But as Rodolphe traversed the Rue de l’Ouest, a dark street and little frequented at any time, he perceived a shadowy figure prowling about in a melancholy manner, muttering rimes between its teeth.
“Hey day!” said Rodolphe, “who is this Sonnet, dancing attendance here? Why, Colline!”
“Why, Rodolphe! Where are you going?”
“To your rooms.”
“You will not find me there.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Waiting.”
“And for what?”
“Ha!” cried Colline, breaking into mock-heroics. “For what does one wait, when one is twenty years old, and there are stars in heaven and songs in the air?”
“Speak in prose.”
“I am waiting for a lady.”
“Good night,” returned Rodolphe, and he made off, talking to himself. “Bless me! is it St. Cupid’s Day, and can I scarcely take a step without jostling a pair of lovers? This is scandalous and immoral! What can the police be doing?”
As the Luxembourg Gardens were still open, Rodolphe took the short cut across them. All along the quieter alleys he saw mysterious couples with their arms about each other flit before him, as if scared away by the sound of his footsteps, to seek, in the language of the poet, the double sweetness of silence and shade.
“It is an evening out of a novel,” said Rodolphe; but the languorous charm grew upon him in spite of himself, and sitting down on a bench, he looked sentimentally up at the moon.
After a time he felt as if some feverish dream had taken possession of him. It seemed to him that the marble population of gods and heroes were coming down from their pedestals to pay their court to their neighbours the goddesses and heroines of the gardens; indeed, he distinctly heard the big Hercules singing a madrigal to Velleda, and thought that the Druidess’s tunic looked unusually short. From his seat on the bench he watched the swan in the fountain glide across towards a nymph on the bank.
“Good!” thought Rodolphe, prepared to believe in the whole heathen mythology. “There goes Jupiter to a tryst with Leda! If only the police do not interfere!”
Resting his forehead on his hands, he deliberately pushed further into the briar-rose wood of sentimentality. But at the finest point in his dream Rodolphe was suddenly awakened by a tap on the shoulder from a policeman.
“Time to go out, sir,” said the man.
“A good thing too,” thought Rodolphe. “If I had stayed here for another five minutes I should have had more vergiss-mein-nicht in my heart than ever grew on the banks of the Rhine, or even in Alphonse Karr’s novels.” And he made all haste out of the Luxembourg Gardens, humming in his deep bass voice a sentimental tune which he regarded as the lover’s “Marseillaise.”
Half an hour after, in some unexplained way, he found himself at the “Prado,” sitting at a table with a glass of punch before him, and chatting with a tall young fellow, famous for his nose—a feature which possessed the singular quality of looking aquiline in profile and like a snub nose when seen full face; a nose of noses—not without sense, with a sufficient experience of love affairs to be able to give sound counsel in such cases and to do a friend a good turn.
“So you are in love?” Alexandre Schaunard (the owner of the nose) was saying.
“Yes, my dear boy. It came on quite suddenly just now, like a bad toothache in your heart.”
“Pass the tobacco,” said Alexandre.
“Imagine it!” continued Rodolphe. “I have met nothing but lovers for the past two hours—men and women by twos and twos. I took it into my head to go into the Luxembourg, and there I saw all sorts of phantasmagoria, which stirred my heart in an extraordinary way, and set me composing elegies. I bleat and I coo—I am being metamorphosed; I am half lamb, half pigeon. Just look at me; I must be covered with wool and feathers!”
“What can you have been drinking?” Alexandre put in impatiently. “You are hoaxing me, that is what it is.”
“I am quite cool and composed, I assure you,” said Rodolphe. “That is, I am not; but I am going to inform you that I long for a mate. Man should not live alone, you see, Alexandre; in a word, you must help me to find a wife. . . . We will take a turn round the dancing saloon, and you must go to the first girl that I point out to you, and tell her that I am in love with her.”
“Why don’t you go and tell her so yourself?” returned Alexandre in his splendid nasal bass.
“Eh, my dear boy! I assure you I have quite forgotten how these things are done. Friends have always written the opening chapters of all my love stories for me; sometimes they have even done the conclusions too. But I never could begin myself!”
“If you know how to end, it will do,” said Alexandre; “but I know what you mean. I have seen a girl with a taste for the oboe; you might perhaps suit her.”
“Oh,” answered Rodolphe, “I should like her to wear white gloves, and she should have blue eyes.”
“Oh, confound it! Blue eyes? I don’t say no; but gloves! You cannot have everything at once, you know. Still, let us go to the aristocratic quarters.”
“There!” said Rodolphe, as they entered the room frequented by the more fashionable portion of the assemblage—“there is someone who seems a very pleasant girl.” He pointed out a rather fashionably dressed damsel in a corner.
“Good!” returned Alexandre. “Keep a little bit in the background; I will go hurl the firebrand of passion for you. When the time comes I will call you.”
Alexandre talked with the girl for about ten minutes. Every now and again she burst into a merry peal of laughter, and ended by flinging Rodolphe a glance which meant plainly enough, “Come, your advocate has gained your cause.”
“Go, the victory is ours!” said Alexandre. “The little creature is not hardhearted, there is no doubt about it; but you had better look harmless and simple to begin with.”
“I stand in no need of that recommendation.”
“Then pass me a little tobacco,” said Alexandre, “and go and sit over there with her.”
“Oh, dear, how funny your friend is!” began the damsel, when Rodolphe seated himself beside her. “He talks like a hunting horn.”
“That is because he is a musician,” answered Rodolphe.
Two hours later Rodolphe and his fair companion stopped before a house in the Rue Saint Denis.
“I live here,” she said.
“Well, dear Louise, when shall I see you again, and where?”
“At your own house, to-morrow evening at eight o’clock.”
“Really?”
“Here is my promise,” said Louise, offering two fresh young cheeks, the ripe fruit of youth and health, of which Rodolphe took his fill at leisure. Then he went home intoxicated to madness.
“Ah!” he cried as he strode to and fro in his room, “it must not pass off thus; I positively must write some poetry.”
Next morning his porter found some thirty pieces of paper lying about the room, with the following solitary line majestically inscribed at the head of each (otherwise blank) sheet—
“O Love! O Love! thou prince of youth!”
That morning Rodolphe, contrary to his usual habit, had awaked very early, and though he had slept very little, he got up at once.
“Ah,