Balcony Stories | Page 3

the peace. Wherever patience is found police investigation should be
made as for smallpox. Patience! Patience! I never heard the word--I
assure you, I never heard the word in Paris. What do you think would
be said there to the messenger who craved patience of you? Oh, they
know too well in Paris--a rataplan from the walking-stick on his back,
that would be the answer; and a, 'My good fellow, we are not hiring
professors of patience, but legs.'"

"But, husband, you must remember we do not hire Pompey. He only
does it to oblige us, out of his kindness."
"Oblige us! Oblige me! Kindness! A negro oblige me! Kind to me!
That is it; that is it. That is the way to talk under the new régime. It is
favor, and oblige, and education, and monsieur, and madame, now.
What child's play to call this a country--a government! I would not be
surprised"--jumping to his next position on this ever-recurring first of
the month theme--"I would not be surprised if Pompey has failed to
find the letter in the box. How do I know that the mail has not been
tampered with? From day to day I expect to hear it. What is to prevent?
Who is to interpose? The honesty of the officials? Honesty of the
officials--that is good! What a farce--honesty of officials! That is
evidently what has happened. The thought has not occurred to me in
vain. Pompey has gone. He has not found the letter, and--well; that is
the end."
But the General had still another theory to account for the delay in the
appearance of his mail which he always posed abruptly after the
exhaustion of the arraignment of the post-office.
"And why not Journel?" Journel was their landlord, a fellow of means,
but no extraction, and a favorite aversion of the old gentleman's.
"Journel himself? You think he is above it, _hé_? You think Journel
would not do such a thing? Ha! your simplicity, Honorine--your
simplicity is incredible. It is miraculous. I tell you, I have known the
Journels, from father to son, for--yes, for seventy-five years. Was not
his grandfather the overseer on my father's plantation? I was not five
years old when I began to know the Journels. And this fellow, I know
him better than he knows himself. I know him as well as God knows
him. I have made up my mind. I have made it up carefully that the first
time that letter fails on the first of the month I shall have Journel
arrested as a thief. I shall land him in the penitentiary. What! You think
I shall submit to have my mail tampered with by a Journel? Their
contents appropriated? What! You think there was no coincidence in
Journel's offering me his post-office box just the month--just the month,
before those letters began to arrive? You think he did not have some

inkling of them? Mark my words, Honorine, he did--by some of his
subterranean methods. And all these five years he has been arranging
his plans--that is all. He was arranging theft, which no doubt has been
consummated to-day. Oh, I have regretted it--I assure you I have
regretted it, that I did not promptly reject his proposition, that, in fact, I
ever had anything to do with the fellow."
It was almost invariably, so regularly do events run in this world,--it
was almost invariably that the negro messenger made his appearance at
this point. For five years the General had perhaps not been interrupted
as many times, either above or below the last sentence. The mail, or
rather the letter, was opened, and the usual amount--three ten-dollar
bills--was carefully extracted and counted. And as if he scented the
bills, even as the General said he did, within ten minutes after their
delivery, Journel made his appearance to collect the rent.
It could only have been in Paris, among that old retired nobility, who
counted their names back, as they expressed it, "au de çà du déluge,"
that could have been acquired the proper manner of treating a "roturier"
landlord: to measure him with the eyes from head to foot; to hand the
rent--the ten-dollar bill--with the tips of the fingers; to scorn a look at
the humbly tendered receipt; to say: "The cistern needs repairing, the
roof leaks; I must warn you that unless such notifications meet with
more prompt attention than in the past, you must look for another
tenant," etc., in the monotonous tone of supremacy, and in the French,
not of Journel's dictionary, nor of the dictionary of any such as he, but
in the French of Racine and Corneille; in the French of the above
suggested circle, which inclosed the General's memory, if it had not
inclosed--as he never tired of