The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1898-10-15
....MONSIEUR ALEXANDRA.

1t was not so very far to walk, after
ALL Just across the park. and almost
directly he would be in the maze OF
small streets where the foreign goods
in the shop windows and the foreign
names over the shop doors allowed him
for a moment to imagine that he was
once more treadng the asphalts of his
beloved Paris.
Standing in the Pimlico street, look
ing down the long row of portiCoed
houses, which, like the people who in
habited them, aped the seeming of a
class above them. he longed for the
busy movement of Soho, the black-hair-
ed, black-eyed urchins, the shrillvoiced
women in their big blue aprons, the
odor Of bad tobacco, and the dear fa-
miliar sound of his own tongue.
Could he manage the walk? Not
very long ago he had been used to take
il almost nightly, when the work of the
day was over, smoking his pipe in the
little restaurant where he had dined,
and discussing la DeVanChe with a mot
ley crew into whose antecedents he
would not have cared to inquire, but
who listened to the old professor with
q semi-amuscd awe. But all that was
before the winter. before that last sharp
bout of bronchitis which had left him
an old man. The doctor told him then
that he needed a warmer climate. good
wine, nOurishng food. The little man
had given his shoulders an innnitesimal
shrug, such as only French shoulders
can give, paid his doctors hill, ana then
set to work again as hard as ever.
AS hard. that is, as circumstances
would allow, for the old French master
was being elboWed out of the field. New
methods, new fads, were coming into
fashion. and the dappor little French
man, with his thrcadbare rediugOte and
highly polished boots. found his pupils
slowly decreasing.
Monsieur Alexandra, however had
the thriftinoss of his race. and it's
strange power of self-denial He had
the art of cutting his coat according to
his cloth; and the diminution of pupils
was balanced by the gradual docking
of such small luXuries as the sugar in
his morning coffee. and the evil-smell-
ing cheese which was his delight after
his frugal dinner By dint Of such pri-
vations the old man managed to make
the two ends Of his tiny income meet:
but this left no margin for extras and
today, when his soul yearned for the
fleshpots of Les BOns Amis," the over
heated. noisy little restaurant Of Ru-
pert street, his indulging i'm an omni-
bus would involve the sacrifice of his
post-prandal coffee.
He would walk! He made the mighty
decision at last, and buttoning his over
coat with an air of resolution. he
stepped out brislily.
Long ago, when he came to London,
hp hn tot. 4 . h.,
permanently into the purieus of Lei
cester Square, because there was only
one way for him to earn his living,
and it seemed to him that marchand
de participest Cas he called himselO-
a French teaCher-would have a better
chance of getting pupils were the scent
of the Franch quarter not so strongly
upon him; and SO he dwelt in a small
room in Pimlico. the wonder of his sue
cessive landladies, to whom the lonely,
met tlodical little man was a closed
book
His heels clicked on the frozen pave
ment as he walked, and somehow, frail
and old ana weary as he looked, his
gait was scarcely that of man whose
best years had been spent i'm teaching
the young idea how to send forth its
He begun to lag a little, however. as
he struck into st. James's Park, but
1t was not so much from physical wear
mess as from the rush of thoughts
croWding in his brain. He had forgot
ten the Park; he did not hear the
shouts of the small boys who tumbled
ana hustled each other on the thin ice
of the little lake. He was thinking of
such very different things, his ewes
We're seeing such utterly different
scenes. 1t was not at all painful to him
to recall them, they We're So irreyO-
cable past and dead: not as the past
of other men, who look back across n
stretch of days which but for trifling
details, were much the same as one
another. For him "thc then" was di
vided from the now" by an impass-
able gulf, 1t was as If he gazed back
on another mans life. All sorts of
childish incidents came back to him:
the big garden in the house at Auteuil
where there was a wonderful fountain.
and tiny watermill which sometimes
worked, and which was the delight and
amazement of his infancy: the visits
10 MS godfather on the Jour de Fan,
and the varying bag of bonbons
and bright five-franc piece--he remem-
bered now, old and feeble beyond his
years. the great things the small boy of
ten used to dream of doing and that
heavy tive-franc piece, if only the i'm
possible had been possible and grand
mere should not have swooped upon
1t for the mysterious Caisse dEparg-
mes.