HOW TOM HUGGED THE PORTIÈRE’S DAUGHTER, WHO WAS BRINGING UP THE CREAM, AND THE DECISION ARRIVED AT IN CONSEQUENCE OF HIS MISDEEDS:
Flers opened the door and went to the staircase, to call for the cream: then he returned without noticing that Tom, who followed him, remained outside; upon his resuming his seat, Jadin, who had left off at the death of Catacwa, was asked to continue his reading:
Here, gentlemen (said he, showing the last page of his manuscript), I must substitute for written memoirs a verbal story, the subsequent events being of comparatively little importance. The offering made by James to the gods of the sea had the effect of making the elements propitious to Captain Pamphile’s vessel. So the remainder of the voyage passed without further adventure. One day, only, there was reason to fear James had met with a fatal mischance. The following shows how it happened.
Captain Pamphile, while they were passing the latitude of Cape Palmas, within sight of Upper Guinea, found in his cabin a magnificent butterfly, a true flying flower of the tropics, with its wings bejewelled and glittering like the breast of a humming-bird. The Captain, as we have seen, neglected nothing which might make a bit of money on his return to Europe. So he captured his unfortunate visitor with the greatest care,
for fear of chafing the velvet of its wings, and fastened it with a pin to the panelling of his room. Not one of you but has watched the dying agonies of a butterfly, and yet who, with the wish to keep, under a glass or in a box, this graceful child of the sun, has not stifled the tenderer feelings of the heart? You know, then, how long is the struggle, as the poor victim turns about the pivot on which its body is impaled, and dies a victim to its own beauty. Captain Pamphile’s butterfly thus I lived for some days, convulsively moving its wings as if it were sucking honey from a flower. This, of course, attracted James’s attention, who watched it out of the corner of his eye, without seeming to notice it. Then, taking advantage of the Captain’s back being turned, he jumped up, and guessing that the animal must be good to eat from its brilliant appearance, devoured it with his usual greediness.
Captain Pamphile turned round at the springs and somersaults of James; in eating the butterfly, he had swallowed the pin, which stuck fast in his throat; the unlucky glutton was choking.
The Captain, unsuspicious of the reason for these grimaces and contortions, thought he was playing, and was at first amused at his mad pranks; but when he saw that the antics seemed to be indefinitely prolonged, | and that the voice of the acrobat seemed to grow more and more like the patter of a Punch-and-Judy show; also that James, instead of merely sucking his thumb, as he had taken to do since his mishap, had put the whole hand half way down his throat, he began to suspect something more than a desire to please in all these gambols, and went up to James. The poor devil rolled his I eyes in a way which left little doubt as to the nature of I his feelings, so that Captain Pamphile, thinking his well-beloved monkey was about to depart this life, shouted for the doctor with all the strength of his lungs, not so much that he believed in the power of medicine, as that he wished to have nothing to reproach himself with later on.
The voice of Captain Pamphile, in consequence of the interest he felt for James, took such a tone of distress that, besides the doctor, every one within hearing ran to his help. Among the first to arrive was Double-Bouche, who, startled by the Captain’s shout while he was following his usual avocation, ran in with a leek and a carrot, which he had been engaged in peeling, in his hand. The Captain had no trouble in explaining the reason for his cries. He only pointed to James, who still continued, in the middle of the room, to show the same signs of pain and grief. Everybody crowded round the invalid. The doctor declared that he was suffering from a brain fever, a malady to which that species of ape was particularly liable, as their habit of hanging by the tail sent the blood to the head; that he must, therefore, bleed James forthwith, but that, whether or no, as he had not been called directly the first symptoms of the disease showed themselves, he could not answer for the result. After this preamble, he drew out his instrument case, got ready his lancet, and desired Double-Bouche to hold the patient steady, for fear he might cut an artery instead of a vein.
The Captain and his crew had great confidence in the doctor, so that they listened with profound respect to the scientific dissertation, the gist of which we have just given; only Double-Bouche made a sign of dissent by shaking his head. Double-Bouche had an old grudge against the doctor. One day it happened that some preserved plums, which the Captain held in great esteem as having been given him by his wife — it happened, then, that these plums, shut up in a certain drawer, were found to have sensibly diminished in number. On this Captain Pamphile had assembled his ship’s company with a view to finding out what member of the crew had dared to put his teeth into the private store of the master of the “Roxelane.” Everybody had denied the theft, Double-Bouche with the rest, but as the last was a likely thief, the Captain had taken his denial for what it was worth, and asked the doctor if there were no means of arriving at the truth. The doctor, whose motto, like that of Jean Jacques Rousseau, was vitam impendiere vero, had answered that nothing was simpler, and that there were two ways, both infallible. The first and speedier method was to rip up Double-Bouche, an operation he could perform in seven seconds; the second was to administer an emetic, which would entail a delay greater or less according to the strength of the drug, but would not under any circumstances be more than one hour. Captain Pamphile, who preferred gentle means, whenever possible, chose the emetic. The medicine was promptly and forcibly administered, and the suspect was handed over to the charge of two sailors, who had strict orders on no account to lose sight of him.
Thirty-nine minutes afterwards the doctor entered, watch in hand, bearing five plum stones, which Double-Bouche had thought well to swallow with the plums for better security, and which, in spite of himself, he had just given up to meet the ends of justice. His guilt was flagrant, Double-Rouche having positively declared that he had eaten no fruit for eight days but bananas and Indian figs, and condign punishment was his instant fate. The prisoner was sentenced to fifteen days’ bread and water with, by way of dessert, twenty-five lashes with a rope’s end, which were regularly administered to him by the quartermaster. From this little event it came about that Double-Bouche, as we have said, hated the doctor cordially, and never let a chance pass from that time forth of making things unpleasant for that individual.
Moreover, Double-Bouche was the only one of the company who did not believe a word of the doctor’s diagnosis. In his illness James exhibited certain symptoms which were very familiar to Double-Bouche from his having suffered in exactly the same manner, when, surprised in the act of tasting the Captain’s bouillabaisse, he had to swallow a piece of fish before he had time to take out the bones. His glance then instinctively wandered round the room seeking for what, by analogy, he reasoned must have tempted James’s appetite. The butterfly and the pin were gone; this was quite enough to show Double-Bouche exactly what was wrong. James had the butterfly in his stomach and the pin in his gullet.
Thus, when the doctor, holding his lancet ready, came cautiously up to James, whom Double-Bouche supported in his arms, the latter said, to the stupefaction and scandal of the Captain and his men, that the doctor was wrong; that James was not the least bit in the world menaced with apoplexy, but was suffering from strangulation; that there was nothing whatever wrong with the brain, but merely a big pin stuck in the oesophagus. Having had his say, Double-Bouche, trying on James the remedy with which he usually cured himself, forced down his throat after several attempts the leek he happened to be peeling when called by the Captain, thus driving the foreign body from the narrow passage where it was into the wider space below. Certain that the operation had been successful and would redound to his credit, he placed the moribund ape in the middle of the room. The latter, instead of going on with the antics which he had been performing before the crew five minutes earlier, rested for a moment quite quietly, as if to be certain that the pain was really past; then he began to blink, then to rub his stomach gently with one hand, and finally he stood up and danced on his hind legs, which, as we all know, was his expression for supreme contentment. But this was not all, for Double-Bouche, to give the final blow at the doctor’s reputation, held out to the convalescent the carrot he had brought, and James, who was very fond of that vegetable, took possession of it at once and proved, by the way in which he munched it without delay and without interruption, that his digestive organs were again quite free from obstruction, and ready to recommence their duties. The amateur surgeon was triumphant. As for the legitimate professor of the art, he made up his mind to take his revenge when Double-Bouche got ill; but unfortunately for him Double-Bouche had nothing whatever the matter with him during the rest of the voyage but a slight attack of indigestion in the latitude of the Azores, and this he treated himself, after the fashion of the ancient Romans, by putting his finger down his throat.
The brig “Roxelane,” Captain Pamphile, after a successful run, arrived then, 30th September, in the harbour of Marseilles, where were unladen, to the great advantage of the Captain, the tea, coffee, and groceries which he had obtained by barter from Captain Kao-Kiou-Kwan, in the Indian Archipelago; as for James the First, he was sold for the sum of seventy-five francs to Eugène Isabey, who gave him to Flers for a Turkish pipe, and Flers exchanged him for a Greek musket with Decamps.
And that is how James passed from the banks of the Bango River to No. 109, Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, where his education was, thanks to the paternal care of Fau, brought to the state of perfection which you all appreciate so highly in him.
Jadin was modestly acknowledging the plaudits of the meeting, when we were startled by loud cries from the outside of the door. We rushed towards the staircase and found the portière’s daughter nearly fainting in the arms of Tom, who, frightened in his turn by our sudden appearance, started off downstairs at full gallop. A moment later we heard a second cry, shriller even than the first; an old marquise, who had lived on the third floor for the last thirty-five years, had been disturbed by the noise, had come out candle in hand, met the fugitive face to face, and gone off in a dead faint. Tom ran upstairs again a few steps, found the door of the fourth floor open, went in as if the rooms belonged to him, and fell into the midst of a wedding supper. In an instant a fearful hubbub arose, the guests, bride and bridegroom at their head, made a dash for the stairs. The whole house, from cellar to attics, was out in less than no time, the lodgers lining the banisters, all talking at once and not one of them listening. Eventually they came back to the fountain head of information; the little girl, who gave the alarm, explained that she was going upstairs without a light, carrying the cream, when she felt that some one had thrown an arm round her waist. Supposing that some impertinent lodger had taken this liberty, she retaliated by a sound box on the ear. Tom replied to the blow by a growl which at once betrayed his identity; the girl, terrified at finding herself in the claws of a bear instead of, as she thought, in the arms of a young man, had given the scream which brought us all out. Our appearance had, as has been said, frightened Tom, and Tom’s fright had brought about the subsequent events, namely, the marquise’s fainting fit and the upset of the wedding party.
Alexandre Decamps, who was Tom’s especial friend, made his excuses to the company, and as proof of his good manners, promised to bring him back as St. Marthe led the famed Tarasque with a mere bit of blue or pink riband. On this a little scamp of a boy brought him the bride’s garter, which he had just got hold of to give to the guests, when the alarm was given. Alexandre took the riband, entered the dining-room, and found Tom walking with the greatest cleverness in and out among the various dishes on the table, where he was just eating his third currant cake. This fresh transgression was his ruin; the bridegroom, unfortunately, had exactly the same tastes as Tom; he called round him all those who were fond of cake. Loud murmurs arose forthwith, and the docility with which poor Tom followed Alexandre did little to allay their anger. At the door of the apartment they met the landlord. The marquise had just given notice to quit; the bridegroom declared he would not stay another quarter of an hour in the house unless justice was done him; and the rest of the lodgers joined in the chorus. The landlord turned pale as he thought of the empty house and vanished rents, and he therefore told Decamps that, much as he desired to retain him as a tenant, it would be impossible for him to do so unless he at once gave up keeping an animal which, at such a time of day and in a respectable house, was the occasion of so grave a scandal. On his part Decamps, who was beginning to get disgusted with Tom, made only sufficient demur to give his surrender the appearance of a favour. He gave his word of honour that Tom should be sent away the next day, and to reassure those of the lodgers who demanded instant expulsion, declaring their inability to go to bed if there was any delay, he went down to the backyard, shoved Tom into a dog kennel, pushed the door of the kennel against the wall, and piled up a heap of paving stones on the top of the kennel.
Thus, the promise, the execution of which had commenced so brilliantly, appeared satisfactory to the complainants; the portière s daughter dried her tears, the marquise calmed down after three severe nervous paroxysms, and the bridegroom magnanimously said he would be satisfied with hot buns in default of currant cakes. All went to their respective rooms, and two hours afterwards perfect tranquillity reigned again.
As for Tom, at first he tried, like Enceladus, to get rid of the mountain which weighed him down, but finding this too much for his strength, he made a hole in the wall and walked out into the next garden.