"It's times like this I do wonder if you were a fancy boy."
Laforêt could scoff all he wanted, but Feuilly was going to take the time to comb his hair out nicely. "Every girl in Paris will be out today, and I have every intention of doing my damnedest to lay one. Laugh if you like, but the barbers will all be busy this morning for the same reason."
"I'm just teasing you. Champs Elysées or barrière du Trône?"
"Champs Elysées. I'm in for the fête, not the throne."
Yet as they were about to leave, Laforêt paused in front of Ada's door. "I should check on her."
"Isn't it a bit soon?"
"Considering the fête? Go on. If I see you, I see you. Maybe I'm the childish one dragging you down. I really should check on her."
Feuilly shrugged but left him to it. As he descended, he could hear Laforêt calling her name. But she must have answered in the end, for he paused at the corner, and Laforêt did not come up to him.
If that was what Laforêt wanted in a marriage, to be berated for not doing right, he could have it. Feuilly refused to believe all women were like Lydie at bottom, but perhaps she had been typical after all. There must be exceptions – Sophie would never lead a man on if she deemed him unworthy, and Vivienne was taking whatever she could get without hopes or recriminations – but Ada had in all ways seemed emblematic of the mass of decent women. And the mass must be more like Lydie than he had thought.
Still, all he sought today was a bit of fun, a few dances and some petting if he could get nothing more. Every girl in Paris would be out, with every man in Paris after them. It was the perfect opportunity to further try on the idea of the poor artist from the provinces.
Yet arriving at the grounds, the stages and tents and dance floors set all along the Champs Elysées, his initial courage faltered. Every man in Paris would be out today, from the second richest stock broker, slumming his way through the public celebration after he had not been invited to any of the king's private audiences, to Babet's crew, looking to pick the stock broker's pocket. Every girl in Paris would be there, clinging to the lovers or husbands they already had or seeking someone better than him, just like every dance hall in Bercy or Saint-Mandé. Here he was prowling alone, when everyone who was not a predator had the decency to come in a group, proclaiming their innocence and good cheer. What had possessed him to think he ought to come to such a place at all?
He watched the professional acrobats, far more talented than the saltimbanques of the street. He listened to an entire set from one of the orchestras not playing music for dancing. He caught a vaudeville and a puppet show. The dance floors could wait until he found some new courage.
The buffets were to open at three o'clock, and he joined the crowd already prowling in the vicinity of the tables. Ragged families had come in search of free food and drink; the most ragged of men cared for the wine fountains only. The crowd was already turning rowdy, pushing up against the barriers. For so many, this was their opportunity to eat that day. Even a handful of men and women in their well-worn Sunday best crowded in anxiously, the genteel poor who otherwise would have hidden starving in their garrets but today had joined the public festivities where their need might be hidden by the general holiday.
When the gates were opened at the stroke of three, the crowd pushed forward. Unlike at the theatre, where the narrow stairway to the amphitheatre forced the throng to maintain order, the gates did little against the forward push of the desperate and the rowdy. One had to throw elbows and accept a few blows if one were to be victorious. Such sport had been easier when Feuilly was a child, able to slip between bigger men and carry the day. Today, he was content with a single thick slice of tourte of uncertain composition.
The pie proved highly spiced, the filling more meaty than he had expected. Someone had provided quite good viands to the government in place of the expected bland pap. It seem impossible to Feuilly that all the cooks commandeered for the occasion would waste such quantities of meat and spices on the expected mob, so he felt himself one of the few winners there might be that day. If nothing else, he was eating very well, indeed.
He was polishing off the last few bites when he heard someone call his name. Expecting Laforêt, it took a moment for him to realise that it was instead one of the Bretons from Lapeyre's shop, calling to him from the edge of one of the dance floors. Feuilly had never seen the twins apart, and it was a momentary shock to see only one of them, with a woman who also waved him over. Who was the woman, and what interest could she have in him?
"I'm glad to see you," Favé told him. "Irène was dying to meet you."
"Irène Quinot," she introduced herself. "Thomas is my brother."
"I've been spoken of?"
"Of course. Not many new men come through there, so you were of particular interest."
"How have you been getting on?" Favé asked.
"As well as one can," Feuilly admitted. Any contact with any sort of work had to be cultivated; it was not the time for proud lies. "Still nothing steady."
"Nevers is still drunk, which you'd think that fall would have cured him of," Favé let on. "I'd rather have you back, and I suspect Lapeyre thinks so, too."
"Thomas says you could put in the entire design by hand if you were asked. I think it must be brilliant to have so much talent at something."
Mlle Quinot was far from the prettiest girl sitting out the dance, and she probably belonged to Favé, but it was still very flattering to be praised by anyone. "It's only brilliant when it leads to work. I rather suspected your brother didn't like me."
"He thinks himself cock of the walk, and you put your nose in, that's all. Piran told me all about it."
The other Favé, it turned out, was dancing with a very good looking girl. A girl who, it seemed, was not his and was not so taken with him, for she went off to her own friends at the end of the dance while Favé joined his brother. "Feuilly, good to see you. How go things?"
"As well as can be expected without steady work."
"We've got to get you back. Nevers gets the shakes once a week. Where's your brother?" he asked Mlle Quinot.
"With Dora, I think. I did not expect you back so soon."
"You may be the only woman in Paris who doesn't mind our accents."
"Your French has gotten much better over the years. That girl doesn't know what she's missing."
"You're alone, too, I see," he observed.
"A man without a job is usually a man without a girl."
"Unless he's slumming it." The girl he had been dancing with was now chatting gaily with a whole group of young bourgeois. "Not much chance for us if they aren't marriage-minded."
"I'm not particularly marriage-minded," Mlle Quinot reminded him.
"Only because you have to wait out or wear down your father."
"Maybe someone else will come along before that happens."
"And you'd leave me for a Frenchman?" her Breton asked.
"Never. Come dance with me!" She pulled Piran toward the dance floor, not that he was making anything but a mock reluctance. "Stay there," she ordered them. "We'll be back."
"So, your brother and Quinot's sister."
"Quinot has decided to accept it; their father, not so much. But he'll come around one of these days, if Irène keeps insisting she'll be an old maid otherwise."
Quinot finally made it over to them, no girl on his arm. "Feuilly, good to see you. Where's Irène?" he asked Favé.
"Where do you expect? On the floor with Piran. They'll be back after this set. Where's Dora?"
"With her friends. One of them went hysterical over some man she hasn't gone with in over a year, so I decided I would leave them to it. Do you understand women?" he asked Feuilly. "I sure as hell don't."
"Does anyone?" Feuilly asked.
They dropped the subject for the moment, chatting on about work and Feuilly's lack of it. Quinot thought he might know someone who might know of something that could be going in a month or so, which was the closest thing to an introduction Feuilly had had since Lapeyre had paid the café owner for him, so he took it as a sign that his luck might well be changing.
As they were talking, Favé caught sight of a girl who was looking in their direction and nudged Feuilly in the ribs. "That one. Tall, blonde, green dress. Which of us do you think she's looking at?"
"If it's me, I'm not biting," Quinot said. "Dora would find out and ruin everything. It's probably the pretty bastard." He shoved Feuilly playfully. "Go on."
"Go on, give her a try," Favé urged.
She was very pretty, indeed, across the crowded floor, and even prettier up close. He tried his most charming manner. "Mademoiselle. I hope you will forgive my forwardness, but I couldn't help seeing that we had attracted your notice. Might I introduce myself? Daniel Feuilly."
"Sylvie Lourdin. Who is your friend?" she asked eagerly, his heart sinking. "The tall one, not the ginger one."
"Quinot is already engaged. His girl is looking after a friend of hers in some sort of crisis. Might I at least have a dance, so you can drop me gently? It would be kind of you."
"Since your friend will not come, why not?"
Mlle Lourdin danced well, but Feuilly knew she was showing off for anyone else who might be watching, not for her unfortunate partner. Still, she had been polite enough to drop him nicely rather than directly insult him or use him without his permission. He had done much worse, and he knew he should not have tried so hard with a pretty girl who could not have been more than eighteen. Lydie was the only one of that sort he had ever succeeded with, and she had been hand-picked for him, strung along on another woman's promises. He thanked Mlle Lourdin for her time, and her kindness, and she let him kiss her hand goodbye.
Piran Favé and Mlle Quinot had joined their brothers when he returned. "She wanted you," he told Quinot. "I said you were taken."
"Damn. Did you learn anything else?"
"What good is it if she thinks you engaged?" Irène told him. "Do I need to go find Dora?"
"She's to meet me here once Charlotte Menet stops weeping, whenever that turns out to be."
"Oh, it's Charlotte! That could be hours without some help. You'd be a friend and flirt with Charlotte, wouldn't you?" she asked Feuilly. "She's good fun when she isn't weepy. All she needs is someone to rub in Didier Vinchon's face, if that's the trouble."
"I believe that's the trouble," Quinot agreed.
"Piran and I will go find them."
"How kind of your sister to give me the weepy one," Feuilly accidentally said aloud, cursing himself the instant he realised he had given voice to his ill conception.
Quinot laughed. "It is rather cruel of her, isn't it? I will say Charlotte is as pretty as that girl who dropped you, so it could be a much worse offer."
Dora proved a thorough unremarkable girl, possessing neither beauty nor an interesting ugliness, lacking even Mlle Quinot's vivacity. Charlotte, on the other hand, was as beautiful as promised, with a milkmaid's perfect complexion and bright blonde hair. She did not bother to hide that she was looking Feuilly up and down as they were introduced, her eyes still a bit red from her tears. "Dora says you're a painter." A healthy suspicion was evident in her voice.
Quinot cut him off before he could answer. "He is. Worked with me for a while."
"If our friends are so keen to set us up in a dance, who are we to say no?" Feuilly proposed.
Whether she decided there was no way out of the proposition or he was at least acceptable for a single dance, Feuilly never discovered, but she did agree to be led to the floor.
"Your hands are so soft! You work with Quinot?"
He was not surprised she sounded skeptical. He was the only man in the shop who did not haul on ropes for his wages. "I did for a while. Corrections, not on the printing line. I'm a painter, as mademoiselle said, not a printer. No rough cables for me."
"What do you do now?"
It was no good lying, not when Quinot might know a man who might know a man. "A little of this, a little of that. Anything going. I was a fan painter until my employer went out of business."
"Don't you hate that?" she commiserated, to his surprise. "I came here with the promise of a job with a staymaker, and that only lasted a day before bailiffs marched in. Everyone makes promises and no one has to keep them. It's not fair."
Irène Quinot turned out to be right. Whatever Charlotte Menet might or might not want of him, she was kind and charming to him in a way no pretty, decent girl had ever been. She permitted familiarities Sophie never would, and he knew she must have given up her virtue to M. Vinchon if she was taking his reappearance so ill so long after his departure, but she still seemed decent at bottom, neither grasping nor sluttish. The two years she admitted to working in Paris had taught her the score, and she accepted it as she was now accepting him. She was not witty, but she was good humoured, and the exertion of the dance brought a perfect flush to her cheeks, augmenting her already considerable beauty.
"We should stick the two of you up on one of the stages to play a pair of shepherds," Mlle Quinot joked when they rejoined the group. A couple more girls had arrived with their men in tow, expanding what was in truth Quinot's family circle. Charlotte was Dora's cousin, and one of the new girls and one of the new men were Quinot cousins.
It was Feuilly's first experience with the way he had always heard families functioned. His life had been spent among those without family, either by choice or by fate. Even Laforêt had half-broken with his family due to his choice to leave the brotherhood: he had family, but only from afar. Feuilly's connections had always been made through friends and cafés and work. No one in his circles ever asked, "Have you met my brother?" or "Do you know my cousin?" But here, everyone was related or would be soon by marriage. Yet it was no closed circle, for the only explanation for his presence - "he worked with Thomas" - was sufficient for entry. It was no rarified social world, but it was precisely the sort of circles he and Laforêt were blocked from at the dance halls. Perhaps that was what Ada saw as their childishness, that they were the juvenile wolves without a pack, prowling around the edges but without the charm or money to work their way in.
The company was genial enough, particularly as pretty Charlotte let him have two more dances, and they finally found a girl willing to spend an evening with the unattached Favé. This was precisely the life Feuilly had set out to claim when he had left Babet's crew behind. If Ada could see him among these people, would she still consider him too light, too childish? If the Quinot clan thought him so, they did not let him feel it.
The sun had set when Dora finally took her cousin away. "If I wanted to see you again, would you like that?" he dared ask Charlotte. If he were honest, he found her a bit boring, but she was very pretty and had given him more attention than any girl in years. If she were willing, he might see her at a pleasure garden on Sunday, bring Laforêt and Ada along, and slip away with her for some petting whilst they distracted her family.
Charlotte did not quite shrug, but her meaning was clear. "I wouldn't mind it, really. I like the Hermitage best." He was certain he could read the implication: he would do very well until someone of means, or at least the pretense to them, came along.
He accepted it with a smile, for how much better could he ever hope to do? She might only want a little petting and nothing more from him, anyway. "I hope I shall see you there some Sunday, mademoiselle." She did flush and smile when he kissed her hand.
Quinot hung back to thank him. "It was a big favour, and I'm grateful."
"Your sister was right: she's a great girl when she's not weeping. You just owe me a drink with your friend, and we'll be even."
"Of course. Week from tomorrow, after work? The usual café."
Feuilly bade him goodbye and headed deeper into the remains of the fête, looking for Laforêt. There were three other dance floors still set up, lanterns blazing in the dark, and Laforêt was surely at one of them, with or without Ada. Feuilly was rather sorry he had not run into Laforêt whilst still in Mlle Menet's company: it was not that he sought to rub his success in a friend's face, merely that he wished to share his good fortune. And he needed Laforêt's experience to help him navigate this new social circle held together by ties of blood.
Yet when he was hailed from one of those remaining dance floors, crowded in the last hour or so of the fête, his heart sank. It was as "M. Feuilly" his name had been called, and it was by a small group of the students, including the dour Spaniard. The Spaniard had a pretty girl on his arm who must have been attracted to his money rather than his ill-assorted features. Of course it had not been the Spaniard who had hailed him, but the short, bright provençal most likely to have been dangled from the bridge if their circle were responsible for the virtuoso graffiti. The blond formed the last of the small company, neither Combeferre nor Bahorel in sight. Gendarmes had stood guard everywhere all day, maintaining order just as they had done the previous afternoon at the theatres, and these naïve students had dared hail a workingman in his Sunday coat. It was the pretty girl who waved most for his attention, and that pushed Feuilly to answering their call despite her attachment to the Spaniard.
"A pleasant coincidence, messieurs, I hope?"
"Assuredly!" the short provençal exclaimed. "With four dance floors, it's certainly a coincidence, and a very pleasant one at that."
Feuilly bowed to the girl and introduced himself. "Emma Lavisse. I take the blame if we've pulled you away from something. They pointed you out, and I was dying to meet you."
"Really?" Why did girls suddenly want to meet him? What were people saying about him? Particularly these students, discussing him with their mistress.
"Germain has the most interesting friends. I love meeting all of them."
"You've been sadly misled in my case, I fear," Feuilly lied. He knew perfectly well that he was probably more interesting than most of the people she might have met, but those aspects were precisely the ones those students should neither know nor share with her. "I'm surprised you would wish to be seen speaking to me in the presence of so many interested parties," he said to the boy who had hailed him.
"I just wanted to say hello and ask how you found the fête. Then Emma wanted to meet you. That's all, I swear."
"How have you found the fête?" the blond asked, trying to assert a more sensible tone over the conversation.
The provençal laughed. "Please, answer Faniel. I make a mess of everything."
"I have passed a pleasant day on the public expenditure," Feuilly replied. "Though I would have preferred to have worked this week, free plays and dances or no."
"You're still on day work, then?" the provençal asked. Courfeyrac, that was his name, Feuilly suddenly remembered.
"I have a few hooks out; something has to bite," he answered, doing his best to stay friendly. But the students, the gendarmes, even the girl had him on edge. It had been a good day, no matter what he told these bourgeois. He had eaten well, he had a line on something that might become a real job instead of makework, and he had danced several times with the sort of pretty, honest, hardworking girl he had always craved greater acquaintance with. And now the students had stuck their noses in it, rendering his successes paltry in comparison to their very existence, pretty Emma on the arm of the ugly Spaniard. The sheer number of gendarmes and soldiers looking on kept him off balance, restrained his ability to respond to the students even more than his innate courtesy did.
He let them chat with him a bit more, neither his heart nor his head really in it. At least the last suspicions he had of their relations with the police fell entirely away. Professionals would not have the girl; amateurs who had never gone beyond their small circle of friends would be the fools to introduce their attempted recruits to their mistresses, for what else did one do with mistresses outside of bed except show them off to friends? Why was Combeferre with such reckless boys? Monday's procession and the discovery of the graffiti had put him in mind to seek Combeferre out again, but if these were the other men at that table, was it really so wise?
There were too many soldiers in Paris this week. The king was afraid, and his fear would lead directly to men asserting their right of rebellion as the scared man cut at his foes, liberties falling aside in the name of one man's peace of mind. The Greeks rebelled, and their suffering increased as the Turks feared them more and more. It was worse for the Jews in Egypt, wasn't it, before they were permitted to leave? Tonight, Feuilly could see at a glance that they were surrounded by fear, and these children were too blind to see it. The police would have no qualms about locking up pretty Mlle Lavisse as a whore and interrogating her for days and weeks. Did they understand that the women from his shop had been taken in, too? Did they care what became of the people they used, so long as they themselves escaped the guillotine?
At the same time, it was hard to be suspicious of Courfeyrac, with his smile as bright as the summer sun. He had an open countenance that simply could not take on the traits of the spy, the conspirator, and that was in itself the problem tonight. Feuilly thought he looked so open that he must not understand that others must be circumspect in their actions, in their attachments. He would be a terrible conspirator, always with his foot in his mouth, his face unable to show anything but his good humoured interest.
Courfeyrac whispered something to Faniel then grabbed Feuilly by the arm. "There's a girl over there that I'm dying for you to meet. The blonde in pink, on the other side of the dance floor."
Another girl, Feuilly muttered internally, though he allowed Courfeyrac to drag him along. To refuse would be to make an observer suspicious. There was nothing for it: he would see the evening through, arrange a meeting with Combeferre, and drop the whole sorry business.
They skirted the edge of the dance floor. "I didn't like the look that gendarme was giving us," Courfeyrac said in his ear when they were close to the orchestra. "Pretend we're talking about the girl in pink. I bet she's a tiger."
Feuilly took a quick glance back at Courfeyrac's friends and flushed in embarrassment. A gendarme in their vicinity was now looking in the direction Courfeyrac had led him, observing what Feuilly had always known was an improper connection. The wolf had been so wrapped up in his own head that the puppy had got the better of him. He forced a laugh, as Courfeyrac had indeed quickly devised the only possible cover story and all he could do was play along. "A tiger, indeed. Yes, one may want to beware her claws."
"Combeferre is very impressed," the boy added quickly. "I'd like to talk more at length some time. If were curious about the Polish exiles, might I find you in their company some evening?"
A minute ago, Feuilly would have brushed him off. But there was nothing boyish in him now: he had seen the danger and manoeuvred out of it with all necessary speed, and his enthusiasm to meet was tempered with a sobriety Combeferre must respect. They were close to the girl. The gendarme's attention, or Courfeyrac's deliberate timing, had left him little time to think. He had already misjudged the boy once, so perhaps it was time to let him say his piece. "I am there frequently," he replied.
Courfeyrac grinned brightly. "Excellent." Yet he turned suddenly to the girl, his conspiracy ended for the moment. "Mademoiselle, my friend saw you across the floor and declared you had the most dazzling eyes he had ever seen. I simply had to see for myself it were a trick of the lamps, and I am so pleased to discover he was absolutely right"
One look at Courfeyrac's fine coat and hat, and the girl immediately gave him her hand. All luck belongs to the men of money, Feuilly reminded himself. Had a Courfeyrac been on offer, he would have got nowhere with Charlotte Menet. "I shall leave you to it," he told them, certain the girl was now an opportunity rather than a cover. The gendarme had appeared to move on to other targets, and in finishing his circuit of the dance floor, Feuilly satisfied himself that it was indeed the case. Were there no real pickpockets for the man to watch? It was past time to go, to leave the streets to the occupying army. Catching up with Faniel, the Spaniard, and the girl, he made his goodbyes. "The hour is late, and I'm not one for being thrown out of a dance hall at closing time. Good evening to you, messieurs, mademoiselle." Just before he went, he locked eyes with Faniel. "Tell Combeferre from me: Sunday, same time, same place." Tipping his hat to them all one last time, he slipped away into the shadows.
Laforêt was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, when he returned to the flat. "Didn't you go out?" Feuilly asked in concern.
"Did. No luck with anything. You?"
"Same here," Feuilly lied. It was better to share a bed in companionable silence than in unacknowledged jealousy.
