BEL-AMI: THE HISTORY OF A SCOUNDREL. Guy de Maupassant
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to. His name was not entered.
However, the box office-keeper, a very affable man, at once said: “Pray, go in all the same, sir, and write yourself to the manager, who, I am sure, will pay attention to your letter.”
He went in and almost immediately met Rachel, the woman he had gone off with the first evening. She came up to him, saying: “Good evening, ducky. Are you quite well?”
“Very well, thanks — and you?”
“I am all right. Do you know, I have dreamed of you twice since last time?”
Duroy smiled, feeling flattered. “Ah! and what does that mean?”
“It means that you pleased me, you old dear, and that we will begin again whenever you please.”
“To-day, if you like.”
“Yes, I am quite willing.”
“Good, but— “ He hesitated, a little ashamed of what he was going to do. “The fact is that this time I have not a penny; I have just come from the club, where I have dropped everything.”
She looked him full in the eyes, scenting a lie with the instinct and habit of a girl accustomed to the tricks and bargainings of men, and remarked: “Bosh! That is not a nice sort of thing to try on me.”
He smiled in an embarrassed way. “If you will take ten francs, it is all I have left.”
She murmured, with the disinterestedness of a courtesan gratifying a fancy: “What you please, my lady; I only want you.”
And lifting her charming eyes towards the young man’s moustache, she took his arm and leant lovingly upon it.
“Let us go and have a grenadine first of all,” she remarked. “And then we will take a stroll together. I should like to go to the opera like this, with you, to show you off. And we will go home early, eh?”
He lay late at this girl’s place. It was broad day when he left, and the notion occurred to him to buy the Vie Francaise. He opened the paper with feverish hand. His article was not there, and he stood on the footpath, anxiously running his eye down the printed columns with the hope of at length finding what he was in search of. A weight suddenly oppressed his heart, for after the fatigue of a night of love, this vexation came upon him with the weight of a disaster.
He reached home and went to sleep in his clothes on the bed.
Entering the office some hours later, he went on to see Monsieur Walter.
“I was surprised at not seeing my second article on Algeria in the paper this morning, sir,” said he.
The manager raised his head, and replied in a dry tone: “I gave it to your friend Forestier, and asked him to read it through. He did not think it up to the mark; you must rewrite it.”
Duroy, in a rage, went out without saying a word, and abruptly entering his old comrade’s room, said:
“Why didn’t you let my article go in this morning?”
The journalist was smoking a cigarette with his back almost on the seat of his armchair and his feet on the table, his heels soiling an article already commenced. He said slowly, in a bored and distant voice, as though speaking from the depths of a hole: “The governor thought it poor, and told me to give it back to you to do over again. There it is.” And he pointed out the slips flattened out under a paperweight.
Duroy, abashed, could find nothing to say in reply, and as he was putting his prose into his pocket, Forestier went on: “To-day you must first of all go to the Préfecture.” And he proceeded to give a list of business errands and items of news to be attended to.
Duroy went off without having been able to find the cutting remark he wanted to. He brought back his article the next day. It was returned to him again. Having rewritten it a third time, and finding it still refused, he understood that he was trying to go ahead too fast, and that Forestier’s hand alone could help him on his way. He did not therefore say anything more about the “Recollections of a Chasseur d’Afrique,” promising himself to be supple and cunning since it was needful, and while awaiting something better to zealously discharge his duties as a reporter.
He learned to know the way behind the scenes in theatrical and political life; the waiting-rooms of statesmen and the lobby of the Chamber of Deputies; the important countenances of permanent secretaries, and the grim looks of sleepy ushers. He had continual relations with ministers, doorkeepers, generals, police agents, princes, bullies, courtesans, ambassadors, bishops, panders, adventurers, men of fashion, card-sharpers, cab drivers, waiters, and many others, having become the interested yet indifferent friend of all these; confounding them together in his estimation, measuring them with the same measure, judging them with the same eye, though having to see them every day at every hour, without any transition, and to speak with them all on the same business of his own. He compared himself to a man who had to drink off samples of every kind of wine one after the other, and who would soon be unable to tell Château Margaux from Argenteuil.
He became in a short time a remarkable reporter, certain of his information, artful, swift, subtle, a real find for the paper, as was observed by Daddy Walter, who knew what newspaper men were. However, as he got only centimes a line in addition to his monthly screw of two hundred francs, and as life on the boulevards and in cafés and restaurants is costly, he never had a halfpenny, and was disgusted with his poverty. There is some knack to be got hold of, he thought, seeing some of his fellows with their pockets full of money without ever being able to understand what secret methods they could make use of to procure this abundance. He enviously suspected unknown and suspicious transactions, services rendered, a whole system of contraband accepted and agreed to. But it was necessary that he should penetrate the mystery, enter into the tacit partnership, make himself one with the comrades who were sharing without him.
And he often thought of an evening, as he watched the trains go by from his window, of the steps he ought to take.
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