A Street of Paris and Its Inhabitant | Page 5

from Passy. He had dined, doubtless, with M. Planchette, one of his
friends of the Academy."
"He couldn't tell me his address," says the cab driver.
"He lives in the Rue Duguay-Trouin, Number three," says the janitor.
"What a neighborhood!" exclaims the driver.
"My friend," asks of the janitor the professor who had found the door

shut, "is there no meeting of the Academy to-day?"
"To-day!" exclaims the janitor. "At this hour!"
"What is the time?" asks the man of science.
"About eight o'clock," the janitor replies.
"It is late," comments M. Marmus. "Take me home, driver."
The driver goes through the quays, the Rue du Bac, falls into a tangle
of wagons, returns by the Rue de Grenelle, the Croix-Rouge, the Rue
Cassette, then he makes a mistake. He tries to find the Rue d'Assas, in
the Rue Honore-Chevalier, in the Rue Madame, in all the impossible
streets and, swearing that if he had known he would not have come so
far for a hundred sous, disembarks the professor in the Rue Duguay-
Trouin.
The cab driver claims an hour, for the police ordinances, that defend
consumers of time in cabs from the stratagems of cab drivers, had not
yet posted the walls of Paris with their protecting articles that settle in
advance all difficulties.
"Very well, my friend," says M. Marmus to the cab driver. "Pay him,"
M. Marmus says to Madame Adolphe. "I do not feel well, my child."
"Monsieur, what did I tell you?" she exclaimed. "You have eaten too
much. While you were away, I said to myself, 'It is Mme. Vernet's
birthday. They will urge him at table and he will come back sick.' Well,
go to bed. I will make camomile tea for you."

VII
DESSERT
The professor walked through the garden into a pavilion at one of its
corners, where he lived alone in order not to be disturbed by his wife.
He went up the stairway leading to his little room, and complained so
much of his pains in the stomach that Madame Adolphe filled him with
camomile tea.
"Ah, here is a carriage! It is Madame returning in great anxiety, I am
sure," said Madame Adolphe, giving to the professor his sixth cup of
camomile tea. "Now, sir, I hope that you will be able to drink it without
me. Do not let it fall all over your bed. You know how Madame would
laugh. You are very happy to have a little wife who is so amiable and
so joyful."
"Say nothing to her, my child," exclaimed the professor, whose features

expressed a sort of childish fear.
The truly great man is always more or less a child.

VIII
THIS SHOWS THAT THE WIFE OF A MAN OF SCIENCE IS
VERY UNHAPPY
"Well, good-bye. Return in the cab, it is paid for," Madame Marmus
was saying when Madame Adolphe arrived at the door.
The cab had already turned the corner. Madame Adolphe, not having
seen Madame Marmus's escort, said to herself:
"Poor Madame! He must be her nephew."
Madame Marmus, a little woman, lithe, graceful, mirthful, was divinely
dressed and in a fashion too young for her age, counting her twenty-
five years as a wife. Nevertheless, she wore well a gown with small
pink stripes, a cape embroidered and edged with lace, boots pretty as
the wings of a butterfly. She carried in her hand a pink hat with peach
flowers.
"You see, Madame Adolphe," she said, "my hair is all uncurled. I told
you that in this hot weather it should be dressed in bandeaux."
"Madame," the servant replied, "Monsieur is very sick. You let him eat
too much."
"What could I do?" Madame Marmus replied. "He was at one end of
the table and I at the other. He returned without me, as his habit is!
Poor little man! I will go to him as soon as I change my dress."
Madame Adolphe returns to the pavilion to propose an emetic, and
scolds the professor for not having returned with Madame Marmus.
"Since you wished to come in a cab, you might have spared me the
expense of the one that Madame Marmus took. The charge for your cab
was an hour. Did you stop anywhere?"
"At the Institute," he replied.
"At the Institute! Where did you take the cab?" she asked.
"In front of a bridge, I think," he replied.
"Was it still daylight?" she asked.
"Almost," he said.
"Then you did not go to Madame Vernet's!" exclaimed Madame
Adolphe.
"Why did you not come to Madame Vernet's?" asked his wife.

Madame Marmus, having come to the door on the tips of her toes, had
heard Madame Adolphe's exclamation. She did not wish to see
Madame Adolphe's astonishment. Surely Madame Adolphe could not
have forgotten the