The mulatto’s irreproachable patent shoes cracked on the disjointed stones of the Passage Cotin as they climbed step by step the arduous way, which even in mid-summer was noxious and greasy. At length, after slipping upon the viscous steps of the interior staircase, Monsieur Alidor tugged viciously at the deer’s foot, which served as a bell-pull at the mouldy doorway. After waiting several minutes the door opened cautiously, and a head, enveloped in a multi-coloured handkerchief, peeped out. The superior man, aroused from a profound sleep, had only had time to slip into a pair of trousers spattered all over with mud of long standing. The room smelt of damp tobacco; a greenish light, nearly exhausted by the numerous indirect channels it traversed painfully, filtered through the dirty window. Political caricatures were pinned on the walls, the washing-stand was covered with tattered, unbound volumes, and a piece of soap, a comb, and half a roll of bread lay among the manuscripts and dictionaries on the writing-table. These things spoke so plainly of habits of sloth and disorder, that after one glance round the room, Sainte-Lucie felt he knew the tutor as well as if he had followed him from café to café for twenty years. The unfortunate creole tried to make up for the ignominy of his dwelling by the extreme dignity of his bearing.
“Excuse me,” he said to the former minister, “for receiving you in the disordered cell of a modern anchorite.” Then he added, drawing himself up, “We are the Benedictines of the nineteenth century.” And he tried to smuggle into his pockets the combs and the crusts of bread which disfigured the table.
Sainte-Lucie had the sense to recognise that he had deceived himself, but had not been deceived. For the matter of that, how could Monsieur Godet-Laterrasse deceive any one? The poor, little, dirty lizard of a man was pitiful to behold, but if there was one sentiment foreign to Sainte-Lucie’s soul, it was pity. And that he had only himself to blame, made him the less forgiving to the innocent tutor. In his anger he bit his lips, and his eyes grew sombre, but it pleased him for the moment to dissimulate. His gentle voice took on an accent which was almost caressing as he said:
“My dear Godet, forgive me for having surprised you in your bed” (here he threw a terrible glance at the object he politely named a bed). “You are the first person I have called on. We will go now and surprise Remi. I wrote to tell him of my arrival, but he did not trouble himself to meet me. I’ll pull his ears for him.”
At these words a shiver of terror shook the frame of the tutor, who however far he threw his head back still looked up into the tall mulatto’s enigmatical face.
He tried to smile, and stammered out something about having given Remi a holiday for the day, and that he had no doubt gone into the country with his friends. The wretched man thus gained a day’s respite; he spent it in researches which only tired him without resulting in any discovery.
By eight o’clock the next morning Monsieur Sainte-Lucie was again in the anchorite’s cell, which the Benedictine of the nineteenth century had tidied up a little. He himself wore a white necktie, and that stoical expression which rendered him so remarkable on ceremonial occasions. It was not only fear of Soulouque’s former minister which troubled him. He had but small credit in Bather’s Alley, and as he did not possess a franc in the world he was in a fix. The two hundred francs which the consul of Haïti remitted to him regularly every month went mostly in paying old debts to various tradesmen, for he was honest; what remained never lasted long. He loved to throw money about, and now he did not possess a franc. His misery, as he followed Sainte-Lucie, was so excessive it blinded him, made him giddy and little by little indifferent as to what might happen. The mulatto’s voice ordering the cabman to drive to the Rue des Feuillantines brought him to his senses, and he endeavoured to postpone the climax for a few hours.
“Dear sir,” he said, “we shall be more likely to find Remi in the afternoon, at the time for our lessons.”
The sly, suspicious Sainte-Lucie felt that something was being hidden from him, but it afforded him a kind of pleasure to pile up grievances in his memory, so he replied with perfect good nature:
“Very well; we will go to breakfast. You must be hungry, Monsieur Godet.”
They breakfasted in a café on the boulevard. The tutor ate little, and fearfully watched his huge companion devouring the mass of food that his bulk demanded. The man had never seemed to him so broad and so tall. Enormous muscular bronze arms were visible through the Haitian’s cuffs with their gold links. He talked in a voice which was almost childishly gentle, and the twinkling of his cruel eyes was softened by the lashes he lowered so trustingly. And that trustfulness added to the tutor’s anguish.
The breakfast dragged on to liqueurs and cigars, but finish it did at last; then a waiter called a cab, and parent and tutor started for the Rue des Feuillantines.
Nothing but a miracle could save him now, and Godet half expected, by the intervention of Providence, to find Remi in his room, “digging away at Tacitus.”
The landlady of the hotel dashed his hopes to the ground with her first word.
“Monsieur Remi has not come back,” she said; “you ought to inform the police.”
Monsieur Alidor folded his arms and turned towards the tutor. The colour of his face was unchanged, but his lips were white and his eyes bloodshot.
“Where is he?” he hissed through his closed teeth. “You are responsible for him.”
He stretched out his powerful hand and grasped the tutor’s arm, who, as the earth did not open beneath him, flung back his head and contemplated the staircase. Even in his downfall he was sublime. Sainte-Lucie, looking round, saw rows of brass candlesticks on a shelf, beneath which hung keys each bearing a numbered tag and a spirit merchant’s advertisement. These things bore witness to European civilisation. Had he instead of them seen a sandy plain, the abrupt sides of a deep ravine, or the palm-trees of his native island, he would in all probability have given way to his desire to strangle the tutor. He abstained from so doing, out of respect for European manners, and contented himself with saying:
“I shall not leave you until you have found him.” Then began a series of drives in cabs to such places as Godet-Laterrasse could suggest. He dined with the mulatto in sumptuous restaurants, ate of succulent dishes, and received the obsequious smiles of waiters. In the evening he mounted the thickly carpeted staircase of Sainte-Lucie’s hotel, the inordinately elongated shadow of his inevitable companion mounting by his side. He was shown into a fine bedroom, and heard the key turn in the lock behind him. When the door opened next morning, it would be for him to resume his life of painful splendour.
There was always a cab waiting for them in the street, which took them on an unceasing round the whole day through. They drove to “The Famished Cat,” where Virginie assured the father of the lively interest she took in his son.
She had often mended Monsieur Remi’s linen, she said. She would have gone to the stake for him. She was not like so many women one sees about. “Go and look in the Morgue,” she added with a sigh.
She dived into her kitchen, and reappeared a moment later, her eyes screwed up and her nose red, and in her hand a bill which Monsieur Remi had not settled.
She profited too by the occasion to remind Monsieur Godet that he also owed her for sundry bocks. But the man of iron had forgotten his purse. Besides, he had given up the struggle; his ambulatory prison exhausted him. He was dragged from “The Famished Cat” to Labanne’s studio. The sculptor stroked his ruddy beard and declared that he did not as yet “see” the expiatory monument to the Victims of Tyranny, but that he was studying the flora of the Antilles. He showed Monsieur Sainte-Lucie an easel, already half buried under a pile of books.
“That was Remi’s easel,” he said; “the young scoundrel was beginning to paint as dexterously as a monkey.”
“Is my son a painter?” exclaimed Sainte-Lucie.
Then with a gesture which was now familiar to him, he hoisted the tutor into the cab which was waiting.
They went to the prefecture of poli
ce; they went to see Dion, who was busy writing a poem. On the wall hung a pair of crossed foils, and a death’s-head, wearing a mask fringed with lace, ornamented his bookcase.
They went to see Mercier, who was living with a high-coloured, formidably built dame — a sage-femme by profession.
They explored the deepest depths of Batignolles till they found Potrel painting in his studio. They went to see a young lady called Marie, and a young lady called Louise, who were very playful with the former minister and called him “papa.” One day, after an extra good breakfast, Godet-Laterrasse, seeing the cab already waiting to carry him off, asked if he might at least be allowed to go to his apartment to get a clean shirt and some socks. Sainte-Lucie, without answering him, ordered the cabman to stop at the first hosier’s he came to.
That same day they went to visit Télémaque. It was the first time that Miragoane had seen a cab stop at her master’s door, and she greeted it by barking furiously. When Télémaque saw Soulouque’s former minister get out of it, he was seized with respect and terror.
“That you, Massa Sainte-Lucie?” were the only words he could say, though his mouth remained open, and he cast furtive glances towards the cab, fearful lest the Emperor himself should be hidden in it. Once reassured on this point, he smiled widely at Monsieur Godet-Laterrasse, and went down into the cellar in search of bottled beer.
During his absence Sainte-Lucie examined the portrait, which in its gilded frame hung over the counter.
“Isn’t it fine, massa? isn’t it really beautiful?” said the negro, his head appearing above the trapdoor, on a level with the floor. “It is your son, massa, who painted it. Massa Remi, he is a sorcerer.”
The father turned two venomous eyes towards the tutor and said nothing.
When Télémaque learned from the former minister of Remi’s disappearance, he pondered for a long time. His half-closed eyes, like those of a cat dropping off to sleep, seemed to interrogate those of Miragoane. Finally he shook his head, and said with religious gravity:
“Massa, it is love which has carried away the young man. Young men are moved by love, and agitated, as Brother Voodoo is agitated when he dances on the serpent’s cage. There is something good about an old woman who knows how to cook: but there is something good, too, about a pretty young girl.”
Here Télémaque held his peace.
“Do you know where my son is?” asked Monsieur Sainte-Lucie.
“Yes, massa,” replied Télémaque; “he is where the young lady is.”
When he was asked where was the young lady of whom he spoke, he replied, with an infantine smile:
“I don’t know, massa.”
And nothing more could be got out of him, so Sainte-Lucie bundled the tutor with his packet of shirts and socks back into the cab, and conjured Télémaque to let him know anything he could find out about Remi.
CHAPTER XIV
TÉLÉMAQUE was dressed in his best black clothes, in which he looked so respectable that the waiter at the hotel unhesitatingly showed him up the main staircase.
“Good morning, massa,” he said to Monsieur Alidor, whom he found arrayed in a pink sleeping suit. “I know where Massa Remi is; he where the young lady is, and the young lady is at the seaside, at Avranches.”
He then explained that, having several times noticed the young man was much interested in Monsieur Sarriette, his landlord at Courbevoie, he thought that perhaps it might be because of something to do with a young lady. The butcher’s wife and the baker’s wife had both told him that Monsieur Sarriette, who received few visitors, was the guardian of a girl who had lost her father, and lived with her mother in the Rue des Feuillantines. Every one said the young lady was very pretty. Hearing further that Monsieur Sarriette had gone to join his ward at a little village near Avranches, Télémaque felt quite sure that Massa Remi had gone to Avranches too. He declared — that Brother Joseph the — prophet could not have divined things better, even though he had first danced on his serpent’s cage.
Monsieur Sainte-Lucie went at once to fetch the tutor from his prison. He was beginning to get used to his well-fed and stupefying life, and merely looked at the ceiling with the air of a poodle and a martyr, which he could so affectingly assume when, — with — cruel irony, he — was — ordered to pack his trunks. A waiter was sent out to buy him some handkerchiefs, and — soon, seated beside the mulatto, he was in the train going to Normandy. The two travellers spent the night at Avranches.
The next day, while the morning sun shone on the bay, turning its sands to silver, and showing up the brown crenellated buildings on Saint Michael’s Mount, Sainte-Lucie dragged Godet-Laterrasse to — the — omnibus which — was — to take them to the little bathing-place. He took his place in the coupé, and put his prisoner under the tilt, where he was squeezed between two packing-cases, the corners of which stuck into his sides. As soon as they reached the village, Sainte-Lucie locked his victim up in a bedroom in the hotel.
The landlady of the inn, being interrogated, told him that Monsieur Remi with his paint-box, accompanied by Monsieur Sarriette, had gone to the cliffs, and there, sure enough, after a ten minutes’ walk, Monsieur Alidor found his son tranquilly sketching the rocks. The father wanted to beat him with his walking-stick, and at the same time hug him to his heart. He was still undecided which desire to satisfy when Remi saw him, and, springing up, threw his arms round his neck.
He was no longer the great sulky boy whom his father had left four years ago; he was a robust, well-grown young fellow, good-humoured and wide awake, with an honest, smiling face.
“How glad I am that you have come, papa,” he said. “I was just going to write to you. This is Monsieur Sarriette — let me present him to you; he will introduce you to Madame and Madamoiselle Lourmel.”
Monsieur Sarriette left off measuring the cliff with his umbrella and bowed.
That evening, beneath an innumerable cohort of stars, Monsieur Alidor Sainte-Lucie, adorned with all his creole airs and graces, offered his arm to Madame Lourmel, and led her for a stroll along the beach.
Remi walked by the side of Jeanne, and noted the blue shadows her long lashes cast on her rounded cheeks. She raised her eyes, cool as violets steeped in dew, to the young man, and a ray of moonlight shone on her pretty teeth, as she said:
“Mamma could not understand — she could not understand a bit — why you should travel in the same train with us, without a hat, too, and in your slippers and jersey. But I knew quite well that it was because you wanted to marry me.”
When Monsieur Alidor found himself alone with his son, he said in a half-scolding, half tender tone:
“She is a very nice girl. You don’t deserve such a nice girl. It was wrong of me not to tell Madame Lourmel the kind of life you have been leading in Paris, you young scamp. Well, anyhow, do you think you know how to paint?”
Then all of a sudden he struck his forehead.
“I have left that fool of a Godet locked up all this time in his room!” he cried.
BALTHASAR AND OTHER WORKS
Translated by Mrs. John Lane
CONTENTS
BALTHASAR
THE CURÉ’S MIGNONETTE
M. PIGEONNEAU
THE DAUGHTER OF LILITH
LAETA ACILIA
THE RED EGG
BALTHASAR
TO THE VICOMTE EUGÈNE MELCHIOR DE VOGUE
“Magos regos fere habuit Oriens.”
— Tertullian.
I.
In those days Balthasar, whom the Greeks called Saracin, reigned in Ethiopia. He was black, but comely of countenance. He had a simple soul and a generous heart The third year of his reign, which was the twenty-second of his age, he left his dominions on a visit to Balkis, Queen of Sheba. The mage Sembobitis and the eunuch Menkera accompanied him. He had in his train seventy-five camels bearing cinnamon, myrrh, gold dust, and elephants’ tusks.
As they rode, Sembobitis instructed him in the influences of the planets,{*} as well as in the
virtues of precious stones, and Menkera sang to him canticles from the sacred mysteries. He paid but little heed to them, but amused himself instead watching the jackals with their ears pricked up, sitting erect on the edge of the desert.
* The East commonly held kings versed in magic.
At last, after a march of twelve days, Balthasar became conscious of the fragrance of roses, and very soon they saw the gardens that surround the city of Sheba. On their way they passed young girls dancing under pomegranate trees in full bloom.
“The dance,” said Sembobitis the mage, “is a prayer.”
“One could sell these women for a great price,” said Menkera the eunuch.
As they entered the city they were amazed at the extent of the sheds and warehouses and workshops that lay before them, and also at the immense quantities of merchandise with which these were piled.
For a long time they walked through streets thronged with chariots, street porters, donkeys and donkey-drivers, until all at once the marble walls, the purple awnings and the gold cupolas of the palace of Balkis, lay spread out before them.
The Queen of Sheba received them in a courtyard cooled by jets of perfumed water which fell with a tinkling cadence like a shower of pearls.
Smiling, she stood before them in a jewelled robe.
At sight of her Balthasar was greatly troubled.
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 300