the Closerie in every variety of carnivalesque costumehad filled it with a noisy company. Close to the table at which he sat,three students, disciples of ?sculapius, from their conversation, tookup their position and ordered a frugal supper before retiring to roostin their attics hard by. They were talkative, and talked as if theywere not very particular who listened. Our friend could not helpoverhearing them, and out of their conversation had sprung the proposed'affair of honour.'
'Ah, _ma Marguerite_,' said one pale-faced, blear-eyed stripling, as herolled a cigarette, 'little I thought as I whirled you in a waltz atwelvemonth ago that I'd be having a hand in your dissection to-day. Shemakes a splendid subject.'
'The proud minx, she never would take my arm,' said a sentimentalgentleman with blue spectacles. 'D'you know, Eug?ne, I cut enough of herhair off when I got the chance, two hours after they brought her in, toplait me a watch-guard. Gar?on, a bock! Don't you think it a famousidea?'
'_Ma foi!_' said Eug?ne, a black-bearded fellow with a Gascon accent,robust of frame, and several years older than his companion, 'the ideais tolerable, but mine is better. I bought a member of Marguerite andtook it home. _Tiens_, see this paper-knife,' producing one from hispocket. 'I thought I'd like a souvenir of _la modiste_ in memory of oldtimes. This is made out of her tibia; I had the fibula removed. Pleaseto observe the beautiful polish the internal malleolus takes!'
'Is that true?' exclaimed O'Hoolohan angrily, starting forward to thetable.
'What business of yours is it?' retorted the Gascon.
'Is it true?'
'I have said it, Mr. Insolent.'
'Then you're a beast, d'you hear?'
'And you, sir, are an intermeddling hound!' shouted the Gascon, foamingat the mouth in a spasm of fury.
O'Hoolohan shut his lips firmly a moment, and clenched his hands as ifstruggling to suppress his wrath. Then, having apparently succeeded, hesaid quietly and deliberately, while a smile that was near akin to asneer played about his lips:
'You are a braggart and a bully, like most Gascons, and it is my privateopinion at present that you are a coward into the bargain.'
There was an immediate springing to the feet of all present, and aconfused hubbub of voices, everyone speaking at once.
'Silence!' shouted the Gascon. 'This is my concern. You'll have toanswer for this, sir. Here is my friend's address.'
'I'm at your service, and the sooner the better. Your friend will nothave to wait long for a visit from a friend of mine.'
And O'Hoolohanhanded his adversary his card, and took the proffered address with abow. Then, removing his hat with a sarcastic coolness, he saluted thecompany and left.
Idiots, you will say, my dear sir or madame, to pick up this quarrel onsuch foolish grounds! I admit it. But do not most quarrels rest on thebasis of folly? and are not most disputants idiots? So it has been, andso will it be to the crack of doom.
The three students were right in one point, however. Marguerite did noteven tenant a grave in the paupers' corner of a cemetery. Her body wasnot claimed; in the darkness it had been bundled in a sack, and trottedto the Ecole Pratique in the Rue de l'Ecole de M?decine, there tocontribute to the enlightenment of the rising generation of surgeons.From the slab in the Morgue to the slab in the dissecting-room! Gruesomejourney and grim destiny!
Mated from the Morgue: A Tale of the Second Empire Page 10