THE OPPORTUNITY OF PETITPAS

In Bordeaux, on the 21st of December, monsieur Petitpas, a clerk with bohemian yearnings, packed his portmanteau for a week's holiday. In Paris, on the same date, monsieur Tricotrin, poet and pauper, was commissioned by the Editor of Le Demi-Mot to convert a rough translation into literary French. These two disparate incidents were destined by Fate—always mysterious in her workings—to be united in a narrative for the present volume.

Three evenings later the poet's concierge climbed the stairs and rapped peremptorily at the door.

"Well?" cried Tricotrin, raising bloodshot eyes from the manuscript; "who disturbs me now? Come in!"

"I have come in," panted madame Dubois, who had not waited for his invitation, "and I am here to tell you, monsieur, that you cannot be allowed to groan in this agonised fashion. Your lamentations can be heard even in the basement."

"Is it in my agreement, madame, that I shall not groan if I am so disposed?" inquired the poet haughtily.

"There are things tacitly understood. It is enough that you are in arrears with your rent, without your doing your best to drive away the other tenants. For two days they have all complained that it would be less disturbing to reside in a hospital."

"Well, they have my permission to remove there," said Tricotrin. "Now that the matter is settled, let me get on with my work!" And with the groan of a soul in Hades, he perused another line.

"There you go again!" expostulated the woman angrily, "It is not to be endured, monsieur. What is the matter with you, for goodness' sake?"

"With me, madame, there is nothing the matter; the fault lies with an infernal Spanish novel. A misguided editor has commissioned me to rewrite it from a translation made by a foreigner. How can I avoid groans when I read his rot? Miranda exclaims, 'May heaven confound you, bandit!' And the fiancé of the ingénue addresses her as 'Angel of this house!'"

"Well, at least groan quietly," begged the concierge; "do not bellow your sufferings to the cellar."

"To oblige you I will be as Spartan as I can," agreed Tricotrin. "Now I have lost my place in the masterpiece. Ah, here we are! 'I feel she brings bad tidings—she wears a disastrous mien.' It is sprightly dialogue! If the hundred and fifty francs were not essential to keep a roof over my head, I would send the Editor a challenge for offering me the job."

Perspiration bespangled the young man's brow as he continued his task. When another hour had worn by he thirsted to do the foreign translator a bodily injury, and so intense was his exasperation that, by way of interlude, he placed the manuscript on the floor and jumped on it. But the climax was reached in Chapter XXVII; under the provocation of the love scene in Chapter XXVII frenzy mastered him, and with a yell of torture he hurled the whole novel through the window, and burst into hysterical tears.

The novel, which was of considerable bulk, descended on the landlord, who was just approaching the house to collect his dues.

"What does it mean," gasped monsieur Gouge, when he had recovered his equilibrium, and his hat; "what does it mean that I cannot approach my own property without being assaulted with a ton of paper? Who has dared to throw such a thing from a window?"

"Monsieur," stammered the concierge, "I do not doubt that it was the top-floor poet; he has been behaving like a lunatic for days."

"Aha, the top-floor poet?" snorted monsieur Gouge. "I shall soon dispose of him !" And Tricotrin's tears were scarcely dried when bang came another knock at his door.

"So, monsieur," exclaimed the landlord, with fine satire, "your poems are of small account, it appears, since you use them as missiles? The value you put upon your scribbling does not encourage me to wait for my rent!"

"Mine?" faltered Tricotrin, casting an indignant glance at the muddy manuscript restored to him; "you accuse me of having perpetrated that atrocity? Oh, this is too much! I have a reputation to preserve, monsieur, and I swear by all the Immortals that it was no work of mine."

"Did you not throw it?"

"Throw it? Yes, assuredly I threw it. But I did not write it."

"Morbleu! what do I care who wrote it?" roared monsieur Gouge, purple with spleen. "Does its authorship improve the condition of my hat? My grievance is its arrival on my head, not its literary quality. Let me tell you that you expose yourself to actions at law, pitching weights like this from a respectable house into a public street."

"I should plead insanity," said Tricotrin; "twenty-seven chapters of that novel, translated into a Spaniard's French, would suffice to people an asylum. Nevertheless, if it arrived on your hat, I owe you an apology."

"You also owe me two hundred francs!" shouted the other, "and I have shown you more patience than you deserve. Well, my folly is finished! You settle up, or you get out, right off!"

"Have you reflected that it is Christmas Eve—do we live in a melodrama, that I should wander homeless on Christmas Eve? Seriously, you cannot expect a man of taste to lend himself to so hackneyed a situation? Besides, I share this apartment with the composer monsieur Nicolas Pitou. Consider how poignant he would find the room's associations if he returned to dwell here alone!"

"Monsieur Pitou will not be admitted when he returns—there is not a pin to choose between the pair of you. You hand me the two hundred francs, or you go this minute—and I shall detain your wardrobe till you pay. Where is it?"

"It is divided between my person and a shelf at the pawnbroker's," explained the poet; "but I have a soiled collar in the left-hand corner drawer. However, I can offer you more valuable security for this trifling debt than you would dare to ask; the bureau is full of pearls —metrical, but beyond price. I beg your tenderest care of them, especially my tragedy in seven acts. Do not play jinks with the contents of that bureau, or Posterity will gibbet you and the name of 'Gouge' will one day be execrated throughout France. Garbage, farewell!"

"Here, take your shaving paper with you!" cried monsieur Gouge, flinging the Spanish novel down the stairs. And the next moment the man of letters stood dejected on the pavement, with the fatal manuscript under his arm.

"Ah, Miranda, Miranda, thou little knowest what mischief thou hast done!" he murmured, unconsciously plagiarising. "She brought bad tidings indeed, with her disastrous mien," he added. "What is to become of me now?"

The moon, to which he had naturally addressed this query, made no answer; and, fingering the sou in his trouser-pocket, he trudged in the direction of the rue Ravignan. "The situation would look well in print," he reflected, "but the load under my arm should, dramatically, be a bundle of my own poems. Doubtless the matter will be put right by my biographer. I wonder if I can get half a bed from Goujaud?"

Encouraged by the thought of the painter's hospitality, he proceeded to the studio; but he was informed in sour tones that monsieur Goujaud would not sleep there that night.

"So much the better," he remarked, "for I can have all his bed, instead of half of it! Believe me, I shall put you to no trouble, madame."

"I believe it fully," answered the woman, "for you will not come inside—not monsieur Goujaud, nor you, nor any other of his vagabond friends. So, there!"

"Ah, is that how the wind blows—the fellow has not paid his rent?" said Tricotrin. "How disgraceful of him, to be sure! Fortunately Sanquereau lives in the next house."

He pulled the bell there forthwith, and the peal had scarcely sounded when Sanquereau rushed to the door, crying, "Welcome, my Beautiful!"

"Mon Dieu, what worthless acquaintances I possess!" moaned the unhappy poet. "Since you are expecting your Beautiful I need not go into details."

"What on earth did you want?" muttered Sanquereau, crestfallen.

"I came to tell you the latest Stop Press news—Goujaud's landlord has turned him out and I have no bed to lie on. Au revoir!"

After another apostrophe to the heavens, "That inane moon, which makes no response, is beginning to get on my nerves," he soliloquised. "Let me see now! There is certainly master Criqueboeuf, but it is a long journey to the quartier Latin, and when I get there his social engagements may annoy me as keenly as Sanquereau's. It appears to me I am likely to try the open-air cure to-night. In the meanwhile I may as well find Miranda a seat and think things over."

Accordingly he bent his steps to the place Dancourt, and having deposited the incubus beside him, stretched his limbs on a bench beneath a tree. His attitude, and his luxuriant locks, to say nothing of his melancholy aspect, rendered him a noticeable figure in the little square, and monsieur Petitpas, from Bordeaux, under the awning of the café opposite, stood regarding him with enthusiasm.

"Upon my word of honour," mused Petitpas, rubbing his hands, "I believe
I see a Genius in the dumps! At last I behold the Paris of my dreams.
If I have read my Murger to any purpose, I am on the verge of an epoch.
What a delightful adventure!"

Taking out his Marylands, Petitpas sauntered towards the bench with a great show of carelessness, and made a pretence of feeling in his pockets for a match. "Tschut!" he exclaimed; then, affecting to observe Tricotrin for the first time, "May I beg you to oblige me with a light, monsieur?" he asked deferentially. A puff of wind provided an excuse for sitting down to guard the flame; and the next moment the Genius had accepted a cigarette, and acknowledged that the weather was mild for the time of year.

Excitement thrilled Petitpas. How often, after business hours, he had perused his well-thumbed copy of La Vie de Bohème and in fancy consorted with the gay descendants of Rodolphe and Marcel; how often he had regretted secretly that he, himself, did not woo a Muse and jest at want in a garret, instead of totting up figures, and eating three meals a day in comfort! And now positively one of the fascinating beings of his imagination lolled by his side! The little clerk on a holiday longed to play the generous comrade. In his purse he had a couple of louis, designed for sight-seeing, and, with a rush of emotion, he pictured himself squandering five or six francs in half an hour and startling the artist by his prodigality.

"If I am not mistaken, I have the honour to address an author, monsieur?" he ventured.

"Your instincts have not misled you," replied the poet; "I am Tricotrin, monsieur—Gustave Tricotrin. The name, however, is to be found, as yet, on no statues."

"My own name," said the clerk, "is Adolphe Petitpas. I am a stranger in
Paris, and I count myself fortunate indeed to have made monsieur
Tricotrin's acquaintance so soon."

"He expresses himself with some discretion, this person," reflected
Tricotrin. "And his cigarette was certainly providential!"

"To meet an author has always been an ambition of mine," Petitpas continued; "I dare to say that I have the artistic temperament, though circumstances have condemned me to commercial pursuits. You have no idea how enviable the literary life appears to me, monsieur!"

"Its privileges are perhaps more monotonous than you suppose," drawled the homeless poet. "Also, I had to work for many years before I attained my present position."

"This noble book, for instance," began the clerk, laying a reverent hand on the abominable manuscript.

"Hein?" exclaimed its victim, starting.

"To have written this noble book must be a joy compared with which my own prosperity is valueless."

"The damned thing is no work of mine," cried Tricotrin; "and if we are to avoid a quarrel, I will ask you not to accuse me of it! A joy, indeed? In that block of drivel you view the cause of my deepest misfortunes."

"A thousand apologies!" stammered his companion; "my inference was hasty. But what you say interests me beyond words. This manuscript, of seeming innocence, is the cause of misfortunes? May I crave an enormous favour; may I beg you to regard me as a friend and give me your confidence?"

"I see no reason why I should refuse it," answered Tricotrin, on whom the boast of "prosperity" had made a deep impression. "You must know, then, that this ineptitude, inflicted on me by an eccentric editor for translation, drove me to madness, and not an hour ago I cast it from my window in disgust. It is a novel entirely devoid of taste and tact, and it had the clumsiness to alight on my landlord's head. Being a man of small nature, he retaliated by demanding his rent."

"Which it was not convenient to pay?" interrupted Petitpas, all the pages of La Vie de Bohème playing leapfrog through his brain.

"I regret to bore you by so trite a situation. 'Which it was not convenient to pay'! Indeed, I was not responsible for all of it, for I occupied the room with a composer named Pitou. Well, you can construct the next scene without a collaborator; the landlord has a speech, and the tragedy is entitled 'Tricotrin in Quest of a Home.'"

"What of the composer?" inquired the delighted clerk; "what has become of monsieur Pitou?"

"Monsieur Pitou was not on in that Act. The part of Pitou will attain prominence when he returns and finds himself locked out."

"But, my dear monsieur Tricotrin, in such an extremity you should have sought the services of a friend."

"I had that inspiration myself; I sought a painter called Goujaud. And observe how careless is Reality in the matter of coincidences! I learnt from his concierge that precisely the same thing had befallen monsieur Goujaud. He, too, is Christmassing alfresco."

"Mon Dieu," faltered the clerk, "how it rejoices me that I have met you! All my life I have looked forward to encountering a genius in such a fix."

"Alas!" sighed Tricotrin, with a pensive smile, "to the genius the fix is less spicy. Without a supper—"

"Without a supper!" crowed Petitpas.

"Without a bed—"

"Without a bed!" babbled Petitpas, enravished.

"With nothing but a pen and the sacred fire, one may be forgiven sadness."

"Not so, not so," shouted Petitpas, smacking him on the back. "You are omitting me from your list of assets! Listen, I am staying at an hotel. You cannot decline to accord me the honour of welcoming you there as my guest for the night. Hang the expense! I am no longer in business, I am a bohemian, like yourself; some supper, a bed, and a little breakfast will not ruin me. What do you say, monsieur?"

"I say, drop the 'monsieur,' old chap," responded Tricotrin. "Your suggestions for the tragedy are cordially accepted. I have never known a collaborator to improve a plot so much. And understand this: I feel more earnestly than I speak; henceforth we are pals, you and I."

"Brothers!" cried Petitpas, in ecstasy. "You shall hear all about a novel that I have projected for years. I should like to have your opinion of it."

"I shall be enchanted," said Tricotrin, his jaw dropping.

"You must introduce me to your circle—the painters, and the models, and the actresses. Your friends shall be my friends in future."

"Don't doubt it! When I tell them what a brick you are, they will be proud to know you."

"No ceremony, mind!"

"Not a bit. You shall be another chum. Already I feel as if we had been confidants in our cradles."

"It is the same with me. How true it is that kindred spirits recognise each other in an instant. What is environment? Bah! A man may be a bohemian and an artist although his occupations are commercial?"

"Perfectly! I nearly pined amid commercial occupations myself."

"What an extraordinary coincidence! Ah, that is the last bond between us! You can realise my most complex moods, you can penetrate to the most distant suburbs of my soul! Gustave, if I had been free to choose my career, I should have become a famous man." "My poor Adolphe! Still, prosperity is not an unmixed evil. You must seek compensation in your wealth," murmured the poet, who began to think that one might pay too high a price for a bed.

"Oh—er—to be sure!" said the little clerk, reminded that he was pledged to a larger outlay than he had originally proposed. "That is to say, I am not precisely 'wealthy.'" He saw his pocket-money during the trip much curtailed, and rather wished that his impulse had been less expansive.

"A snug income is no stigma, whether one derives it from Parnassus or the Bourse," continued Tricotrin. "Hold! Who is that I see, slouching over there? As I live, it's Pitou, the composer, whose dilemma I told you of!"

"Another?" quavered the clerk, dismayed.

"Hé, Nicolas! Turn your symphonic gaze this way! 'Tis I, Gustave!"

"Ah, mon vieux!" exclaimed the young musician joyfully; "I was wondering what your fate might be. I have only just come from the house. Madame Dubois refused me admission; she informed me that you had been firing Spanish novels at Gouge's head. Why Spanish? Is the Spanish variety deadlier? So the villain has had the effrontery to turn us out?"

"Let me make your affinities known to each other," said Tricotrin. "My brother Nicolas—my brother Adolphe. Brother Adolphe has received a scenario of the tragedy already, and he has a knack of inventing brilliant 'curtains.'"

Behind Pitou's back he winked at Petitpas, as if to say, "He little suspects what a surprise you have in store for him!"

"Oh—er—I am grieved to hear of your trouble, monsieur Pitou," said
Petitpas feebly.

"What? 'Grieved'? Come, that isn't all about it!" cried Tricotrin, who attributed his restraint to nothing but diffidence. In an undertone he added, "Don't be nervous, dear boy. Your invitation won't offend him in the least!"

Petitpas breathed heavily. He aspired to prove himself a true bohemian, but his heart quailed at the thought of such expense. Two suppers, two beds, and two little breakfasts as a supplement to his bill would be no joke. It was with a very poor grace that he stammered at last, "I hope you will allow me to suggest a way out, monsieur Pitou? A room at my hotel seems to dispose of the difficulty."

"Hem?" exclaimed Pitou. "Is that room a mirage, or are you serious?"

"'Serious'?" echoed Tricotrin. "He is as serious as an English adaptation of a French farce." He went on, under his breath, "You mustn't judge him by his manner, I can see that he has turned a little shy. Believe me, he is the King of Trumps."

"Well, upon my word I shall be delighted, monsieur," responded Pitou.
"It was evidently the good kind fairies that led me to the place
Dancourt. I would ask you to step over the way and have a bock, but my
finances forbid."

"Your finances need cause no drought—Adolphe will be paymaster!" declared Tricotrin gaily, shouldering his manuscript. "Come, let us adjourn and give the Réveillon its due!"

Petitpas suppressed a moan. "By all means," he assented; "I was about to propose it myself. I am a real bohemian, you know, and think nothing of ordering several bocks at once."

"Are you sure he is all you say?" whispered Pitou to Tricotrin, with misgiving.

"A shade embarrassed, that is all," pronounced the poet. And then, as the trio moved arm-in-arm toward the café, a second solitary figure emerged from the obscurity of the square.

"Bless my soul!" ejaculated Tricotrin; "am I mistaken, or—Look, look, Adolphe! I would bet ten to one in sonnets that it is Goujaud, the painter, whose plight I mentioned to you!"

"Yet another?" gasped Petitpas, panic-stricken.

"Sst! Hé, Goujaud! Come here, you vagrant, and be entertaining!"

"Well met, you fellows!" sighed Goujaud. "Where are you off to?"

"We are going to give Miranda a drink," said the poet; "she is drier than ever. Let there be no strangers—my brother Adolphe, my brother Théodose! What is your secret woe, Théo? Your face is as long as this Spaniard's novel, Adolphe, have you a recipe in your pocket for the hump?"

"Perhaps monsieur Goujaud will join us in a glass of beer?" said
Petitpas very coldly.

"There are more unlikely things than that!" affirmed the painter; and when the café was entered, he swallowed his bock like one who has a void to fill. "The fact is," he confided to the group, "I was about to celebrate the Réveillon on a bench. That insolent landlord of mine has kicked me out."

"And you will not get inside," said Tricotrin, "'not you, nor I, nor any other of your vagabond friends. So there!' I had the privilege of conversing with your concierge earlier in the evening."

"Ah, then, you know all about it. Well, now that I have run across you, you can give me a shakedown in your attic. Good business!"

"I discern only one drawback to the scheme," said Pitou; "we haven't any attic. It must be something in the air—all the landlords seem to have the same complaint."

"But if you decide in the bench's favour, after all, you may pillow your curls on Miranda," put in Tricotrin. "She would be exhilarating company for him, Adolphe, hein? What do you think?" He murmured aside, "Give him a dig in the ribs and say, 'You silly ass, I can fix you up all right!' That's the way we issue invitations in Montmartre."

The clerk's countenance was livid; his tongue stuck to his front teeth. At last, wrenching the words out, he groaned, "If monsieur Goujaud will accept my hospitality, I shall be charmed!" He was not without a hope that his frigid bearing would beget a refusal.

"Ah, my dear old chap!" shouted Goujaud without an instant's hesitation, "consider it done!" And now there were to be three suppers, three beds, and three little breakfasts, distorting the account!

Petitpas sipped his bock faintly, affecting not to notice that his guests' glasses had been emptied. With all his soul he repented the impulse that had led to his predicament. Amid the throes of his mental arithmetic he recognised that he had been deceived in himself, that he had no abiding passion for bohemia. How much more pleasing than to board and lodge this disreputable collection would have been the daily round of amusements that he had planned! Even now—he caught his breath—even now it was not too late; he might pay for the drinks and escape! Why shouldn't he run away?

"Gentlemen," cried Petitpas, "I shall go and fetch a cab for us all.
Make yourselves comfortable till I come back!"

When the café closed, messieurs Tricotrin, Goujaud, and Pitou crept forlornly across the square and disposed themselves for slumber on the bench.

"Well, there is this to be said," yawned the poet, "if the little bounder had kept his word, it would have been an extraordinary conclusion to our adventures—as persons of literary discretion, we can hardly regret that a story did not end so improbably…. My children, Miranda, good-night—and a Merry Christmas!"