The Adventures of a Modest Man

Into the tanks fall insects from the world above, and the fish sail up to the surface and lazily suck in the hapless fly or spider that tumbles onto the surface of the water.

It is a fresh-water aquarium. All the fresh-water fish of France are represented here by fine specimens – pike, barbels, tench, dace, perch, gudgeons, sea-trout, salmon, brown-trout, and that lovely delicate trout-like fish called l'Ombre de Chevallier. What it is I do not know, but it resembles our beautiful American brook-trout in shape and marking; and is probably a hybrid, cultivated by these clever French specialists in fish-propagation.

Coming to a long crystal-clear tank, I touched the glass with my finger-tip, and a slender, delicate fish, colored like mother-of-pearl, slowly turned to stare at me.

"This," said I, "is that aristocrat of the waters called the 'Grayling.' Notice its huge dorsal fin, its tender and diminutive mouth. It takes a fly like a trout, but the angler who would bring it to net must work gently and patiently, else the tender mouth tears and the fish is lost. Is it not the most beautiful of all fishes?

"'Here and there a lusty trout;
Here and there a Grayling – '

"Ah, Tennyson knew. And that reminds me, Alida," I continued, preparing to recount a personal adventure with a grayling in Austria – "that reminds me – "

I turned around to find I had been addressing the empty and somewhat humid atmosphere. My daughter Alida stood some distance away, gazing absently at a tank full of small fry; and Captain Vicômte Torchon de Cluny stood beside her, talking. Perhaps he was explaining the habits of the fish in the tank.

My daughter Dulcima and Captain de Barsac I beheld far down the arcades, strolling along without the faintest pretence of looking at anything but each other.

"Very well," thought I to myself, "this aquarium is exactly the place I expect to avoid in future – " And I cheerfully joined my daughters as though they and their escorts had long missed me.

Now, of course, they all expressed an enthusiastic desire to visit every tank and hear me explain the nature of their contents; but it was too late.

"No," said I, "it is damp enough here to float all the fishes in the Seine. And besides, as we are to 'see' the Rive Droite, we should hasten, so that we may have at least half an hour to devote to the remainder of France."

From the bowels of the earth we emerged into the sunshine, to partake of an exceedingly modest luncheon in the Trocadero restaurant, under the great waterfall.

Across the river a regiment of red-legged infantry marched, drums and bugles sounding.

"All that territory over there," said De Barsac, "is given up to barracks. It is an entire quarter of the city, occupied almost exclusively by the military. There the streets run between miles of monotonous barracks, through miles of arid parade grounds, where all day long the piou-pious drill in the dust; where the cavalry exercise; where the field-artillery go clanking along the dreary streets toward their own exercise ground beyond the Usine de Gaz. All day long that quarter of the city echoes with drums beating and trumpets sounding, and the trample of passing cavalry, and the clank and rattle of cannon. Truly, in the midst of peace we prepare for – something else – we French."

"It is strange," said I, "that you have time to be the greatest sculptors, architects, and painters in the world."

"In France, monsieur, we never lack time. It is only in America that you corner time and dispense it at a profit."

"Time," said I, "is at once our most valuable and valueless commodity. Our millionaires seldom have sufficient time to avoid indigestion. Yet, although time is apparently so precious, there are among us men who spend it in reading the New York Herald editorials. I myself am often short of time, yet I take a Long Island newspaper and sometimes even read it."

We had been walking through the gardens, while speaking, toward a large crowd of people which had collected along the river. In the centre of the crowd stood a taxicab, on the box of which danced the cabby, gesticulating.

When we arrived at the scene of disturbance the first person I saw distinctly was our acquaintance, the young man from East Boston, hatless, dishevelled, all over dust, in the grasp of two agents de police.

"He has been run over by a taxi," observed De Barsac. "They are going to arrest him."

"Well, why don't they do it?" I said, indignantly, supposing that De Barsac meant the chauffeur was to be arrested.

"They have done so."

"No, they haven't! They are holding the man who has been run over!"

"Exactly. He has been run over and they are arresting him."

"Who?" I demanded, bewildered.

"Why, the man who has been run over!"

"But why, in Heaven's name!"

"Why? Because he allowed himself to be run over!"

"What!" I cried. "They arrest the man who has been run over, and not the man who ran over him?"

"It is the law," said De Barsac, coolly.

"Do you mean to tell me that the runner is left free, while the runnee is arrested?" I asked in deadly calmness, reducing my question to legal and laconic language impossible to misinterpret.

"Exactly. The person who permits a vehicle to run over him in defiance of the French law, which says that nobody ought to let himself be run over, is liable to arrest, imprisonment, and fine – unless, of course, so badly injured that recovery is impossible."

Now at last I understood the Dreyfus Affaire. Now I began to comprehend the laws of the Bandarlog. Now I could follow the subtle logic of the philosophy embodied in "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass!"

This was the country for me! Why, certainly; these people here could understand a man who was guilty of stealing his own pig.

"I think I should like to live in Paris again," I said to my daughters; then I approached the young man from East Boston and bade him cheer up.

He was not hurt; he was only rumpled and dusty and hopping mad.

"I shall pay their darned fine," he said. "Then I'm going to hire a cab and drive it myself, and hunt up that cabman who ran over me, by Judas!"

That night I met Williams at the Café Jaune by previous and crafty agreement; and it certainly was nice to be together after all these years in the same old seats in the same café, and discuss the days that we never could live again – and wouldn't want to if we could – alas!

The talk fell on Ellis and Jones, and immediately I perceived that Williams had skillfully steered the conversation toward those two young men – and I knew devilish well he had a story to tell me about them.

So I cut short his side-stepping and circling, and told him to be about it as I wanted to devote one or two hours that night to a matter which I had recently neglected – Sleep.

"That Jones," he said, "was a funny fellow. He and Ellis didn't meet over here; Ellis was before his time. But they became excellent friends under rather unusual circumstances.

"Ellis, you know, was always getting some trout fishing when he was over here. He was a good deal of a general sportsman. As for Jones – well, you remember that he had no use for anything more strenuous than a motor tour."

"I remember," I said.

CHAPTER XIII

A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE

Well, then, the way that Ellis and Jones met each other – and several other things – was this. It chanced to be in the northern forests, I believe – both were fishing, neither knew the other nor was even aware of their mutual proximity.

Then the wind changed abruptly, blowing now from the south; and with the change of wind Ellis fancied that he smelled green wood burning. A few minutes later he was sure of it; he stood knee-deep in the stream sniffing uneasily, then he lifted his trout-rod, reeled in his line, and waded silently shoreward, his keen nose twitching.

Ah! There it was – that misty bluish bloom belting a clump of hemlocks. And the acrid odor grew, impregnating the filtered forest air. He listened, restless eyes searching. The noise of the stream filled his ears; he tightened the straps of his pack, shortened his trout rod, leaving line and cast on, and crawled up the ravine, shoulder-deep in fragrant undergrowth, until the dull clash of flashing spray and the tumult of the falls were almost lost in the leafy depths behind.

Ranker, stronger, came the pungent odor of smoke; halting to listen he heard the hissing whisper of green wood afire; then, crawling up over an enormous boulder, he saw, just beyond and below, a man in tweeds, squatting on his haunches, and attempting to toss a flapjack over a badly constructed camp-fire.