The Immortal by Alphonse Daudet (short story to read txt) 📖

face of the parasite, and the warm air floated laden with the rich smell of the dinner which he had eaten and was repaying in mean dirty slanders. There's for your _truffes farcies_; there's for your _gelinottes_, and your '_chateaux_' at fifteen shillings a glass! Danjou and he have got together on purpose to play this popular game of running-down; and a great deal they know and a great deal they tell. Lavaux serves the ball and Danjou returns. And the simple Guardsman, not knowing how much to believe, tries to laugh, with a horrid fear lest the Duchess should catch them, and is much relieved when he hears his uncle calling him from the other end of the terrace. The Papal Embassy shuts up early, and since his little misfortune he has been kept strictly to hours.
'Good night, gentlemen.'
'Good luck to you, young man.'
The Nuncio is gone; now for the surprise. At a signal from the Duchess, the author of _Roxelane_ took his place at the piano and swept his beard over the keys as he struck two penetrating chords. Immediately at the far end of the rooms the curtains were drawn from the door, and down the vista of brilliant apartments, tripping along on the tips of her little gilt slippers, came a charming brunette in the close bodice and puffed skirts of the ballet, conducted at arm's-length by a gloomy person with hair in rolls and a cadaverous countenance divided by a dead black moustache. It is Dea! Dea, the folly of the hour, the fashionable toy, accompanied by her instructor, Valere, the ballet-master at the opera. _Roxelane_ was taken first this evening; and the girl, warm from her triumphant performance, had come to give her dance again for the benefit of the Duchess's Imperial guest. A more delightful surprise his respected friend could not have devised. What more exquisite than to have all to yourself, close to yourself, and within an inch of your face, the pretty whirl of muslin and the panting of the fresh young breath, and to hear the sinews of the little creature strain like the sheets of a sail! His Highness was not alone in this opinion. The moment the dance began the men drew together, selfishly making a close ring of black coats and leaving the few ladies present to see what they could from outside. Even the Grand-Duke is hustled and shoved in the press: for as the dance quickens the circle narrows, till there is scarcely room for the movement. Men of letters and of politics, breathing hard, thrust their heads forward, while their decorations swing like cow-bells, and grinning from ear to ear show their watery lips and toothless jaws with grotesque animal cachinnations. Even the Prince d'Athis stoops with less contempt for humanity, as he gazes upon this marvel of youth and fairy grace, who with the tips of her toes takes off the masks of convention; and the Turk, Mourad Bey, who has sat the whole evening without a word in the depths of an armchair, is now gesticulating in the front row with open nostrils and staring eyes.
In the midst of the wild shouts of applause the girl springs and leaps with so harmonious a concealment of the muscular working of her frame, that her dance might seem as easy as the hovering of a dragon-fly, but for the few drops on her firm rounded neck and the smile, forced, tense, and almost painful, at the corner of her mouth, which betray the exhausting effort of the exquisite little creature, Paul Astier, who did not care for dancing, had stayed on the terrace to smoke. The applause and the thin sounds of the piano, audible in the distance, made an accompaniment to his reflections, which took shape little by little, even as his outward eyes, growing accustomed to the dark, made out by degrees in the garden the trunks of the trees and their quivering leaves, and far away at the end the delicate tracery of an old-fashioned trellis against the wall. It was so hard to succeed; one must hold on so long to reach the desired point, always close at hand and always receding. Why was it that Colette seemed every moment on the point of falling into his arms, and yet when he went back he had to begin again from the beginning? It looked as if in his absence some one for amusement pulled down his work. Who was it? It was that dead fellow, confound him! He ought to be at her side from morning to night; but how could he, with the perpetual necessity of running after money?
There came a light step, a soft sound of velvet. It was his mother looking for him. Why did he not come into the drawing-room with all the rest? She leaned over the balustrade beside him and wanted to know what he was thinking about.
'Oh, nothing, nothing.' But further pressed he came out with it. Well, the fact was--the fact was--that he had had enough of starving. Dun, dun, dun. One hole stopped and another opened. He would not stand any more of it, so there!
From the drawing-room came loud exclamations and wild laughter, together with the expressionless voice of Valere, directing the dancer in the imitation of an old-fashioned ballet figure.
'How much do you want?' whispered the mother trembling. She had never seen him like this before.
'No, it's no use; it's more than you could possibly manage.'
'How much?' she asked again.
'Eight hundred.' And the agent must have it tomorrow by five o'clock, or else he would take possession. There would be a sale and all sorts of horrors. Sooner than that--and here he ground his cigar between his teeth as he said the last words--'better make a hole in my frontispiece.'
The mother had heard enough. 'Hush! hush!' she said. 'By five o'clock to-morrow? Hush!' And she flung herself upon him, and she pressed her hands in agony upon his lips, as if she would arrest there the appalling sentence of death.


CHAPTER VI.
That night she could not sleep. Eight hundred pounds! eight hundred pounds! The words went to and fro in her head. Where were they to be found? To whom could she apply? There was so little time. Names and faces flashed before her, passing for a moment where the pale gleam of the night-light fell on the ceiling, only to disappear and be replaced by other names and other faces, which vanished as quickly in their turn. Freydet? She had just made use of him. Sammy? Had nothing till he married. Besides, did anybody do such a thing as to borrow or lend eight hundred pounds? No one but a poet from the country. In Parisian society money never appears on the scene; it is assumed that you have it and are above these details, like the people in genteel comedy. A breach of this convention would banish the transgressor from respectable company.
And while Madame Astier pursued her feverish thoughts she saw beside her the round back of her husband rising and falling peacefully. It was one of the depressing incidents of their joint life that they had lain thus side by side for thirty years, having nothing in common but the bed. But never had the isolation of her surly bedfellow so strongly aroused her indignation. What was the use of waking him, of talking to him about the boy and his desperate threat? She knew perfectly well that he would not believe her, nor so much as move the big back which protected his repose. She was inclined for a minute to fall upon him, to pummel him, and scratch him, and rouse him out of his selfish slumbers by shouting in his ear: 'Leonard, your papers are on fire!' And as the thought of the papers flashed madly across her mind she almost leaped out of bed. She had got her eight hundred! The drawers upstairs! How was it she had not thought of them before? There she lay, till day dawned and the night-light went out with a sputter, content and motionless, arranging what she should do, with the look of a thief in her open eyes.
Before the usual hour she was dressed, and all the morning prowled about the rooms, watching her husband. He talked of going out, but changed his mind, and went on with his sorting till breakfast. Between his study and the attic he went to and fro with armfuls of pamphlets, humming a careless tune. He had not feeling enough to perceive the constrained agitation which surcharged the air with nervous electricity and played among the furniture in the cupboards, and upon the handles of the doors. He worked on undisturbed. At table he was talkative, told idiotic stories, which she knew by heart, interminable as the process of crumbling with his knife his favourite cheese. Piece after piece of cheese he took, and still one anecdote followed another. And when the time came for going to the Institute, where the Dictionary Committee was to sit before the regular meeting, how long he took to start! and in spite of her eagerness to get him off quick, what an age he spent over every little thing!
The moment he turned the corner of the street, without waiting to shut the window, she darted to the serving-hatch, crying, 'Corentine, call a cab, quick!' He was gone at last, and she flew up the little staircase to the attic.
Crouching down to keep clear of the low ceiling she began to try a bunch of keys in the lock which fastened the bar of the drawers. She could not fit it. She could not wait. She would have forced away, without scruple, a side of the frame, but her fingers gave way and her nails broke. She wanted something to prise with. She opened the drawer of the card-table: and there lay three yellow scrawls. They were the very things she was looking for--the letters of Charles V.! Such miracles do happen sometimes!
She bent down to the low-arched window to make sure, and read: 'Francois Rabelais, maitre en toutes sciences et bonnes lettres.' Enough! She started up, hitting her head hard as she did so, and was not aware of it till she was in the cab and on her way to the shop of the famous Bos in the Rue de l'Abbaye.
She got down at the corner of the street. It is a short quiet street, overshadowed by St. Germain des Pres and by the old red brick buildings of the School of Surgery. A few of the surgeons' carriages, professional broughams with splendid liveries, were in waiting. Scarcely anyone was about. Pigeons were feeding on the pavement, and flew away as she came to the shop opposite the school. It offers both books and curiosities, and exhibits an archaic inscription, highly appropriate to such a nook of Old Paris: 'Bos: Antiquary and Palaeographer.'
The shop-front displayed something of all sorts: old manuscripts, ancient ledgers with mould spots on the edges, missals with damaged gilding, book-clasps and book-covers. To the upper panes were fastened assignats, old placards, plans of Paris, ballads, military franks with spots of blood, autographs of all ages, some verses by Madame Lafargue, two letters from Chateaubriand to 'Pertuze, Boot-maker, names of celebrities ancient and modern at the foot of an invitation to dinner, or perhaps a request for money, a complaint of poverty, a love letter, &c, enough to cure anyone of writing for ever. All the autographs were priced; and as Madame Astier paused for a moment before the window she might see next to a letter of Rachel, price 12L., a letter from Leonard Astier-Rehu to Petit Sequard, his publisher, price 2s. But this was not what she came for: she was trying to discover,