Ratapoil said: ‘So they have, old fellow. And one must move with them; although, of course, if anyone but you called me a tradesman he should feel a few inches of my sword in his tripes within ten minutes ….’ He sighed. ‘But nobody would dare. Here, as heretofore, I am still Ratapoil, the Jack of Swords. Nobody dares to challenge me in New Orleans, any more than they did in Paris in the old days; unless they happen to be very drunk. Then, I pink them in the arm to teach them better manners; or, if they are very young, simply disarm them. Oho, I assure you, Tessier, the Creoles treat me with the respect to which I am accustomed. But among themselves they fight like the very devil, either with the colchemarde or else the sword-cane …. Not your line, eh, old comrade?’
Tessier shook his head, and said: ‘No, I used to have a tolerably light hand with a rapier, fifteen or twenty years ago. Your colchemarde, however, you can keep – it is nothing but a triangular pig-sticker. I am an artilleryman, when all is said and done. Well … I take it that you have not made your fortune exclusively as Master of Arms in New Orleans? … For example, this fine house, “three hogshead of rum” for a slave in livery, etcetera——’
‘– Oh, one thing leads to another,’ said Ratapoil. ‘In this country one finds oneself becoming a tradesman in spite of oneself. If you want to twist the play titles of Molière, you can call me Le Bourgeois Malgré Lui…. Clever, eh? I opened my little Académie in the Vieux Carré, in the spring of 1813. It was not done, I may say, without a little bloodshed. The Master of Fence at that time was a Swiss named Harter. One word led to another, we measured swords, he was buried the following day (nothing keeps long in this humidity), and I took over. I challenged a Spanish Fencing Master and, on his decease, accommodated his pupils also. By way of advertisement, I then challenged the entire Army of His Majesty, the King of Spain, to come on, one at a time, with sabre, rapier or colchemarde, for the honour of France. Only half a dozen Spaniards took up the challenge; if that child’s play had gone on, His Catholic Majesty would have had to abdicate for lack of soldiers. Meanwhile, I played a little at cards and dice. Nobody dared to cheat me. I won. The stakes were money, or money’s worth – rum, molasses, cane-sugar, coffee, or what not. What do you do with a storehouse-full of such truck?’
‘Sell it,’ said Tessier.
‘Exactly; thereby becoming a kind of merchant. For example, I bought this house with tobacco. I may also mention that at this time we were living at the Saint Timothy Hotel, at a cost of thirty dollars a month. You may remember that my dear wife Louise was brought up by a most respectable aunt, who used to let elegant furnished apartments to unmarried gentlemen in one of the best quarters of Paris——’
‘– I remember your attic room,’ said Tessier.
‘To cut a long story short,’ said Ratapoil. ‘Louise said: “They are robbing us, my dear. I could provide accommodation twice as good for twenty dollars a month. The steamboats are on the river now; elegant ladies and gentlemen are coming into New Orleans in place of the Kaintoucks, the flat-boat men. Let us build a fine hotel, stylishly furnished.” “To provide good food and lodging, twice as good as at the Saint Timothy, for twenty dollars a month?” I asked. She said: “No; for forty dollars a month…. And, since you must gamble, why not do it under your own roof? We could set apart a nicely-appointed room for cards and so forth, strictly for the nobility, and with you to keep order….” In brief, old comrade: I am merchant, hotelier, and anything you like. I am rotten rich. And I take this opportunity of telling you that, with the exception of my wife and my toothbrush, everything I have is yours to command.’
‘I do not want a wife,’ said Tessier, ‘and I have no need for a toothbrush.’ He bared his toothless gums.
‘You used to have excellent teeth,’ said Ratapoil.
‘I have none left that show – I was kicked in the face by a horse.’
‘You shall have the best teeth that money can buy,’ said Ratapoil, ‘the teeth of a healthy young negress, fresh-pulled; and Dr Brossard will fit them into your jaws, so that you’ll never know the difference. Meanwhile, drink, Tessier, drink. Brandy needs no chewing.’
Tessier drank, muttering: ‘The devil take all horses, and, in particular, dapple-grey mares that show the whites of their eyes…. Believe me, Ratapoil, men, women and horses are never to be trusted when they show the whites of their eyes below the iris…. Also, beware of Roman noses, they also are signs of danger in men, women, and horses…. Damn that roman-nosed dapple-grey mare from throat-latch to croup; and damn her rolling eyes!’
‘I detest horses,’ said Ratapoil. ‘But then I am an infantryman, born and bred. I’d rather trust myself to my own two legs than to the four legs of that most hysterical and cowardly of beasts, the horse. I can at least rely on these feet of mine not to bolt with me if a rabbit starts up under my nose in the moonlight; or not to kick my teeth out when I stoop to cut their toe-nails … Still, horses have their place in the world, also.’
‘You are even beginning to think like a bourgeois,’ said Tessier. ‘All the same, you are right. Every grain of sand has its assigned position in the Scheme of Things——’
‘– I should say so! Do you remember when I fought LeGrand with pistols in Egypt? A grain of sand flew into my eye just as the handkerchief dropped, so that I missed him clean; otherwise I should certainly have shot him. As it turned out, I was in the wrong; and LeGrand and I became good friends, until he was killed at Eylau. How old is a grain of sand, and how many grains of sand are there in a desert? And how long had that grain in particular been lying there, awaiting instructions to fly up and prevent an injustice? It goes to show … But what were you doing on horseback at your time of life, Tessier?’
‘Taking my place in the Scheme of Things,’ said Tessier, sombrely, ‘dust that I am.’
His pale, toothless mouth pulsed like a frog’s throat as he sucked his cigar alight at a candle. Then he went on:
… You, Ratapoil, were always a Legitimist at heart. I, au fond, was always a good Republican. But both of us loved France, first and foremost; therefore we gave of our best to Napoleon for the greater glory of France. Our health, our youth, our blood, our marrow – what we had, we gave! And after we had grown old in his service Buonaparte brushed us off, like dust from his cuffs; you for breach of discipline, me as a political suspect. Then we said, in effect: Beware of the Dust, O Emperor! The Wrath of God waits in the Dust! (only you said ‘God’, and I said ‘History’.) And we joined little anti-Napoleonist clubs.
You were in the Malet Plot; I was a member of the Brutus Club. Still, we were old comrades and helped each other. You escaped from France by the skin of your teeth, in 1812, and came here to America. I stayed, more fool me!
I still clung to some mad hope of a Republican coup. If that hope had been realised – which it could not have been, because the time was not ripe for it – I should now be a General. As events occurred, Louis XVIII came back to France when Napoleon went to Elba.
You, wisely, stayed in New Orleans. But, where was I to go? Whichever way the cat jumped, I was the mouse. At that time the Bonapartists hated me; the Legitimists hated me; the Republicans, driven underground, split into a hundred tiny sects, every one of which execrated me as a heretic, a Republican of the old-fashioned Classical School.