The Mysteries Of Paris Volume I Part 44

"With the utmost pleasure!" quickly replied Rodolph, curious to dive into the mysteries of who Madame Pipelet's correspondent might be; and forthwith he read what follows, written upon hot-pressed paper, stamped in its right-hand corner with the helmet, the letters "C. R.," the heraldic supporters, and the cross of honour.

"To-morrow (Friday), about eleven o'clock, let there be a good (not an overfierce) fire lighted in both rooms; have everything well dusted, and remove the coverings from the furniture, taking especial care not to scratch the gilding, or to soil or burn the carpet while lighting the fires. If I should not be in about one o'clock, when a lady will arrive in a hackney-coach and inquire for me by the name of M. Charles, let her be shown up to the apartment; after which the key is to be taken down-stairs again, and kept till my arrival."

Spite of the want of finished composition displayed in this _billet_, Rodolph perfectly comprehended to whom and what it alluded, and merely added, after perusing it:

"Who lives on the first floor, then?"

The old woman placed her yellow, shrivelled finger upon her pendulous lip, and replied, by a half-malicious grin:

"Hus.h.!.+ There is a woman in the way,--silence!"

"Oh, my dear Madame Pipelet, I merely asked because, before living in a house, one likes to know a little."

"Yes, yes! Of course, everybody likes to know all they can; that is all fair enough; and I am sure I have no objection to tell you all I know myself, and that is but very little. Well, but to begin. About six weeks ago a carpet-maker came here to look at the first floor, which was then to let, and to ask the price, and other particulars about it. Next day he came again, accompanied by a young man of fair complexion, small moustaches, and wearing a cross of honour and very fine linen. The carpet-maker called him commandant."

"A military man, I suppose?" said Rodolph.

"Military!" exclaimed Madame Pipelet, with a chuckle. "Not he! Why, Alfred might as well call himself porter to a prince."

"How so?"

"Why, he is only in the National Guard! The carpet-maker only called him commandant to flatter him: just the same as it tickles up Alfred's vanity to be styled _concierge_ instead of porter. So when the commandant (that is the only name we know him by) had looked over the rooms, he said to the upholsterer, his friend, 'Well, I think the place will do for me,--just see the landlord, and arrange all about it.' 'Yes, commandant,' says the other. And the very next day the upholsterer-man signed the lease with M. Bras Rouge (in his own name, mind you); and, further, paid six months in advance, because, he said, the gentleman did not wish to be bored about references. And such a power of fine furniture as was sent into the first floor! _Sophesus_ (sarcophagus) curtains, all silk; gla.s.ses set in gold, and everything you can mention, all beautiful enough to astonish you; just, for all the world, like one of them grand cafes on the Boulevards! As for the carpets,--oh, you never trod on the like of them, I'll be bound. Put your foot on them, and you'd fancy you was stepping on velvet, and take it off again for fear of spoiling it. When everything was completed, the commandant came to look at it,--just to see if he could find out anything more he wanted; but he could not. So then he spoke to Alfred, and says he, 'Could you take charge of my rooms and keep them in nice order, light fires from time to time, and get them ready for me when I wish to occupy them? I shall not be here often,' says he, 'and would always write you a line before coming, to give you time to prepare them.' 'Yes, commandant, I can,' answers my flatterer of an Alfred. 'And what shall you charge?'

'Twenty francs a month, commandant.' 'Twenty francs!' exclaimed the commandant. 'Why, porter, you are jesting, surely!' And hereupon he began bating Alfred down in the most shabby manner, trying to squeeze poor people like us out of two or three miserable francs, when he had been squandering thousands in fitting up his grand apartments, which, after all, he did not mean to live in! However, after a deal of battling, we got twelve francs a month out of him,--a paltry, pitiful, two-farthing captain! What a difference, now, between you and him!"

added the porteress, addressing Rodolph with an admiring glance. "You don't call yourself fine names and t.i.tles,--you only look like a plain body,--you must be poor, or you would not perch yourself on the fourth floor; and yet you agreed with me for six francs, without attempting to bate me down!"

"And when did the commandant pay you his next visit?"

"I'll tell you,--and good fun it is, too. My gentleman must have been nicely choused by somebody. Three times did he write (same as to-day), ordering us to light a fire and have everything ready for the reception of a lady he expected would come. Come! Yes, I daresay he may expect a long time first, I rather think."

"n.o.body came then?"

"Listen. The first time the commandant arrived, strutting and swelling like a turkey-c.o.c.k, humming and singing, after his manner, all the gay tunes of the day, walking up and down his fine room with his hands stuck in his pockets, and occasionally stopping to arrange his hair before the gla.s.s,--we were watching him all the time. Well, this went on for two or three hours, when, I suppose, he knew it was no use waiting any longer; so he came down-stairs very softly, and with quite a different manner to the pride and consequence he had marched up with. By way of teasing him, Pipelet and I went out to him and said, 'Commandant, there has been no lady whatever to inquire for you,' 'Very well! Very well!' exclaimed he, half mad and half ashamed of being laughed at, and, b.u.t.toning up his coat, he walked off as fast as he could. The next time, before he came himself, a small note was brought here by a man, directed to M. Charles; I strongly suspected he was done again, and Pipelet and me were enjoying a hearty good laugh over it when the commandant arrived. 'Captain,'

says I, putting the back of my hand up to my wig, by way of military salute, 'here is a letter for you, but I am afraid it contains news of a second countermarch against you.' He looked at me sour as a crab, s.n.a.t.c.hed the letter from my hand, read it, turned scarlet as a boiled lobster, then walked off, pretending to whistle; but he was finely vexed,--ready to hang himself, I could see he was,--and it was rare nuts to me. 'Go, and swallow that pill, my two-farthing captain,' says I to myself; 'that serves you right for only giving twelve francs a month for minding your apartments.'"

"And the third time?"

"Ah, the third time I really thought it was all right. The commandant arrived more stuck up with pride than ever; his eyes staring with self-satisfied admiration at himself and the certainty of not being disappointed this time. Let me tell the truth about him; he really is a good-looking man, and dresses well, though he stinks of musk like a civet cat. Well, there was my gentleman arrayed in all his finery, and scarcely condescending to look at us poor folks; he seemed as though he conferred a favour on the earth by deigning to walk on it, and went, sticking his nose into the air, as if he meant to touch the clouds with it. He took the key, and said to us, as he pa.s.sed up-stairs, in a jeering, self-complacent tone, as though to revenge himself for having been laughed at twice before, 'You will direct the lady to my apartments when she comes.' Well, Pipelet and I were so anxious to see the lady he expected, though we did not much reckon upon her keeping her appointment, even if she ever made one, that we went and hid ourselves behind the little door that belongs to the alley; and, behold! in a short time a blue hackney-coach, with its blinds drawn down, stopped at the entrance to the house. 'There she is!' says I to Alfred. 'There is his madame; let's keep back a bit for fear we frighten her away.' The coachman got off his box and opened the door. Then we saw a female, closely covered with a black veil, and carrying a m.u.f.f; she had apparently been crying, for she kept her handkerchief to her face; for when the steps were let down, instead of alighting, she said some few words to the driver, who, much surprised, shut the door up again."

"Then the lady did not get out?"

"No! she threw herself back in the coach and pressed her handkerchief tightly to her eyes. I rushed out, and before the coachman had time to get on his seat again, I called out, 'Hallo, there, coachy! are you going back again?' 'Yes,' says he. 'Where?' says I. 'Where I came from,'

answers he. 'And where did you come from?' asks I again. 'From the Rue St. Dominique, corner of the Rue Belle Cha.s.se.'"

Rodolph started at these words. His dearest friend, the Marquis d'Harville, who, as elsewhere stated, had been for some time labouring under a deep melancholy none could penetrate, lived in the very place just mentioned by Madame Pipelet. Could this mysterious female in the blue _fiacre_ be the Marquise d'Harville? And was it from the lightness and frivolity of her conduct that the mind of her excellent husband was bowed down by doubts and misgivings? These painful suggestions crowded on Rodolph's mind, but, although well acquainted with all the various guests received by the marquise, he could recollect no one answering the description of the commandant; added to which, any female might have taken a hackney-coach from that spot without necessarily living in the street. There was really nothing to identify the unknown of the blue _fiacre_ with Madame d'Harville, and yet a thousand vague fears and painful suspicions crossed his mind; his uneasy manner and deep abstraction did not escape the porteress.

"What are you thinking of, sir?" asked she at length.

"I was wondering what could have induced the lady, after coming to the very door, to change her mind so suddenly."

"There is no saying; some sudden thought,--dread or fear,--for we poor women are but weak, cowardly things," said the porteress, a.s.suming a timid, frightened manner. "Well, I think if it had been myself now, coming secretly to visit Alfred, I should have had to try back a great many times before I could have screwed up my courage to venture in. But then, as for visiting your great dons in this kind of way, I never could have done such a thing. No, never! I am sure there is n.o.body under the face of heaven can say I ever give them the least freedom,--I should think not, indeed, while my poor dear old darling of a husband is left."

"No doubt,--no doubt, Madame Pipelet; but about the young person you were describing in the blue _fiacre_?"

"Oh! mind, I don't know whether she was young or old; I could not even catch a glimpse of the tip of her nose; all I can say is she went as she came, and that is all about it. As for Alfred and me, we were better pleased than if we had found ten francs."

"Why so?"

"By enjoying the rage and confusion of the commandant when he found himself a third time disappointed; but, instead of going and telling him at once that his 'madame' had been and gone, we allowed him to fume and fret for a whole hour. Then I went softly up-stairs with only my list slippers on. I reached his door, which I found half shut; as I pushed against it, it creaked; the staircase is as black as night, and the entrance to the apartment quite as obscure. Scarcely had I crept into the room, when the commandant caught me in his arms, saying, in a languis.h.i.+ng voice, 'My dearest angel! what makes you so late?'"

Spite of the serious nature of the thoughts crowding upon his mind, Rodolph could not restrain a smile as he surveyed the grotesque periwig and hideously wrinkled, carbuncled visage of the heroine of this comic scene.

Madame Pipelet, however, resumed her narration with a mirthful chuckle that increased her ugliness:

"That was a go, wasn't it? But stop a bit. Well, I did not make the least reply, but, almost keeping in my breath, I waited to see what would be the end of this strange reception. For a minute or two the commandant kept hugging me up, then, all of a sudden, the brute pushed me away, exclaiming with as much disgust as though he had touched a toad, 'Who the devil are you?' 'Me, commandant,--the porteress,--Madame Pipelet; and, as such, I will thank you to keep your hands off my waist, and not to call me your angel, and scold me for being late. Suppose Alfred had heard you, a pretty business we should have made of it!'

'What the deuce brings you here?' cried he. 'Merely to let you know the lady in the hackney-coach has just arrived!' 'Well, then, you stupid old fool, show her up directly. Did I not tell you to do so?' 'Yes, commandant; you said I was to show her up.' 'Then why do you not obey me?' 'Because the lady--' 'Speak out, woman, if you can!' 'The lady has gone again.' 'Something you have said or done, then, to offend her, I am sure!' roared he in a perfect fury. 'Not at all, commandant. The lady did not alight, but when the coach stopped and the driver opened the door, she desired him to take her back to where she came from.' 'The vehicle cannot have got far by this time,' exclaimed the commandant, hastening towards the door. 'It has been gone upwards of an hour,'

answered I, enjoying his fury and disappointment. 'An hour! an hour! and what, in the devil's name, hindered you from letting me know this sooner?' 'Because, commandant, Alfred and I thought we would spare you as long as we could the tidings of this third breakdown, which we fancied might be too much for you.' Come, thinks I, there is something to make you remember flinging me out of your arms, as though it made you sick to touch me. 'Begone!' bawled out the commandant. 'You hideous old hag! You can neither say nor do the thing that is right,' and with this he pulled off his dressing-gown and threw his beautiful Greek cap, made of velvet embroidered with gold, on the ground: it was a real shame, for the cap was a downright beauty; and as for the dressing-gown, oh, my! it would set anybody longing. Meanwhile the commandant kept pacing the room, with his eyes glaring like a wild beast and glowing like two glow-worms."

"But were you not afraid of losing his employ?"

"He knew too well what he was about for that; we had him in a fix, we knew where his 'madame' lived, and had he said anything to us, we should have threatened to expose the whole affair. And who do you think for his beggarly twelve francs would have undertaken to attend to his rooms,--a stranger? No! That we would have prevented; we would soon have made the place too hot to hold any person he might appoint,--poor, shabby fellow that he is! What do you think? He actually had the meanness to examine his wood and put out the quant.i.ty he should allow to be burnt while he was away. He is nothing but an upstart, I am sure,--a n.o.body, who has suddenly tumbled into money he does not know how to spend properly,--a rich man's head and a beggar's body, who squanders with one hand and nips and pinches with the other. I do not wish him any harm, but it amuses me immensely to think how he has been befooled; and he will go on believing and expecting from day to day, because he is too vain to imagine he is being laughed at. At any rate, if the lady ever comes in reality, I will let my friend the oyster-woman next door know; she enjoys a joke as well as I do, and is quite as curious as myself to find out what sort of person she is, whether fair or dark, pretty or plain.

And--who knows?--this woman may be cheating some easygoing simpleton of a husband for the sake of our two-penny-halfpenny of a commandant! Well, that is no concern of mine, but I am sorry, too, for the poor, dear, deceived individual, whoever he may be. Dear me! Dear me! My pot is boiling over,--excuse me a minute, I must just look to it. Ah, it is time Alfred was in, for dinner is quite ready, and tripe, you know, should never be kept waiting. This tripe is done to a turn. Do you prefer the thick or thin tripe? Alfred likes it thick. The poor darling has been sadly out of spirits lately, and I got this dainty dish to cheer him up a bit; for, as Alfred says himself, that for a bribe of good thick tripe he would betray France itself,--his beloved France.

Yes, the dear old pet would change his country for such fine fat tripe as this, he would."

While Madame Pipelet was thus delivering her domestic harangue upon the virtues of tripe and the powerful influence it possessed over even the patriotism of her husband, Rodolph was buried in the deepest and most sombre reflections. The female, whose visits to the house had just been detailed, be she the Marquise d'Harville or any other individual, had evidently long struggled with her imprudence ere she had brought herself to grant a first and second rendezvous, and then, terrified at the probable consequences of her imprudence, a salutary remorse had, in all probability, prevented her from fulfilling her dangerous engagement. It might be that the fine person this M. Charles was described as possessing had captivated the senses of Madame d'Harville, whom Rodolph knew well as a woman of deep feeling, high intellect, and superior taste, of an elevated turn of mind, and a reputation unsullied by the faintest breath of slander. After long and mature consideration, he succeeded in persuading himself that the wife of his friend had nothing to do with the unknown female in the blue _fiacre_. Madame Pipelet, having completed her culinary arrangements, resumed her conversation with Rodolph.

"And who lives on the second floor?" inquired he of the porteress.

"Why, Mother Burette does,--a most wonderful woman at fortune-telling; bless you, she can read in your hand the same as a book, and many quite first-rate people come to her to have the cards consulted when they are anxious about any particular matter. She earns her weight in gold, and that is not a trifle, for she is a rare bundle of an old body. However, telling fortunes is only one of her means of gaining a livelihood."

"Why, what does she do besides?"

"She keeps what you would call a p.a.w.nbroker's shop upon a small scale."

"I see; your second-floor lodger lends out again the money she derives from her skill in foretelling events by reading the cards."

"Exactly so; only she is cheaper and more easy to deal with than the regular p.a.w.nbrokers: she does not confuse you with a heap of paper tickets and duplicates,--nothing of the sort. Now suppose: Some one brings Mother Burette a s.h.i.+rt worth three francs; well, she lends ten sous upon condition of being paid twenty at the end of the week, otherwise she keeps the s.h.i.+rt for ever. That is simple enough, is it not? Always in round figures, you see,--a child could understand it. And the odd things she has brought her as pledges you would scarcely believe. You can hardly guess what she sometimes is asked to lend upon.

I saw her once advance money upon a gray parrot that swore like a trooper,--the blackguard did."

"A parrot? But to what amount did she advance money?"

"I'll tell you; the parrot was well known; it belonged to a Madame Herbelot, the widow of a factor, living close by, and it was also well understood that Madame Herbelot valued the parrot as much as she did her life. Well, Mother Burette said to her, 'I will lend you ten francs on your bird, but if by this day week at twelve o'clock I do not receive twenty francs with interest (it would amount to that in round numbers), if I am not paid my twenty francs, with the expenses of his keep, I shall give your Polly a trifling dose of a.r.s.enic mixed with his food.'

She knew her customer well, bless you! However, by this threat Mother Burette received her twenty francs at the end of seven days, and Madame Herbelot got back her disagreeable, screaming parrot."

"Mother Burette has no other way of living besides the two you have named, I suppose?"

"Not that I know of. I don't know, however, what to say of some rather sly and secret transactions, carried on in a small room she never allows any one to enter, except M. Bras Rouge and an old one-eyed woman, called La Chouette."

Rodolph opened his eyes with unmixed astonishment as these names sounded on his ear, and the porteress, interpreting the surprise of her future lodger according to her own notions, said: