Part 11

"Sais pas, m'sieur!"

"Comment, petit crétin, tu ne sais pas!"

And Rapaud would receive a pincée tordue--a "twisted pinch"--on the back of his arm to quicken his memory.

"Oh, là, là!" he would howl--"je n' sais pas!"

"Et toi, Maurice?"

"Ça se dit 'to be able,' m'sieur!" I would say.

"Mais non, mon ami--tu oublies ta langue natale--ça se dit, 'to can'! Maintenant, comment dirais-tu en anglais, 'je voudrais pouvoir'?"

"Je dirais, 'I would like to be able.'"

"Comment, encore! petit cancre! allons--tu es Anglais--tu sais bien que tu dirais, 'I vould vill to can'!"

Then M. Brossard turns to Barty: "A ton tour, Josselin!"

"Moi, m'sieur?" says Barty.

"Oui, toi!--comment dirais-tu, 'je pourrais vouloir'?"

"Je dirais 'I vould can to vill,'" says Barty, quite unabashed.

"À la bonne heure! au moins tu sais ta langue, toi!" says Père Brossard, and pats him on the cheek; while Barty winks at me, the wink of successful time-serving hypocrisy, and Bonneville writhes with suppressed delight.

What lives most in my remembrance of that summer is the lovely weather we had, and the joy of the Passy swimming-bath every Thursday and Sunday from two till five or six; it comes back to me even now in heavenly dreams by night. I swim with giant side-strokes all round the Île des Cygnes between Passy and Grenelle, where the École de Natation was moored for the summer months.

Round and round the isle I go, up stream and down, and dive and float and wallow with bliss there is no telling--till the waters all dry up and disappear, and I am left wading in weeds and mud and drift and drought and desolation, and wake up shivering--and such is life.

As for Barty, he was all but amphibious, and reminded me of the seal at the Jardin des Plantes. He really seemed to spend most of the afternoon under water, coming up to breathe now and then at unexpected moments, with a stone in his mouth that he had picked up from the slimy bottom ten or twelve feet below--or a weed--or a dead mussel.

Part Second

"Laissons les regrets et les pleurs À la vieillesse; Jeunes, il faut cueillir les fleurs De la jeunesse!"--Baïf.

Sometimes we spent the Sunday morning in Paris, Barty and I--in picture-galleries and museums and wax-figure shows, churches and cemeteries, and the Hôtel Cluny and the Baths of Julian the Apostate--or the Jardin des Plantes, or the Morgue, or the knackers' yards at Montfaucon--or lovely slums. Then a swim at the Bains Deligny. Then lunch at some restaurant on the Quai Voltaire, or in the Quartier Latin. Then to some café on the Boulevards, drinking our demi-tasse and our chasse-café, and smoking our cigarettes like men, and picking our teeth like gentlemen of France.

Once after lunch at Vachette's with Berquin (who was seventeen) and Bonneville (the marquis who had got an English mother), we were sitting outside the Café des Variétés, in the midst of a crowd of consommateurs, and tasting to the full the joy of being alive, when a poor woman came up with a guitar, and tried to sing "Le petit mousse noir," a song Barty knew quite well--but she couldn't sing a bit, and nobody listened.

"Allons, Josselin, chante-nous ça!" said Berquin.

And Bonneville jumped up, and took the woman's guitar from her, and forced it into Josselin's hands, while the crowd became much interested and began to applaud.

Thus encouraged, Barty, who never in all his life knew what it is to be shy, stood up and piped away like a bird; and when he had finished the story of the little black cabin-boy who sings in the maintop halliards, the applause was so tremendous that he had to stand up on a chair and sing another, and yet another.

"Écoute-moi bien, ma Fleurette!" and "Amis, la matinée est belle!" (from La Muette de Portici), while the pavement outside the Variétés was rendered quite impassable by the crowd that had gathered round to look and listen--and who all joined in the chorus:

"Conduis ta barque avec prudence, Pêcheur! parle bas! Jette tes filets en silence Pêcheur! parle bas! Et le roi des mers ne nous échappera pas!" (bis).

and the applause was deafening.

Meanwhile Bonneville and Berquin went round with the hat and gathered quite a considerable sum, in which there seemed to be almost as much silver as copper--and actually two five-franc pieces and an English half-sovereign! The poor woman wept with gratitude at coming into such a fortune, and insisted on kissing Barty's hand. Indeed it was a quite wonderful ovation, considering how unmistakably British was Barty's appearance, and how unpopular we were in France just then!