Chapter V: A Concierge’s Lodge

In a house of respectable appearance on Rue d’Angoulême, about half-past eleven one evening, the street bell was pulled so violently that it caused Monsieur Baudoin, the concierge, to leap from his chair, upon which he was beginning to doze, while his wife Hildegarde took advantage of his nodding to open a small cupboard and take therefrom a bottle, the neck of which she proceeded to introduce into her mouth, and took several swallows of a fluid which she seemed to enjoy greatly.

Baudoin the concierge was a tall, thin man, with a pale face and light hair, who had passed his fiftieth year, but was still very straight, and as active as a young man. To his occupation of concierge, he added that of clerk in a stage office, which kept him only until six o’clock. He was an honest man, to whom one could fearlessly entrust his house and his treasure; he did promptly whatever he was ordered to do, unless he did not fully understand; but in that case it was not safe to reproach him, for Baudoin lost his temper very readily, having an immeasurable self-esteem and claiming that he never made a mistake. When he did lose his temper, Baudoin swore like a trooper, and turned as red as a turkey-cock.

Hildegarde, the concierge’s wife, was two or three years older than her husband; she had once been pretty and sentimental; she was not very well preserved, and her inclination to sentiment having with age become diverted to brandy, Madame Baudoin had neglected herself considerably; there was a deplorable carelessness in her dress, which resulted in nothing ever being in place. Baudoin, who was always neat and decently dressed, often reproached his wife for her heedlessness in that respect, and as he had also discovered her unlucky fondness for liquor, he sometimes added to his reproaches lessons of an impressive sort, which made Hildegarde bellow loudly, and promise never to give way again to her miserable failing; but she never failed to forget that promise, whenever she thought that her husband would know nothing about it.

Moreover, Madame Baudoin was a genuine type of concierge: talkative, inquisitive, gossiping, scandal-loving, incautious, not evil-minded at bottom, but capable of setting the whole quarter at odds with remarks made without ill-intent. Her husband often scolded her for it; but “what’s bred in the bone will come out in the flesh!”

At the jingling of the bell, and the somersault performed by her husband, Hildegarde, bewildered, and realizing that she had not time to replace the bottle of brandy in the cupboard, hastily put it on the floor between her feet, and then sat down, thus having her dear bottle in the place where the open air tradeswomen put their foot-warmers.

“Didn’t someone ring?” said Baudoin, rubbing his eyes.

“Yes, my dear, yes, someone certainly did!” replied his wife, without moving from her chair.

“Well, then, draw the cord, Hildegarde; you’re right near it.”

“You can draw it much easier yourself, my dear; you have only to put out your arm and lean forward a bit.”

“Look here, why won’t you pull the cord, when you’re right beside it? What sort of way is that to behave?”

“Why--why, you see I pulled it just now when the tenant of the first floor came in, so it’s your turn.”

“Ah! so this is a new idea you’ve got into your head! Madame is afraid that she will pull the cord oftener than I, who have just come in, all tired and out of breath after running about Paris all day! What a lazy hussy!”

“Mon Dieu! is it possible for a man to be as ugly as this to his wife! to be so unwilling to do anything for her! Ah! Monsieur Baudoin, how you have changed!”

While this little dialogue was taking place between the couple employed to take care of the house, the person who had rung remained at the door, which is rarely pleasing when one returns home at night. A second peal at the bell, much more violent than the first, announced that he was losing patience.

Baudoin decided to pull the cord, but as he did so he said to his wife:

“Ah! _bigre!_ you shall pay for this, Hildegarde! by all that’s good! I promise you that.”

Hildegarde made no reply, but continued to sit over her bottle. Someone came in and closed the street door; and soon a man appeared at the concierge’s lodge, and said curtly:

“Give me my light.”

“Oh! yes, Monsieur Malberg; this minute, Monsieur Malberg.--Hildegarde, just take Monsieur Malberg’s candlestick from the cupboard by you, light it at our lamp, or rather light it with a match, for the chimney of our lamp is cracked and it might break in your hand.--You are just from the theatre, I suppose, Monsieur Malberg? They say that they are giving a fine play there just now; I don’t know which theatre, but no matter, it seems that it’s fine, all the same! You have been to see it, of course?”

“I have been where I chose to go, and it is none of your business,” replied the tenant, in a tone which did not invite further conversation. “Well! what about my light? Are you going to give it to me to-night? or do you intend to keep me waiting here as long as you did in the street?”

“What, Hildegarde, haven’t you lighted Monsieur Malberg’s light yet? Look here, what are you about? God forgive me, Monsieur Malberg, but I believe that my wife is getting deaf or idiotic; something’s the matter with her to-night; it isn’t possible--yes, she may have been tippling. You know her unlucky failing, which will lead her to perdition! and it isn’t for lack of my trying to correct it by every means that I can think of.”

Whereupon Hildegarde, who had her reasons for not stirring from her chair, made haste to reply:

“Oh, yes! the means you use are very nice! I advise you to boast of them; you ought to be ashamed of them! a man with an education, who has clerks under him, in an office, to raise his hand to his wife! Yes, Monsieur Malberg, I don’t blush to confess that Monsieur Baudoin has the baseness to strike me! that’s a nice thing to do, ain’t it?”

But the man to whom these questions were addressed, observing that no one thought of giving him his light, pushed open the door of the lodge, took his candlestick, lighted the candle with a piece of paper, and went upstairs without another word to the concierge and his wife, who continued their conversation.

“Well, Hildegarde, do you see what you’ve done? Here’s Monsieur Malberg had to light his candle himself! what will he think of us?”

“Oh! I don’t care what he thinks! he’s an agreeable man, that tenant! a fellow who never talks, who hardly answers when you speak to him, and always in a short, surly tone, as if he was always angry!”

“It is true that he seldom laughs; but still perhaps that’s his nature; there are people who enjoy being dismal. However, he’s a man who occupies an apartment at eleven hundred francs, and who pays on the dot, without having to be reminded that it is rent day, and who has very handsome furniture, and mirrors in every room, so that the proprietor has a very high regard for him.”

“Oh! I don’t say that he’s a vagabond! but why doesn’t he keep a maid, who’d come to our lodge in the evening and talk, as decent people always do, instead of that miserable blackamoor, that yellow negro, who doesn’t know how to do anything but wax his floor and polish his boots? as if you could call that a servant! He ought to hire me to do his housework; that’s my line!”

“You forget, Hildegarde, that the landlord doesn’t want you to do housework. Of course, if you went away while I am at my office, there wouldn’t be anybody but the cat to look after the lodge and answer questions!”

“A fine job this is, where the concierge’s wife isn’t allowed to do housework! That was my only ambition.”

“Oh, yes! the fact is that you were the cause of our being discharged from the lodge we had before this, because you did housework for the men on the fourth floor and drank all their liquor.”

“That isn’t true, it’s a slander!”

“Let’s not go back to that. I am mortified that Monsieur Malberg had to light his candle himself; it’s a stain upon our good name.”

“Well then, you ought to have lighted it for him, if you have that on your conscience!”

“Hold your tongue, Hildegarde; you’re very unreasonable to-night, you have something bad to say about everybody. You find fault because Monsieur Malberg has a yellow negro to work for him, and you don’t seem to know that that is very distinguished. Swell people always have colored servants in their employ.”

“It’s a miserable fashion. But still, if that miserable Pingo or Ponceau--I never know what his name is--was only agreeable.”

“Pongo!”

“Oh! what a dog of a name! Pongo! But he never talks, the blackamoor; or else he talks to himself, and says things that I don’t understand; I believe that he talks Morocco!”

“Come, Hildegarde, it’s almost twelve o’clock; go to bed, that’s the best thing you can do.”

“Everybody hasn’t come in.”

“Yes they have, everybody except little Georget, who lives up under the roof, with his mother.--By the way, how is the poor woman to-day?”

“Not very well; she’s had more fainting fits this afternoon, and I thought she was going _to put out her gas_.”

“And her son hasn’t come home, at midnight! that’s what I call a ne’er-do-well, a downright scamp! Hildegarde, heaven didn’t give us any children, and I give thanks for it in my heart; because they aren’t always honey for parents, and often absinthe rules the roost, as I see in the case of Mère Georget!”

“Absinthe--absinthe--I don’t hate that! it helps the digestion!”

“Oh! bless my soul! you don’t hate any liquid; but I know that absinthe is bad for the health; I’ve heard some of the clerks at the office talking about two talented actors who played at the theatre and who put an end to themselves with absinthe; without counting several others who are in a fair way to do the same thing!”

“Bah! that’s all nonsense!”

“Come, Hildegarde, go to bed; I will come in a little while; and if little Georget isn’t in at the quarter, I will leave him outside; I can’t waste my oil for anyone who never makes it up to me. Well, you don’t move; are you fastened to your chair to-night?”

“Go to bed first, Baudoin; I’ll sit up for the young man, and put the lodge in order.”

“You know very well that I am not in the habit of going to bed before you. I see your scheme: you will wait until I am asleep and then go to the cupboard to say a word or two to the bottle!”

“Oh! the idea of my going to the cupboard! It’s much more likely to be you, for you like brandy too.”

“I like it reasonably, like a man with some self-respect, who doesn’t choose to make a brute of himself.--Hildegarde, go to bed.”

“I don’t feel sleepy.”

“Hildegarde, we are going to have trouble! Will you go to bed at once?”

“You pester me----”

“Hildegarde, I shall be compelled to resort to severe means. Why, you certainly are glued to your chair; this isn’t natural, I suspect some trick. Ah! I see! I’ll bet that the bottle isn’t in the cupboard.”

And Baudoin rose to go to the cupboard, but as his wife was sitting in front of it and did not move, he pushed her roughly aside, whereupon she reeled, and almost instantly uttered a cry of distress so heartrending that her husband feared that he had hurt her. But it was not Hildegarde who was hurt, it was the bottle under her skirts, which she had involuntarily upset, and which had broken, overflowing the lodge with all the liquor which it contained.

“I say! what’s all this?” cried Baudoin, when he found a stream flowing between his feet; but soon the odor which spread through the room left him in no doubt as to the identity of the liquid.

“It is brandy; she had the bottle under her skirt; what a vile trick!”

“Yes, and you made me break it! that’s the worst of it, you brute! Such splendid brandy!”

“Hildegarde, you persist in your debauchery; I am going to give you a taste of the broomstick.”

“Touch me if you dare! I’ll call the watch! I’ll make a disturbance in the house!”

Meanwhile Baudoin, who was in the habit of keeping his promises, had gone to fetch the broomstick. At that moment, the bell at the street door rang, and this time the woman made haste to open, hoping that it was somebody who would protect her.

It was Georget, the young messenger of the flower market, who entered the house, and in another instant the porter’s lodge, just as Baudoin raised his broomstick over the head of his wife, who ran behind the young man, crying:

“Oh! monsieur, save an unfortunate woman, whose husband is trying to murder her!”

“Sapristi! how strong it smells of brandy here!” said Georget, sniffing; then, leaping upon the broomstick which the concierge held, he seized it with both hands. But Baudoin held on, he would not let go, and a struggle began between him and the young messenger, remarkably like the battles around the flag, which we see in the war plays at the boulevard theatres; only in this case the flag was a broomstick and the combatants were not in uniform.

The struggle continued for some time, on nearly even terms; Baudoin was stronger and little Georget more active. The concierge’s wife paid no heed to the contestants; she had taken a small sponge, and was using it to soak up the brandy from the floor; and when it was well saturated, she put it to her lips.

Suddenly the broomstick broke, each of the contestants fell backward, and the battle was at an end. Finding himself then on a level with Madame Baudoin, who was kneeling on the floor with her body bent forward, still soaking and sucking her sponge, Georget could not restrain a burst of laughter; and the concierge, who was inclined at first to belabor his wife with what remained of his broomstick, suddenly decided to lie down on the floor, and to lap up the brandy with his tongue as thirsty dogs lap up the water in the gutter.