The Martian: A Novel

Thus pleasantly August wore itself away, Bonzig and Barty nearly always dining together for about a franc apiece, including the waiter, and not badly. Bonzig knew all the cheap eating‐houses in Paris, and what each was specially renowned for – "bonne friture," "fricassée de lapin," "pommes sautées," "soupe aux choux," etc., etc.

Then, after dinner, a long walk and talk and cigarettes – or they would look in at a café chantant, a bal de barrière, the gallery of a cheap theatre – then a bock outside a café – et bonsoir la compagnie!

On September the 1st, Lirieux and his brother went to see their people in the south, leaving the studio to Bonzig and Barty, who made the most of it, though greatly missing the genial young painter, both as a companion and a master and guide.

One beautiful morning Bonzig called for Barty at his crémerie, and proposed they should go by train to some village near Paris and spend a happy day in the country, lunching on bread and wine and sugar at some little roadside inn. Bonzig made a great deal of this lunch. It had evidently preoccupied him.

Barty was only too delighted. They went on the impériale of the Versailles train and got out at Ville d'Avray, and found the kind of little pothouse they wanted. And Barty had to admit that no better lunch for the price could be than "small blue wine" sweetened with sugar, and a hunch of bread sopped in it.

Then they had a long walk in pretty woods and meadows, sketching by the way, chatting to laborers and soldiers and farm‐people, smoking endless cigarettes of caporal; and finally they got back to Paris the way they came – so hungry that Barty proposed they should treat themselves for once to a "prix‐fixe" dinner at Carmagnol's, in the Passage Choiseul, where they gave you hors‐d'œuvres, potage, three courses and dessert and a bottle of wine, for two francs fifty – and everything scrupulously clean.

So to the Passage Choiseul they went; but just on the threshold of the famous restaurant (which filled the entire arcade with its appetizing exhalations) Bonzig suddenly remembered, to his great regret, that close by there lived a young married couple of the name of Lousteau, who were great friends of his, and who expected him to dine with them at least once a week.

"I haven't been near them for a fortnight, mon cher, and it is just their dinner hour. I am afraid I must really just run in and eat an aile de poulet and a pêche au vin with them, and give them of my news, or they will be mortally offended. I'll be back with you just when you are 'entre la poire et le fromage' – so, sans adieu!" and he bolted.

Barty went in and selected his menu; and waiting for his hors‐d'œuvre, he just peeped out of the door and looked up and down the arcade, which was always festive and lively at that hour.

To his great surprise he saw Bonzig leisurely flâning about with his cigarette in his mouth, his hands in his pockets, his long spectacled nose in the air – gazing at the shop windows. Suddenly the good man dived into a baker's shop, and came out again in half a minute with a large brown roll, and began to munch it – still gazing at the shop windows, and apparently quite content.

Barty rushed after and caught hold of him, and breathlessly heaped bitter reproaches on him for his base and unfriendly want of confidence – snatched his roll and threw it away, dragged him by main force into Carmagnol's, and made him order the dinner he preferred and sit opposite.

"Ma foi, mon cher!" said Bonzig – "I own to you that I am almost at the end of my resources for the moment – and also that the prospect of a good dinner in your amiable company is the reverse of disagreeable to me. I thank you in advance, with all my heart!"

"My dear M'sieur Bonzig," says Barty, "you will wound me deeply if you don't look on me like a brother, as I do you; I can't tell you how deeply you have wounded me already! Give me your word of honor that you will share ma mangeaille with me till I haven't a sou left!"

And so they made it up, and had a capital dinner and a capital evening, and Barty insisted that in future they should always mess together at his expense till better days – and they did.

But Barty found that his own money was just giving out, and wrote to his bankers in London for more. Somehow it didn't arrive for nearly a week; and they knew at last what it was to dine for five sous each (2‐1/2d.) – with loss of appetite just before the meal instead of after.

Of course Barty might very well have pawned his watch or his scarf‐pin; but whatever trinkets he possessed had been given him by his beloved Lady Archibald – everything pawnable he had in the world, even his guitar! And he could not bear the idea of taking them to the "Mont de Piété."

So he was well pleased one Sunday morning when his remittance arrived, and he went in search of his friend, that they might compensate themselves for a week's abstinence by a famous déjeuner. But Bonzig was not to be found; and Barty spent that day alone, and gorged in solitude and guzzled in silence – moult tristement, à l'anglaise.

He was aroused from his first sleep that night by the irruption of Bonzig in a tremendous state of excitement. It seems that a certain Baron (whose name I've forgotten), and whose little son the ex‐usher had once coached in early Latin and Greek, had written, begging him to call and see him at his château near Melun; that Bonzig had walked there that very day – thirty miles; and found the Baron was leaving next morning for a villa he possessed near Étretat, and wished him to join him there the day after, and stay with him for a couple of months – to coach his son in more classics for a couple of hours in the forenoon.

Bonzig was to dispose of the rest of his time as he liked, except that he was commissioned to paint six "marines" for the baronial dining‐room; and the Baron had most considerately given him four hundred francs in advance!

"So, then, to‐morrow afternoon at six, my dear Josselin, you dine with me, for once – not in the Passage Choiseul this time, good as it is there! But at Babet's, en plein Palais Royal! un jour de séparation, vous comprenez! the dinner will be good, I promise you: a calf's head à la vinaigrette – they are famous for that, at Babet's – and for their Pauillac and their St.‐Estèphe; at least, I'm told so! nous en ferons l'expérience… And now I bid you good‐night, as I have to be up before the day – so many things to buy and settle and arrange – first of all to procure myself a 'maillot' and a 'peignoir,' and shoes for the beach! I know where to get these things much cheaper than at the seaside. Oh! la mer, la mer! Enfin je vais piquer ma tête [take my header] là dedans —et pas plus tard qu'après‐demain soir… À demain, très‐cher camarade – six heures – chez Babet!"

And, delirious with joyful anticipations, the good Bonzig ran away – all but "piquant sa tête" down the narrow staircase, and whistling "Mon Aldegonde" at the very top of his whistle; and even outside he shouted:

"Ouïle – mé – sekile rô,sekile rô,sekile rô …Ouïle – mé – sekile rôTat brinn my laddé ôme!"

He had to be silenced by a sergent de ville.

And next day they dined at Babet's, and Bonzig was so happy he had to beg pardon for his want of feeling at seeming so exuberant "un jour de séparation! mais venez aussi, Josselin – nous piquerons nos têtes ensemble, et nagerons de conserve…"

But Barty could not afford this little outing, and he was very sad – with a sadness that not all the Pauillac and St.‐Estèphe in M. Babet's cellars could have dispelled.

He made his friend a present of a beautiful pair of razors – English razors, which he no longer needed, since he no longer meant to shave – "en signe de mon deuil!" as he said. They had been the gift of Lord Archibald in happier days. Alas! he had forgotten to give his uncle Archie the traditional halfpenny, but he took good care to extract a sou from le Grand Bonzig!

So ended this little episode in Barty's life. He never saw Bonzig again, nor heard from him, and of him only once more. That sou was wasted.

It was at Blankenberghe, on the coast of Belgium, that he at last had news of him – a year later – at the café on the plage, and in such an odd and unexpected manner that I can't help telling how it happened.

One afternoon a corner of the big coffee‐room was being arranged for private theatricals, in which Barty was to perform the part of a waiter. He had just borrowed the real waiter's jacket and apron, and was dusting the little tables for the amusement of Mlle. Solange, the dame de comptoir, and of the waiter, Prosper, who had on Barty's own shooting‐jacket.

Suddenly an old gentleman came in and beckoned to Barty and ordered a demi‐tasse and petit‐verre. There were no other customers at that hour.

Mlle. Solange was horrified; but Barty insisted on waiting on the old gentleman in person, and helped him to his coffee and pousse‐café with all the humorous grace I can so well imagine, and handed him the Indépendance Belge, and went back to superintend the arrangements for the coming play.

Presently the old gentleman looked up from his paper and became interested, and soon he grew uneasy, and finally he rose and went up to Barty and bowed, and said (in French, of course):

"Monsieur, I have made a very stupid mistake. I am near‐sighted, and that must be my apology. Besides, you have revenged yourself 'avec tant d'esprit,' that you will not bear me rancune! May I ask you to accept my card, with my sincere excuses?.."

And lo! it was Bonzig's famous Baron! Barty immediately inquired after his lost friend.

"Bonzig? Ah, monsieur – what a terrible tragedy! Poor Bonzig, the best of men – he came to me at Étretat. I invited him there from sheer friendship! He was drowned the very evening he arrived.

"He went and bathed after sunset – on his own responsibility and without mentioning it to any one. How it happened I don't know – nobody knows. He was a good swimmer, I believe, but very blind without his glasses. He undressed behind a rock on the shore, which is against the regulations. His body was not found till two days after, three leagues down the coast.

"He had an aged mother, who came to Étretat. It was harrowing! They were people who had seen better days," etc., etc., etc.

And so no more of le Grand Bonzig.

Nor did Barty ever again meet Lirieux, in whose existence a change had also been wrought by fortune; but whether for good or evil I can't say. He was taken to Italy and Greece by a wealthy relative. What happened to him there – whether he ever came back, or succeeded or failed – Barty never heard! He dropped out of Barty's life as completely as if he had been drowned like his old friend.

These episodes, like many others past and to come in this biography, had no particular influence on Barty Josselin's career, and no reference to them is to be found in anything he has ever written. My only reason for telling them is that I found them so interesting when he told me, and so characteristic of himself. He was "bon raconteur." I'm afraid I'm not, and that I've lugged these good people in by the hair of the head; but I'm doing my best. "La plus belle fille au monde ne peut donner que ce qu'elle a!"

I look to my editor to edit me – and to my illustrator to pull me through.

That autumn (1856) my father went to France for six weeks, on business. My sister Ida went with the Gibsons to Ramsgate, and I remained in London with my mother. I did my best to replace my father in Barge Yard, and when he came back he was so pleased with me (and I think with himself also) that he gave me twenty pounds, and said, "Go to Paris for a week, Bob, and see Barty, and give him this, with my love."

And "this" was another twenty‐pound note. He had never given me such a sum in my life – not a quarter of it; and "this" was the first time he had ever tipped Barty.

Things were beginning at last to go well with him. He had arranged to sell the vintages of Bordeaux and Champagne, as well as those of Burgundy; and was dreaming of those of Germany and Portugal and Spain. Fortune was beginning to smile on Barge Yard, and ours was to become the largest wine business in the world – comme tout un chacun sait.

I started for Paris that very night, and knocked at Barty's bedroom door by six next morning; it was hardly daylight – a morning to be remembered; and what a breakfasting at Babet's, after a rather cold swim in the Passy school of natation, and a walk all round the outside of the school that was once ours!

Barty looked very well, but very thin, and his small sprouting beard and mustache had quite altered the character of his face. I shall distress my lady readers if I tell them the alteration was not an improvement; so I won't.

What a happy week that was to me I leave to the reader's imagination. We took a large double‐bedded room at the Hôtel de Lille et d'Albion in case we might want to smoke and talk all night; we did, I think, and had our coffee brought up to us in the morning.

I will not attempt to describe the sensations of a young man going back to his beloved Paris "after five years." Tout ça, c'est de l'histoire ancienne. And Barty and Paris together – that is not for such a pen as mine.

I showed him a new photograph of Leah Gibson – a very large one and an excellent. He gazed at it a long time with his magnifying‐glass and without, all his keen perceptions on the alert; and I watched his face narrowly.

"My eyes! She is a beautiful young woman, and no mistake!" he said, with a sigh. "You mustn't let her slip through your fingers, Bob!"

"How about that toss?" said I, and laughed.

"Oh, I resign my claim; she's not for the likes o' me. You're going to be a great capitalist – a citizen of credit and renown. I'm Mr. Nobody, of nowhere. Go in and win, my boy; you have my best wishes. If I can scrape together enough money to buy myself a white waistcoat and a decent coat, I'll be your best man; or some left‐off things of yours might do – we're about of a size, aren't we? You've become très bel homme, Bob, plutôt bel homme que joli garçon, hein? That's what women are fond of; English women especially. I'm nowhere now, without my uniform and the rest. Is it still Skinner who builds for you? Good old Skinner! Mes compliments!"

This simple little speech took a hidden weight off my mind and left me very happy. I confided frankly to the good Barty that no Sally in any alley had ever been more warmly adored by any industrious young London apprentice than was Leah Gibson by me!

"Ça y est, alors! Je te félicite d'avance, et je garde mes larmes pour quand tu seras parti. Allons dîner chez Babet: j'ai soif de boire à ton bonheur!"

Before I left we met an English artist he had known at the British Museum – an excellent fellow, one Walters, who took him under his wing, and was the means of his entering the atelier Troplong in the Rue des Belges as an art student. And thus Barty began his art studies in a proper and legitimate way. It was characteristic of him that this should never have occurred to him before.

So when I parted with the dear fellow things were looking a little brighter for him too.

All through the winter he worked very hard – the first to come, the last to go; and enjoyed his studio life thoroughly.

Such readers as I am likely to have will not require to be told what the interior of a French atelier of the kind is like, nor its domestic economy; nor will I attempt to describe all the fun and the frolic, although I heard it all from Barty in after‐years, and very good it was. I almost felt I'd studied there myself! He was a prime favorite – "le Beau Josselin," as he was called.

He made very rapid progress, and had already begun to work in colors by the spring. He made many friends, but led a quiet, industrious life, unrelieved (as far as I know) by any of those light episodes one associates with student life in Paris. His principal amusements through the long winter evenings were the café and the brasserie, mild écarté, a game at billiards or dominoes, and long talks about art and literature with the usual unkempt young geniuses of the place and time – French, English, American.

Then he suddenly took it into his head to go to Antwerp; I don't know who influenced him in this direction, but I arranged to meet him there at the end of April – and we spent a delightful week together, staying at the "Grand Laboureur" in the Place de Meer. The town was still surrounded by the old walls and the moat, and of a picturesqueness that seemed as if it would never pall.

Twice or three times that week British tourists and travellers landed at the quai by the Place Verte from The Baron Osy– and this landing was Barty's delight.

The sight of fair, fresh English girls, with huge crinolines, and their hair done up in chenille nets, made him long for England again, and the sound of their voices went nigh to weakening his resolve. But he stood firm to the last, and saw me off by The Baron. I felt a strange "serrement de cœur" as I left him standing there, so firm, as if he had been put "au piquet" by M. Dumollard! and so thin and tall and slender – and his boyish face so grave. Good heavens! how much alone he seemed, who was so little built to live alone!

It is really not too much to say that I would have given up to him everything I possessed in the world – every blessed thing! except Leah – and Leah was not mine to give!

Now and again Barty's face would take on a look so ineffably, pathetically, angelically simple and childlike that it moved one to the very depths, and made one feel like father and mother to him in one! It was the true revelation of his innermost soul, which in many ways remained that of a child even in his middle age and till he died. All his life he never quite put away childish things!

I really believe that in bygone ages he would have moved the world with that look, and been another Peter the Hermit!

He became a pupil at the academy under De Keyser and Van Lerius, and worked harder than ever.

He took a room nearly all window on a second floor in the Marché aux Œufs, just under the shadow of the gigantic spire which rings a fragment of melody every seven minutes and a half – and the whole tune at midnight, fortissimo.

He laid in a stock of cigars at less than a centime apiece, and dried them in the sun; they left as he smoked them a firm white ash two inches long; and he grew so fond of them that he cared to smoke nothing else.

He rose before the dawn, and went for a swim more than a mile away – got to the academy at six – worked till eight – breakfasted on a little roll called a pistolet, and a cup of coffee; then the academy again from nine till twelve – when dinner, the cheapest he had ever known, but not the worst. Then work again all the afternoon, copying old masters at the Gallery. Then a cheap supper, a long walk along the quais or ramparts or outside – a game of dominoes, and a glass or two of "Malines" or "Louvain" – then bed, without invading hordes; the Flemish are as clean as the Dutch; and there he would soon smoke and read himself to sleep in spite of chimes – which lull you, when once you get "achimatized," as he called it, meaning of course to be funny: a villanous kind of fun – caught, I fear, in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury. It used to rain puns in the City – especially in the Stock Exchange, which is close to Barge Yard.

It was a happy life, and he grew to like it better than any life he had led yet; besides, he improved rapidly, as his facility was great – for painting as for everything he tried his hand at.

He also had a very agreeable social existence.

One morning at the academy, two or three days after his arrival, he was accosted by a fellow‐student – one Tescheles – who introduced himself as an old pupil of Troplong's in the Rue des Belges. They had a long chat in French about the old Paris studio. Among other things, Tescheles asked if there were still any English there.

"Oui" – says Barty – "un nommé Valtères"…

Barty pronounced this name as if it were French; and noticed that Tescheles smiled, exclaiming:

"Parbleu, ce bon Valtères – je l'connais bien!"

Next day Tescheles came up to an English student called Fox and said:

"Well, old stick‐in‐the‐mud, how are you getting on?"

"Why, you don't mean to say you're an Englishman?" says Barty to Tescheles.

"Good heavens! you don't mean to say you are! fancy your calling poor old Walters Vàltères!"

And after that they became very intimate, and that was a good thing for Barty.

The polyglot Tescheles was of a famous musical family, of mixed German and Russian origin, naturalized in England and domiciled in France – a true cosmopolite and a wonderful linguist, besides being also a cultivated musician and excellent painter; and all the musicians, famous or otherwise, that passed through Antwerp made his rooms a favorite resort and house of call. And Barty was introduced into a world as delightful to him as it was new – and to music that ravished his soul with a novel enchantment: Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, Schumann – and he found that Schubert had written a few other songs besides the famous "Serenade"!

One evening he was even asked if he could make music himself, and actually volunteered to sing – and sang that famous ballad of Balfe's which seems destined to become immortal in this country – "When other lips" … alias, "Then you'll remember me!"

Strange to say, it was absolutely new to this high musical circle, but they went quite mad over it; and the beautiful melody got naturalized from that moment in Belgium and beyond, and Barty was proclaimed the primo tenore of Antwerp – although he was only a barytone!

A fortnight after this Barty heard "When other lips" played by the "Guides" band in the park at Brussels. Its first appearance out of England – and all through him.

Then he belonged to the Antwerp "Cercle Artistique," where he made many friends and was very popular, as I can well imagine.

Thus he was happier than he had ever been in his life; but for one thing that plagued him now and again: his oft‐recurring desire to be conscious once more of the north, which he had not felt for four or five years.

The want of this sensation at certain periods – especially at night – would send a chill thrill of desolation through him like a wave; a wild panic, a quick agony, as though the true meaning of absolute loneliness were suddenly realized by a lightning flash of insight, and it were to last for ever and ever.

This would pass away in a second or two, but left a haunting recollection behind for many hours. And then all was again sunshine, and the world was made of many friends – and solitude was impossible evermore.

One memorable morning this happiness received a check and a great horror befell him. It was towards the end of summer – just before the vacation.

With a dozen others, he was painting the head of an old man from the life, when he became quite suddenly conscious of something strange in his sight. First he shut his left eye and saw with his right quite perfectly; then he shut the right, and lo! whatever he looked at with the left dwindled to a vanishing point and became invisible. No rubbing or bathing of his eye would alter the terrible fact, and he knew what great fear really means, for the first time.

Much kind concern was expressed, and Van Lerius told him to go at once to a Monsieur Noiret, a professor at the Catholic University of Louvain, who had attended him for the eyes, and had the reputation of being the first oculist in Belgium.

Barty wrote immediately and an appointment was made, and in three days he saw the great man, half professor, half priest, who took him into a dark chamber lighted by a lamp, and dilated his pupil with atropine, and looked into his eye with the newly discovered "ophthalmoscope."

Professor Noiret told him it was merely a congestion of the retina – for which no cause could be assigned; and that he would be cured in less than a month. That he was to have a seton let into the back of his neck, dry‐cup himself on the chest and thighs night and morning, and take a preparation of mercury three times a day. Also that he must go to the seaside immediately – and he recommended Ostend.

Barty told him that he was an impecunious art student, and that Ostend was a very expensive place.