Baeader
by
I was sitting in the shadow of Mme. Poulard’s delightful inn at St. Michel when I first saw Baeader. Dinner had been served, and I had helped to pay for my portion by tacking a sketch on the wall behind the chair of the hostess. This high valuation was not intended as a special compliment to me, the wall being already covered with similar souvenirs from the sketch-books of half the painters in Europe.
Baeader, he pronounced it Bayder, had at that moment arrived in answer to a telegram from the governor, who the night before, in a moment of desperation, had telegraphed the proprietor of his hotel in Paris, “Send me a courier at once who knows Normandy and speaks English.” The bare-headed man who, hat in hand, was at this moment bowing so obsequiously to the governor, was the person who had arrived in response. He was short and thick-set, and perfectly bald on the top of his head in a small spot, friar-fashion. He glistened with perspiration that collected near the hat-line, and escaped in two streams, drowning locks of black hair covering each temple, stranding them like wet grass on his cheek-bones below. His full face was clean-shaven, smug, and persuasive, and framed two shoe-button eyes that, while sharp and alert, lacked neither humor nor tenderness.
He wore a pair of new green kid gloves, was dressed in a brown cloth coat bound with a braid of several different shades, showing different dates of repair, and surmounted by a velvet collar of the same date as the coat. His trousers were of a nondescript gray, and flapped about a pair of brand-new gaiters, evidently purchased for the occasion, and, from the numerous positions assumed while he talked, evidently one size too small.
His hat–the judicious use of which added such warmth, color, and picturesqueness to his style of delivery, now pressed to his chest, now raised aloft, now debased to the cobbles–had once had some dignity and proportions. Continual maltreatment had long since taken all the gay and frolicsome curl out of its brim, while the crown had so often collapsed that the scars of ill-usage were visible upon it. And yet at a distance this relic of a former fashion, as handled by Baeader,–it was so continually in his grasp and so seldom on his head, that you could never say it was worn,–this hat, brushed, polished, and finally slicked by its owner to a state slightly confusing as to whether it were made of polished iron or silk, was really a very gay and attractive affair.
It was easy to see that the person before me had spared neither skill, time, nor expense to make as favorable an impression on his possible employers as lay in his power.
“At the moment of the arrival of ze depeche telegraphique,” Baeader continued, “I was in ze office of monsieur ze proprietaire. It was at ze conclusion of some arrangement commercial, when mon ami ze proprietaire say to me: ‘Baeader, it is ze abandoned season in Paris. Why not arrange for ze gentlemen in Normandy? The number of francs a day will be at least'”–here Baeader scrutinized carefully the governor’s face–‘”at least to ze amount of ten’–is it not so, messieurs? Of course,” noting a slight contraction of the eyebrows, “if ze service was of long time, and to ze most far-away point, some abatement could be posseeble. If, par exemple, it was to St. Malo, St. Servan, Parame, Cancale speciale, Dieppe petite, Dinard, and ze others, the sum of nine francs would be quite sufficient.”
The governor had never heard Dieppe called “petite” nor Cancale “speciale,” and said so, lifting his eyebrows inquiringly. Baeader did not waver. “But if messieurs pretend a much smaller route and of few days, say to St. Michel, Parame, and Cancale,”–here the governor’s brow relaxed again,–“then it was imposseeble,–if messieurs will pardon,–quite imposseeble for less zan ten francs.”