A Street of Paris and Its Inhabitant by Honoré de Balzac (best short books to read TXT) 📖

and the Pont Royal. Curiosity makes one lose more time in Paris than anywhere else.

How may one walk without looking at those little oblong boxes, wide as the stones of the parapet, that all along the quays stimulate book lovers with posters saying, "Four Sous--Six Sous--Ten Sous--Twelve Sous--Thirty Sous?" These catacombs of glory have devoured many hours that belonged to the poets, to the philosophers and to the men of science of Paris.

Great is the number of ten-sous pieces spent in the four-sous stalls!

The professor saw a pamphlet by Vicq-d'Azyr, a complete Charles Bonnet in the edition of Fauche Borel, and an essay on Malus.

"And such then is the sum of our achievements," he said to himself. "Malus! A genius arrested in his course when he had almost captured the empire of light! But we have had Fresnel. Fresnel has done excellent things!--Oh, they will recognize some day that light is only a mode of substance."

The professor held the notice on Malus. He turned its pages. He had known Malus. He recalled to himself and recited the names of all the Maluses. Then he returned to Malus, to his dear Malus, for they had entered the Institute together at the return to Paris of the expedition to Egypt. Ah! It was then the Institute of France and not a mass of disunited Academies.

"The Emperor had preserved," said Marmus to himself, "the saintly idea of the Convention. I remember," he muttered aloud, "what he said to me when I was presented to him as a member of the Institute. Napoleon the First said, 'Marmus, I am the Emperor of the French, but you are the King of the infinitely little and you will organize them as I have organized the Empire.' Ah, he was a very great man and a man of wit! The French appreciated this too late."

The professor replaced Malus and the essay on him in the ten-sous stall, without remarking how often hope had been lit and extinguished alternately in the gray eyes of an old woman seated on a stool in an angle of the quay.

"He was there," Marmus said, pointing to the Tuileries on the opposite bank of the river. "I saw him reviewing his sublime troops! I saw him thin, ardent as the sands of Egypt; but, as soon as he became Emperor, he grew fat and good-natured, for all fat men are excellent--this is why Sinard is thin, he is a gall-making machine. But would Napoleon have supported my theory?"


V


FIRST COURSE

It was the hour at which they went to the dinner table in the house of Marmus's sister-in-law. The professor walked slowly toward the Chamber of Deputies, asking himself if his theory might have had Napoleon's support. He could no longer judge Napoleon save from that point of view. Did Napoleon's genius coincide with that of Marmus in regard to the assimilation of things engendered by an attraction perpetual and continuous?


VI


SECOND COURSE

"No, Baron Sinard was a worshipper of power. He would have gone to the Emperor and told him that my theory was the inspiration of an atheist. And Napoleon, who has done a great deal of religious sermonizing for political reasons, would have persecuted me. He had no love for ideas. He was a courtier of facts! Moreover, in Napoleon's time, it would not have been possible for me to communicate freely with Germany. Would they have lent me their aid--Wytheimler, Grosthuys, Scheele, Stamback, Wagner?

"To make men of science agree--men of science agree!--the Emperor should have made peace; in time of peace, perhaps, he would have taken an interest in my quarrel with Sinard! Sinard, my friend, my pupil, become my antagonist, my enemy! He, a man of genius--

"Yes, he is a man of genius. I do justice to him in the face of all the world."

At this moment the professor could talk aloud without trouble to himself or to the passers-by. He was near the Chamber of Deputies, the session was closed, all Paris was at dinner--except the man of science.

Marmus was haranguing the statues which, it must be conceded, are similar to all audiences. In France there is not an audience that is not prohibited from giving marks of approval or disapproval. Otherwise, there is not an audience that would not turn orator.

At the Iena bridge Marmus had a pain in the stomach. He heard the hoarse voice of a cab driver. Marmus thought that he was ill and let himself be ushered into the cab. He made himself comfortable in it.

When the driver asked, "Where?" Marmus replied quietly:

"Home."

"Where is your home, Monsieur?" asked the driver.

"Number three," Marmus replied.

"What street?" asked the driver.

"Ah, you are right, my friend. But this is extraordinary," he said, taking the driver into his confidence. "I have been so busy comparing the hyoides and the caracoides--yes, that's it. I will catch Sinard in the act. At the next session of the Institute he will have to yield to evidence."

The driver wrapped his ragged cloak around him. Resignedly, he was saying to himself, "I have seen many odd folks, but this one--" He heard the word "Institute."

"The Institute, Monsieur?" he asked.

"Yes, my friend, the Institute," replied Marmus.

"Well he wears the red ribbon," said the driver to himself. "Perhaps he has something to do with the Institute."

The professor, infinitely more comfortable in his cab than on the sidewalk, devoted himself entirely to solving the problem that went against his theory and would not surrender--the rascal! The cab stops at the Institute; the janitor sees the Academician and bows to him respectfully. The cab driver, his suspicions dispelled, talks with the janitor of the Institute while the illustrious professor goes--at eight in the evening--to the Academie des Sciences.

The cab driver tells the janitor where he found his fare.

"At the Iena bridge," repeats the janitor. "M. Marmus was coming back from Passy. He had dined, doubtless, with M. Planchette, one of his friends of the Academy."

"He couldn't tell me his address," says the cab driver.

"He lives in the Rue Duguay-Trouin, Number three," says the janitor.

"What a neighborhood!" exclaims the driver.

"My friend," asks of the janitor the professor who had found the door shut, "is there no meeting of the Academy to-day?"

"To-day!" exclaims the janitor. "At this hour!"

"What is the time?" asks the man of science.

"About eight o'clock," the janitor replies.

"It is late," comments M. Marmus. "Take me home, driver."

The driver goes through the quays, the Rue du Bac, falls into a tangle of wagons, returns by the Rue de Grenelle, the Croix-Rouge, the Rue Cassette, then he makes a mistake. He tries to find the Rue d'Assas, in the Rue Honore-Chevalier, in the Rue Madame, in all the impossible streets and, swearing that if he had known he would not have come so far for a hundred sous, disembarks the professor in the Rue Duguay-Trouin.

The cab driver claims an hour, for the police ordinances, that defend consumers of time in cabs from the stratagems of cab drivers, had not yet posted the walls of Paris with their protecting articles that settle in advance all difficulties.

"Very well, my friend," says M. Marmus to the cab driver. "Pay him," M. Marmus says to Madame Adolphe. "I do not feel well, my child."

"Monsieur, what did I tell you?" she exclaimed. "You have eaten too much. While you were away, I said to myself, 'It is Mme. Vernet's birthday. They will urge him at table and he will come back sick.' Well, go to bed. I will make camomile tea for you."


VII


DESSERT

The professor walked through the garden into a pavilion at one of its corners, where he lived alone in order not to be disturbed by his wife.

He went up the stairway leading to his little room, and complained so much of his pains in the stomach that Madame Adolphe filled him with camomile tea.

"Ah, here is a carriage! It is Madame returning in great anxiety, I am sure," said Madame Adolphe, giving to the professor his sixth cup of camomile tea. "Now, sir, I hope that you will be able to drink it without me. Do not let it fall all over your bed. You know how Madame would laugh. You are very happy to have a little wife who is so amiable and so joyful."

"Say nothing to her, my child," exclaimed the professor, whose features expressed a sort of childish fear.

The truly great man is always more or less a child.


VIII


THIS SHOWS THAT THE WIFE OF A MAN OF SCIENCE IS VERY UNHAPPY

"Well, good-bye. Return in the cab, it is paid for," Madame Marmus was saying when Madame Adolphe arrived at the door.

The cab had already turned the corner. Madame Adolphe, not having seen Madame Marmus's escort, said to herself:

"Poor Madame! He must be her nephew."

Madame Marmus, a little woman, lithe, graceful, mirthful, was divinely dressed and in a fashion too young for her age, counting her twenty-five years as a wife. Nevertheless, she wore well a gown with small pink stripes, a cape embroidered and edged with lace, boots pretty as the wings of a butterfly. She carried in her hand a pink hat with peach flowers.

"You see, Madame Adolphe," she said, "my hair is all uncurled. I told you that in this hot weather it should be dressed in bandeaux."

"Madame," the servant replied, "Monsieur is very sick. You let him eat too much."

"What could I do?" Madame Marmus replied. "He was at one end of the table and I at the other. He returned without me, as his habit is! Poor little man! I will go to him as soon as I change my dress."

Madame Adolphe returns to the pavilion to propose an emetic, and scolds the professor for not having returned with Madame Marmus.

"Since you wished to come in a cab, you might have spared me the expense of the one that Madame Marmus took. The charge for your cab was an hour. Did you stop anywhere?"

"At the Institute," he replied.

"At the Institute! Where did you take the cab?" she asked.

"In front of a bridge, I think," he replied.

"Was it still daylight?" she asked.

"Almost," he said.

"Then you did not go to Madame Vernet's!" exclaimed Madame Adolphe.

"Why did you not come to Madame Vernet's?" asked his wife.

Madame Marmus, having come to the door on the tips of her toes, had heard Madame Adolphe's exclamation. She did not wish to see Madame Adolphe's astonishment. Surely Madame Adolphe could not have forgotten the assurance with which the professor's wife had placed him in imagination at Madame Vernet's table.

"My dear child, I do not know," said the professor in a repentant tone.

"Then you have not dined," said Madame Marmus, whose attitude remained that of the purest innocence.

"With what could he have dined, Madame? He had two sous," said Madame Adolphe, looking at Madame Marmus with an accusing air.

"Ah, I am truly to be pitied, my poor Madame Adolphe," said Madame Marmus. "This sort of thing has been going on for twenty years, and I am not yet accustomed to it. Six days after our wedding, we were going out of our room one