The Manuscript Two gentlemen sat chatting together one evening.
Their daily business was to occupy themselves with literature. At the present moment they were engaged in drinking whisky,--an occupation both agreeable and useful,--and in chatting about books, the theater, women and many other things. Finally they came around to that inexhaustible subject for conversation, the mysterious life of the soul, the hidden things, the Unknown, that theme for which Shakespeare has given us an oft-quoted and oft-abused device, which one of the men, Mr. X., now used to point his remarks. Raising his glass, he looked at himself meditatively in a mirror opposite, and, in a good imitation of the manner of his favorite actor, he quoted:
"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in thy philosophy, Horatio."Mr. Y. arranged a fresh glass for himself, and answered:
"I believe it. I believe also that it is given but to a few chosen ones to see these things. It never fell to my lot, I know.
Fortunately for me, perhaps. For,--at least so it appears to me,--these chosen ones appear on closer investigation to be individuals of an abnormal condition of brain. As far as I personally am concerned, I know of nothing more strange than the usual logical and natural sequence of events on our globe. I confess things do sometimes happen outside of this orderly sequence; but for the cold-blooded and thoughtful person the Strange, the apparently Inexplicable, usually turns out to be a sum of Chance, that Chance we will never be quite clever enough to fully take into our calculations.
"As an instance I would like to tell you the story of what happened several years back to a friend of mine, a young French writer. He had a good, sincere mind, but he had also a strong leaning toward which was just then in danger of becoming as much of a fashion in France as it is here now. The event of which I am about to tell you threw him into what was almost a delirium, which came near to robbing him of his normal intelligence, and therefore came near to robbing French readers of a few excellent books.
"This was the way it happened:
"It was about ten years back, and I was spending the spring and summer in Paris. I had a room with the family of a concierge on the left bank, rue de Vaugirard, near the Luxembourg Gardens.
"A few steps from my modest domicile lived my friend Lucien F. We had become acquainted through a chain of circumstances which do not belong to this story, but these circumstances had made firm friends of us, a friendship which was a source of great pleasure and also of assistance to me in my study of Paris conditions. This friendship also enabled me to enjoy better and cheaper whisky than one can usually meet with in the city by the Seine, a real good 'Jameson Highland.'
"Lucien F. had already published several books which had aroused attention through the oddity of their themes, and their gratifying success had made it possible for him to establish himself in a comfortably furnished bachelor apartment on the corner of the rue de Vaugirard and the rue de Conde.
"The apartment had a corridor and three rooms; a dining room, a bedroom and a charming study with an inclosed balcony, the three windows of which,--a large one in the center and two smaller ones at the side,--sent a flood of light in over the great writing table which filled nearly the entire balcony. Inside the room, near the balcony, stood a divan covered with a bearskin rug. Upon this divan I spent many of my hours in Paris, occupied in the smoking of my friend's excellent cigars, and the sampling of his superlatively good whisky. At the same time I could lie staring up at the tops of the trees in the Luxembourg Gardens, while Lucien worked at his desk. For, unlike most writers, he could work best when he was not alone.
"If I remained away several days, he would invariably ring my bell early some morning, and drag me out of bed with the remark: 'The whisky is ready. I can't write if you are not there.'
"During the particular days of which I shall tell you, he was engaged in the writing of a fantastic novelette, 'The Force of the Wind,' a work which interested him greatly, and which he would interrupt unwillingly at intervals to furnish copy for the well-known newspaper that numbered him among the members of its staff.
His books were printed by the same house that did the printing for the paper.
"Often, as I lay in my favorite position on the divan, the bell would ring and we would he honored by a visit from the printer's boy Adolphe, a little fellow in a blue blouse, the true type of Paris gamin. Adolphe rejoiced in a broken nose, a pair of crafty eyes, and had his fists always full of manuscripts which he treated with a carelessness that would have driven a literary novice to despair. The long rolls of yellow paper would hang out of his trousers pockets as if ready to fall apart at his next movement.
And the disrespectful manner in which he crammed my friend Lucien's scarcely dried essay into the breast of his blouse would have certainly called forth remarks from a journalist of more self-conceit.
"But his eyes were so full of sly cunning, and there was such an atmosphere of Paris about the stocky little fourteen-year-old chap, that we would often keep him longer with us, and treat him to a glass of anisette to hear his opinion of the writers whose work he handled. He was an amusing cross between a tricky little Paris gamin and a real child, and he hit off the characteristics of the various writers with as keen a touch of actuality as he could put into his stories of how many centimes he had won that morning at 'craps' from his friend Pierre. Pierre was another employee of the printing house, Adolphe's comrade in his study of the mysteries of Paris streets, and now his rival. They were both in love with the same girl, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the keeper of 'La Prunelle' Cafe, and her favor was often the prize of the morning's game.
