BEL-AMI: THE HISTORY OF A SCOUNDREL. Guy de Maupassant

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СКАЧАТЬ to cool the bright, clear water. Duroy had slackened his pace, a longing to drink parched his throat.

      A hot thirst, a summer evening’s thirst assailed him, and he fancied the delightful sensation of cool drinks flowing across his palate. But if he only drank two bocks of beer in the evening, farewell to the slender supper of the morrow, and he was only too well acquainted with the hours of short commons at the end of the month.

      He said to himself: “I must hold out till ten o’clock, and then I’ll have my bock at the American café. Confound it, how thirsty I am though.” And he scanned the men seated at the tables drinking, all the people who could quench their thirst as much as they pleased. He went on, passing in front of the cafés with a sprightly swaggering air, and guessing at a glance from their dress and bearing how much money each customer ought to have about him. Wrath against these men quietly sitting there rose up within him. If their pockets were rummaged, gold, silver, and coppers would be found in them. On an average each one must have at least two louis. There were certainly a hundred to a café, a hundred times two louis is four thousand francs. He murmured “the swine,” as he walked gracefully past them. If he could have had hold of one of them at a nice dark corner he would have twisted his neck without scruple, as he used to do the country-folk’s fowls on field-days.

      And he recalled his two years in Africa and the way in which he used to pillage the Arabs when stationed at little outposts in the south. A bright and cruel smile flitted across his lips at the recollection of an escapade which had cost the lives of three men of the Ouled-Alane tribe, and had furnished him and his comrades with a score of fowls, a couple of sheep, some gold, and food for laughter for six months.

      The culprits had never been found, and, what is more, they had hardly been looked for, the Arab being looked upon as somewhat in the light of the natural prey of the soldier.

      In Paris it was another thing. One could not plunder prettily, sword by side and revolver in hand, far from civil authority. He felt in his heart all the instincts of a sub-officer let loose in a conquered country. He certainly regretted his two years in the desert. What a pity he had not stopped there. But, then, he had hoped something better in returning home. And now — ah! yes, it was very nice now, was it not?

      He clicked his tongue as if to verify the parched state of his palate.

      The crowd swept past him slowly, and he kept thinking. “Set of hogs — all these idiots have money in their waistcoat pockets.” He pushed against people and softly whistled a lively tune. Gentlemen whom he thus elbowed turned grumbling, and women murmured: “What a brute!”

      He passed the Vaudeville Theater and stopped before the American café, asking himself whether he should not take his bock, so greatly did thirst torture him. Before making up his mind, he glanced at the illuminated clock. It was a quarter past nine. He knew himself that as soon as the glassful of beer was before him he would gulp it down. What would he do then up to eleven o’clock?

      He passed on. “I will go as far as the Madeleine,” he said, “and walk back slowly.”

      As he reached the corner of the Palace de l’Opera, he passed a stout young fellow, whose face he vaguely recollected having seen somewhere. He began to follow him, turning over his recollections and repeating to himself half-aloud: “Where the deuce did I know that joker?”

      He searched without being able to recollect, and then all at once, by a strange phenomenon of memory, the same man appeared to him thinner, younger, and clad in a hussar uniform. He exclaimed aloud: “What, Forestier!” and stepping out he tapped the other on the shoulder. The promenader turned round and looked at him, and then said: “What is it, sir?”

      Duroy broke into a laugh. “Don’t you know me?” said he.

      “No.”

      “George Duroy, of the 6th Hussars.”

      Forestier held out his hands, exclaiming: “What, old fellow! How are you?”

      “Very well, and you?”

      “Oh, not very brilliant! Just fancy, I have a chest in brown paper now. I cough six months out of twelve, through a cold I caught at Bougival the year of my return to Paris, four years ago.”

      And Forestier, taking his old comrade’s arm, spoke to him of his illness, related the consultations, opinions, and advice of the doctors, and the difficulty of following this advice in his position. He was told to spend the winter in the South, but how could he? He was married, and a journalist in a good position.

      “I am political editor of the Vie Francaise. I write the proceedings in the Senate for the Salut, and from time to time literary criticisms for the Planète. That is so. I have made my way.”

      Duroy looked at him with surprise. He was greatly changed, matured. He had now the manner, bearing, and dress of a man in a good position and sure of himself, and the stomach of a man who dines well. Formerly he had been thin, slight, supple, heedless, brawling, noisy, and always ready for a spree. In three years Paris had turned him into someone quite different, stout and serious, and with some white hairs about his temples, though he was not more than twenty-seven.

      Forestier asked: “Where are you going?”

      Duroy answered: “Nowhere; I am just taking a stroll before turning in.”

      “Well, will you come with me to the Vie Francaise, where I have some proofs to correct, and then we will take a bock together?”

      “All right.”

      They began to walk on, arm-in-arm, with that easy familiarity existing between schoolfellows and men in the same regiment.

      “What are you doing in Paris?” asked Forestier.

      Duroy shrugged his shoulders. “Simply starving. As soon as I finished my term of service I came here — to make a fortune, or rather for the sake of living in Paris; and for six months I have been a clerk in the offices of the Northern Railway at fifteen hundred francs a year, nothing more.”

      Forestier murmured: “Hang it, that’s not much!”

      “I should think not. But how can I get out of it? I am alone; I don’t know anyone; I can get no one to recommend me. It is not goodwill that is lacking, but means.”

      His comrade scanned him from head to foot, like a practical man examining a subject, and then said, in a tone of conviction: “You see, my boy, everything depends upon assurance here. A clever fellow can more easily become a minister than an under-secretary. One must obtrude one’s self on people; not ask things of them. But how the deuce is it that you could not get hold of anything better than a clerk’s berth on the Northern Railway?”

      Duroy replied: “I looked about everywhere, but could not find anything. But I have something in view just now; I have been offered a riding-master’s place at Pellerin’s. There I shall get three thousand francs at the lowest.”

      Forestier stopped short. “Don’t do that; it is stupid, when you ought to be earning ten thousand francs. You would nip your future in the bud. In your office, at any rate, you are hidden; no one knows you; you can emerge from it if you are strong enough to make your way. But once a riding-master, and it is all over. It is as if you were head-waiter at a place where all Paris goes to dine. When once you have given riding lessons to people in society or to their children, they will never be able to look upon you as an equal.”

      He remained silent СКАЧАТЬ