"Really, you know," he said to Florent, as they came away, "all that you have been saying inside there doesn't interest me in the least. It may be very clever, but, for my own part, I see nothing in it. Still, you've got a splendid fellow there, that blessed Robine. He's as deep as a well. I'll come with you again some other time, but it won't be for politics. I shall make sketches of Logre and Gavard, so as to put them with Robine in a picture which I was thinking about while you were discussing the question of-what do you call it? eh? Oh, the question of the two Chambers. Just fancy, now, a picture of Gavard and Logre and Robine talking politics, entrenched behind their glasses of beer! It would be the success of the Salon, my dear fellow, an overwhelming success, a genuine modern picture!"
Florent was grieved by the artist's political scepticism; so he took him up to his bedroom, and kept him on the narrow balcony in front of the bluish mass of the markets, till two o'clock in the morning, lecturing him, and telling him that he was no man to show himself so indifferent to the happiness of his country.
"Well, you're perhaps right," replied Claude, shaking his head; "I'm an egotist. I can't even say that I paint for the good of my country; for, in the first place, my sketches frighten everybody, and then, when I'm busy painting, I think about nothing but the pleasure I take in it. When I'm painting, it is as though I were tickling myself; it makes me laugh all over my body. Well, I can't help it, you know; it's my nature to be like that; and you can't expect me to go and drown myself in consequence. Besides, France can get on very well without me, as my aunt Lisa says. And-may I be quite frank with you?-if I like you it's because you seem to me to follow politics just as I follow painting. You titillate yourself, my good friend."
Then, as Florent protested, he continued:
"Yes, yes; you are an artist in your own way; you dream of politics, and I'll wager you spend hours here at night gazing at the stars and imagining they are the voting-papers of infinity. And then you titillate yourself with your ideas of truth and justice; and this is so evidently the case that those ideas of yours cause just as much alarm to commonplace middle-class folks as my sketches do. Between ourselves, now, do you imagine that if you were Robine I should take any pleasure in your friendship? Ah, no, my friend, you are a great poet!"
Then he began to joke on the subject, saying that politics caused him no trouble, and that he had got accustomed to hear people discussing them in beer shops and studios. This led him to speak of a cafe in the Rue Vauvilliers; the cafe on the ground-floor of the house where La Sarriette lodged. This smoky place, with its torn, velvet-cushioned seats, and marble table-tops discoloured by the drippings from coffee- cups, was the chief resort of the young people of the markets. Monsieur Jules reigned there over a company of porters, apprentices, and gentlemen in white blouses and velvet caps. Two curling "Newgate knockers" were glued against his temples; and to keep his neck white he had it scraped with a razor every Saturday at a hair-dresser's in the Rue des Deux Ecus. At the cafe he gave the tone to his associates, especially when he played billiards with studied airs and graces, showing off his figure to the best advantage. After the game the company would begin to chat. They were a very reactionary set, taking a delight in the doings of "society." For his part, Monsieur Jules read the lighter boulevardian newspapers, and knew the performers at the smaller theatres, talked familiarly of the celebrities of the day, and could always tell whether the piece first performed the previous evening had been a success or a failure. He had a weakness, however, for politics. His ideal man was Morny, as he curtly called him. He read the reports of the discussions of the Corps Legislatif, and laughed with glee over the slightest words that fell from Morny's lips. Ah, Morny was the man to sit upon your rascally republicans! And he would assert that only the scum detested the Emperor, for his Majesty desired that all respectable people should have a good time of it.
"I've been to the cafe occasionally," Claude said to Florent. "The young men there are vastly amusing, with their clay pipes and their talk about the Court balls! To hear them chatter you might almost fancy they were invited to the Tuileries. La Sarriette's young man was making great fun of Gavard the other evening. He called him uncle. When La Sarriette came downstairs to look for him she was obliged to pay his bill. It cost her six francs, for he had lost at billiards, and the drinks they had played for were owing. And now, good night, my friend, and pleasant dreams. If ever you become a Minister, I'll give you some hints on the beautifying of Paris."
Florent was obliged to relinquish the hope of making a docile disciple of Claude. This was a source of grief to him, for, blinded though he was by his fanatical ardour, he at last grew conscious of the ever- increasing hostility which surrounded him. Even at the Mehudins' he now met with a colder reception: the old woman would laugh slyly; Muche no longer obeyed him, and the beautiful Norman cast glances of hasty impatience at him, unable as she was to overcome his coldness. At the Quenus', too, he had lost Auguste's friendship. The assistant no longer came to see him in his room on the way to bed, being greatly alarmed by the reports which he heard concerning this man with whom he had previously shut himself up till midnight. Augustine had made her lover swear that he would never again be guilty of such imprudence; however, it was Lisa who turned the young man into Florent's determined enemy by begging him and Augustine to defer their marriage till her cousin should vacate the little bedroom at the top of the house, as she did not want to give that poky dressing-room on the first floor to the new shop girl whom she would have to engage. From that time forward Auguste was anxious that the "convict" should be arrested. He had found such a pork shop as he had long dreamed of, not at Plaisance certainly, but at Montrouge, a little farther away. And now trade had much improved, and Augustine, with her silly, overgrown girl's laugh, said that she was quite ready. So every night, whenever some slight noise awoke him, August was thrilled with delight as he imagined that the police were at last arresting Florent.
Nothing was said at the Quenu-Gradelles' about all the rumours which circulated. There was a tacit understanding amongst the staff of the pork shop to keep silent respecting them in the presence of Quenu. The latter, somewhat saddened by the falling-out between his brother and his wife, sought consolation in stringing his sausages and salting his pork. Sometimes he would come and stand on his door-step, with his red face glowing brightly above his white apron, which his increasing corpulence stretched quite taut, and never did he suspect all the gossip which his appearance set on foot in the markets. Some of the women pitied him, and thought that he was losing flesh, though he was, indeed, stouter than ever; while others, on the contrary, reproached him for not having grown thin with shame at having such a brother as Florent. He, however, like one of those betrayed husbands who are always the last to know what has befallen them, continued in happy ignorance, displaying a light-heartedness which was quite affecting. He would stop some neighbour's wife on the footway to ask her if she found his brawn or truffled boar's head to her liking, and she would at once assume a sympathetic expression, and speak in a condoling way, as though all the pork on his premises had got jaundice.
"What do they all mean by looking at me with such a funereal air?" he asked Lisa one day. "Do you think I'm looking ill?"
Lisa, well aware that he was terribly afraid of illness, and groaned and made a dreadful disturbance if he suffered the slightest ailment, reassured him on this point, telling him that he was as blooming as a rose. The fine pork shop, however, was becoming gloomy; the mirrors seemed to pale, the marbles grew frigidly white, and the cooked meats on the counter stagnated in yellow fat or lakes of cloudy jelly. One day, even, Claude came into the shop to tell his aunt that the display in the window looked quite "in the dumps." This was really the truth. The Strasburg tongues on their beds of blue paper-shavings had a melancholy whiteness of hue, like the tongues of invalids; and the whilom chubby hams seemed to be wasting away beneath their mournful green top-knots. Inside the shop, too, when customers asked for a black-pudding or ten sous' worth of bacon, or half a pound of lard, they spoke in subdued, sorrowful voices, as though they were in the bed-chamber of a dying man. There were always two or three lachrymose women in front of the chilled heating-pan. Beautiful Lisa meantime discharged the duties of chief mourner with silent dignity. Her white apron fell more primly than ever over her black dress. Her hands, scrupulously clean and closely girded at the wrists by long white sleevelets, her face with its becoming air of sadness, plainly told all the neighbourhood, all the inquisitive gossips who streamed into the shop from morning to night, that they, the Quenu-Gradelles, were suffering from unmerited misfortune, but that she knew the cause of it, and would triumph over it at last. And sometimes she stooped to look at the two gold-fish, who also seemed ill at ease as they swam languidly around the aquarium in the window, and her glance seemed to promise them better days in the future.