The Son of Clemenceau, A Novel of Modern Love and LifeDumas, Alexandre
General
The Son of Clemenceau, A Novel of Modern Love and Life
Dumas, Alexandre
Fiction
"A cut-throat quarter, that is it," remarked the student, still too
excited to feel the cold and want of his outer garment. "After all, one
cannot travel from Berlin to Paris without getting some soot on the
cheek and a cinder or two in the eye. In the same way it is not possible
to see life and go through this world without being smeared with a
little blood or smut."
While talking to himself, he smoothed his dress and curled his dark and
fine moustache, projecting horizontally and not drooping. He had walked
so fast that he had overtaken the Jews, delayed as the girl was by her
father's lameness, and having to carry the violin in its case which she
had recovered and preciously guarded.
"What an audacious bully that was," the student continued; "but even a
good cat loses a mouse now and then."
The pair seemed to expect him to join them, but as he was about to do
so, at the mouth of a narrow and unlighted alley, he heard the measured
tramp of feet indicating the patrol.
Already the character of the streets and houses changed: there were
vistas of those large buildings which give one the impression that
Munich is planned on too generous a scale for its population. Only here
and there was a roof or front suggestive of the Middle Ages, and they
may have been in imitation; the others were stately and were classical,
and the avenues became spacious.
All at once, while the student was watching the semi-military constables
approach, he heard an uproar toward the bridge. The major had been
discovered by quite another sort of folk than the allies of Baboushka,
and the alarm was given.
To advance was to invite an arrest which would result in no pleasant
investigation.
He had tarried too long as it was. The watchman's
horn--tute-horn--sounded at the bridge and the squad responded through
their commander; whistles also shrilled, being police signals. The
student was perceived. It was a critical moment. The next moment he
would be challenged, and at the next, have a carbine or sabre levelled
at his breast. He retired up the alley, precipitately, wondering where
the persons whom he befriended had disappeared so quickly.
A very faint light gleamed from deeply within, at the end of a crooked
passage through a lantern-like projection at a corner. A number of iron
hooks bristled over his head as if for carcasses at a butchers, although
their innocent use was to hang beds on them to air. On a tarnished plate
he deciphered "ARTISTES' ENTRANCE," and while perplexed, even as the
gendarmes appeared at the mouth of this blind-alley, a long and taper
hand was laid on his arm and a voice, very, very sweet, though in a mere
murmur, said irresistibly:
"Come! come in, or you will be lost!" He yielded, and was drawn into a
corridor under the oriel window, where the air was pungent with the reek
of beer, tobacco-smoke, orange-peel, cheese and caraway seeds.
CHAPTER III.
"THE JINGLE-JANGLE."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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