In the Days of My Youth Part 42

Mademoiselle Marie repeated the invitation to her aunt, who accepted it at once.

"_Tres volontiers, tres volontiers, messieurs_" she said, smiling and nodding. "We have rambled out so far--so far! And I am not as young as I was forty years ago. _Ah, mon Dieu_! how my old bones ache! Give me thy hand, Marie, and thank the gentlemen for their politeness."

So Mam'selle Marie helped her aunt to rise, and we steadied the boat close under the bank, at a point where the interlacing roots of a couple of sallows made a kind of natural step by means of which they could easily get down.

"Oh, dear! dear! it will not turn over, will it, my dear young man?

_Ciel_! I am slipping ... Ah, _Dieu, merci_!--Marie, _mon cher enfant_, pray be careful not to jump in, or you will upset us all!"

And _ma tante_, somewhat tremulous from the ordeal of embarking, settled down in her place, while Muller lifted Mam'selle Marie into the boat, as if she had been a child. I then took the oars, leaving him to steer; and so we pursued our way towards Courbevoie.

"Mam'selle has of course seen the fair?" said Muller, from behind the old lady's back.

"No, monsieur,"

"No! Is it possible?"

"There was so much crowd, monsieur, and such a noise ... we were quite too much afraid to venture in."

"Would you be afraid, mam'selle, to venture with me?"

"I--I do not know, monsieur."

"Ah, mam'selle, you might be very sure that I would take good care of you!"

"_Mais ... monsieur_"...

"These gentlemen, I see, have been angling," said the old lady, addressing me very graciously. "Have you caught many fish?"

"None at all, madame!" I replied, loudly.

"_Tiens_! so many as that?"

"_Pardon_, madame," I shouted at the top of my voice. "We have caught nothing--nothing at all."

_Ma tante_ smiled blandly.

"Ah, yes," she said; "and you will have them cooked presently for dinner, _n'est-ce pas_? There is no fish so fresh, and so well-flavored, as the fish of our own catching."

"Will madame and mam'selle do us the honor to taste our fish and share our modest dinner?" said Muller, leaning forward in his seat in the stern, and delivering his invitation close into the old lady's ear.

To which _ma tante_, with a readiness of hearing for which no one would have given her credit, replied:--

"But--but monsieur is very polite--if we should not be inconveniencing these gentlemen"....

"We shall be charmed, madame--we shall be honored!"

"_Eh bien!_ with pleasure, then--Marie, my child, thank the gentlemen for their amiable invitation."

I was thunderstruck. I looked at Muller to see if he had suddenly gone out of his senses. Mam'selle Marie, however, was infinitely amused.

"_Fi donc!_ monsieur," she said. "You have no fish. I heard the other gentleman say so."

"The other gentleman, mam'selle," replied Muller, "is an Englishman, and troubled with the spleen. You must not mind anything he says."

Troubled with the spleen! I believe myself to be as even-tempered and as ready to fall in with a joke as most men; but I should have liked at that moment to punch Franz Muller's head. Gracious heavens! into what a position he had now brought us! What was to be done? How were we to get out of it? It was now just seven; and we had already been upon the water for more than an hour. What should we have to pay for the boat? And when we had paid for the boat, how much money should we have left to pay for the dinner? Not for our own dinners--ah, no! For _ma tante's_ dinner (and _ma tante_ had a hungry eye) and for _la pet.i.te_ Marie's dinner; and _la pet.i.te_ Marie, plump, rosy, and well-liking, looked as if she might have a capital appet.i.te upon occasion! Should we have as much as two and a half francs? I doubted it. And then, in the absence of a miracle, what could we do with two and a half francs, if we had them? A miserable sum!--convertible, perhaps, into as much bouilli, bread and cheese, and thin country wine as might have satisfied our own hunger in a prosaic and commonplace way; but for four persons, two of them women!...

And this was not the worst of it. I thought I knew Muller well enough by this time to feel that he would entirely dismiss this minor consideration of ways and means; that he would order the dinner as recklessly as if we had twenty francs apiece in our pockets; and that he would not only order it, but eat it and preside at it with all the gayety and audacity in life.

Then would come the horrible retribution of the bill!

I felt myself turn red and hot at the mere thought of it.

Then a dastardly idea insinuated itself into my mind. I had my return-ticket in my waistcoat-pocket:--what if I slipped away presently to the station and went back to Paris by the next train, leaving my clever friend to improvise his way out of his own sc.r.a.pe as best he could?

In the meanwhile, as I was rowing with the stream, we soon got back to Courbevoie.

"_Are_ you mad?" I said, as, having landed the ladies, Muller and I delivered up the boat to its owner.

"Didn't I admit it, two or three hours ago?" he replied. "I wonder you don't get tired, _mon cher_, of asking the same question so often."

"Four francs, fifty centimes, Messieurs," said the boatman, having made fast his boat to the landing-place.

"Four francs, fifty centimes!" I echoed, in dismay.

Even Muller looked aghast.

"My good fellow," he said, "do you take us for coiners?"

"Hire of boat, two francs the hour. These gentlemen have been out nearly one hour and a half--three francs. Hire of bait and fis.h.i.+ng-tackle, one franc fifty. Total, four francs and a half," replied the boatman, putting out a great brown palm.

Muller, who was acting as cas.h.i.+er and paymaster, pulled out his purse, deposited one solitary half-franc in the middle of that brown palm, and suggested that the boatman and he should toss up for the remaining four francs--or race for them--or play for them--or fight for them. The boatman, however, indignantly rejected each successive proposal, and, being paid at last, retired with a _decrescendo_ of oaths.

"_Tiens_!" said Muller, reflectively. "We have but one franc left. One franc, two sous, and a centime. _Vive la France!_"

"And you have actually asked that wretched old woman and her niece to dinner!"

"And I have actually solicited that excellent and admirable woman, Madame Marotte, relict of the late lamented Jacques Marotte, umbrella maker, of number one hundred and two, Rue du Faubourg St. Denis, and her beautiful and accomplished niece, Mademoiselle Marie Charpentier, to honor us with their company this evening. _Dis-donc,_ what shall we give them for dinner?"

"Precisely what you invited them to, I should guess--the fish we caught this afternoon."

"Agreed. And what else?"

"Say--a dish of invisible greens, and a phoenix _a la Marengo_."

"You are funny, _mon cher_."

"Then, for fear I should become too funny--good afternoon."

"What do you mean?"