Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/187

covered the distance separting him from the Barrière de la Villette.

When he reached the halls of the Grand Vainqueur, the crowd was enormous. The dining-room, seating three hundred, was thronged with five hundred people. A vast horizon of veal and carrots spread itself before the eyes of Rodolphe.

At length they began to serve the soup.

As the guests were carrying their spoons to their lips, five or six people in plain clothes, and several police officers in uniform pushed into the room, with a commissary of police at their head.

“Gentlemen,” said the commissary, “by order of the authorities, this dinner cannot take place. I call upon you to withdraw.”

“Oh!” said Rodolphe, retiring with everyone else. “Oh! what a fatality has spoilt my dinner.”

He sadly resumed the road to his dwelling, and reached it at about eleven at night.

Monsieur Benoît was awaiting him.

“Ah! it is you,” said the landlord. “Have you thought of what I told you this morning? Have you brought me any money?”

“I am to receive some to-night; I will give you some of it to-morrow morning,” replied Rodolphe, looking for his key and his candlestick in their accustomed place. He did not find them.

“Monsieur Rodolphe,” said the landlord, “I am very sorry, but I have let your room, and I have no other vacant just now—you must go somewhere else.”

Rodolphe had a loftly soul, and a night in the open air did not alarm him. Besides, in the event of bad weather, he could sleep in a box at the Odéon Theatre, as he had already done before. Only he claimed “his property”