In the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, a block of vehicles arrested the cab which was bringing Octave Mouret and his three trunks from the Lyons railway station. The young man lowered one of the windows, in spite of the already intense cold of that dull November afternoon. He was surprised at the abrupt approach of twilight in this neighbourhood of narrow streets, all swarming with a busy crowd. The oaths of the drivers as they lashed their snorting horses, the endless jostlings on the foot-pavements, the serried line of shops swarming with attendants and customers, bewildered him; for, though he had dreamed of a cleaner Paris than the one he beheld, he had never hoped to find it so eager for trade, and he felt that it was publicly open to the appetites of energetic young fellows.
The driver leant towards him.
“It’s the Passage Choiseul you want, isn’t it?”
“No, the Rue de Choiseul. A new house, I think.”
And the cab only had to turn the corner. The house was the second one in the street: a big house four storeys high, the stonework of which was scarcely discoloured, in the midst of the dirty stucco of the adjoining old frontages. Octave, who had alighted on to the pavement, measured it and studied it with a mechanical glance, from the silk warehouse on the ground floor to the projecting windows on the fourth floor opening on to a narrow terrace. On the first floor, carved female heads supported a highly elaborate cast-iron balcony. The windows were surrounded with complicated frames, roughly chiselled in the soft stone; and, lower down, above the tall doorway, two cupids were unrolling a scroll bearing the number, which at night-time was lighted up by a jet of gas from the inside.
A stout fair gentleman, who was coming out of the vestibule, stopped short on catching sight of Octave.
“What! you here!” exclaimed he. “Why, I was not expecting you till to-morrow!”
“The truth is,” replied the young man, “I left Hassans a day earlier than I originally intended. Isn’t the room ready?”
“Oh, yes. I took it a fortnight ago, and I furnished it at once in the way you desired. Wait a bit, I will take you to it.”
He re-entered the house, though Octave begged he would not give himself the trouble. The driver had got the three trunks off the cab. Inside the doorkeeper’s room, a dignified-looking man with a long face, clean-shaven like a diplomatist, was standing up gravely reading the “Moniteur.” He deigned, however, to interest himself about these trunks which were being deposited in his doorway; and, taking a few steps forward, he asked his tenant, the architect of the third floor as he called him:
“Is this the person, Monsieur Campardon?”
“Yes, Monsieur Gourd, this is Monsieur Octave Mouret, for whom I have taken the room on the fourth floor. He will sleep there and take his meals with us. Monsieur Mouret is a friend of my wife’s relations, and I beg you will show him every attention.”
Octave was examining the entrance with its panels of imitation marble and its vaulted ceiling decorated with rosettes. The courtyard at the end was paved and cemented, and had a grand air of cold cleanliness; the only occupant was a coachman engaged in polishing a bit with a chamois leather at the entrance to the stables. There were no signs of the sun ever shining there.
Meanwhile, Monsieur Gourd was inspecting the trunks. He pushed them with his foot, and, their weight filling him with respect, he talked of fetching a porter to carry them up the servants’ staircase.
“Madame Gourd, I’m going out,” cried he, just putting his head inside his room.
It was like a drawing-room, with bright looking-glasses, a red flowered Wilton carpet and violet ebony furniture; and, through a partly opened door, one caught a glimpse of the bed-chamber with a bedstead hung with garnet rep. Madame Gourd, a very fat woman with yellow ribbons in her hair, was stretehed out in an easy-chair with her hands clasped, and doing nothing.
“Well! let’s go up,” said the architect.
And seeing how impressed the young man seemed to be by Monsieur Gourd’s black velvet cap and sky blue slippers, he added, as he pushed open the mahogany door of the vestibule:
“You know he was formerly the Duke de Vaugelade’s valet.”
“Ah!” simply ejaculated Octave.
“It’s as I tell you, and he married the widow of a little bailiff of Mort-la-Ville. They even own a house there. But they are waiting until they have three thousand francs a year before going there to live. Oh! they are most respectable doorkeepers!”
The decorations of the vestibule and the staircase were gaudily luxurious. At the foot of the stairs was the figure of a woman, a kind of gilded Neapolitan, supporting on her head an amphora from which issued three gas-jets protected by ground glass globes. The panels of imitation white marble with pink borders succeeded each other at regular intervals up the wall of the staircase, whilst the cast-iron balustrade with its mahogany hand-rail was in imitation of old silver with clusters of golden leaves. A red carpet, secured with brass rods, covered the stairs. But what especially struck Octave on entering was a green-house temperature, a warm breath which seemed to be puffed from some mouth into his face.
“Hallo!” said he, “the staircase is warmed.”
“Of course,” replied Campardon. “All landlords who have the least self-respect go to that expense now. The house is a very fine one, very fine.”
He looked about him as though he were sounding the walls with his architect’s eyes.
“My dear fellow, you will see, it is a most comfortable place, and inhabited solely by highly respectable people!”
Then, slowly ascending, he mentioned the names of the different tenants. On each floor were two separate suites of apartments, one looking on to the street, the other on to the courtyard, and the polished mahogany doors of which faeed eaeh other. He began by saying a few words respecting Monsieur Auguste Vabre; he was the landlord’s eldest son; since the spring he had rented the silk warehouse on the ground floor, and he also occupied the whole of the “entresol” above. Then, on the first floor the landlord’s other son, Monsieur Théophile Vabre and his wife, resided in the apartment overlooking the courtyard; and in the one overlooking the street lived the landlord himself, formerly a notary at Versailles, but who was now lodging with his son-in-law, Monsieur Duveyrier, a judge at the Court of Appeal.
“A fellow who is not yet forty-five,” said Campardon, stopping short. “That’s something remarkable, is it not?”
He ascended two steps, and then suddenly turning round, he added:
“Water and gas on every floor.”
Beneath the tall window on each landing, the panes of which, bordered with fretwork, lit up the staircase with a white light, was placed a narrow velvet covered bench. The architect observed that elderly persons could sit down and rest. Then, as he passed the second floor without naming the tenants.
“And there?” asked Octave, pointing to the door of the principal suite.
“Oh! there,” said he, “persons whom one never sees, whom no one knows. The house could well do without them. Blemishes, you know, are to be found everywhere.”
He gave a little snort of contempt.
“The gentleman writes books, I believe.”
But on the third floor his smile of satisfaction reappeared. The apartments looking on to the courtyard were divided into two suites; they were occupied by Madame Juzeur, a little woman who was most unhappy, and a very distinguished gentleman who had taken a room to which he came once a week on business matters. Whilst giving these particulars, Campardon opened the door on the other side of the landing.
“And this is where I live,” resumed he. “Wait a moment, I must get your key. We will first go up to your room; you can see my wife afterwards.”
During the two minutes he was left alone, Octave felt penetrated by the grave silence of the staircase. He leant over the balustrade, in the warm air which ascended from the vestibule; he raised his head, listening if any noise came from above. It was the death-like peacefulness of a middle-class drawing-room, carefully shut in and not admitting a breath from outside. Behind the beautiful shining mahogany doors there seemed to be unfathomable depths of respectability.
“You will have some excellent neighbours,” said Campardon, reappearing with the key; “on the street side there are the Josserands, quite a family, the father who is cashier at the Saint-Joseph glass works, and also two marriageable daughters; and next to you the Pichons, the husband is a clerk; they are not rolling in wealth, but they are educated people. Everything has to be let, has it not? even in a house like this.”
From the third landing, the red carpet ceased and was replaced by a simple grey holland. Octave’s vanity was slightly ruffled. The staircase had, little by little, filled him with respect; he was deeply moved at inhabiting such a fine house as the architect termed it. As, following the latter, he turned into the passage leading to his room, he caught sight through a partly open door of a young woman standing up before a cradle. She raised her head at the noise. She was fair, with clear and vacant eyes; and all he carried away was this very distinct look, for the young woman, suddenly blushing, pushed the door to in the shame-faced way of a person taken by surprise.
Campardon turned round to repeat:
“Water and gas on every floor, my dear fellow.”
Then he pointed out a door which opened on to the servants’ staircase. Their rooms were up above. And stopping at the end of the passage, he added:
“Here we are at last.”
The room, which was square, pretty large, and hung with a grey wall-paper with blue flowers, was furnished very simply. Close to the alcove was a little dressing-closet with just room enough to wash one’s hands. Octave went straight to the window, which admitted a greenish light. Below was the courtyard looking sad and clean, with its regular pavement, and the shining brass tap of its cistern. And still not a human being, nor even a noise; nothing but the uniform windows, without a bird-cage, without a flower-pot, displaying the monotony of their white curtains. To hide the big bare wall of the house on the left hand side, which shut in the square of the courtyard, the windows had been repeated, imitation windows in paint, with shutters eternally closed, behind which the walled-in life of the neighbouring apartments appeared to continue.
“But I shall be very comfortable here!” cried Octave delighted.
“I thought so,” said Campardon. “Well! I did everything as though it had been for myself; and, moreover, I carried out the instructions contained in your letters. So the furniture pleases you? It is all that is necessary for a young man. Later on, you can make any changes you like.”
And, as Octave shook his hand, thanking him, and apologising for having given him so much trouble, he resumed in a serious tone of voice:
“Only, my boy, no rows here, and above all no women! On my word of honour, if you were to bring a woman here it would revolutionize the whole house!”
“Be easy!” murmured the young man, feeling rather anxious.
“No, let me tell you, for it is I who would be compromised. You have seen the house. All middle-class people, and of extreme morality! between ourselves, they affect it rather too much. Never a word, never more noise than you have heard just now. Ah, well! Monsieur Gourd would at once fetch Monsieur Vabre, and we should both be in a nice pickle! My dear fellow, I ask it of you for my own peace of mind: respect the house.”
Octave, overpowered by so much virtue and respectability, swore to do so. Then, Campardon, casting a mistrustful glance around, and lowering his voice as though some one might have heard him, added with sparkling eyes:
“Outside it concerns nobody. Paris is big enough, is it not? there is plenty of room. As for myself, I am at heart an artist, therefore I think nothing of it!”
A porter carried up the trunks. When everything was straight, the architect assisted paternally at Octave’s toilet. Then, rising to his feet he said:
“Now we will go and see my wife.”
Down on the third floor the maid, a slim, dark, and coquettish looking girl, said that madame was busy. Campardon, with a view of putting his young friend at ease, showed him over the rooms: first of all, there was the huge white and gold drawingroom, highly decorated with artificial mouldings, and situated between a green parlour which the architect had turned into a workroom and the bedroom, into which they could not enter, but the narrow shape of which, and the mauve wall-paper, he described. As he next ushered him into the dining-room, all in imitation wood, with an extraordinary complication of baguettes and coffers, Octave, enchanted, exclaimed:
“It is very handsome!”
On the ceiling, two big cracks cut right through the coffers, and, in a corner, the paint had peeled off and displayed the plaster.
“Yes, it creates an effect,” slowly observed the architect, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “You see, these kind of houses are built to create effect. Only, the walls will not bear much looking into. It is not twelve years old yet, and it is already cracking. One builds the frontage of handsome stone, with a lot of sculpture about it; one gives three coats of varnish to the walls of the staircase; one paints and gilds the rooms; and all that flatters people, and inspires respect. Oh! it is still solid, it will certainly last as long as we shall!”
He led him again across the ante-room, which was lighted by a window of ground glass. To the left, looking on to the courtyard, there was a second bed-chamber where his daughter Angèle slept, and which, all in white, looked on this November afternoon as sad as a tomb. Then at the end of the passage, came the kitchen, into which he insisted on conducting Octave, saying that it was necessary to see everything.
“Walk in,” repeated he, pushing open the door.
A terrible uproar issued from it. In spite of the cold, the window was wide open. With their elbows on the rail, the dark maid and a fat cook, a dissolute looking old party, were leaning out into the narrow well of an inner courtyard, which lighted the kitchens of each floor, placed opposite to each other. They were both yelling with their backs bent, whilst, from the depths of this hole, arose the sounds of vulgar voices, mingled with oaths and bursts of laughter. It was like the overflow of some sewer: all the domestics of the house were there, easing their minds. Octave’s thoughts reverted to the peaceful majesty of the grand staircase.
Just then the two women, warned by some instinct, turned round. They remained thunderstruck on beholding their master with a gentleman. There was a gentle whistle, windows were shut, and all was once more as silent as death.
“What is the matter, Lisa?” asked Campardon.
“Sir,” replied the maid, greatly excited, “it’s that filthy Adèle again. She has thrown a rabbit’s guts out of the window. You should speak to Monsieur Josserand, sir.”
Campardon became very grave, anxious not to make any promise. He returned to his workroom, saying to Octave:
“You have seen all. On each floor, the rooms are arranged the same. I pay a rent of two thousand five hundred francs, and on a third floor, too! Rents are rising every day. Monsieur Vabre must make about twenty-two thousand francs a year from his house. And it will increase still more, for there is a question of opening a wide thoroughfare from the Place de la Bourse to the new Opera-house. And he had the ground this is built upon almost for nothing, twelve years ago, after that great fire caused by a druggist’s servant!”
As they entered, Octave observed, hanging above a drawing-table, and in the full light from the window, a richly framed picture of a Virgin, displaying in her opened breast an enormous flaming heart. He could not repress a movement of surprise; he looked at Campardon, whom he had known to be a rather wild fellow at Plassans.
“Ah! I forgot to tell you,” resumed the latter slightly colouring, “I have been appointed diocesan architect, yes, at Evreux. Oh! a mere bagatelle as regards money, in all barely two thousand francs a year. But there is scarcely anything to do, a journey now and again; for the rest I have an inspector there. And, you see, it is a great deal, when one can print on one’s cards: ‘government architect.’ You can have no idea what an amount of work that procures me in the highest society.”
Whilst speaking, he looked at the Virgin with the flaming heart.
“After all,” continued he in a sudden fit of frankness, “I do not care a button for their paraphernalia!”
But, on Octave bursting out laughing, the architect was seized with fear. Why confide in that young man? He gave a side glance, and, putting on an air of compunction, he tried to smooth over what he had said.
“I do not care and yet I do care. Well! yes, I am becoming like that. You will see, you will see, my friend: when you have lived a little longer, you will do as every one else.”
And he spoke of his forty-two years, of the emptiness of life, posing for being very melancholy, which his robust health belied. In the artist’s head which he had fashioned for himself, with flowing hair and beard trimmed in the Henri IV. style, one found the flat skull and square jaw of a middle-class man of limited intelligence and voracious appetites. When younger, he had a fatiguing gaiety.
Octave’s eyes became fixed on a number of the “Gazette de France,” which was lying amongst some plans. Then, Campardon, more and more ill at ease, rang for the maid to know if madame was at length disengaged. Yes, the doctor was just leaving, madame would be there directly.
“Is Madame Campardon unwell?” asked the young man.
“No, she is the same as usual,” said the architect in a bored tone of voice.
“Ah! and what is the matter with her?”
Again embarrassed, he did not give a straightforward answer.
“You know, there is always something going wrong with women. She has been in this state for the last thirteen years, ever since her confinement. Otherwise, she is as well as can be. You will even find her stouter.”
Octave asked no further questions. Just then, Lisa returned, bringing a card; and the architect, begging to be excused, hastened to the drawing-room, telling the young man as he disappeared to talk to his wife and have patience. Octave had caught sight, on the door being quickly opened and closed, of the black mass of a cassock in the centre of the large white and gold apartment.
At the same moment, Madame Campardon entered from the ante-room. He scarcely knew her again. In other days, when a youngster, he had known her at Plassans, at her father’s, Monsieur Domergue, government clerk of the works, she was thin and ugly, as puny-looking as a young girl suffering from the crisis of her puberty; and now he beheld her plump, with the clear and placid complexion of a nun, soft eyes, dimples, and a general appearance of an overfed she-cat. If she had not been able to grow pretty, she had ripened towards thirty, gaining a sweet savour and a nice fresh odour of autumn fruit. He remarked, however, that she walked with difficulty, her whole body wrapped, in a mignonette coloured silk dressing-gown, moving; which gave her a languid air.
“But you are a man, now!” said she gaily, holding out her hands. “How you have grown, since our last journey to the country!”
And she gazed at him: tall, dark, handsome, with his well kept moustache and beard. When he told her his age, twenty-two, she scarcely believed it: he looked twenty-five at least. He, whom the presence of a woman, even though she were the lowest of servants, filled with rapture, laughed melodiously, enveloping her with his eyes of the colour of old gold, and of the softness of velvet.
“Ah! yes,” repeated he gently, “I have grown, I have grown. Do you recollect, when your cousin Gasparine used to buy me marbles?”
Then, he gave her news of her parents. Monsieur and Madame Domergue were living happily, in the house to which they had retired; they merely complained of being very lonely, bearing Campardon a grudge for having taken their little Rose from them, during a stay he had made at Plassans on business. Then, the young man tried to bring the conversation round to cousin Gasparine, having a precocious youngster’s old curiosity to satisfy, in the matter of an hitherto unexplained adventure: the architect’s mad passion for Gasparine, a tall lovely girl, but poor, and his sudden marriage with skinny Rose who had a dowry of thirty thousand francs, and quite a tearful scene, and a quarrel, and the flight of the abandoned one to Paris, to an aunt who was a dressmaker. But Madame Campardon, whose placid complexion preserved a rosy paleness, did not appear to understand. He was unable to draw a single particular from her.
“And your parents?” inquired she in her turn. “How are Monsienr and Madame Mouret?”
“Very well, thank you,” replied he. “My mother scarcely leaves her garden. You would find the house in the Rue de la Banne, just as you left it.”
Madame Campardon, who seemed unable to remain standing for long without feeling tired, had seated herself on a high drawing-chair, her legs stretched out in her dressing-gown; and he, taking a low chair beside her, raised his head when speaking, with his air of habitual adoration. With his large shoulders, he was like a woman, he had a woman’s feeling which at once admitted him to their hearts. So that, at the end of ten minutes, they were both talking like two lady friends of long standing.
“Now I am your boarder,” said he, passing a handsome hand with neatly trimmed nails over his beard. “We shall get on well together, you will see. How charming it was of you to remember the Plassans youngster and to busy yourself about everything, at the first word!”
But she protested.
“No, do not thank me. I am a great deal too lazy, I never move. It was Achille who arranged everything. And, besides, was it not sufficient that my mother mentioned to us your desire to board in some family, for us to think at once of opening our doors to you? You will not be with strangers, and will be company for us.”
Then, he told her of his own affairs. After having obtained a bachelor’s diploma, to please his family, he had just passed three years at Marseilles, in a big calico print warehouse, which had a factory in the neighbourhood of Plassans. He had a passion for trade, the trade in women’s luxuries, into which enters a seduction, a slow possession by gilded words and adulatory glances. And he related, laughing victoriously, how he had made the five thousand francs, without which he would never have ventured on coming to Paris, for he had the prudence of a Jew beneath the exterior of an amiable giddy-headed fellow.
“Just fancy, they had a Pompadour calico, an old design, something marvellous. No one would bite at it; it had been stowed away in the cellars for two years past. Then, as I was about to travel through the departments of the Var and the Basses-Alpes, it occurred to me to purchase the whole of the stock and to sell it on my own account. Oh! such a success! an amazing success! The women quarrelled for the remnants; and to-day, there is not one there who is not wearing some of my calico. I must say that I talked them over so nicely! They were all with me, I might have done as I pleased with them.”
And he laughed, whilst Madame Campardon, charmed, and troubled by thought of that Pompadour calico, questioned him: “Little bouquets on an unbleached ground, was it not?” She had been trying to obtain the same thing everywhere for a summer dressing-gown.
“I have travelled for two years, which is enough,” resumed he. “Besides, there is Paris to conquer. I must immediately look out for something.”
“What!” exclaimed she, “has not Achille told you? But he has a berth for you, and close by, too!”
He uttered his thanks, as surprised as though he were in fairy land, asking, by way of a joke, whether he would not find a wife and a hundred thousand francs a-year in his room that evening, when a young girl of fourteen, tall and ugly, with fair insipid-looking hair, pushed open the door, and gave a slight cry of fright.
“Come in and don’t be afraid,” said Madame Campardon. “It is Monsieur Octave Mouret, whom you have heard us speak of.”
Then, turning towards the latter, she added:
“My daughter, Angèle. We did not bring her with us at our last journey. She was so delicate! But she is getting stouter now.”
Angèle, with the awkwardness of girls in the ungrateful age, went and placed herself behind her mother, and cast glances at the smiling young man. Almost immediately, Campardon reappeared, looking excited; and he could not contain himself, but told his wife in a few words of his good fortune: the Abbé Mauduit, Vicar of Saint-Roch, had called about some work, merely some repairs, but which might lead to many other things. Then, annoyed at having spoken before Octave, and still quivering, he rapped one hand in the other, saying:
“Well! well! what are we going to do?”
“Why, you were going out,” said Octave. “Do not let me disturb you.”
“Achille,” murmured Madame Campardon, “that berth, at the Hédouins’—”
“Why, of course! I was forgetting,” exclaimed the architect. “My dear fellow, a place of first clerk at a large linen-draper’s. I know some one there who has said a word for you. You are expected. It is not yet four o’clock; shall I introduce you now?”
Octave hesitated, anxious about the bow of his necktie, flurried by his mania for being neatly dressed. However, he decided to go, when Madame Campardon assured him that he looked very well. With a languid movement, she offered her forehead to her husband, who kissed her with a great show of tenderness, repeating:
“Good-bye, my darling—good-bye, my pet.”
“Do not forget that we dine at seven,” said she, accompanying them across the drawing-room, where they had left their hats.
Angèle followed them without the slightest grace. But her music-master was waiting for her, and she at once commenced to strum on the instrument with her bony fingers. Octave, who was lingering in the ante-room, repeating his thanks, was unable to make himself heard. And, as he went downstairs, the sound of the piano seemed to follow him: in the midst of the warm silence other pianos—from Madame Juzeur’s, the Vabres’, and Duveyriers’—were answering, playing on eaeh floor other airs, whieh issued, distantly and religiously, from the calm solemnity of the doors.
On reaching the street, Campardon turned into the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin. He remained silent, with the absorbed air of a man seeking for an opportunity to broach a subject.
“Do you remember Mademoiselle Gasparine?” asked he, at length. “She is first lady assistant at the Hédouins’. You will see her.”
Octave thought this a good time for satisfying his curiosity.
“Ah!” said he. “Does she live with you?”
“No! no!” exelaimed the architect, hastily, and as though feeling hurt at the bare idea.
Then, as the young man appeared surprised at his vehemence, he gently continued, speaking in an embarrassed way:
“No; she and my wife no longer see each other. You know, in families— Well, I met her, and I could not refuse to shake hands, could I? more especially as she is not very well off, poor girl. So that, now, they have news of each other through me. In these old quarrels, one must leave the task of healing the wounds to time.”
Octave was about to question him plainly on the subject of his marriage, when the architect suddenly put an end to the conversation by saying:
“Here we are!”
It was a large linen-drapers, opening on to the narrow triangle of the Place Gaillon, at the corner of the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin and the Rue de la Michodière. Across two windows immediately above the shop was a signboard, with the words, “The Ladies’ Paradise, founded in 1822,” in faded gilt letters, whilst on the shop windows was inscribed, in red, the name of the firm, “Deleuze, Hédouin, & Co.”
“It has not the modern style, but it is honest and solid,” rapidly explained Campardon. “Monsieur Hédouin, formerly a clerk, married the daughter of the elder Deleuze, who died a couple of years ago; so that the business is now managed by the young couple—the old Deleuze and another partner, I think, both keep out of it. You will see Madame Hédouin. Oh! a woman with brains! Let us go in.”
It so happened that Monsieur Hédouin was at Lille buying some linen; therefore Madame Hédouin received them. She was standing up, a penholder behind her ear, giving orders to two shopmen who were putting away some pieces of stuff on the shelves; and she appeared to him so tall, so admirably lovely, with her regular features and her tidy hair, so gravely smiling, in her black dress, with a turn-down collar and a man’s tie, that Octave, not usually timid, could only stammer out a few observations. Everything was settled without any waste of words.
“Well!” said she, in her quiet way, and with her tradeswoman’s accustomed gracefulness, “you may as well look over the place, as you are not engaged.”
She called one of her clerks, and put Octave under his guidance; then, after having politely replied to a question of Campardon’s that Mademoiselle Gasparine was out on an errand, she turned her back and resumed her work, continuing to give her orders in her gentle and concise voice.
“Not there, Alexandre. Put the silks up at the top. Be careful, those are not the same make!”
Campardon, after hesitating, at length said to Octave that he would call again for him to take him back to dinner. Then, during two hours, the young man went over the warehouse. He found it badly lighted, small, encumbered with stock, which, overflowing from the basement, became