the ribs; and all of them called him “brigand,” “assassin,” “rioter.” With his breast bare, and his clothes in rags, he protested that he was innocent; he could not, in cold blood, look at a child receiving a beating.
“My name is Dussardier. I’m employed at Messieurs Valincart Brothers’ lace and fancy warehouse, in the Rue de Cléry. Where’s my case? I want my case!”
He kept repeating:
“Dussardier, Rue de Cléry. My case!”
However, he became quiet, and, with a stoical air, allowed himself to be led towards the guard-house in the Rue Descartes. A flood of people came rushing after him. Frederick and the young man with the moustaches walked immediately behind, full of admiration for the shopman, and indignant at the violence of power.
As they advanced, the crowd became less thick.
The policemen from time to time turned round, with threatening looks; and the rowdies, no longer having anything to do, and the spectators not having anything to look at, all drifted away by degrees. The passers-by, who met the procession, as they came along, stared at Dussardier, and in loud tones, gave vent to abusive remarks about him. One old woman, at her own door, bawled out that he had stolen a loaf of bread from her. This unjust accusation increased the wrath of the two friends. At length, they reached the guard-house. Only about twenty persons were now left in the attenuated crowd, and the sight of the soldiers was enough to disperse them.
Frederick and his companion boldly asked to have the man who had just been imprisoned delivered up. The sentinel threatened, if they persisted, to ram them into jail too. They said they required to see the commander of the guard-house, and stated their names, and the fact that they were law-students, declaring that the prisoner was one also.
They were ushered into a room perfectly bare, in which, amid an atmosphere of smoke, four benches might be seen lining the roughly-plastered walls. At the lower end there was an open wicket. Then appeared the sturdy face of Dussardier, who, with his hair all tousled, his honest little eyes, and his broad snout, suggested to one’s mind in a confused sort of way the physiognomy of a good dog.
“Don’t you recognise us?” said Hussonnet.
This was the name of the young man with the moustaches.
“Why — — ” stammered Dussardier.
“Don’t play the fool any further,” returned the other. “We know that you are, just like ourselves, a law-student.”
In spite of their winks, Dussardier failed to understand. He appeared to be collecting his thoughts; then, suddenly:
“Has my case been found?”
Frederick raised his eyes, feeling much discouraged.
Hussonnet, however, said promptly:
“Ha! your case, in which you keep your notes of lectures? Yes, yes, make your mind easy about it!”
They made further pantomimic signs with redoubled energy, till Dussardier at last realised that they had come to help him; and he held his tongue, fearing that he might compromise them. Besides, he experienced a kind of shamefacedness at seeing himself raised to the social rank of student, and to an equality with those young men who had such white hands.
“Do you wish to send any message to anyone?” asked Frederick.
“No, thanks, to nobody.”
“But your family?”
He lowered his head without replying; the poor fellow was a bastard. The two friends stood quite astonished at his silence.
“Have you anything to smoke?” was Frederick’s next question.
He felt about, then drew forth from the depths of one of his pockets the remains of a pipe — a beautiful pipe, made of white talc with a shank of blackwood, a silver cover, and an amber mouthpiece.
For the last three years he had been engaged in completing this masterpiece. He had been careful to keep the bowl of it constantly thrust into a kind of sheath of chamois, to smoke it as slowly as possible, without ever letting it lie on any cold stone substance, and to hang it up every evening over the head of his bed. And now he shook out the fragments of it into his hand, the nails of which were covered with blood, and with his chin sunk on his chest, his pupils fixed and dilated, he contemplated this wreck of the thing that had yielded him such delight with a glance of unutterable sadness.
“Suppose we give him some cigars, eh?” said Hussonnet in a whisper, making a gesture as if he were reaching them out.
Frederick had already laid down a cigar-holder, filled, on the edge of the wicket.
“Pray take this. Goodbye! Cheer up!”
Dussardier flung himself on the two hands that were held out towards him. He pressed them frantically, his voice choked with sobs.
“What? For me! — for me!”
The two friends tore themselves away from the effusive display of gratitude which he made, and went off to lunch together at the Café Tabourey, in front of the Luxembourg.
While cutting up the beefsteak, Hussonnet informed his companion that he did work for the fashion journals, and manufactured catchwords for L’Art Industriel.
“At Jacques Arnoux’s establishment?” said Frederick.
“Do you know him?”
“Yes! — no! — that is to say, I have seen him — I have met him.”
He carelessly asked Hussonnet if he sometimes saw Arnoux’s wife.
“From time to time,” the Bohemian replied.
Frederick did not venture to follow up his enquiries. This man henceforth would fill up a large space in his life. He paid the lunch-bill without any protest on the other’s part.
There was a bond of mutual sympathy between them; they gave one another their respective addresses, and Hussonnet cordially invited Frederick to accompany him to the Rue de Fleurus.
They had reached the middle of the garden, when Arnoux’s clerk, holding his breath, twisted his features into a hideous grimace, and began to crow like a cock. Thereupon all the cocks in the vicinity responded with prolonged “cock-a-doodle-doos.”
“It is a signal,” explained Hussonnet.
They stopped close to the Théàtre Bobino, in front of a house to which they had to find their way through an alley. In the skylight of a garret, between the nasturtiums and the sweet peas, a young woman showed herself, bareheaded, in her stays, her two arms resting on the edge of the roof-gutter.
“Good-morrow, my angel! good-morrow, ducky!” said Hussonnet, sending her kisses.
He made the barrier fly open with a kick, and disappeared.
Frederick waited for him all the week. He did not venture to call at Hussonnet’s residence, lest it might look as if he were in a hurry to get a lunch in return for the one he had paid for. But he sought the clerk all over the Latin Quarter. He came across
