“The cover,” said Gaillard, “has spoiled thesale a good deal. You have no idea of the influence of a cover on a book: devils have gone out of fashion in the last month. It’s all owing to that exposure of the Satanists—silly fools!—and of course it is just my luck, for I have a little brochure in proof called ‘Bon Jour, Satan.’ Well, then, I must change the title, and what does that mean? Why, rewriting the book. People are turning religious, it seems; that is where art hits one. The silly public takes a whim into its head; the artist must meet it or starve. I had a meeting with Chauvin, my publisher, to-day. You should have seen his face. He declares the market for poetry is dead, and the silly fool wants me to write him something manly and religious. We nearly came to words, but we made it up. I am actually like a rat in a horrible trap. Do, Toto, act as a friend in this matter, and till the end of the month, when my royalties are due——”
“It is absolutely disgusting,” Gaillard would murmur to himself as he made for home after these expeditions. “It is like asking a loan from a laborer. He takes out a few francs and looks atthem as if they were his last, and that little Célestin, I believe she puts him up to resist lending; I believe she puts all his spare money into the money-box of that wretched lark. I believe she is in love with that great fat beast who smells of garlic, and who always runs away when I come, as if he feared the presence of a gentleman; that is the lark she is saving up for. Yes, some day Toto will wake up to find nothing but a smell of garlic and Célestin flown. It will serve him right.”
Yet, were Toto out when he called at the atelier, he would lay his troubles on the back of Célestin, always sure of attention and commiseration. And smoking his eternal cigarettes, he would pour into her ear the horrors of life, the futility of Pelisson, the detestable nature of De Brie, and the villainy of De Nani. Sometimes Toto, returning after one of these séances had lasted an hour or so, would find Célestin looking almost old, and with tears in her heavenly eyes.
“I have been telling her a society fairy tale,” would say Gaillard.
Itwas now June, and lately Toto had become subject to moods, or, to speak more correctly, fits of moodiness. He had now for a month or more been living face to face with Art, and the prolonged interview with that lady was bearing fruit in his manners and customs.
Three weeks ago he would not have cared very much had Paris known of his mode of life and ridiculed him for it. Cocksure, and blinded by thefata Morganaof success, he would have shaken his palette in the face of Paris; but Art had changed all that.
“Art is not a wanton, to be hired for a night,” said Garnier one day in answer to a remark of Toto’s. “Mon Dieu!no; she is like that woman in the Bible whose courting took seven years, andthen again seven years, and seven years again. Work, and don’t think, work and don’t think.”
Easy advice to give. Toto was now continually thinking. He was in a worse Bastille than that from which Latude made his escape, for he had devised his own bondhouse, and the prison a man makes for himself is of all prisons, perhaps, the most difficult to leave.
He dreaded now meeting anyone that he knew, and in the street going to and from the studio glanced about him with the eyes of a frightened hare. As yet no one knew of his folly but Gaillard, Helen Powers, and his mother, but, indeed, that audience, together with his self-respect, were quite enough to keep him performing a little while longer.
Then there was Célestin. The unutterable contentment and bliss of Célestin with her new life filled the heart of Toto sometimes now with a vague sort of terror. She seemed to think that this sort of thing was to go on forever. Her love for him, expressed in a thousand different ways, seemed to spring from infinity itself, and love likethis is to the beloved either a blessing beyond all blessings or a curse. To Toto just now it was not a blessing.
Of course, by a cab to the Nord, or the L’Ouest, or the Orleans railway, and a ticket to anywhere, and a few months’ absence, he could have put everything to rights. Paris, like a cold gray sea, would have washed over Célestin and Dodor, washed away the furniture of the atelier, washed away his memory from therapinsat Melmenotte’s, and obliterated all traces. Paris, whose motto is “I have forgotten,” would not trouble even to repeat those funereal and final words over this small escapade.
But Toto was not the person to leave Célestin and Dodor to the mercies of Paris. In some unaccountable way Célestin had drawn the better parts of his nature to herself; to wound her would be to wound himself. If he thought Célestin were weeping alone in some attic, it would have taken the pleasure from life, and spoiled his digestion, and filled his nights with nightmares, for his better parts would have been weeping with her. In short,though capable of a foolish action, he was as yet incapable of a ruffianly, and as a result he was unhappy. A perfectly happy fool must always, I think, be a ruffian.
One day Garnier, who called frequently now as a friend of the family, found Célestin on the verge of tears. The tulip in the red-tile pot had died, and she was inconsolable. She declared that she would never keep another when Garnier offered to replace it.
“Never mind,” said the painter; “I will procure you a flower that will not die.”
A juggler who had lodged once in the same house had instructed him in the manufacture of roses that never die, immortal tulips, and decay-defying camellias. They were made from turnips cunningly carved and dyed in cochineal. Camellias were the easiest to make, roses more difficult, whilst tulips, strange to say, were the most difficult of all. The tulip had first to be blocked out roughly from the succulent root; then the exterior had to be carved, and lastly, the whole thing hollowed neatly.
So Garnier took a day off, and procured a turnip and a knife, some cochineal, and all the other necessary paraphernalia, and, with his work cut out before him, locked his door. This room of Garnier’s was close to the roof, and from its window one could see the spires of Notre Dame by standing on a chair. A desperate-looking cat lived here, whose life had been saved by the artist one morning as he was starting to work. It had repaid him lately by kittening under his bed. In one corner of the room lay a pile of newspapers, on the chimney-piece some books—Rousseau’s “Nouvelle Héloïse” in paper covers; a little book of German fairy tales, which he could not read, but which he treasured because of the delightful pictures; “The Mysteries of Paris,” which he had read four times; and a few others.
On this floor also there was a large atelier kept up by three young men from the South, who did their own cooking, so that the place was always filled with the sound of frying and the smell of garlic. They did their own washing, too, and so defied the laundress; they also at times defied thelandlord when he threatened to turn them out. They had got an old banjo from somewhere, and, needless to say, they played on it. Garnier worked in this atelier when he was not working elsewhere. He loved its discords, and never painted better than when Castanet was playing the banjo, Lorillard accompanying him on a comb, and Floquet frying things over the stove, for then he imagined himself back in Provence, and the atelier became flooded with the light that never was in Paris except on the canvas of a Diaz or a Garnier.
Floquet had a sweetheart, who sat to him for love, and of course also to his friends. She darned Castanet’s stockings, for he wore them out in some miraculous way quicker than anyone else. As for Lorillard, he never wore stockings—at least, in summer—and laughed at people who did.
Altogether they were as disreputable a colony as one could find in the whole quarter, but as good-hearted as they were jolly. Castanet, be it observed, was a law student; he lived with the others just as the owl lives with the prairie-dogs, because he liked them.
All these people noticed a change that had come over Garnier during the last fortnight. He was abstracted, he sighed, he laughed at nothing, burst out laughing sometimes as he painted, in a happy manner, as if a child had performed some antic for his amusement, and then a few minutes later he would give a little groan. He no longer cast his brushes joyously aside when Floquet turned the shrieking and fizzing pan of fish stewed in garlic onto a dish; his appetite had diminished.
The fact was, the great Garnier was miraculously in love. When an elephant falls into a pit he does it in a whole-hearted manner; so fell Garnier into this passion. Célestin had been for him that dangerous thing—a revelation. She had eclipsed theIntransigèant, and robbed Henri Rochefort of his power; she had touched Prince Rudolph, and he had slunk back into his impossible mysteries; she had taken the charm from garlic, and even the wizard café lost its fascination.
Yet for all this he was not in love with Célestin in the ordinary acceptation of the term. He never dreamt of marriage with her, simply because duringthe last twelve days he had become miraculously married to her. She dwelt with him always now in that atelier he called his head. There she made her hats, trimming them with sunbeams, and turning to him for admiration with her celestial smile.
She was the wife of his soul. Never was there a purer passion begotten of man and woman; yet, strangely enough, it did not purify him. He talked of women in the same old free-and-easy way, and the jokes of Castanet, Lorillard, Floquet & Co. did not shock him.
Had Célestin lived in a romance, she would doubtless have cast her light on womanhood. She would have elevated Garnier, and he certainly would have been none the worse for that. In reality, however, her effulgence showed him nothing but herself.
She had such pretty ways. Her slightest movement had a deeply artistic meaning. She interpreted unspoken sentences with a motion of her hands. A poppy swaying in the wind had not the grace of Célestin crossing the floor to put the littlekettle on the stove. Her talk seemed a strange sister of Dodor’s song. And then the way she had of casting her eyes up to heaven! Her gaze always seemed to return bluer from that journey, and filled with light gathered from the ghostly distance.
She was all those twelve children he had longed for rolled into one, and much more besides. She was one of those delightful little cherubs over the fonts in the Church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois; she was the wind that waved the trees at Barbizon, the flowers that blew to the wind, and the sparrows that flew in the street; she was Mistigris, the cat who lived under his bed, and each of Mistigris’s six kittens. For all of these things that he loved when he thought of, beheld, or felt them, reminded him of Célestin.
He labored away over his tulip, carving at it with infinite care. Castanet came and kicked at his door, and asked him what he was doing, and then he felt the eye of Castanet peering through the key-hole, and heard his voice informing Floquet that Garnier was writing a letter to his sweetheart. Then the banjo struck up, and the doleful soundof the comb laboring out “Partant pour la Syrie” mixed with the sound of Lorillard washing his shirt and beating it between his hands as a sort of accompaniment to the music.
Then the flower was at last accomplished—a bit too thick in the petal, perhaps, but still a fairly accurate representation. He dyed it with the cochineal, and mounted it on a little green stick he had prepared to do duty for a stalk. It was a poor child for so great an artist to produce, yet he smiled at it in a satisfied manner, for it reminded him of Célestin.
He then went to the atelier of Castanet & Co. to see if he could get a piece of fish for Mistigris, who had come out from under the bed with a kitten in her mouth, as if to remind him that she was the mother of a family and required sustaining. And when he had fed her, he darted off with the tulip in his hand, making for the Rue de Perpignan, regardless of the ribaldry of his compatriots, who were watching him from their window away up near the roof. He hurried along like a man pursuing fortune, or as if fearful that the tulip would wither.Toto was out, but Célestin was at home mending a glove.
“Ah,ciel!” cried Célestin, as she held the tulip out between finger and thumb. “What a marvelous thing! You made it, and from a turnip! It is a miracle!”
“We will plant it!” cried Garnier, running about with the red-tile pot in his hand, and looking for some place in which to throw the dead flower. There was a sink outside the door; he cast it there.
Then they planted the new tulip, pressing the mold tightly around the base of the stick, and hardly was the thing accomplished when Toto entered, looking worried, and as if he had been walking in a hurry.
“Yes, it is very nice,” said Toto in the manner of an absent-minded parent as they called upon him to admire their handiwork.
He kissed Célestin without fervor, and then, pulling Garnier aside by the arm, invited him to come outside for a moment and have a glass of beer, and give his advice about a picture.
“I have had a row at the studio,” said Toto, when they were in the street.
“Eh! what? with Melmenotte?”
“No, that fool Jolly. I knocked him down.”
“What! you did that?Boufre!but it will do him a lot of good, that same Jolly. I have often wished to do so myself, but I am too big, and he is too small. You are more of his size. And why did you knock him down?”
“He told me I wasn’t able to paint, that anydemi-mondainehad more art in painting her face than I had in painting a picture.”
“But that is nothing; we all tell each other things like that.”
“Yes, but he meant it; and, he said it in such an insulting manner, and, besides, he only said it because I had refused to lend him more money.”
“So you knocked him down!” cried Garnier, breaking into a roar of laughter. “Mon Dieu!and I missed it! I would have given five francs to have been there.”
They entered a little café, and Toto called for two bocks.
“I am very unhappy,” said Toto as he sipped his beer.
“What! about that rascal Jolly?”
“Oh, no; it is not that. I am unhappy about a lot of things. I wish I had never come to the Rue de Perpignan.”
“Oh!”
“Yes, tell me something seriously. How long do you think it will be before I am able to exhibit?”
Garnier shifted about in his seat. He did not know exactly what to say; he had never considered Toto’s art seriously. His father had a shop, and the son, after dabbling a while with art, would doubtless end happily behind the counter. He was having hisWanderjahrnow. Even at the worst he might become a great artist. Who could tell? And who was Garnier that he should throw water on another man’s aspirations?
“Five years,” said Garnier. “You see, you are only beginning. The great thing in art is time; nothing is done without time and patience. Another thing: one must not think. Work away anddon’t think. Don’t ask ‘How am I getting on?’ or, at least, only on New Year’s Day. Then, enjoy yourself, and keep your eyes open. Paris is a big atelier. An artist wants to study movement as well as the nude. I never walk down the street but I pick up something; it all comes in handy. If you want to paint life, you must dip your brush in everything, even mud. Those old men who spent their lives painting pots and pans and saints leave me cold. I would like to clap the Rue St. Honoré into a canvas—will, too, some day. I don’t think there is anything more fine in nature than a fire-engine going full speed to a fire, except, maybe, a dragon-fly.”
Garnier buried his nose in his glass, and Toto put his chin on his palm, his elbow on the table, and stared before him, as if gazing at a cheerless view.
“Or a girl flinging up her arms to yawn,” continued Garnier. “Girls are all art—that is why they make such rotten artists; but they are natural when they are flinging up their arms to yawn, or stooping to tie their garters, because then theythink no one is looking at them, or they don’t care.”
He held out a handful of cigarettes, and Toto took one.
“I have never seen Célestin yawn,” said Toto in a meditative voice, as he lit the cigarette.
“Heavens! no,” said Garnier.
“Why not?”
“The gift of weariness is not given to her. Have you ever seen a butterfly yawn, or a happy child?”
“Sheishappy!” said Toto in a half-regretful voice.
“She is happiness, you mean.Mon Dieu!yes, she is happiness; as for me, when I see her I always feel ten years younger, twenty years younger when she speaks, thirty years younger when she smiles.”
“You are only twenty-five.”
“Oh, yes; so you see, Mlle. Célestin’s smile puts me back to five years before my birth. I was then an angel, a fat little angel in the cherub cage; there I would have been still had not the Father Eternal put in his hand and taken me out, and flung me tothe blue, crying ‘Try your wings.’ That is how the business is managed: the world is pursued by a flock of cherubs in search of a roost; when they overtake the world, they take it by storm, people want to marry, and that makes spring; when the world outstrips them that makes winter. I have never begotten a child, so I have never given a perch to one of those sparrow angels, worse luck!” and Garnier sighed and called for more beer.
“Shall I tell you something?” asked Toto, who had been slowly making up his mind as the painter prattled.
“Why, yes!”
“Well, you remember, when I met you first, you asked me what my father was. I said he had a shop. Well, I told you a lie.”
“Ma foi!why not? What do I care what your father is?—you are a good fellow. That is enough for me. We all boast a bit, we artists.”
“I was not exactly boasting,” said Toto, knocking the ash off his cigarette in a nervous manner. “My father made all his money out of a bank.”
“You don’t mean to say he is a banker!” saidGarnier, opening his eyes in astonishment, for a banker to Garnier was a much more extraordinary person than even one of those cherubs he talked about.
“No; not exactly a banker: he was a partner in a great bank. He was always awfully ashamed of the bank. He is dead, you know.”
“Ashamed of being a banker!” gasped Garnier. “What sort of man was he?”
“He was an awfully funny old fellow. I can just remember him. He scarcely ever spoke to me; he was very stiff and straight, and he used to paint his face and wear stays.”
“He was mad, then?” said Garnier.
“Not he; he was as sane as I am—saner; for I believe I am cracked. No matter, it’s not my fault; I did not make myself.”
“Paint his face and wear stays and ashamed of being a banker,” murmured Garnier. “You are not making an April fish of me? No, you can’t be, for it is the second of June.”
“No, I wish I was; but I have a lot more to tell. You know I came down here to paint and live inthe Rue de Perpignan a little more than a month ago. Well, I thought I was going to be a great artist. No, worse than that: I thought I was a great artist.”
“So do we all, till we find out the right side of our palettes,” said Garnier.
“Well, I am only a dauber; don’t say no—I have been finding it out in the last week. I didn’t want that fellow Jolly to tell me; that’s what made me so angry, I suppose, for I knew he was telling me the truth. Well, I am sick of it all; the pleasure is all gone from my life. I have a lot of anxieties; it is like being in prison. When I go out on the street, even here in this quarter, where I am not likely to come across anyone, I have to be always on the watch for fear of meeting anyone I know; I always look down a street before I walk down it.”
“Ah, yes! I know that feeling. There are three streets forbidden to me just at present; they are barricaded by creditors.”
“Oh, it is not creditors I fear.”
“What then?”
“Friends.”
“Mon Dieu!what a funny man you are! What is there pleasanter to meet than a friend?”
“Yes; but don’t you understand? I don’t want my friends to know that I am an artist.”
“And, for Heaven’s sake, why not?”
“Well, for one thing, they would laugh at me.”
“Laugh at you for being an artist! Sacred Heaven! what a funny man you are, and what funny friends you must have! And why should they laugh at you for being an artist?”
“Well, you see, they don’t know anything about art, for one thing.”
“Ah, I can see those friends of yours!” said Garnier, with an inspired air. “Old religious ladies, aunts, and what not,—they drive in carriages with pug dogs,—and old gentlemen with the Legion of Honor.”
“Not at all; my friends are quite young.”
“Who are they, then?”
“Well, there is Eugène Valfray, son of the railway man.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Then there is the Prince de Harnac—Gustave.”
“What, you know a Prince!”
“Why, man, I am a Prince.”
“You are a what?”
“I am a Prince,” said Toto shamefacedly.
“Ah,mon Dieu!what a droll you are!” cried Garnier, breaking into a laugh. “First you are a bourgeois, then you are a banker, then you are a Prince.”
“I am not joking; I am what I say.”
“But,” cried Garnier, sobered by the serious face of Toto, “you a Prince, sitting here at the Trois Frères with me! Come now! a joke is all very well up to a certain point; beyond that it makes one feel giddy. Besides, you are not like a Prince.”
“For Heaven’s sake, whatisa Prince like?” asked Toto, half laughing, half vexed. “I have never seen a Prince that was different from anyone else; they are generally more stupid, perhaps, but that is all.”
“But what are you Prince of?” cried thepainter, belief and disbelief battling in his mind.
“My father was a prince of the Roman Empire. I am the same, of course, now that he is dead.”
“But, my dear child!” cried the Provençal, to whom a Prince was a Prince, no matter what empire he belonged to, “what made you come amongst us at Melmenotte’s? it is like what one reads in a romance, all this. I could not have believed it. And what made you come to live in the Rue de Perpignan? And Célestin! Ah,ciel!I see it all now: she is a Princess; that is what makes her different from other people. A Princess! she has made me coffee, whilst I have talked to her as to a child. I have carved for her a tulip out of a turnip, and I never guessed who she was, when it was plain before me written all over her——”
“You are wrong,” said Toto in a troubled voice. “She is not a Princess; I wish she were. Listen, my friend, and I will tell you all. I want your advice.”
He told the little story of his meeting with Célestin,everything; he sketched rapidly a portrait of his mother; then he paused to let the tale sink in, and Garnier rubbed his chin.
“But what made you do all this?” asked the painter at last. “You could have painted at home.”
“I don’t know; I was so sick of it all. I wanted a change, I wanted to do for myself; it seemed so jolly to have an atelier, and live in a blouse and work; then, besides—I can’t explain exactly, but I felt as if I wanted to grow: a lot of people had deceived me. They did not mean it, I suppose, but they praised my work; besides, I felt that they were laughing at me behind my back.”
He told the story of De Nani, and the truth that had escaped from him in drink; he felt no shame in confiding his troubles to Garnier. All great-minded people have this in common. They resemble priests; we confess to them openly what we would not whisper to little minds.
“Ah, well,” said Garnier, “there are rogues in every trade, and that old man is a rogue.Mon Dieu!I am not straitlaced; but there aretwo things I cannot stand by and see: an old man drunk, and an old man following a woman. Do not think of him, but tell me now, what does it feel like to be a Prince? Oh, I should like to be a Prince just for an hour! I would dress myself in ermine and walk down the Rue de Rivoli. Ah! you are laughing, but I would. I would call my servants and give them orders, just to hear them call me M. le Prince. I would call at Melmenotte’s, and walk about the atelier trailing my skirts.Mon Dieu!yes, I should like to be a Prince just for an hour.”
“And then?”
“Oh, I would kick off my togs and come back and be an artist. Just as you will kick off your togs and go back to be a Prince; one always returns to one’s trade.”
“You think I will go back to be a Prince?”
“Why, of course.”
“Would you advise me to?”
“Why, of course, when you are tired of your atelier you will put on your crown.”
“I have no crown,” said Toto; “but I will nodoubt return and put on a tall hat. What troubles me is Célestin.”
“Ah! Célestin!”
“She does not know who I am.”
Garnier frowned slightly.
“She would not have loved me, I think, if I had told her, poor child! She has a great awe of titled people; she makes hats for them. She will never do that again, anyhow.”
“Still,” said Garnier, “you ought to have told her.”
“Why? I don’t see why.”
“You have told me, yet you would hide what I know from that angel of light. That is not as it should be. Take it as a man. How would you like Mlle. Célestin to deceive you? The thing is impossible, but, still——”
“Perhaps you are right; and I wish I had never met her.”
Garnier frowned again.
“You do not love her, then?”
“Oh, yes; I do. It is not that, but my mother, and all the people I know. Not that I care a button—nota button; let them all go to the devil.”
“Ah, now you speak like a man! And will you tell Célestin all that you have told to me?”
“I will. I will tell her this evening.”
But when evening came, and he sat alone with Célestin on the couch in the lamplight, and when he took her hand saying “I want to tell you something; I ought to have told it to you before,” the words dried up; he could not tell her of his position in the world; besides, he knew her inevitable answer, “What matter, so long as we love each other?” It always came when difficulties arose—if the beef was understewed or the wine sour, if the cats kept them awake or if the door of Dodor’s cage got jammed.
“Célestin, I ought to have told you before; but do you know that, though we live here in this atelier and are happy enough, God knows—do you know that I am—awfully poor?”
“What matter? What does anything matter, so long as we love each other?” sighed Célestin.
“I will tell you all about myself some day,” said Toto. “I have not told you I have a mother.”
“Ah, how I would love to see her! How happy, that is, to have a mother! As for me, I never had a mother.”
“Perhaps it is just as well you had not.”
“I will tell you,” said Célestin: “we will share your mother. I will take one-half of her heart, and you will have the other, like those ogres in that fairy tale of dear M. Gaillard’s.”
“Thanks,” said Toto; “you may have it all.”
“Dodor, we are very poor,” said Célestin next morning. She had taken the lark from its cage, and was holding the little warm, brown body to her breast.
Toto had gone out to slink about the streets in a miserable state of mind. He was deadly tired of his atelier—Art had pulled his ears; yet he was ashamed to go home. Besides, how about Célestin?
He felt like a child who had stolen a fiddle, unable to play on it, tired of it, afraid to return it, and wavering for a moment ere he throws it into the nearest ditch. It was ten o’clock in the morning.
“So,” continued Célestin, putting the lark back in its cage, “I am going to make some money.”
Her head was full of echoes begotten of Toto’s words last night, “I am very poor,” and plans begottenof the echoes. She had all her life been well-to-do; by some special provision of God’s, instead of her seeking work, work had always stolen to seek her fingers; the winds had blown tulle and artificial roses across her path; Mme. Hümmel had supplied her with foundations, and art had done the rest.
So it was a new sensation to hear the wolf scratch at the door, rather fearful, yet almost pleasurable: for was not Toto with her, and so long as they loved each other what did anything matter?
She had three hats finished—four, in fact, but only three for sale. For the fourth was the one she had made that morning,—the morning of the honeymoon,—and it was not for sale. She could not think of allowing another woman to wear it, so she put it on her head, determining to wear it herself.
She had on a dress of lilac-colored nun’s cloth. She made the three hats up in a parcel, and then drew on a pair of lilac-colored gloves.
“How grand Mme. Hümmel will think I have become!” said Célestin, as she departed.
Even the old Rue de Perpignan looked young this morning. It was a blissful and dreamy day; heavy showers had fallen in the early morning, leaving a perfume in the air, faint, as if from the gardens of Paradise.
She reached Verral’s in the Rue St. Honoré without any surprising adventure, and entered by the side door that leads to the workrooms. These lay behind the showrooms, the buzz and murmur of which penetrated the thin partitions dividing the one from the other. The atmosphere was warm and filled with that oppressive smell which comes from millinery in a mass. Size, varnish, and glue contributed their odors, whilst the air vibrated with the whir of sewing machines from the rooms above.
“Ah, the little Célestin!” cried Mme. Hümmel, a stout Alsatian in black silk, and with a good-natured face.
“I sent a girl to the Rue de Babylone only last week to see if you were dead, and they said you were married. Bad child not to have told me! I was frightened. I could not sleep at night, sayingto myself, ‘Where is that Célestin?’ So you have brought me some hats?”
She led the way to her private room, and looked at the hats, and praised them a little: for it does not do to lavish praise on employees; they are apt to wax fat on it and kick for higher prices, as Mme. Hümmel had learnt in the course of her experience.
Then she ran away to get some money, and Célestin stood by the table, on which lay feathers, patterns of silk, and thosepomponswhich, according to Gaillard, were the mainstay and support of the mysterious Angélique.
“This is for the work,” said Mme. Hümmel, paying the stipulated amount, “and this is for yourself. It is a wedding gift. Poor child! are you happy?”
“Oh, very happy!” said Célestin, putting the napoleon just given to her for a wedding gift into her glove, and the six francs into her purse. “Happier than I can tell. How good it is of you! A whole napoleon! I never thought—I——”
“No, do not thank me. You are a good child, and I am sure you will make him happy. Youmust bring him to see me some Saturday. I will lecture him for you. And is he dark or fair? and what is his name?”
“He is dark, and his name is Désiré.”
“And his other name?”
“I don’t know,” said Célestin. “He told me once, and I have forgotten. How stupid it is of me!”
Mme. Hümmel smothered a little laugh.
“So you do not know his surname?Mon Dieu!what a droll child you are!”
“I don’t remember it. My head will not hold names; it is like a sieve. I am very silly.” And Célestin, blushing and shaking the good woman by the hand, departed, whilst Madame cried after her, “Be sure and bring him some Saturday for me to lecture him,” little thinking that this young man with the forgettable surname was Toto, son of Verral’s best customer, Mme. la Princesse de Cammora.
Célestin walked away, so lost in her napoleon that she did not notice the clouds hurrying up from the southwest. Like everything fortunate, the napoleonwas a gift from the good God. Toto was one of these gifts, or, rather, the chief of them; and as she made her way along the busy street, she cast her eyes up several times as if returning thanks through the brim of her hat to those favored angels, her guardians.
A thought had crossed her mind. She would get a money-box for Toto and save up for him, for what would happen if she were to die, and he were left like the artist in that terrible play at the Porte St. Martin? Already, in fancy, she was supporting him by her hats whilst he pursued his beautiful art to fame.
But if she were to die? Her lips trembled. Those two children of hers, Toto and Dodor! They crossed her imagination together, feckless creatures, one so like the other in character, either jumping about on their perches, or moping, irresponsible, and terribly in need of someone to tidy their cages, talk to them, and love them.
She was passing a frightful criticism on Toto, but she did not know it. Perhaps the only people who criticise us justly are the people who love us,for our perfections and imperfections are to them all one country, and of that country perhaps our imperfections are the fairest part.
Just as she reached the middle of the Place de la Concorde the clouds burst. It was like a huge shower bath, of which the string had suddenly been pulled. In a second the Madeleine and Rue Royale on one hand, and the big letters announcing the Chamber of Deputies on the other, were veiled by sheets of rain.
Célestin awoke suddenly from her painful, half-pleasurable reverie, to find herself drenched. She had no umbrella, and her friends the omnibuses were not near, so she ran through sheets of rain, till her hat was ruined, and then she hid in a doorway, panting, and with her hand to her breast. The shower spent itself in ten minutes, and the day smiled out again brighter than ever. So she pursued her way to the Rue de Perpignan, wet to the skin, and rejecting the idea of an omnibus because of the expense for one thing, and, besides, she was wet already, and it was safer to walk and keep warm.
When she reached the atelier she found Toto carefully drying himself at the stove. He, too, had been caught by the rain, but not so badly.
She insisted upon his taking off his coat, and whilst it was drying she talked to him and laughed to cheer him up. Then she spread the cloth on the table, for it was time fordéjeuner, and lastly she went to the bedroom, like a prudent person, and changed her things. But the beautiful hat was ruined beyond redemption, and as she gazed at it she gave a little shiver.
That evening, when the lamp was lit, she told Toto all about Mme. Hümmel, the selling of the hats, the gift of the napoleon, and the desire of the forewoman to see him and lecture him.
Toto listened half unconsciously. He was already revolving in his mind plans of escape from his cage. He had fixed upon Gaillard as the man of all others to help him, but he had not seen Gaillard now for four days.
As Célestin finished her story—she was sitting upon the floor, her head resting against Toto’s knee—a shudder ran through her, and her teeth chattered.
“Why,” cried Toto, “what is this? What makes you shiver so?”
“I don’t know,” said Célestin, half laughing. “I did not do it on purpose;” and again the rigor seized her, as if someone were shaking her by the shoulder. “I will go to bed,” she said, rising to her feet. “My head swims.”
“I hope she is not going to be ill,” thought the Prince to himself. “And I do wish Gaillard would come. What can have happened to him?”
Nothingin particular had happened to Gaillard, yet the poet was in tribulation. To begin with, all his friends were too busy to attend to or amuse themselves with him. Struve was writing his book, or, rather, correcting the proof sheets, an employment that kept him short of temper and time; Pelisson had only one idea—Pantin; Toto was crabbedly finding out his own stupidity in the Rue de Perpignan; whilst De Brie had turned very acid over his connection with the new journal, and flung him commissions for little articles or volumes for review as if they were bones to a dog.
Then his publisher had informed him, with a very long face, that only three hundred copies of “The Fall of the Damned” had sold in three weeks,whereas three thousand of “Satanitie” had gone off in the same time.
To make matters worse, Papillard had stopped working; De Nani had frozen him. De Nani he felt to be the cause of all his misfortunes, and he only continued to exist—so he told himself—that he might witness De Nani’s downfall.
You may imagine, then, how pleased he felt when, on the morning after the same showery day that drenched Célestin, Pelisson appeared in his rooms before eight o’clock, and pulled up his blinds.
“Wake up! I want Adam Froissart’s address,” cried Pelisson, standing over the poet, and poking him with his stick to rouse him.
“Froissart!” cried Gaillard, rubbing his eyes. “He is not in Paris.”
“Where is he, then?”
“He is in—Amiens,” said Gaillard.
Froissart was a spiteful genius who possessed the unsavory humor of Papillard. No one had ever seen him, and his sole title to consideration lay in three malevolent articles leveled against De Brieand his political tendencies. They had been submitted to Pelisson by Gaillard, and so had found their way into theDébats. Pelisson, who noted down everything, had made a memorandum of this gentleman’s abilities. De Brie had done likewise, and though he hated this unknown journalist, he would have given a good deal to secure him as a member of his staff. He had expressed the desire in the hearing of Gaillard, and he might have obtained his wish, only that Froissart’s genius for malevolence was useless when expended against anyone else than De Brie.
Needless to say, there was no Froissart. He belonged to the shadowy band that included Fanfoullard, Mirmillard, Papillard, Églantine, and Angélique.
“This is a great nuisance,” grumbled Pelisson, rubbing his chin.
“What do you want of Froissart?”
“I am going to sack De Nani, and I want a man to take his place.”
Gaillard’s countenance became glorified.
“But, my dear Pierre, why seek for Froissart?Are there not plenty of men of ability in Paris to take the place of this silly old villain of a De Nani?”
“Hundreds, but no use to me. I don’t want one of your bright diamonds—I want a man in the rough; I don’t want an editor—I want a creature, a clever one, too, now: for, upon my soul, I am becoming exhausted between keepingPantinand De Nani going at the same time. You said this Froissart was poor.”
“Frightfully.”
“That’s just what I want.”
“But I believe he has an aunt who is very rich, and I heard she was dying some little time ago. I would not seek Froissart, Pierre; believe me, he is a very acid man, and quite unfit for an editor. If you want the sort of person you say you want, why not try me? I will do whatever you wish, and write whatever you wish.”
“No, no!” cried Pelisson hastily; “it would not do. You are a poet—stick to your last. Besides, I have been bombarded with your creditors; I’ve had enough of that. That is one of the reasons Iam sacking De Nani. The old fool has burst the bladder. Someone went to Auteuil to make inquiries, and found he was living in three rooms, and owed money to his laundress. You can fancy how the news has flown amongst his creditors. Next thing someone will find out that he is a fool.”
“But why not edit the thing yourself?”
“So I do; but I want a shield.Pantinwill begin to bellow soon. Well, no matter; I am off for Amiens. I won’t be back till to-morrow. What’s this man’s address?”
“He lives in a cottage near the railway station; you will easily find it—there are roses on the porch. But, see here; who’s taking charge till you return?”
“De Nani, nominally; he cannot do any harm in one day. Besides, I have left everything cut and dried.”
“Does he know he is getting the sack?”
“I should think so. He and I have been at the office all night talking things over. He is quite resigned—going to cut and run. I left him asleepon the sofa. Now good-by. The cottage near the railway station, you say.Mon Dieu!I will scarcely have time to catch the train.”
He darted off, and Gaillard sank down again in bed filled with the bliss of satisfied hatred. De Nani was down at last; the little world of æsthetic people who required “Satanities” and “Falls of the Damned” would now, perhaps, give their Gaillard undivided attention. He never once thought of Pelisson gone off on a wild-goose chase to Amiens, and soon he forgot even De Nani, immersed in visions of an impossible Gaillard worshiped by an impossible world.
Mme. Plon came in and placedPantinon the foot of his bed, and a letter in a blue envelope. The letter looked like a bill, so he left it whilst he glanced at the journal with languid interest. Then he picked up the letter, which had been left by a messenger, and, to his surprise, found that it was from De Nani.