Norse Tales and Sketches | Page 4

of all.
But into that threatening, growling sound far below there began to
come an upward movement. The notes ran into, over, past each
other--upward, always upward, but without making any way. There
was a wild struggle to get up, as it were a multitude of small, dark
figures scratching and tearing; a mad eagerness, a feverish haste; a
scrambling, a seizing with hands and teeth; kicks, curses, shrieks,
prayers--and all the while the artist's hands glided upward so slowly, so
painfully slowly.
'Anatole,' whispered Adèle, pale as death, 'he is playing Poverty.'
'Oh, these truffles!' groaned Anatole, holding his stomach.
All at once the room was lit up. Two servants with lamps and
candelabra appeared in the _portière_; and at the same moment the
stranger finished by bringing down his fingers of steel with all his
might in a dissonance, so startling, so unearthly, that the whole party
sprang up.
'Out with the lamps!' shouted De Silvis.
'No, no!' shrieked Adèle; 'I dare not be in the dark. Oh, that dreadful
man!'
Who was it? Yes, who was it? They involuntarily crowded round the
host, and no one noticed the stranger slip out behind the servants.
De Silvis tried to laugh. 'I think it was the devil himself. Come, let us
go to the opera.'
'To the opera! Not at any price!' exclaimed Louison. 'I will hear no
music for a fortnight.'
'Oh, those truffles!' moaned Anatole.
The party broke up. They had all suddenly realized that they were

strangers in a strange place, and each one wished to slip quietly home.
As the journalist conducted Mademoiselle Louison to her carriage, he
said: 'Yes, this is the consequence of letting one's self be persuaded to
dine with these semi-savages. One is never sure of the company he will
meet.'
'Ah, how true! He quite spoiled my good spirits,' said Louison
mournfully, turning her swimming eyes upon her companion. 'Will you
accompany me to La Trinité? There is a low mass at twelve o'clock.'
The journalist bowed, and got into the carriage with her.
But as Mademoiselle Adèle and Monsieur Anatole drove past the
English dispensary in the Rue de la Paix, he stopped the driver, and
said pleadingly to his fair companion: 'I really think I must get out and
get something for those truffles. You will excuse me, won't you? That
music, you know.'
'Don't mind me, my friend. Speaking candidly, I don't think either of us
is specially lively this evening. Good-night.'
She leant back in the carriage, relieved at finding herself alone; and this
light, frivolous creature cried as if she had been whipped whilst she
drove homeward.
Anatole was undoubtedly suffering from the truffles, but yet he thought
he came to himself as the carriage rolled away. Never in their whole
acquaintance had they been so well pleased with each other as at this
moment of parting.
'Der liebe Doctor' had come best through the experience, because,
being a German, he was hardened in music. All the same, he resolved
to take a walk as far as Müller's brasserie in the Rue Richelieu to get a
decent glass of German beer, and perhaps a little bacon, on the top of it
all.

A MONKEY.
Yes, it was really a monkey that had nearly procured me 'Laudabilis'
[Footnote: A second-class pass.] in my final law examination. As it was,
I only got 'Haud'; [Footnote: A third-class pass.] but, after all, this was
pretty creditable.
But my friend the advocate, who had daily, with mingled feelings, to
read the drafts of my work, found my process-paper so good that he
hoped it might raise me into the 'Laud' list. And he did not wish me to

suffer the injury and annoyance of being plucked in the _vivâ voce_
examination, for he knew me and was my friend.
But the monkey was really a coffee-stain on the margin of page 496 of
Schweigaard's Process, which I had borrowed from my friend Cucumis.
Going up to a law examination in slush and semi-darkness in
mid-winter is one of the saddest experiences that a man can have. It
may, indeed, be even worse in summer; but this I have not tried.
One rushes through these eleven papers (or is it thirteen?--it is certainly
the most infamous number that the college authorities have been able to
devise)--like an unhappy _débutant_ in a circus. He stands on the back
of a galloping horse, with his life in his hands and a silly circus smile
on his lips; and so he must leap eleven (or is it thirteen?) times through
one of these confounded paper-covered hoops.
The unhappy mortal who passes--or tries to pass--his law examination,
finds himself in precisely the same situation, only he does not gallop
round a ring, under brilliant gaslight,