In the Days of My Youth Part 66

The soldier on the Pont de la Cite gave a shout and fired. There was a splash--a plunge--a rush to the opposite parapet.

"There he goes!"

"Where?"

"He has dived again!"

"Look--look yonder--between the floating bath and the bank!"

The sergeant stood motionless, his revolver ready c.o.c.ked--the water swirled and eddied, eddied and parted--a dark dot rose for a second to the surface!

Three shots fired at the same moment (one by the sergeant, two by the soldiers) rang sharply through the air, and were echoed with startling suddenness again and again from the b.u.t.tressed walls of Notre Dame. Ere the last echo had died away, or the last faint smoke-wreath had faded, two boats were pulling to the spot, and all the quays were alive with a fast-gathering crowd. The sergeant beckoned to the gendarme who had come upon the box.

"Bid the boatmen drag the river just here between the two bridges," he said, "and bring the body up to the Prefecture." Then, turning to Muller and myself, "I am sorry to trouble you again, Messieurs," he said, "but I must ask you to come back once more to the Quai des Orfevres, to depose to the facts which have just happened."

"But is the man shot, or has he escaped?" asked a breathless bystander.

"Both," said the sergeant, with a grim smile, replacing his revolver in his belt. "He has escaped Toulon; but he has gone to the bottom of the Seine with something like six ounces of lead in his skull."

CHAPTER XL

THE ENIGMA OF THE THIRD STORY.

Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?--MARLOWE.

In Paris, a lodging-house (or, as they prefer to style it, a _hotel meuble_) is a little town in itself; a beehive swarming from bas.e.m.e.nt to attic; a miniature model of the great world beyond, with all its loves and hatreds, jealousies, aspirations, and struggles. Like that world, it contains several grades of society, but with this difference, that those who therein occupy the loftiest position are held in the lowest estimation. Thus, the fifth-floor lodgers turn up their noses at the inhabitants of the attics; while the fifth-floor is in its turn scorned by the fourth, and the fourth is despised by the third, and the third by the second, down to the magnificent dwellers on _the premier etage_, who live in majestic disdain of everybody above or beneath them, from the grisettes in the garret, to the _concierge_ who has care of the cellars.

The house in which I lived in the Cite Bergere was, in fact, a double house, and contained no fewer than thirty tenants, some of whom had wives, children, and servants. It consisted of six floors, and each floor contained from eight to ten rooms. These were let in single chambers, or in suites, as the case might be; and on the outer doors opening round the landings were painted the names, or affixed the visiting-cards, of the dwellers within. My own third-floor neighbors were four in number. To my left lived a certain Monsieur and Madame Lemercier, a retired couple from Alsace. Opposite their door, on the other side of the well staircase, dwelt one Monsieur Cliquot, an elderly _employe_ in some public office; next to him, Signor Milanesi, an Italian refugee who played in the orchestra at the _Varietes_ every night, was given to practising the violoncello by day, and wore as much hair about his face as a Skye-terrier. Lastly, in the apartment to my right, resided a lady, upon whose door was nailed a small visiting-card engraved with these words:--

MLLE. HORTENSE DUFRESNOY.

_Teacher of Languages_.

I had resided in the house for months before I ever beheld this Mademoiselle Hortense Dufresnoy. When I did at last encounter her upon the stairs one dusk autumnal evening, she wore a thick black veil, and, darting past me like a bird on the wing, disappeared down the staircase in fewer moments than I take to write it. I scarcely observed her at the time. I had no more curiosity to learn whether the face under that veil was pretty or plain than I cared to know whether the veil itself was Shetland or Chantilly. At that time Paris was yet new to me: Madame de Marignan's evil influence was about me; and, occupied as my time and thoughts were with unprofitable matters, I took no heed of my fellow-lodgers. Save, indeed, when the groans of that much-tortured violoncello woke me in the morning to an unwelcome consciousness of the vicinity of Signor Milanesi, I should scarcely have remembered that I was not the only inhabitant of the third story.

Now, however, that I spent all my evenings in my own quiet room, I became, by imperceptible degrees, interested in the unseen inhabitant of the adjoining apartment. Sometimes, when the house was so still that the very turning of the page sounded unnaturally loud, and the mere falling of a cinder startled me, I heard her in her chamber, singing softly to herself. Every night I saw the light from her window streaming out over the balcony and touching the evergreens with a midnight glow. Often and often, when it was so late that even I had given up study and gone to bed, I heard her reading aloud, or pacing to and fro to the measure of her own recitations. Listen as I would, I could only make out that these recitations were poetical fragments--I could only distinguish a certain chanted metre, the chiming of an occasional rhyme, the rising and falling of a voice more than commonly melodious.

This vague interest gave place by-and-by to active curiosity. I resolved to question Madame Bousse, the _concierge_; and as she, good soul!

loved gossip not wisely, but too well, I soon knew all the little she had to tell.

Mademoiselle Hortense, it appeared, was the enigma of the third story.

She had resided in the house for more than two years. She earned her living by her labor; went out teaching all the day; sat up at night, studying and writing; had no friends; received no visitors; was as industrious as a bee, and as proud as a princess. Books and flowers were her only friends, and her only luxuries. Poor as she was, she was continually filling her shelves with the former, and supplying her balcony with the latter. She lived frugally, drank no wine, was singularly silent and reserved, and "like a real lady," said the fat _concierge_, "paid her rent to the minute."

This, and no more, had Madame Bousse to tell. I had sought her in her own little retreat at the foot of the public staircase. It was a very wet afternoon, and under pretext of drying my boots by the fire, I stayed to make conversation and elicit what information I could. Now Madame Bousse's sanctuary was a queer, dark, stuffy little cupboard devoted to many heterogeneous uses, and it "served her for parlor, kitchen, and all." In one corner stood that famous article of furniture which became "a bed by night, a chest of drawers by day." Adjoining the bed was the fireplace; near the fireplace stood a corner cupboard filled with crockery and surmounted by a grand ormolu clock, singularly at variance with the rest of the articles. A table, a warming-pan, and a couple of chairs completed the furniture of the room, which, with all its contents, could scarcely have measured more than eight feet square.

On a shelf inside the door stood thirty flat candlesticks; and on a row of nails just beneath them, hung two and twenty bright bra.s.s chamber-door keys--whereby an apt arithmetician might have divined that exactly two-and-twenty lodgers were out in the rain, and only eight housed comfortably within doors.

"And how old should you suppose this lady to be?" I asked, leaning idly against the table whereon Madame Bousse was preparing an unsavory dish of veal and garlic.

The _concierge_ shrugged her ponderous shoulders.

"Ah, bah, M'sieur, I am no judge of age," said she.

"Well--is she pretty?"

"I am no judge of beauty, either," grinned Madame Bousse.

"But, my dear soul," I expostulated, "you have eyes!"

"Yours are younger than mine, _mon enfant_," retorted the fat _concierge_; "and, as I see Mam'selle Hortense coming up to the door, I'd advise you to make use of them for yourself."

And there, sure enough, was a tall and slender girl, dressed all in black, pausing to close up her umbrella at the threshold of the outer doorway. A porter followed her, carrying a heavy parcel. Having deposited this in the pa.s.sage, he touched his cap and stated his charge.

The young lady took out her purse, turned over the coins, shook her head, and finally came up to Madame's little sanctuary.

"Will you be so obliging, Madame Bousse," she said, "as to lend me a piece of ten sous? I have no small change left in my purse."

How shall I describe her? If I say that she was not particularly beautiful, I do her less than justice; for she was beautiful, with a pale, grave, serious beauty, unlike the ordinary beauty of woman. But even this, her beauty of feature, and color, and form, was eclipsed and overborne by that "true beauty of the soul" which outs.h.i.+nes all other, as the sun puts out the stars.

There was in her face--or, perhaps, rather in her expression--an indefinable something that came upon me almost like a memory. Had I seen that face in some forgotten dream of long ago? Brown-haired was she, and pale, with a brow "as chaste ice, as pure as snow," and eyes--

"In whose orb a shadow lies, Like the dusk in evening skies!"

Eyes lit from within, large, clear, l.u.s.trous, with a meaning in them so profound and serious that it was almost sorrowful,--like the eyes of Giotto's saints and Cimabue's Madonnas.

But I cannot describe her--

"For oh, her looks had something excellent That wants a name!"

I can only look back upon her with "my mind's eye," trying to see her as I saw her then for the first time, and striving to recall my first impressions.

Madame Bousse, meanwhile, searched in all the corners of her ample pockets, turned out her table-drawer, dived into the recesses of her husband's empty garments, and peeped into every ornament upon the chimney-piece; but in vain. There was no such thing as a ten-sous piece to be found.

"Pray, M'sieur Basil," said she, "have you one?"

"One what?" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, startled out of my reverie.

"Why, a ten-sous piece, to be sure. Don't you see that Mam'selle Hortense is waiting in her wet shoes, and that I have been hunting for the last five minutes, and can't find one anywhere?"

Blus.h.i.+ng like a school-boy, and stammering some unintelligible excuse, I pulled out a handful of francs and half-francs, and produced the coin required.

"_Dame_!" said the _concierge_. "This comes of using one's eyes too well, my young Monsieur. Hem! I'm not so blind but that I can see as far as my neighbors."

Mademoiselle Hortense had fortunately gone back to settle with the porter, so this observation pa.s.sed unheard. The man being dismissed, she came back, carrying the parcel. It was evidently heavy, and she put it down on the nearest chair.

"I fear, Madame Bousse," she said, "that I must ask you to help me with this. I am not strong enough to carry it upstairs."

More alert this time, I took a step in advance, and offered my services.