SOME OLD ACQUAINTANCES
A few evenings after the one on which Sallenauve and Marie-Gaston had taken Jacques Bricheteau to Saint-Sulpice to hear the Signora Luigia's voice, the church was the scene of a curious little incident that passed by almost wholly unperceived.A young man entered hastily by a side-door; he seemed agitated, and so absorbed in some anxiety that he forgot to remove his hat.The beadle caught him by the arm, and his face became livid, but, turning round, he saw at once that his fears were causeless.
"Is your hat glued on your head, young man?" said the beadle, pompously.
"Oh, pardon me, monsieur," he replied, snatching it off; "I forgot myself."Then he slipped into the thickest of the crowd and disappeared.
A few seconds after the irruption of this youth the same door gave access to a man around whose powerful, seamed face was the collar of a white beard, which, combined with a thick shock of hair, also white but slightly reddish in tone and falling almost to his shoulders, gave him very much the air of an old Conventional, or a Bernardin de Saint-Pierre who had had the small-pox.His face and his hair placed him in the sixties, but his robust figure, the energetic decision of his movements, and, above all, the piercing keenness of the glance which he cast about him on entering the church, showed a powerful organization on which the passage of years had made little or no impression.No doubt, he was in search of the young fellow who had preceded him; but he did not commit the mistake of entering the crowd, where he knew of course that the youth had lost himself.Like a practised hunter, he saw that pursuit was useless, and he was just about to leave the church when, after a short organ prelude, the contralto of the signora delivering its solemn notes gave forth that glorious harmony to which is sung the Litany of the Virgin.The beauty of the voice, the beauty of the chant, the beauty of the words of the sacred hymn, which the fine method of the singer brought out distinctly, made a singular impression on the stalwart stranger.
Instead of leaving the church, he put himself in the shadow of a column, against which he leaned as he stood; but as the last notes of the divine canticle died away among the arches of the church, he knelt on the pavement, and whoever had chanced to look that way would have seen two heavy tears rolling slowly down his cheeks.The benediction given, and the crowd dispersing, he rose, wiped his eyes, and, muttering, "What a fool I am!" left the church.Then he went to the Place Saint-Sulpice, and, beckoning to a coach on the stand, he said to the driver,--"Rue de Provence, my man, quick! there's fat in it."Reaching the house, he went rapidly up the stairway, and rang at the door of an apartment on the first floor.
"Is my aunt at home?" he inquired of the Negro who opened it.Then he followed the man, and was presently ushered into a salon where the Negro announced,--"Monsieur de Saint-Esteve."
The salon which the famous chief of the detective police now entered was remarkable for the luxury, but still more for the horribly bad taste, of its appointments.Three women of advanced age were seated round a card-table earnestly employed in a game of dominoes.Three glasses and an empty silver bowl which gave forth a vinous odor showed that the worship of double-sixes was not without its due libations.
"Good evening, mesdames," said the chief of police, sitting down; "for I have something to say to each of you.""We'll listen presently," said his aunt; "you can't interrupt the game.It won't be long; I play for four.""White all round!" said one of the hags.
"Domino!" cried the Saint-Esteve."I win; you have four points between you two, and the whites are all out.Well, my dear, what is it?" she said, turning to her nephew, after a rather stormy reckoning among the witches was over.
"You, Madame Fontaine," said the chief of police, addressing one of the venerable beings, whose head was covered with disorderly gray hair and a battered green bonnet,--"you neglect your duty; you have sent me no report, and, on the contrary, I get many complaints of you.The prefect has a great mind to close your establishment.I protect you on account of the services you are supposed to render us; but if you don't render them, I warn you, without claiming any gifts of prediction, that your fate-shop will be shut up.""There now!" replied the pythoness, "you prevented me from hiring Mademoiselle Lenormand's apartment in the rue de Tournon, and how can you expect me to make reports about the cooks and clerks and workmen and grisettes who are all I get where I am? If you had let me work among the great folks, I'd make you reports and plenty of them.""I don't see how you can say that, Madame Fontaine," said Madame de Saint-Esteve."I am sure I send you all my clients.It was only the other day," continued the matrimonial agent, "I sent you that Italian singer, living with a deputy who is against the government; why didn't you report about that?""There's another thing," said the chief of police, "which appears in several of the complaints that I received about you,--that nasty animal--""What, Astaroth?" said Madame Fontaine.
"Yes, that batrachian, that toad, to come down to his right name.It seems he nearly killed a woman who was pregnant--""Well, well," interrupted the sorceress, "if I am to tell fortunes alone, you might as well guillotine me at once.Because a fool of a woman lay-in with a dead child, must toads be suppressed in nature?
Why did God make them?"
"My dear woman," said the chief, "did you never hear that in 1617 a learned man was put to death for having a toad in a bottle?""Yes, I know that; but we are not in those light ages," replied Madame Fontaine, facetiously.
