To-morrow? Part 16

"That which you had was the original, not a copy. I have no copy of it from which I can replace it."

"But M'sieur will certainly have his notes, his private work, his first scheme?"

"None. I do not work in that way. There is not a sc.r.a.p of paper relative to it anywhere."

Upon this the publisher rose, looked at me in a long silence, and then said in an icy tone,--

"Then M'sieur wishes me to understand that he does not intend to allow our firm to publish his work at all?"

I flushed at the insult his words contained. They practically intimated that he thought the whole thing an invention, and that I was going to give the MS. elsewhere. I got up too, and said--

"I have told you the MS. is destroyed, and I have no means of reproducing it, therefore it is impossible for it to be brought out by your or any other firm."

The man before me merely raised his shoulders over his ears, bowed, spread out the palms of his hands, raised his eyebrows, and muttered,--

"Comme vous voulez, M'sieur."

Confound him! was he a liar that he a.s.sumed me to be one. There was nothing to do but to bow and leave.

As I walked out of his office into the fresh, sparkling, morning sunlight, life to me had a very bitter savour. I walked through the streets till I felt tired in every muscle. Then I sat thinking on a bench in a green corner of the Champs Elysees, watching absently the sun patches jump from leaf to neighbouring leaf as the wind elevated and depressed them, and trying to mentally seize upon and a.n.a.lyse this vile, low impulse of another man's envy.

It was dark when I came back to the hotel. When I came up to my room I was surprised to see quite a little crowd of figures cl.u.s.tered round my door, all talking at once in their shrill French tones, all gesticulating at each other as if about to tear off each other's scalps.

Angry exclamations reached me as I came towards them.

"Mais je vous dis, je ne savais pas!"

"Mais c'est impossible!"

"Pas en regie!"

"Que voulez vous? C'est un barbare!"

Then as I came up there was a general cry of "Le voila! le voila!" and in an instant they were all around me, all clamouring, screaming, questioning me at once. The master of the hotel in the greatest agitation, the manager in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves, two or three waiters, a man looking like a gendarme, and another official with a paper in his hand. For a second they shouted so--nothing could be distinguished except broken phrases and the continual repet.i.tion of the words "Notification" and "M'sieur le Commissionaire."

"A vous la responsibilite!"

"Moi? je n'en savais rien!"

"Il veut abimer notre sante!"

"Il partera tout de suite!"

I looked at them for a moment in amaze, and the fellow with the paper thundered out--"Silence," which produced the effect of cold thrown suddenly in boiling water. The little crowd pressed in upon me closely and listened awe-struck as the Commissionaire spoke to me, in French, of course.

"Monsieur," he said, in an impressive tone, "I am informed you have a dog here!"

I nodded.

"A dog--dead!" and the accent on the last word was terrific.

"My dog unfortunately has died," I said. "Yes"--and I wondered more and more the upshot of it all.

"Then," thundered the official, purple with excited rage, "how is it, Monsieur, you have not sent a notification to the police?"

I was fairly taken aback. The matter, though I barely yet comprehended it, was evidently, in their estimation, one of serious importance.

Involuntarily, I glanced round at the others as the Commissionaire scowled threateningly at me. They noted my glance, and attributing it, I suppose, to guilty confusion, there were suppressed and complacent murmurs all round me, and shakes of the head.

"Pas d'explication!"

"Vous voyez ca?"

"Point d'excuse!"

"It is scandalous, it is shameful, it is abominable, M'sieur," shouted the Commissionaire, "the way you have acted! Twenty-four hours you hide the dead body of a dog in your bedroom! You hope to escape the eye of the law! You would bring disgrace on the gendarmerie, on the munic.i.p.ality of Paris! You laugh at our regulations, M'sieur, you laugh!" and he brandished the paper violently. "But you will find the authority of France is greater than you! There are cells, M'sieur, there are courts, there are judges for your education!!!"

Matters were apparently growing serious for me. I had evidently offended them all desperately somehow. "You go out in the morning," he continued, furiously, "and you do not slink back here till it is dark!

You are a coward, M'sieur! a coward!"

No Englishman likes hearing himself abused, and my own anger now was considerably roused. But still, in my way about life, I have found the inestimable value of conciliation. It saves one such an infinity of trouble. I suppose I lean naturally towards it. At any rate, I always feel this--that if you have not the power on your side it is undignified to a.s.sume that which you cannot enforce, and if you have the power you can then afford to be civil.

A pleasant manner has never once failed me in bringing about an effect which is highly convenient to oneself, and in the long run it spares one's vanity considerably. There is hardly any human being, however aggressive he may be at first, that does not melt into respect before an imperturbable civility. I felt in this case, too, that I was probably in the wrong from their point of view. It was the question of another country's ways, and I have a lenient feeling towards the epichortyon. So, annoyed and irritated as I was, I checked my own feelings and said,--

"I think it is altogether a misunderstanding! I have no intention of breaking any regulations. I was not aware that a dog's death would be a matter where the law would interfere."

The fury on the purple face opposite me subsided somewhat.

"Is it then possible," he said, more quietly, "that you are in ignorance of our rule, that, when any animal dies in a private dwelling-house, the fact shall be notified within twelve hours to the police, in order that the dead body may be immediately removed?"

All eyes fixed upon me with breathless uncertainty.

"Certainly," I said, "I did not know of the regulation. If I had, I should have complied with it. There is no similar rule in England."

A great change took place in the official's manner. His face cleared, and he waved his arm with a gesture of magnificent condescension. His whole att.i.tude expressed clearly that so enlightened and cultured a person as himself was in the habit of making every allowance for any poor, benighted pagan like me.

"Well, M'sieur; well, I accept your statement, and I withdraw my expressions of a moment back. But think, M'sieur, of the risk to which your conduct has exposed others. Think of the pollution of the air, the contamination of the atmosphere! Think, M'sieur, of the typhoid! the fever!! the cholera!!!"

He looked round upon the others, and a sympathetic shudder of horror pa.s.sed over them.

As an Englishman, of course, I felt strongly inclined to derisive laughter. However, I merely said,--

"Well, what is to be done next?"

"The body must be removed, M'sieur!" he answered, with a touch of severity, "at once!!"

"How?"

"A scavenger will remove it."