Chapter III: Georget and Chicotin

“We would like a magnificent bouquet, mademoiselle,” said Madame Glumeau to Violette.

“Yes,” said Mademoiselle Eolinde, “a su--su--superb bou--bou----”

“That isn’t all,” said Monsieur Astianax, doing his utmost to look at the pretty flower girl with both eyes at once. “I wish to express a certain meaning in presenting a bouquet to my father, so that the flowers must interpret my meaning; I would like a _selam_, mademoiselle; give me a _selam_.”

Violette stared at him as she replied:

“I don’t know that flower, monsieur; does it grow in boxes or in pots?”

“A _selam_ is not a single flower, mademoiselle; it is an arrangement of flowers, which means something particular; it’s an oriental bouquet.”

“I have no oriental flowers, monsieur.”

“But you don’t catch my meaning, I mean----”

“Upon my word, Astianax, you are insufferable; you will keep us here two hours when you know that we are in a hurry; select yourself the flowers that you want, and she will make them into a bouquet for you.”

Monsieur Astianax, confused by the flower girl’s lovely eyes, turned very red and began to rummage among the flowers on the counter, stammering:

“But I don’t see--I am looking--I don’t find--I would like--haven’t you got any?”

“Tell me what flowers you want, monsieur; that will be better than upsetting my whole stock.”

But the little fellow could not admire the pretty flower girl enough, and he had no idea what he wanted.

The porter who had in his arms the box with the pomegranate, which was very heavy, and the rosebush, which was not light, said to Madame Glumeau:

“If you’re going to be here long, lady, I am going to get a basket to put these things in.”

“Oh, no! it isn’t worth while, messenger; we are going at once.--Well, my son, have you chosen your flowers?”

“I don’t find what I am looking for.”

“Bless my soul! Eolinde, is not that Cousin Michonnard, standing over there?”

“Yes, yes, mamma, it is she.”

“Ah! if she sees us, we are lost; she will follow us wherever we go; we shall not be able to get rid of her, for she is quite capable of inviting herself to dinner. You know that your father doesn’t like her because she always says that he doesn’t look well. Let’s go along at once before she sees us.--Come, Astianax.”

“But my dear mother, I haven’t any bouquet.”

“It is your own fault, you take too long to decide. You can present your father with a Savoy cake with his monogram, that will be just as respectful. Come, come!--Follow us, messenger.”

And this time, without listening to the remonstrances of her son, who declared that a cake did not express his meaning, the stout lady took his arm and dragged him away, but not until the little fellow had darted a random glance in Violette’s direction. In a few moments the Glumeau family had disappeared.

Thereupon, a young man in a blouse, with a cap on his head, and with a shrewd, clever face and a slender figure which denoted sixteen years at most, although he was past seventeen, began to laugh as he looked at the pretty flower girl, beside whom he had stopped, and said to her:

“Well, my word! there’s customers for you! They come here and handle and move your flowers and spoil them, and then go away without buying anything.”

“Dear me, Monsieur Georget, that’s the way it is in business; one can’t always sell.”

“But the young man would have liked to stay, I fancy. What eyes he made at you, zigzag! A man shouldn’t be allowed to squint like that! I am sure it would exempt him from the conscription; for when a man looks all ways at once, he can hardly fire straight at the enemy.--But no matter, you have turned his head.”

“Mon Dieu! to hear you, Georget, one would think that everybody is in love with me!”

“Well, it seems to me that you don’t lack suitors and gallants. There are days when a fellow can’t get near your shop, there are so many people around you!”

“I have no reason to complain, that is true. I sell a great deal. My bouquets seem to please.”

“Oh! your bouquets--and yourself too. When the dealer is good-looking, that makes business good; and deuce take it! you are mighty good-looking.”

“You know very well, Georget, that nothing tires me so much as compliments!”

“Then you must get tired very often! you receive them all day!”

“I can’t prevent the gentlemen who buy flowers of me from talking nonsense to me! but it seems to me that you might get along without it.”

“So what I say to you is nonsense, is it?”

“Instead of idling away your time every market day, walking back and forth in front of my stand, wouldn’t you do better to work?”

“Do you mean that you don’t like to have me stop in front of your shop sometimes, mamzelle?”

“I don’t say that, but I ask you if you would not do better to work.”

“All right, mamzelle, that’s enough. I won’t stand near you any more, never fear! If you don’t like it, why, I----”

“Oh! how wrong-headed you are, Monsieur Georget! a body can’t give you a little advice, eh?”

But the young messenger was no longer listening to the pretty flower girl; he walked away with a very pronounced frown, and sat down upon one of the steps of the Château d’Eau. He had hardly settled down when another youngster of nineteen, tall, strong and active, with his cap cocked over one ear in true roistering fashion, came and stood in front of him, crying:

“Ah! here’s Georget! here’s my little Georget! I am glad of that; I thought he must have been swallowed by the whale on exhibition over yonder, behind us. To be sure, I know that it isn’t alive; but never mind, you might have crawled into its mouth. I say, Georget, have you seen the whale?”

“Let me alone, I don’t feel like talking!”

“Well! I paid to see the whale, because as I’d never seen the sea, I said to myself: ‘That will give me an idea of its inhabitants.’--But confound it! how I was sold! Just fancy--I went into a long, narrow place, like a corridor with boarded walls. I couldn’t see anything, no water at all. I said to myself: ‘Where in the deuce is the whale?’ but there was a fellow in a sailor’s suit, walking up and down the corridor, singing out at the top of his lungs: ‘See, ladies and gentlemen, look, examine this rare animal! It’s the first whale that’s been seen in France since the Roman conquest! It was harpooned at Havre and would have been brought to Paris alive, if there had been room enough for it in a first-class carriage!’--When I heard that, I squinted up my eyes to find the marine monster. When I first went into the corridor, I had noticed something like a pile of earth, on the floor between two boards, and I said to myself: ‘It seems that they are going to plant flowers in the place to brighten it up!’ But not at all: that black thing, between two boards, was the whale! I discovered it when I reached the end of the corridor, because then I saw a kind of head, with a beard, at one end of what I had taken for earth. I was mad, I tell you! I regretted my money, and I said to the sailor: ‘If you’d told me beforehand that I was going to see a whale in a box, and dry as a herring, I wouldn’t have come into your old barrack!’--Well, little Georget, why don’t you laugh?”

“I tell you to let me alone, I don’t feel like laughing!”

“Why, what under the sun is the matter with the little mummy! He’s got to be as melancholy as an empty stomach for some time past! Come, I propose to cheer you up; I’ll treat you to a glass at the wine merchant’s on Rue Basse.”

“Thanks, I am not thirsty.”

“And then you will come to the theatre this evening with me. I don’t mean the Délasses, or the Funambs, or the Petit-Lazare; I go to the big theatres now; I have become an habitué of the Folies-Dramatiques! Nothing less! You see, when one has seen Mamzelle Duplessis, in _‘Une Mauvaise Nuit Est Bientôt Passée,’_ one doesn’t care to see anything else! It is magnificent! Mamzelle Duplessis is in a night jacket embroidered with lace, like a bride preparing to retire. Dieu! how lovely she is! I dream of her every night as I go to bed! And then, Monsieur Christian, in _‘La Perruque de Mon Oncle!’_ When he says: ‘Ah! fichtre! sacrebleu! hush or I will thrash you!’ or something else in that line, I tell you it’s amusing! I laugh until I make a show of myself! And just now Monsieur Christian passed here--you didn’t see him--the real man, the one who plays at the Folies; and he bought a bunch of violets, and smiled because I said to him: ‘Monsieur Christian, do you want me to carry you?’--Ha! ha! that made him laugh!--Well, Georget, I say, Georget! you little wretch of a Georget! what in the world has somebody been doing to you, Gringalet?”

“If you call me Gringalet, I’ll punch your head, do you understand?”

“Oho! how ugly the little rascal is! What have you been treading on to-day?”

“I may be small without being a Gringalet, or a wretch. I am seventeen years, eight months and ten days.”

“You look as if you were about twelve or less!”

“The looks make no difference; I am not a child any more, and I don’t propose to be treated like an urchin.”

“Ah! you wish to be looked up to, perhaps?”

“If anyone insults me, he must fight me.”

“Tell me what you have eaten this morning? You are not so ugly as this usually!”

“But you are teasing me! saying things that make me angry!”

“Then as I am in the wrong, thrash me right away and let’s have it over with! But I don’t propose to fight with you, because I am your friend, and I like you with all your ill-humor! Come, strike me!”

As he spoke, Chicotin Patatras--for such was the name of this last individual--coolly planted himself in front of his friend, and stooped as if he were all ready to be beaten. But when he saw that, Georget rose, his anger vanished, and he offered his hand to his comrade, saying:

“Can you think of such a thing? I, strike you! that would be pretty! Come, it is all over, I am not angry any more; nor you either, are you?”

“Oh! I haven’t been at all!”

“You see, Chicotin, there are many people who say that you are a ne’er-do-well, a brawler, and a sot; they have nicknamed you Patatras, because wherever you go, you always arrive like a bomb and turn everything topsy-turvy! But I do you justice, and I have always defended you; and if you are noisy, and if you do sometimes throw a whole company into confusion, you have a good heart all the same, and when you are fond of anybody, he can always rely on you.”

“Pardi! a man is a good friend, or he isn’t. A door is open or shut, one or the other! that’s all I know!--Well, will you go to the Folies-Dramatiques with me to-night? I’ll treat you; I have some cash; I carried a bouquet to the young lady! Ah! bless my soul! that bouquet evidently gave pleasure, for she put five francs in my hand; the gentleman had given me as much! in all, two hind wheels, six times as much as the bouquet was worth! But these lovers! tell me who else is so generous, when they are satisfied, and are in funds? ‘Tis love, love, love, that makes the world go round!”

“Oh, yes! the rich lovers, they are happy enough! they can make their sweethearts handsome presents!”

“Bah! they are not the ones I envy, especially as I have noticed that the ones who are loved the best are not the ones who give the most presents! A little more pains is taken to deceive them, that’s all! I see so many things, when I am doing errands, opening carriage doors, or asking for theatre checks! But the actors! Oh, the actors! when I can be employed by one of them, then I am perfectly happy! I went on the stage once, that is to say, under the stage, at the Ambigu! It’s mighty amusing, I tell you, and you see a lot of things--that you don’t expect to see!--But you are not listening to me, Georget. Ah! I can guess what you’re thinking about, with your eyes always turned in that direction! So it is all over, is it? You’re in love for good and all!”

“Hush, Chicotin, don’t say that, I beg you!”

“I say it because I see it; I don’t need to be a sleep-walker to guess that! You’re in love with the pretty flower girl, Mamzelle Violette!”

“I never told anybody so!”

“You don’t need to tell it, it’s plain enough; that’s what upsets you so, and changes your whole disposition, and gives you a sour look, a dismal expression, like Monsieur Goujet of the Gaîté, when he plays the traitors, the abductors who carry off young girls! Ah! how magnificent he was in _‘Martin et Bamboche!’_ I was a little bit of a fellow when I saw that, but I still have the piece in my head all the same, it impressed me so. He had on a white coat, rather neat, did Monsieur Goujet; he played the part of a well-dressed son, who treated his father like the deuce!--Confound it! He isn’t listening to me because I’ve stopped talking about the flower girl! Why, is this passion of yours making you an idiot? As if a man ever fell in love for good at your age! For my part, I like pretty girls too; but it doesn’t make me so stupid as it does you! it never lasts more than a week! Let your beard grow, then you’ll have the right to pose as a sentimental lover! Ah! now he turns as red as a turkey-cock! What is going on? Ah! I see; because two fine gentlemen, two swells have stopped and are looking at the flower girl’s wares. I suppose you’d like it if nobody ever bought anything of your pretty dealer? She’d do a fine business then!”

“Oh! but I know those two young men; they come very often to buy flowers of her and they always talk nonsense to her; especially the tallest one! He actually dared one time to ask her to be his mistress! Ah! if big Chopard hadn’t held me back, I’d have jumped on him; I’d have scratched him and bitten him!”

“Hoity-toity! is that the way you propose to treat Mamzelle Violette’s customers? You’ll give her shop a good reputation!”

“That’s what Chopard said, to calm me down!”

“Besides, don’t all these dandies--that is what they call these fellows--don’t all these dandies talk that way to women, especially when they are pretty? It’s their way; they must always play the lady-killer; if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be dandies! But I know one of those young men, too; the tallest one is an author,--that means a man who writes plays; his name is Jéricourt; I’ve carried letters to his room sometimes from the other one, who isn’t so tall; that one has employed me often; just now he’s very attentive to an actress at the Folies, a little blonde with black eyes, who plays such parts as Rigolette,--Mademoiselle Dutaillis. I’ll bet that she’s the one he’s going to buy a bouquet for, and then he’ll take her to dinner at Bonvalet’s; and when she’s in the cast, they keep sending me to the theatre, to the box office, to ask how far they have got. I always ask a handsome man who is sitting inside the office, and he answers with a sly look: ‘Go and tell mademoiselle that she has time enough to eat another course, provided that it isn’t carp, because the bones might make her lose her cue.’”

“Oh, yes! I know well enough that it isn’t the light-haired one who is dangerous to Violette; it’s the other one!”

“And why should the other one be dangerous, when everyone says that the little flower girl is virtuous? You yourself told me so a hundred times.”

“Certainly she is virtuous, perfectly virtuous. If she wasn’t, if she was anything else, do you suppose I’d be mad over her as I am?”

“Then what difference does it make to you whether people pay her compliments and make love to her? She won’t listen to them.”

“Who can tell? A young girl sometimes ends by allowing herself to be deceived by all these soft speeches. They offer her dresses, jewels, entertainments, love--it’s all very tempting. Look, see how that tall, scented fellow is leaning over her counter to speak to her! I don’t care; no matter what happens, I am going to tell that man to act different from that!”

“Upon my word! be good enough to stay here. You don’t like to see him talking with the flower girl; very good, let me fix him; I haven’t been nicknamed Patatras for nothing!”