Part 5 (2/2)
Byron.
We have camped together for the whole of ten years. We have stuck to each other in both joy and sorrow; honestly we have shared good and evil.
When I am happy he is also happy; he does not for a moment consider if he has any personal reason to cheer up; he doesn't ask for any explanations; he only thinks of partaking in my pleasure--only a glance, a nod, or a single friendly word is enough for him, and his whole honest face lights up with my joy. And when I am depressed and miserable, he then sits so sorrowfully by my side. He does not try to console me, for he knows how little words of pity avail; he says nothing, for he knows that silence is a comfort when one is sad. He only looks steadfastly at me, and maybe puts his big head on my knee. He knows that he cannot fathom what it is that worries me; that his poor, dark brain cannot follow me in all I am thinking about; but his faithful heart anyhow wants to claim his share of my burden.
Others think I am quick-tempered and angry, and pay me back in the same way; his patient indulgence knows how to forgive everything; his friends.h.i.+p stands the trial against all injustice. Am I nervous and hard on him when I leave him, he rewards evil with good and comes just as friendly and caressingly to meet me when I come back. Others sit in judgment over my many faults, and have only words of blame for whatever I take in hand; he tries with loving eagerness to find out the least ugly side of everything; he refuses to believe me capable of anything wrong. When I defend a cause, I am too often considered to be in the wrong; but he thinks always as I do. In the moment of adversity no friends are to be found; he is always at my side ready to defend me against any peril, happy, if required, to give his life for mine.
He never complains; he is always satisfied, however uncomfortable he is, if only he may be allowed to be with me. He can sit for hours out in the street waiting patiently, in cold and rain, whilst I am visiting some of my acquaintances where he is not received. Is there no room in the carriage when I drive, he runs just as cheerfully behind me; he is even delighted when I am driving; he is proud of me; he thinks it looks grand. Do I go out in my boat, without hesitation he jumps in the water after me; he swims as long as he has any breath left, and when his strength begins to give out, with a last effort he raises himself out of the water to look after the boat, but to return to the sh.o.r.e he never dreams of. When I travel by train, he sits, without complaining, cramped up in his little compartment for however long it may be, without a sc.r.a.p of comfort, with the sharp wind blowing straight through, sore in all his bones with the continual shaking, softened by no springs, black in his face as a sweep from the smoke of the engine. And anyhow, whenever the train stops, he shouts out cheerfully that he is there, and all well on board. Have I time to run forward and look at him, he peeps out patiently and contentedly through his little barred window, and presses his dry nose against my hand--never a hint that he is aware how uncomfortable he is, compared to me in my luxurious wagon-lit; never the slightest complaint against the railway company who has done so surprisingly little for travellers of his cla.s.s.
But if he, out of delicacy for me, has never wanted to make any complaint, I do not see why I should be kept back from doing so by any such consideration. And I may as well tell you that I am thinking of getting up a pet.i.tion to protest against _the unfair distribution of comfort for railway travellers_. I have been inquiring about it for the many years I have knocked about on the railways of all nations, and I am pretty sure that I may count upon a great number of signatures from travellers concerned. Man, who always takes the best of everything, and thinks of n.o.body but himself, has also succeeded in securing all sorts of advantages from the railway companies--advantages which exclusively benefit him, but which are a crying injustice towards other travellers, who have also paid for their tickets, and consequently have a right, even they, to claim the fulfilment of the obligations which the railway company has accepted towards them. If I am waked up in the night in my comfortable berth by the heating apparatus having gone wrong, and find the compartment cold, I have only to complain to the conductor; but I have innumerable times heard loud complaints from the dog-compartments about the ice-cold night-wind blowing straight through them, and I have never noticed any one pay the slightest attention to this. If my neighbour lights a cigar, and having blown a cloud of smoke in my face, asks me if I object to his smoking, although it is not a smoking compartment, I have only to answer ”Yes,” to get rid of the smoke; but who has ever asked the dogs if they object to the thick fumes of coal which the engine puffs in their faces the whole time, where the poor fellows sit in the front van?
All trains stop at certain places for refreshment, and we have only to run into the buffet to eat our fill; but is there any one who knows how difficult it is to get a little food and a drink of water for a travelling dog? The minutes are counted, and you are served in turn as you come to the buffet, you believe. No, not in the very least, the dogs are always skipped over, even if they have their money lying ready before them on the table; and as often as not, when their turn comes the bell rings, and the train is off. When I was in the first stage of my human knowledge--the Idealistic--I always asked for some food for my dog; that was no good, no waiter was kind enough to listen to that.
Later, when in the second stage--that of Vanis.h.i.+ng Illusions--I asked at once for a beefsteak for my dog; that was not much better, the chances of getting anything are very small. In the third stage--that of Hopeless Pessimism--I immediately ask for dinner for two, and turn two chairs at the _table d'hote_; Tappio disappears instantly under the table, and I hand down to him his portion as it is placed before his chair. I have acquired such a practice in this that n.o.body notices where the food goes, and silent as a ghost, Tappio swallows down both cutlets and pastry in one gulp--the only thing which has made him lose countenance has been the, in Italy, not uncommon practice of serving ice-cream, of the inconvenience of which, at railway dinners, I agree with him. I remember how once in Macon--the Paris-Turin night-train used to stop there for supper--we had as neighbours a peaceful family of bourgeois, the members of which, one after the other, dropped their knives and forks as the dinner proceeded, and stared at me and my rapidly vanis.h.i.+ng double portions with increasing amazement. At last a little old lady, who was of the party, exclaimed, quite aloud, ”_Voila un homme que je ne voudrais pas inviter a diner, il serait capable de manger les a.s.siettes aussi!_”
Yes, we have seen a good deal of the world; we have met many people on our way; our experience of life is large enough. There was a time when we were ambitious we also, very ambitious. We dreamt of prize medals and certificates for both of us, of Persian carpets under our feet, and of roasted ortolans flying straight into our mouths. That time is past, one of us is already gray, but no roasted ortolans have flown into our mouths, nor any Persian carpets spread themselves under our feet. And when the floor feels too cold, I lay down my cloak for my comrade to lie upon. And we begin to realise what man is worth. We used to be idealists because we believed that others were idealists. We were gentle and harmless as lambs because we believed that others were so. We were philanthropists. But we have discovered that we were mistaken. Men are not at all kind to each other. They talk so much about friends.h.i.+p, but there are only very few of them who are capable of realising the true signification of this word.
But, to be sure, they laugh if one gives to a dog's faithful devotion the name of friends.h.i.+p, if with thankful recognition one strives to repay as far as lies in one's power the humble comrade whom they call but a soulless animal, whose fine, sensitive thought they call instinct, and for whose honest, n.o.ble soul they deny all right to live any longer than his faithful dog-heart beats.
If this be not virtue, this all-sacrificing, all-self-denying, all-injustice-forgetting love,--well, then, I don't know what virtue means; and should his only reward for a whole life's faithful devotion consist in being shot in his old age and buried under a tree in the park at home, then all I can say is, that I do not believe that we either will get beyond the grave where our remains will one day be laid.
MONSIEUR ALFREDO
I do not in the least know how I happened to come upon the modest little cafe, nor do I know how it came to pa.s.s that during the whole of that year I frequented no other.
I wonder whether it was not on account of Monsieur Alfredo that I became an habitue there.
He evidently had his luncheon later than I, as I had already had time to smoke a couple of cigarettes before he made his appearance at the Cafe de l'Empereur, upright and trim in his tightly-b.u.t.toned frock-coat, a roll of ma.n.u.script under his arm, and his gray hair in neat curls surrounding his wrinkled, childlike face. The waiter brought him his little cup of coffee and placed the chess-board between us. Monsieur Alfredo, with old-fas.h.i.+oned courtesy, inquired after my health, and I on my side received satisfactory a.s.surances as to his well-being. I busied myself in placing the chess-men, and whilst I groped under the table to find that p.a.w.n which somehow or other had always fallen to the ground, Monsieur Alfredo rapidly produced his lump of sugar out of his pocket and put it into his cup.
We always played two games. I am singularly unlucky in games, and the old man, who loved chess, beamed all over every time he checkmated me.
He played very slowly, but with amazing boldness, and even after having played with him every day for months together, I was still incapable of forming an opinion as to which of us played the worse. What puzzled me most of all was the fact that Monsieur Alfredo seldom or never played anything but kings and queens; occasionally, with reluctance, he would put the knights, castles, and bishops into requisition, but as to the p.a.w.ns, he appeared to ignore them altogether. I had never before seen anybody play in this way, and often enough had I to look very sharp to make sure of losing.
The conversation turned on literature, and above all, the theatre.
Monsieur Alfredo was extremely exacting as to dramatic art, and approved of no other form than the tragic. He was exceedingly difficult as to authors. I was just then full of Victor Hugo, but Monsieur Alfredo considered him much too sentimental. Racine and Corneille he thought better of, although he gave me to understand he considered them lacking in power. He despised comedy and refused point-blank to admit Scribe, Augier, Lab.i.+.c.he, or Dumas as celebrities. One only needed to mention the name of Offenbach or Lecocq to make the otherwise peaceful Monsieur Alfredo fall into a complete rage; he then burst forth into Italian, which he never spoke unless greatly excited; he denounced them as _Birbanti_, and _Avvelenatori_,[20]--they had with their music spread the poison which had killed the good taste of a whole generation, and they were, to a great extent, responsible for the downfall of tragedy in our days.
He seemed well informed in everything concerning the Paris theatres, and was evidently a frequent playgoer himself; I had once or twice hinted that we should go to the theatre together some evening, but had observed that Monsieur Alfredo never seemed willing to understand me.
As soon as we had finished our second game, Monsieur Alfredo produced four sous wrapped up in paper, called the waiter and asked what he had to pay, and laid his four sous on the table. The Cafe de l'Empereur was not a very expensive place, as you may perceive; on the Boulevard St.
Michel they charged you eight sous for a cup of coffee, here you only had to pay four if you took it without milk or sugar--Monsieur Alfredo had long ago confided to me his experience that sugar took away half the fragrance of coffee. I, who was not so particular, had both sugar and milk with my coffee, and cognac besides, but never once had I succeeded in getting Monsieur Alfredo to accept a gla.s.s from me. I had tried to tempt him with everything the Cafe de l'Empereur could offer, but the old gentleman had always declined courteously but firmly.
I knew that Monsieur Alfredo was an author, and that it was the ma.n.u.script of a five-act tragedy he carried under his arm. I have always admired authors and artists, and I tried my best to make him understand how flattered I felt by his society. I had long ago told him everything about myself and my affairs, but Monsieur Alfredo showed for a long while a singular reticence in all that concerned himself. Sometimes, on leaving the cafe together, I had tried to accompany him for a while, but, once in the streets, he always wished me good-bye, and I could easily see that I was not wanted. I had also expressed a wish to be allowed to call upon him, but had been given to understand that his time was very limited just then, and feeling sure that the tragedy was the cause of it all, I took good care not to disturb him.
<script>