A Start in Life [19]
"How shall I ever get rid of mamma?" thought Oscar.
"What's the matter?" asked Madame Clapart.
Oscar pretended not to hear, the monster! Perhaps Madame Clapart was
lacking in tact under the circumstances; but all absorbing sentiments
have so much egotism!
"Georges, do you like children when travelling?" asked one young man
of the other.
"Yes, my good Amaury, if they are weaned, and are named Oscar, and
have chocolate."
These speeches were uttered in half-tones to allow Oscar to hear them
or not hear them as he chose; his countenance was to be the weather-
gauge by which the other young traveller could judge how much fun he
might be able to get out of the lad during the journey. Oscar chose
not to hear. He looked to see if his mother, who weighed upon him like
a nightmare, was still there, for he felt that she loved him too well
to leave him so quickly. Not only did he involuntarily compare the
dress of his travelling companion with his own, but he felt that his
mother's toilet counted for much in the smiles of the two young men.
"If they would only take themselves off!" he said to himself.
Instead of that, Amaury remarked to Georges, giving a tap with his
cane to the heavy wheel of the coucou:
"And so, my friend, you are really going to trust your future to this
fragile bark?"
"I must," replied Georges, in a tone of fatalism.
Oscar gave a sigh as he remarked the jaunty manner in which his
companion's hat was stuck on one ear for the purpose of showing a
magnificent head of blond hair beautifully brushed and curled; while
he, by order of his step-father, had his black hair cut like a
clothes-brush across the forehead, and clipped, like a soldier's,
close to the head. The face of the vain lad was round and chubby and
bright with the hues of health, while that of his fellow-traveller was
long, and delicate, and pale. The forehead of the latter was broad,
and his chest filled out a waistcoat of cashmere pattern. As Oscar
admired the tight-fitting iron-gray trousers and the overcoat with its
frogs and olives clasping the waist, it seemed to him that this
romantic-looking stranger, gifted with such advantages, insulted him
by his superiority, just as an ugly woman feels injured by the mere
sight of a pretty one. The click of the stranger's boot-heels offended
his taste and echoed in his heart. He felt as hampered by his own
clothes (made no doubt at home out of those of his step-father) as
that envied young man seemed at ease in his.
"That fellow must have heaps of francs in his trousers pocket,"
thought Oscar.
The young man turned round. What were Oscar's feelings on beholding a
gold chain round his neck, at the end of which no doubt was a gold
watch! From that moment the young man assumed, in Oscar's eyes, the
proportions of a personage.
Living in the rue de la Cerisaie since 1815, taken to and from school
by his step-father, Oscar had no other points of comparison since his
adolescence than the poverty-stricken household of his mother. Brought
up strictly, by Moreau's advice, he seldom went to the theatre, and
then to nothing better than the Ambigu-Comique, where his eyes could
see little elegance, if indeed the eyes of a child riveted on a
melodrama were likely to examine the audience. His step-father still
wore, after the fashion of the Empire, his watch in the fob of his
trousers, from which there depended over his abdomen a heavy gold
chain, ending in a bunch of heterogeneous ornaments, seals, and a
watch-key with a round top and flat sides, on which was a landscape in
mosaic. Oscar, who considered that old-fashioned finery as the "ne
plus ultra" of adornment, was bewildered by the present revelation of
superior and negligent elegance. The young man exhibited, offensively,
a pair of spotless gloves, and seemed to wish to dazzle Oscar by
twirling with much grace a gold-headed switch