Part 46 (1/2)
”Yes--don't you know Molino's--the large swimming-school by the Pont Neuf. It's a glorious morning for a plunge in the Seine.”
A plunge in the Seine! Now, given a warm bed, a chilly autumn morning, and a decided inclination to quote the words of the sluggard, and ”slumber again,” could any proposition be more inopportune, savage, and alarming? I shuddered; I protested; I resisted; but in vain.
”I shall be up again in less time than it will take you to tell your beads, _mon gaillard_” said Muller the ferocious, as, having captured my Napoleon, he prepared to go down and liquidate with number One Thousand and Eleven. ”And it's of no use to bolt me out, because I shall hammer away till you let me in, and that will wake your fellow-lodgers. So let me find you up, and ready for the fray.”
And then, execrating Muller, and Molino, and Molino's bath, and Molino's customers, and all Molino's ancestors from the period of the deluge downwards, I reluctantly complied.
The air was brisk, the sky cloudless, the sun coldly bright; and the city wore that strange, breathless, magical look so peculiar to Paris at early morning. The shops were closed; the pavements deserted; the busy thoroughfares silent as the avenues of Pere la Chaise. Yet how different from the early stillness of London! London, before the world is up and stirring, looks dead, and sullen, and melancholy; but Paris lies all beautiful, and bright, and mysterious, with a look as of dawning smiles upon her face; and we know that she will wake presently, like the Sleeping Beauty, to sudden joyousness and activity.
Our road lay for a little way along the Boulevards, then down the Rue Vivienne, and through the Palais Royal to the quays; but long ere we came within sight of the river this magical calm had begun to break up.
The shop-boys in the Palais Royal were already taking down the shutters--the great book-stall at the end of the Galerie Vitree showed signs of wakefulness; and in the Place du Louvre there was already a detachment of brisk little foot-soldiers at drill. By the time we had reached the open line of the quays, the first omnibuses were on the road; the water-carriers were driving their carts and blowing their shrill little bugles; the washer-women, hard at work in their gay, oriental-looking floating kiosques, were hammering away, mallet in hand, and chattering like millions of magpies; and the early matin-bell was ringing to prayers as we pa.s.sed the doors of St. Germain L'Auxerrois.
And now we were skirting the Quai de l'ecole, looking down upon the bath known in those days as Molino's--a hugh, floating quadrangular structure, surrounded by trellised arcades and rows of dressing-rooms, with a divan, a cafe restaurant, and a permanent corps of cooks and hair-dressers on the establishment. For your true Parisian has ever been wedded to his Seine, as the Venetian to his Adriatic; and the ecole de Natation was then, as now, a lounge, a reading-room, an adjunct of the clubs, and one of the great inst.i.tutions of the capital.
Some bathers, earlier than ourselves, were already sauntering about the galleries in every variety of undress, from the simple _calecon_ to the gaudiest version of Turkish robe and Algerian _kepi_. Some were smoking; some reading the morning papers; some chatting in little knots; but as yet, with the exception of two or three school-boys (called, in the _argot_ of the bath, _moutards_), there were no swimmers in the water.
With some of these loungers Muller exchanged a nod or a few words as we pa.s.sed along the platform; but shook hands cordially with a bronzed, stalwart man, dressed like a Venetian gondolier in the frontispiece to a popular ballad, with white trousers, blue jacket, anchor b.u.t.tons, red sash, gold ear-rings, and great silver buckles in his shoes. Muller introduced this romantic-looking person to me as ”Monsieur Barbet.”
”My friend, Monsieur Barbet,” said he, ”is the prince of swimming-masters. He is more at home in the water than on land, and knows more about swimming than a fish. He will calculate you the specific gravity of the heaviest German metaphysician at a glance, and is capable of floating even the works of Monsieur Thiers, if put to the test.”
”Monsieur can swim?” said the master, addressing me, with a nautical sc.r.a.pe.
”I think so,” I replied.
”Many gentlemen think so,” said Monsieur Barbet, ”till they find themselves in the water.”
”And many who wish to be thought accomplished swimmers never venture into it on that account,” added Muller. ”You would scarcely suppose,” he continued, turning to me, ”that there are men here--regular _habitues_ of the bath--who never go into the water, and yet give themselves all the airs of practised bathers. That tall man, for instance, with the black beard and striped _peignoir_, yonder--there's a fellow who comes once or twice a week all through the season, goes through the ceremony of undressing, smokes, gossips, criticises, is looked up to as an authority, and has never yet been seen off the platform. Then there's that bald man in the white robe--his name's Giroflet--a retired stockbroker. Well, that fellow robes himself like an ancient Roman, puts himself in cla.s.sical att.i.tudes, affects taciturnity, models himself upon Brutus, and all that sort of thing; but is as careful not to get his feet wet as a cat. Others, again, come simply to feed. The restaurant is one of the choicest in Paris, with this advantage over Vefour or the Trois Freres, that it is the only place where you may eat and drink of the best in hot weather, with nothing on but the briefest of _calecons_”
Thus chattering, Muller took me the tour of the bath, which now began to fill rapidly. We then took possession of two little dressing-rooms no bigger than sentry-boxes, and were presently in the water.
The scene now became very animated. Hundreds of eccentric figures crowded the galleries--some absurdly fat, some ludicrously thin; some old, some young; some bow-legged, some knock-kneed; some short, some tall; some brown, some yellow; some got up for effect in gorgeous wrappers; and all more or less hideous.
”An amusing sight, isn't it?” said Muller, as, having swum several times round the bath, we sat down for a few moments on one of the flights of steps leading down to the water.
”It is a sight to disgust one for ever with human-kind,” I replied.
”And to fill one with the profoundest respect for one's tailor. After all, it's broad-cloth makes the man.”
”But these are not men--they are caricatures.”
”Every man is a caricature of himself when you strip him,” said Muller, epigrammatically. ”Look at that scarecrow just opposite. He pa.s.ses for an Adonis, _de par le monde_.”
I looked and recognised the Count de Rivarol, a tall young man, an _elegant_ of the first water, a curled darling of society, a professed lady-killer, whom I had met many a time in attendance on Madame de Marignan. He now looked like a monkey:--
.... ”long, and lank and brown, As in the ribb'd sea sand!”
”Gracious heavens!” I exclaimed, ”what would become of the world, if clothes went out of fas.h.i.+on?”
”Humph!--one half of us, my dear fellow, would commit suicide.”