“Well,” continued old Mouton, punctuating his remarks by bringing his fist down on the table with a bang that set all the glasses and pint-pots trembling. “Well, I take a look at the papers. Good! What do I find? One says ‘white’ and another ‘black.’ Fiddle-diddle! What is that to me? I am a sober father of a family, coming here for——”
“A game of dominoes.”
“Every evening. Very well. Now, suppose, for the sake of saying something—you understand?”
“Very well,” said Rodolphe.
“I read an article that I don’t agree with. That puts me in a fury; I get all of a fluster, because, look you, the newspapers are full of lies from beginning to end. Yes, lies!” shrieked he in the shrillest, squeakiest notes of his squeaky voice, “and journalists are bandits, a set of paltry scriveners!”
“Still, M. Mouton——”
“Aye, bandits! They are at the bottom of everybody’s troubles; they got up the Revolution and the assignats. Murat, now; there’s proof for you.”
“I beg your pardon,” put in Rodolphe, “you mean Marat.”
“No, no, not at all. I mean Murat, for I saw his funeral myself as a boy——”
“I assure you——”
“The same that they made a play about at the Cirque. So there!”
“Well, well, just so. Murat it is.”
“Why, what have I been telling you this hour past?” cried the persistent Mouton. “Murat that used to write in a cellar, eh? Well, suppose now—weren’t the Bourbons in the right of it to guillotine him when he was playing them false?”
“Guillotine him? Who? Played them false—what!” exclaimed Rodolphe, buttonholing M. Mouton in his turn.
“Oh, well, Marat.”
“No, no, not at all, M. Mouton. You mean Murat! Hang it all! Let us know what we are talking about.”
“Certainly. Marat, and a low scoundrel he was. Betrayed the Emperor in 1815. That is what makes me say that all newspapers are alike,” added M. Mouton, returning to the theme which he had quitted for what he called an explanation. “For my own part, do you know what I should like, M. Rodolphe? Well, let us suppose now—I should like a good newspaper. Oh, not a big one. Good. No set phrases—that’s it!”
“You are very hard to please,” put in Rodolphe. “A newspaper without set phrases!”
“Well, yes; are you following my idea?”
“I am trying to.”
“A newspaper that just lets you know how the King is and about the crops. For after all, what is the good of all your gazettes, when nobody can make anything out of them? Suppose now that I am in the mayor’s office, am I not? I am registrar. Good! Well, it is as if people came and said to me, ‘M. Mouton, you register deaths; very well, do this and do that.’ Very well; what this, eh? and that, eh? Well, and it is the same thing with the newspapers,” he concluded.
“Evidently,” put in a neighbour, who had understood him. And M. Mouton went back to his game of dominoes amid the congratulations of those who shared his opinions.
“I have put him in his place,” he remarked, indicating Rodolphe, who had gone to join Schaunard and Colline at their table.
“What a dolt!” said Colline, glancing across at the registrar.
“He has a good head, with his eyelids like a carriage-hood, and eyes like loto-knobs,” remarked Schaunard, drawing out a wonderfully coloured cutty-pipe.
“By Jove, monsieur, you have a very pretty pipe there!” remarked Rodolphe.
“Oh, I have a still better one for great occasions,” Schaunard answered carelessly. “Just pass me the tobacco, Colline.”
“There!” cried the philosopher, “I have none left.”
“Allow me,” said Rodolphe, pulling a packet out of his pocket and laying it on the table.
Colline thought he ought to respond to this act of courtesy by the offer of a drink.
Rodolphe accepted. The conversation turned upon literature. Rodolphe, questioned as to his profession, confessed (for his clothes betrayed him) to his relations with the Muses, and stood drinks all round. The waiter was going to take the bottle away, but Schaunard requested him to be so kind as to overlook it. Two five-franc pieces were jingling in one of Colline’s pockets, and the silvery sound of the duet had reached Schaunard’s ears. Rodolphe meanwhile quickly overtook his friends, reached the point of expansiveness, and poured out confidences in his turn.
The trio would, no doubt, have spent the rest of the night in the café, if they had not been requested to leave. Outside in the street, they had scarcely gone ten paces (which distance was accomplished in about a quarter of an hour) when they were overtaken by a deluge of rain. Colline and Rodolphe lived at opposite ends of Paris; the former in the Ile Saint Louis, the latter at Montmartre. As for Schaunard, he had completely forgotten that he had no lodging at all, and offered his friends hospitality.
“Come home with me,” he said; “I lodge near by, and we will spend the night in talking literature and art.”
“You shall play for us,” said Colline, “and Rodolphe will recite his own poetry.”
“Faith, yes,” added Schaunard, “we must laugh; we can only live once.”
Schaunard had some little difficulty in recognising his house; but arrived in front of it, he sat down for a moment on a kerbstone, while his friends went over to a wine-shop, which still kept open, in search of the first elements of supper. On their return Schaunard rapped several times on the door, for he had a dim recollection that the porters always kept him waiting. At last it opened. Old Durand, in the balmy depths of his beauty sleep, forgot that Schaunard had ceased to be an inmate of his house, and heard the name called without putting himself out in the least.
The ascent of the stairs was a slow and no less difficult business. Schaunard went first, but on arriving on the top landing he found a key already in the lock of his door, and uttered a cry of astonishment.
“What is the matter?” asked Rodolphe.
“I can make nothing of this,” murmured Schaunard; “the key that I carried off with me this morning is here sticking in the lock! Ha! we shall soon see. I put it in my pocket. Eh, by Jove! and here it is, too!” he cried, holding it up.
“It is witchcraft!”
“It is a phantasmagoria!” (from Colline).
“A fancy!” (from Rodolphe).
“But,” demurred Schaunard, with growing terror audible in his voice, “but, do you hear that?”
“What?”
“What?”
“My piano, playing all by itself—ut, la, mi, ré, do, la, sı, sol, ré. Rascally ré, that it is! It never will keep in tune.”
“This is not your room, of course,” said Rodolphe; and leaning heavily on Colline, he whispered, “he is drunk.”
“I think so. In the first place, that is not a piano; it is a flute.”
“Why, you are drunk too, my dear fellow,” said the poet to the philosopher, who by this time was sitting on the floor. “It is a violin!”
“A v——fiddle-de-dee! I say, Schaunard,” stammered Colline, pulling his friend by the legs, “that is good, is that! Here is this gentleman saying that it is a vio——”
“Confound it!” cried Schaunard, frightened out