In Madeira Place | Page 5

fond of strolling about the wharves, and I
should have liked very well to stop occasionally at Sorel's, if I could
have been allowed to sit in the kitchen and hear the general
conversation. But this was not sufficient state for "M. le maître
d'école." I must be drawn off upstairs to the bedroom parlor, to hear of
Auguste's virtues. Such devotion I have seldom seen. Sorel would have
praised Auguste, with tears in his eyes, for hours together, if I would
have stayed to listen.
He had many things to show in that parlor. He had gyroscopes: and he
would wind them up and set half-a-dozen of those anti-natural tops
spinning straight out in the air for my diversion. There were great sacks
of uninflated balloons, and delicate sheet-rubber, from which Sorel
made up balloons. There were other curious things in rubber,--a
tobacco-pouch, for example, in perfect outward imitation of an iron
kilogramme-weight, with a ring to lift it by, warranted to create
"immense surprise" among those who should lift it for iron;
tobacco-pouches, too, in fac-simile of lobsters and crabs and reptiles,
colored to nature, which Sorel assured me would cause roars of
laughter among my friends: there was no pleasanter way, he said, of
entertaining an evening company than suddenly to display one of these
creatures, and make the ladies scream and run about. He presented me,
at different times, with a gyroscope, a kilogramme-weight and a lobster
with a blue silk lining.
As time ran on, and, in the early winter, I began practice, Sorel brought
me a little business. He had to sue two Graeco-Roman wrestlers for
board and attach their box-office receipts. Some Frenchman had heard
of a little legacy left him in the Calvados, and wanted me to look up the
matter.
Fidèle, too, came to me every quarter-day, to make oath before me to
his pension certificate, and stopped and made a short call. He had little

to say about France. His great romance had been the war, although it
seemed to have fused itself into a hazy, high-colored dream of danger,
excitement, suffering, and generous devotion. Tears always rose in his
eyes when he spoke of "la république?"
In those first days of practice, anything by the name of law business
wore a halo, and I used to encourage Sorel's calls, partly for this reason
and partly for practice in talking French with a common man. I hoped
to go to France some day, and I wanted to be able then to talk not only
with the grammatical, but with the dear people who say, "I guess
likely," and "How be you?" in French.
Moreover, Sorel was rather amusing. He was something of a humorist.
Once he came to tell me, excitedly, that Auguste was learning music:
"Il touche au violon,--mais--'e play so bien!" And Sorel's eyes opened
in wonder at the boy's quickness.
"Who teaches him?" I asked. "Some Frenchman who plays in the
theatre?"
"Mais, no," Sorel replied, with a broad drollery in his eye; "un
professeur d'occasion!" It was a ruined music-teacher, engaged now in
selling balloons from Madeira Place, who was the "professeur
d'occasion."
One day Sorel appeared with a great story to tell. Auguste, it seemed,
had wearied of home, and was determined to go to sea. Nothing could
deter him. Whereupon M. Sorel had hit upon a stratagem. He had
hunted up, somewhere along the wharves, two French sailors with
conversational powers, and had retained them to stay at his house for
two or three days, as chance comers. It was inevitable that Auguste
should ply them with eager questions,--and they knew their part.
As Sorel, entering into the situation now with all his dramatic nature,
with his eyes wide open, repeated to me some of the tales of horror
which they had palmed off upon innocent Auguste as spontaneous truth,
I could see, myself, the rigging covered with ice an inch thick; sailors
climbing up ("Ah! comme ils grimpent,--ils grimpent!") bare-handed,

their hands freezing to the ropes at every touch, and leaving flesh
behind, "comme if you put your tongue to a lam'post in the winter." I
could see the seamen's backs cut up with lashes for the slightest
offences; I tasted the foul, unwholesome food. I think that Sorel half
believed it all himself,--his imagination was so powerful,--forgetting
that he had paid in silver coin for every word of it. At any rate, the ruse
had been successful. Auguste had been thoroughly scared and had
consented to stay at home, and the most threatening cloud of Sorel's life
had blown over.
Usually, however, Sorel and I talked politics; and to our common
pleasure we generally agreed. Sorel knew very little about the details of
our government, and he would listen to me with the utmost