Paris in the Twentieth Century Page 6

  "It does you credit, " Quinsonnas continued. "You are an honest man—a thief would never have let himself be caught. Such is my opinion. "

  Michel stared hard at his interlocutor—was he being teased? The bookkeeper's tremendously serious countenance permitted no such supposition. "I await your orders, " Michel said.

  "And I yours. "

  "What is it that I am to do?"

  "Just this: dictate to me, in a slow, clear voice, the various quotations from the papers which I am to transfer into the Ledger. Mind what you are about! Speak emphatically, and breathe deeply. There must be no errors—one erasure and I am dismissed. "

  There were no further preliminaries, and the work began.

  Quinsonnas was a young man of thirty who by dint of his serious expression might pass for forty. Yet attentive scrutiny might ultimately discern, beneath that ominous gravity, a good deal of secret joviality and a dash of diabolic wit. Michel, after three days, began to notice something of the kind.

  Yet the bookkeeper's reputation for simplicity, not to say stupidity, was celebrated throughout the offices; stories were told about him that would have made the Calinos[16] of the period turn pale! Nonetheless, his splendid calligraphy and his exactitude were indisputable virtues; it was on account of the latter, thanks to his proverbial obtuseness, that he had escaped the two tasks so burdensome for a clerk: jury duty and National Guard service (these two great institutions were still functioning in the year of grace 1960).

  Here are the circumstances in which Quinsonnas was removed from the lists of the former and the roll books of the latter. About a year earlier, fate had placed his name in the jury pool; the case was an extremely serious one in the Assize Court and particularly long as well; it had already lasted some eight days, and only now was there some hope of bringing it to an end; the last witnesses were being questioned, but Quinsonnas had not been taken into consideration. In the middle of the session, he stood up and asked the presiding magistrate if the defendant might be asked one question. Permission was granted, the question was asked, and the defendant provided an answer.

  "In that case, " said Quinsonnas, very loudly, "it is plain that the defendant is not guilty. " The effect can be imagined! It is forbidden for any member of the jury to express an opinion during the course of the interrogation, on pain of mistrial! Quinsonnas's blunder thus extended the case to yet another session! And everything had to be started all over again; and since the incorrigible juror, involuntarily or else naively repeated the error, no verdict could be reached!

  What could anyone say to the unfortunate Quinsonnas? He was evidently speaking out despite himself, in the heat of the interrogation; his thoughts got the best of him. It was an infirmity, but finally, since Justice had to proceed on its course, he was permanently excused from the jury lists.

  The National Guard was another matter. The first time Quinsonnas was assigned to sentry duty at the gates of his municipal district, he took his duties seriously; he stood at attention before his box, his rifle loaded, his finger on the trigger, ready to fire as if the enemy was about to appear around the corner. Naturally some people stared at this zealous sentry—more than a few, in fact; several innocent bystanders smiled. This was not to the fierce National Guardsman's liking. He arrested one, then two, then three of these idlers; at the end of his two hours on duty, he had filled the post. His actions nearly caused a riot.

  What could be said? Quinsonnas was quite within his rights; he claimed to have been insulted while under arms! The religion of the flag was on his side, and the incident was inevitably repeated during his next session on duty, and since neither his zeal nor his susceptibility, both quite honorable, after all, could be moderated, he was removed from the military roles.

  Quinsonnas may well have passed for an imbecile, yet in this fashion he had managed to avoid both jury duty and National Guard service. Released from these two social burdens, Quinsonnas became a model bookkeeper.

  For a month, Michel dictated according to the regulations. His work was easy enough, but it left him not a moment's freedom; Quinsonnas wrote, sometimes shooting a remarkably sharp glance at young Dufrénoy when the latter began declaiming the Ledger's articles in emotional accents.

  "What an odd chap, " he mused; "yet he seems born for better things! I wonder why he's been put here, being Boutardin's nephew and all? Could it be to take my place? Impossible—he writes like the cook's cat! Maybe he's really just the simpleton he seems. I must get to the bottom of this!"

  For his part, Michel indulged in identical reflections: "This Quinsonnas must be playing a double game. Obviously he's born for better things than making those F's or those M's. There are times when I can actually hear him laughing to himself! What's he thinking about?"

  Thus these two comrades of the Ledger observed each other; they did so with a clear, frank gaze on either side, thereby generating a communicative spark. Such a situation could not continue without some consequence. Quinsonnas was dying to ask questions, and Michel to answer them, and one fine day, without knowing why, in an expansive mood, Michel was led to tell his life story; he did so excitedly, his words full of feelings that had been repressed too long. Quinsonnas was very likely moved, for he squeezed his young companion's hand. "But your father?" he asked.

  "Was a musician. "

  "A musician—was he that Dufrénoy whose last works are among the finest things in modern music?"

  "That was certainly my father. "

  "A man of genius!" Quinsonnas exclaimed, "a poor man and little known, my dear boy, yet he was my own master!"

  "Your master!" Michel gaped.

  "Yes, mine!" exclaimed Quinsonnas, brandishing his pen, "to the devil with scruples! Io son pittore! I am a musician!"

  "You're an artist!"

  "Yes, but not so loud! I'll get myself thanked for it, " Quinsonnas whispered, quelling the young man's gestures of surprise and delight.

  "But..."

  "Here I'm a bookkeeper; the copyist feeds the musician, until..." Here he broke off, staring hard at Michel.

  "Until..."

  "Until the moment I've discovered some practical notion!"

  "In industry!" Michel replied, disappointed.

  "No, my boy, " Quinsonnas replied in a fatherly tone, "in music. "

  "In music?"

  "Silence! Don't question me, it's a secret. I'm going to astound the age. Don't laugh! Laughter is punishable by death these days; our contemporaries are serious to the end of time."

  "Astound the age, " the young man repeated quite mechanically.

  "That's my motto, " Quinsonnas answered. "Astound, since I can no longer beguile. Like you, I was born a century too late; and you must do as I do, work! Earn your bread, since all of us must achieve that ignoble thing: digestion! I'll teach you something about life, if you're willing to learn; for fifteen years I've been feeding my poor self quite meagerly, and it's taken strong teeth to chew what fate has put in my mouth! But finally, with a strong pair of jaws, you can get the best of fate! Luckily I fell into a job, of sorts; I have a good hand, as they say. Lord! If I were to lose an arm, what would I do? No piano—no Ledger either! Bah, in time I could learn to play with my feet! I've thought about it. Certainly that's one thing that would astound the age..."

  Michel couldn't keep from laughing.

  "Don't laugh, wretch, it's forbidden chez Casmodage! Look, I have a face that can break stones and an expression that would freeze the Tuileries pond in midsummer. I suppose you've heard how some American philanthropists thought up the idea of throwing their prisoners into round cells so as to deny them even the distraction of corners? Well, my boy, this society of ours is as round as those American jails! A man can gloom away his whole life—"

  "But, Monsieur, " Michel interrupted, "it seems to me there's something cheerful about you—"

  "Not here! Once I'm home, that's different. You come and see me! I'll play you some music—real music! The old kind!"

  "Whenever you
like, " Michel answered, delighted. "But I'd have to get some time off..."

  "Fine! I'll say you need dictation lessons. But no more of these subversive conversations here! I'm a cog, you're a cog! Let's do our cog work and get back to the litanies of Holy Accountancy!" "Petty Cash, " Michel intoned. "Petty Cash, " Quinsonnas repeated. And their labor began again. From this day on, young Dufrénoy's existence was noticeably altered; he had a friend; he talked; he could be understood, happy as a mute who has regained the use of his tongue. The

  Ledger's summits no longer seemed deserted peaks, and he had no difficulty breathing at such altitudes. Soon the two comrades indulged in the most intimate forms of address.

  Quinsonnas shared with Michel all the acquisitions of his experience, and Michel, during his sleepless nights, brooded upon the disappointments of this world; each morning he returned to the offices inflamed by his thoughts of the night before and poured out his thoughts to the musician, who failed to keep him silent. Soon the Ledger was no longer under discussion. "You're going to make us commit some terrible error, " Quinsonnas kept saying, "and we'll be thrown out!"

  "But I have to talk, " Michel answered.

  "All right, " Quinsonnas said to him one day, "you come and have dinner at my place tonight, with my friend Jacques Aubanet. "

  "At your place! But we have to get permission..."

  "I've got it. Where were we?"

  "Liquidations, " Michel intoned.

  "Liquidations, " Quinsonnas repeated.

  Chapter VII: Three Drones

  As soon as the bank closed, the two friends headed for Quinsonnas's residence, in the Rue Grange-aux-Belles; they walked arm in arm, Michel exulting in his freedom, his steps those of a conqueror.

  It is a good distance from Casmodage and Co. to the Rue Grange-aux-Belles; but lodgings were hard to find in a capital too small for its five million inhabitants; enlarging public squares, opening avenues, and multiplying boulevards threatened to leave little room for private dwellings. Which justified this bromide of the period: in Paris there are no longer houses, only streets!

  Some neighborhoods offered no lodging whatever to inhabitants of the capital, specifically the Ile de la Cité, where there was room only for the Bureau of Commerce, the Palace of Justice, the Prefecture of Police, the cathedral, the morgue—in other words, the means of being declared bankrupt, guilty, jailed, buried, and even rescued. Public buildings had driven out houses.

  That accounted for the high cost of present-day lodgings; the Imperial Real Estate Corporation was gradually seizing all of Paris, in collusion with the government-controlled Building Company, and yielded magnificent dividends. This corporation, founded by two skillful financiers of the nineteenth century, the brothers Péreire, now also owned many of the chief cities of France, Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Nantes, Strasbourg, Lille, which it had gradually rebuilt. Its shares, which had split five times, were still quoted on the Bourse at 4, 450 francs.

  Poorer people reluctant to live far from the center of town therefore had to live high up; what they gained in proximity they lost in elevation—a matter of fatigue, henceforth, and not of time.

  Quinsonnas lived in a twelfth-floor walk-up, an old apartment house which would have been greatly improved by elevator service. But once he was at home, the musician found himself no worse for wear.

  When they reached the Rue Grange-aux-Belles, he dashed up the huge spiral staircase. "Don't think about it—just keep climbing, " he panted to Michel, who was following just behind him. "We'll get there eventually—nothing is eternal in this world, not even stairs. There!" he gasped, flinging open his door after a breathtaking ascent.

  He pushed the young man into his "apartments, " a single room some fourteen meters square. "No vestibule!" he observed. "That's for people who want to keep other people waiting, and since most visitors and salespeople seem a good deal less eager to climb twelve flights than to walk down them, I do without; I've also done without a living room, which would have made the lack of a dining room too obvious. "

  "It looks fine to me, " said Michel, once he had caught his breath.

  "At least the air is as fresh as the ammonia of Paris mud permits. "

  "It only seems small at first glance, " said Michel.

  "And at second, but it'll do. "

  "Besides, it's so well arranged, " Michel continued, laughing.

  "Well now, you old darling, " Quinsonnas remarked to an elderly woman who came in just then, "is dinner on the way? We'll be three starving guests tonight. "

  "On its way, Monsieur Quinsonnas, " replied the crone, "but you know I couldn't set the table—there is no table!"

  "We'll do without, " Michel exclaimed, rather enjoying the prospect of dining on his lap.

  "What do you mean, we'll do without!" interjected Quinsonnas. "Can you suppose I'd invite friends to dinner without having a table to serve it on?"

  "I don't see...," began Michel, glancing dubiously around the room, which indeed contained neither table, nor bed, nor armoire, nor commode, nor chair. Not one piece of furniture, except for a good- sized piano.

  "You don't see...," repeated Quinsonnas. "Well now! What about industry, that kind mother, and mechanics, that fine young lady, are you forgetting them? Here is the table as requested. " With these words he went over to the piano, pressed a button, and there sprang forth—no other words were adequate to the occasion—a table fitted with benches at which three guests could sit with plenty of room.

  "Very ingenious, " Michel observed.

  "Necessity is our mother, " the pianist replied, "since the exiguity of the apartments no longer permitted furniture! Have a look at this complex instrument, an amalgamation of Érard and Jeanselme[17]! It fills every need, takes up no room at all, and I can assure you that the piano itself is none the worse for it. "

  At this moment the doorbell rang. Quinsonnas opened the door and announced his friend Jacques Aubanet, an employee of the General Corporation of Maritime Mines. Michel and Jacques were introduced to each other in the simplest manner possible.

  Jacques Aubanet, a handsome young man of twenty-five, was a close friend of Quinsonnas, and like him reduced in circumstances. Michel had no idea what kind of work the employees of the Corporation of Maritime Mines might do; certainly Jacques brought with him a remarkable appetite.

  Fortunately dinner was ready; the three young men devoured: after the initial moments of this struggle with comestibles, a few words managed to make their way through the less expeditive mouthfuls. "My dear Jacques, " Quinsonnas observed, "by introducing you to Michel Dufrénoy I allowed you to make the acquaintance of a young friend who is one of us— one of those poor devils Society refuses to employ according to their talents, one of those drones whose useless mouths Society padlocks in order not to have to feed!"

  "Ah! Monsieur Dufrénoy is a dreamer, " Jacques replied.

  "A poet, my friend! and I wonder what in the world he can be doing here in Paris, where a man's first duty is to make money!"

  "Obviously enough, " Jacques replied, "he's landed on the wrong planet. "

  "My friends, " said Michel, "you're anything but encouraging, but I shall take your exaggerations into account. "

  "This dear child, " Quinsonnas replied, "he hopes, he works, he loves good books, and when Hugo, Musset, and Lamartine are no longer read, he hopes someone will still read him! But what have you done, wretch that you are—have you invented a utilitarian poetry, a literature to replace compressed air or power brakes? No? Well then! Gnaw your own vitals, my son! If you don't have something sensational to tell, who will listen to you? Art is no longer possible unless it produces a tour de force! These days, Hugo would have to recite his Orientates straddling two circus horses, and Lamartine would perform his Harmonies upside down from a trapeze!"

  "Nonsense, " exclaimed Michel, leaping up in indignation.

  "Calm down, child, " the pianist replied. "Just ask Jacques whether I'm right or not. "

  "A hundred tim
es over, " Jacques opined. "This world is nothing more than a market, an immense fairground, and you must entertain your clients with the talents of a mountebank. "

  "Poor Michel, " Quinsonnas continued with a sigh, "his Latin verse prize will turn his head!"

  "What will you prove by that?" demanded the young man.

  "Nothing, my son! After all, you're following your destiny. You're a great poet! I've seen some of your works; only you'll allow me to remark that they're hardly suited to the taste of the age. "

  "Which means?"

  "Which means that you deal with poetical subjects, and nowadays that's a poetical fault! You sing of mountains and valleys, fields and clouds, love and the stars—all those worn-out things no one wants anymore!"

  "Then what should I sing?"

  "Your verses must celebrate the wonders of industry!"

  "Never!" Michel exclaimed.

  "Well put, " Jacques observed.

  "For instance, " Quinsonnas continued, "have you heard the ode that was given first prize by the forty de Broglies cluttering up the Académie-Française?" "No!"

  "Well then, listen and learn. Here are the two last stanzas:

  And coal was shoveled into blazing fires:

  Through glowing tubes the pressure it requires

  Is driven to the monster's heart; it pumps

  In pulsing fury and in frenzy thumps

  Till, bellowing, it emulates the forces

  of eighty horses!

  Now with his heavy bars, the engineer

  Opens the valves! Within the cylinder

  The double piston runs! The wheel has slipped

  Its cog! The roaring engine's speed is up!

  The whistle blows!... Hail to the Crampton System:

  the locomotive runs!

  "Dreadful!" Michel exclaimed.

  "Some nice rhymes, " Jacques observed.

  "There you are, my boy, " continued the pitiless Quinsonnas. "May heaven keep you from being forced to live by your talent! Better follow the example of those of us who recognize the present state of affairs for what it is, at least until better days. "