The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter. Henri Murger

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Arrived in the courtyard, Durand was hailed at once by the young fellow in the white hat.

      “Look here, concierge,” cried he, “am I going to be put in possession of my room? Is to-day the 8th of April? Did I engage the lodgings here and pay you the luck-penny, or did I not?”

      “I beg your pardon, sir, I am at your service,” broke in the landlord. “Durand, I shall speak to this gentleman myself. Go upstairs. That scoundrel Schaunard is there packing up his things, no doubt. Lock him in, if you can catch him, and then go out for the police.”

      Old Durand disappeared up the staircase. The landlord and the new-comer were left together.

      “I beg your pardon, sir,” M. Bernard began, “but to whom have I the pleasure of speaking?”

      “I am your new tenant, sir. I engaged a room here on the sixth floor, and I am beginning to grow impatient because I can’t move in.”

      “You find me in despair,” exclaimed M. Bernard. “A difficulty has arisen between me and one of my tenants; in fact, the tenant whom you are about to replace.”

      A voice sounded from above; it came from a window on the top story.

      “M. Bernard, sir!” shouted old Durand. “M. Schaunard isn’t here! But his room is here! (Idiot that I am!) I mean to say he hasn’t taken anything away—not a single hair, M. Bernard, sir!”

      “That is right. Come down,” called M. Bernard. Then, addressing the young man, “Dear me! have a little patience, I beg. My man shall stow all the insolvent lodger’s furniture in the cellar, and you shall move in in half an hour. Besides, your own furniture isn’t here yet.”

      “I beg your pardon, sir,” the new-comer returned placidly. M. Bernard took a look about him, but he saw nothing save the huge screens that had previously made his concierge uneasy.

      “Eh, what? I beg your pardon. Eh? I don’t see any,” he murmured.

      “Look,” returned the other, and he opened out the leaves of the screen, displaying to the landlord’s gaze a palatial interior full of jasper pillars and bas-reliefs and pictures by great masters.

      “But—your furniture?”

      “Here it is,” and, with a wave of the hand, he indicated the sumptuous splendours of the painted palace, part of a set of decorations for the amateur stage, a recent purchase at the Hotel Bullion.

      “I am pleased to believe, sir, that you have something more solid in the way of furniture than that.”

      “What, genuine Boule!”

      “I must have some guarantee for my rent, you understand.”

      “The deuce! Isn’t a palace good enough to cover the rent of a garret?”

      “No, sir. I must have furniture—genuine mahogany furniture.”

      “Alas! yet neither gold nor mahogany can make us happy, to quote the ancients. And, speaking for myself, I cannot endure it. Mahogany is a stupid sort of wood; everybody has mahogany!”

      “But after all, sir, you have some furniture of some kind, I suppose?”

      “No. It fills up the space till there is no room for anything else. As soon as you bring chairs into a place you do not know where to sit.”

      “Still, you have a bedstead? How do you lie down at night?”

      “I lie down trusting in Providence, sir.”

      “I beg your pardon, one more question. What is your profession, if you please?”

      At that very moment in walked the commissionaire for the second time. Among the various objects slung over his shoulders appeared an unmistakable easel. Old Durand pointed this out in dismay to the landlord.

      “Oh, sir, he is a painter!”

      “An artist! I knew it!” M. Bernard exclaimed in his turn (and the hairs of his wig stood upright with fright). “An artist!!! But” (turning to the concierge) “did you not make any inquiries about this gentleman? Did you not know what he did?”

      “Lord, sir, he gave me five francs for my luck-penny; how was I to imagine that——”

      “When you have done,” began the owner of the easel, but M. Bernard adjusted his spectacles on his nose with aplomb.

      “Sir,” said he, “since you have no furniture you cannot move it in. I am legally entitled to decline a lodger who brings no guarantee.”

      “And how about my word?” the artist inquired with dignity.

      “It is no equivalent for furniture. You can look for lodgings somewhere else. Durand shall give you back your luck-penny.”

      “Eh?” cried the dumbfounded concierge, “I paid it into the savings-bank.”

      “But I cannot find another lodging all in a minute,” objected he of the hat. “Let me have a day’s shelter, at any rate.”

      “Go to the hotel,” returned M. Bernard. “By-the-by,” he added quickly as a sudden thought struck him, “I will let you have the room furnished if you like. My insolvent lodger’s things are up there. Only the rent, as you know, in such cases is paid in advance.”

      “The question is how much you want for the den,” said the artist, seeing there was no other way out of it.

      “But it is a very good room; the rent will be twenty-five francs a month, under the circumstances. You pay in advance.”

      “So you have said already; the phrase hardly deserves the honour of an encore.” He fell to fumbling in his pockets. “Have you change for five hundred francs?”

      “Eh? what?” exclaimed his amazed landlord.

      “Oh, well, call it half a thousand, then. Have you never seen such a thing before?” continued the artist, waving the note before the eyes of landlord and concierge. The latter appeared to lose his balance completely at the sight.

      “I will give you change,” M. Bernard began respectfully. “There will only be twenty francs to take, since Durand is giving you back your luck-penny.”

      “He may keep it,” said the artist, “on condition that he will come up every morning to tell me the day of the week, the day of the month, the quarter of the moon, and what kind of a day it is, and what form of government we are living under.”

      “Oh, sir!” cried old Durand, bowing to an angle of ninety degrees.

      “All right, my good fellow, you will act as my almanack. And in the meantime you will help my commissionaire with the moving in.”

      “I will send you your receipt directly, sir,” added the landlord. And that very evening Marcel the painter was installed as M. Bernard’s new lodger. Schaunard had fled, and his garret was transformed into a palace.

      The said Schaunard, meanwhile, was beating СКАЧАТЬ