“I would endeavor even to be dull,” said Gaillard, “to vex De Brie.”
“But see here,” said Toto. “What is the use of another paper? There are hundreds of papers.”
“There is no paper like mine,” said Pelisson. “Wait till you see it! it will begin with a grunt and end in a yell.Ma foi!yes. There are a hundred dull papers pretending to be clever, but there is no clever paper pretending to be dull. I am going to be respectable, and wear a scorpion’s tail. I am going to give more business news than any other paper. M. Prudhomme will read me after dinner; and I will tickle him under the ribs, and then some day I will bite him behind, and make him jump from his easy-chair and pull things down. You will hear Paris crack. Here we are!”
They had reached the Café de la Paix; De Nani and Wolf were there already.
“For goodness’ sake, Pelisson,” said Gaillard, “give this wretched Wolf his hundred francs, or he will be making innuendoes all dinner-time! It is a way he has; he is most spiteful and has no reserve.”
Wolf was a journalist, with a long black beard, a high forehead, and spectacles. His forte was interviewing. He entered one’s house like a wolf, and swallowed one—house, wife, furniture, and all;the backyard and the front garden were not beneath him. Then he vomited the remains into the columns of fifty papers, and went and devoured someone else. But he was a good-natured wolf, ready to lend to a friend in distress, but a terrible creditor, for, to use Gaillard’s expression, he tortured one so.
Pelisson drew him aside and promised him payment, and then they dined, the journalist sketching out his plan between the courses to the delight of his listeners, excepting Toto.
The wretched Toto had no part in the scheme; they asked him for money to help them, but they did not invoke his brains. He felt the slight, but not severely; literature was not his path. He had no hankering after distinction as a journalist, so he agreed to supply the hundred thousand francs, if he could get them.
“I will give you bills at three months, and leave you to discount them. I am going to Corsica to shoot moufflon.” And he touched Gaillard’s foot under the table to remind him of Célestin and the attic in Bohemia.
“But,” said De Nani, who had remained sober, for the gout was threatening, and, besides, there seemed to be a chance of money in all this, “what is the name of this journal to be?”
“Pantin,” replied Pelisson. “I have sifted a hundred thousand names in my head during the last three days, andPantinis the only one that stuck. It fits my idea like a glove; it has several meanings. It is like a stroke on a gong.”
Pantin’shealth was drunk, then the conversation ran on, everyone talking except Toto, who was drinking.
Toto, to do him credit, rarely drank much; he drank to-night because the joy of the others depressed him. He could not share their excitement; he felt himself to be the drone in this hive; they were all famous in their way, these men, except De Nani. He and De Nani, the representatives of birth—what a pair! He drank double on account of De Nani.
They all rose from the table and trooped out, Pelisson’s hand on everybody’s shoulder, Wolf withhis spectacles glittering in the gaslight, Gaillard gesticulating, De Nani sniggering, Toto smoking. They were going to Pelisson’s rooms to formulate their plans on paper. Unhappy Toto, had he known the nasty trickPantinwas destined to play him!
Somedays later Gaillard was lying in bed. It was noon, and the blinds of his room were down. Toto burst in.
“Go away, Toto,” said the poet in a feeble voice. “I am dying.”
“What are you dying of?”
“Misery,” murmured Gaillard, turning his face to the wall.
Toto pulled up the blind.
“Never mind the misery. Get up and come out; I want you. What’s the matter?”
“The world; it comes upon me like this sometimes, the horror of the whole thing. Besides, someone stole all my money last night. Where is God? I do not know. Go away, and leave me to myself.”
“You haven’t taken poison or anything, have you?”
“No—not yet.”
“Well, get up, and I will give you some money, and we will go and havedéjeuner.”
Gaillard moved uneasily.
“Do be quick, or I will go without you.”
The poet rose rapidly, and began to dress.
“I have seen Célestin,” said Toto, standing by the window, and looking out on the street.
“Ah, that charming Célestin!” sighed Gaillard, putting on his trousers with a weary air.
“And I have taken an atelier in the Rue de Perpignan. I spent the whole afternoon yesterday hunting for that fool Fanfoullard; no one knew of such a person, but I found very nice rooms.”
“Fanfoullard has left Paris—gone to Nîmes. But, Toto, what is this you tell me? Are you really going to start on this crusade—become a painter?”
“I am a painter.”
“I mean, live in this dreadful way? Toto, I predict that there will be great trouble. Your mother is very anxious; she is anxious for you to make a good match.”
“That’s all right.”
“How all right?” asked Gaillard, scratching his head.
“I saw the American girl yesterday, and told her what I was going to do. She is going to keep my mother quiet; she fell in with the idea at once. She is the only person who understands me.”
“Did you tell her of Célestin?”
“No, of course I did not; I am not that sort of person. I never talk of one woman before another. Go on dressing.”
“And I suppose you will end by marrying the beautiful American, when you are famous?”
“I will never marry anyone but Célestin. She is the only woman I have ever loved.”
“But,mon Dieu! you are not going to marry her?”
“No; I would if she wanted to, but she doesn’t. A priest mumbling over us will not make us love each other any more. Don’t put on that awful green necktie, for goodness’ sake; take that plaid one, it looks better.”
“And you are going to start yourménageto-morrow?” asked Gaillard, putting on the desired necktie carefully before the glass.
“Yes, and that is what I am going to start on.”
He held out three bank-notes for a thousand francs each.
“It won’t last you a month.”
“It will have to last me a year.”
“Toto, are you serious?”
“What the deuce!” blazed out Toto. “Everyone asks me that when I want to do anything that is not foolish. When I took to painting first, that fool De Harnac raised his stupid eyebrows and said: ‘Toto, are you serious?’ When I told Helen Powers yesterday, the first thing she said was, ‘Toto, are you serious?’ And now you. Am I a buffoon? And stop calling me by that odious name: I am Toto no longer—I am Désiré. Are you dressed? Let us go, then.”
“But I do not know what will become of me,” said Gaillard, as they descended the stairs. “What will become of me, all alone in Paris, without you? I shall be bored; I shall die of yawning.”
“You can come over every day and see us.”
“It is so far.”
“You can take an omnibus.”
“A what? An omnibus! I!”
“They are good enough for Célestin; they are good enough for me; but see here, Gaillard: above all things, you must not tell anyone what I am going to do or where I am going. I am going to amuse myself. Well, what does it matter to people whether I am amusing myself by shooting in Corsica or by painting in the Rue de Perpignan?”
“I will be mute as a fish.”
“I have joined a studio—Melmenotte’s. I want to do a lot at the nude. I will sell my studies as I go on. A student there told me it was quite easy to live by pot-boiling, but I am going to have a great work in hand. How can a man work leading the life we lead? The other morning, just as I was settling down to a picture, Valfray came and dragged me off to that cock-fight at Chantilly. I got a blouse yesterday for six francs. Come in here, I want to see Pelisson; he is sure to be here at this hour.”
They entered a café on the Boulevard des Capucines,and there sure enough sat Pelisson; he had finished hisdéjeunerand was reading letters.
“How’sPantin?” asked Gaillard.
“Blooming, or going to bloom. I am besieged with firms who want to advertise.”
“Have you fixed on your editor?”
“De Nani”
“What!” asked Gaillard in a horrified voice. “That drunken old wretch!”
“Pah! he is only the figurehead. I am the editor; no one knows him, that is the charm. He has been lyingperduat Auteuil for half a century, and now I have got him, he is only a skin; I am going to stuff him—stuff him with Pelisson. Already people are asking who is this Marquis de Nani, and people are answering he is the editor of the new journal that is going to be,Pantin, the wittiest man in Paris, and discovered by Pelisson. I am circulatingbonmotsof De Nani’s; they are mine, but nobody knows that. In a week’s time everyone will be talking of De Nani, this Marquis who is a genius; everyone will be craving to see him. You know Paris. The old fool is wise enough to dodgeround comers, for he knows his own stupidity; should anyone find it out, they will put it down to his cleverness. Wolf is publishing an interview with him written by me. Oh, yes!Pantinwill be a success, and you will have your hundred thousand francs back, Toto, and a hundred thousand on top of it.”
“You got the bills discounted?”
“Oh, yes.”
“What is this I hear about a new journal?” asked Struve, who had come in unobserved, slipping into a chair beside Pelisson.
The newspaper man explained whilst Toto and Gaillard breakfasted.
“And Toto pays for all this?”
“He has good security; besides, he only pays a third. I have two hundred thousand francs from a little syndicate, and the promise of five hundred thousand if the thing takes. Toto has a lien on the advertisements; he is perfectly safe.”
“What’s De Nani’s salary?”
“I give him a dinner every day and ten francs.”
“Have you a cash-box?”
“Why?”
“Keep it locked. Pelisson, you are a fool.”
“Why?”
“To have let that old goat into your affair.”
“You wait and see.”
“I will.”
“You are not going?”
“I am.”
“But see here: I want a man to do the art criticism.”
“You’ll find lots.” And Struve vanished.
“He always throws cold water on everything,” said Toto, remembering the advice about the coffee mill.
“He’s a critic,” said Gaillard.
“He’s a clever man,” said Pelisson, knitting his brows an instant; “but he’s wrong here.”
“Oh, the middle of the day!” cried Toto in a voice of tragedy as he took the poet’s arm half an hour later and lounged out of the café. “What a frightful institution it is! I would like to be born into a world where the days had no middles.”
“You are right; it is a most inartistic flaw in the scheme of things. The night has no such blunder; that is why I love it. The night always reminds me of the exquisite masterpiece of some forgotten painter in the gallery of some bourgeois millionaire. Every twelve hours we slip into the exquisite poem of darkness, and then out again into this villainous prose. Pah! if I had the key of the meter that feeds our great chandelier, men would have a three-hours’ day; it is quite long enough.”
“Quite. I am going to look at my new rooms; will you come? We will take a cab.”
They drove to the Rue de Perpignan; it was a long street situated in what remains of the Latin Quarter. Gaillard shivered at the everyday appearance of the place. He had never been in it before; the name, floating loose in his head, had attached itself to the name of Fanfoullard; he wished now that he had never imagined the fan-painter.
“It is a great way from everywhere, do you not think, Désiré? Why put the Seine between one’s self and civilization? One can hide one’s self justas easily a hundred yards from the Rue St. Honoré as a hundred miles.”
Toto made no answer, but led the way upstairs.
The atelier was certainly large enough; men were at work settling the stove; another man was mending the top light. The place was almost studiously bare; a tulip in the bud in a red-tile pot stood on a table; an old guitar hung on the wall; there was a throne and drapery, an easel, or, at least, three. Some of these things had belonged to the last tenant. The tulip in the pot had, however, only just arrived. It suited the surroundings, which were those of an ordinary atelier; yet there was something about the place suggestive of a scene in a theater. Perhaps it was the guitar. But one felt the hand of Henri Murger over it all.
“This,” said Toto, touching a nail in the wall, “is for Dodor’s cage.”
Gaillard’s heel struck against the handle of a little frying-pan that protruded from a bundle.
“We will have our meals sent in, but it is useful sometimes to be able to cook at home—sausagesand things. You must come and teach us how to make coffee.”
Gaillard poked his nose into an adjoining room; it was a bedroom. He observed that the washing-jug was cracked.
“Well,” said Toto, “what do you think of it all?”
“I envy you.”
“I envyyou,” said Gaillard as they returned to civilization; “I envy you because you are young, rich, and a Prince. I do not envy you for these things, but rather for the enjoyment they can give you. To be twenty-two, poor, and in love—what can be better than that? You are twenty-two, and in love, and you are so rich that you can allow yourself the luxury of being poor. What a change for you, and how you will taste it all! Poverty falls to the poor; they have it every day, but they do not enjoy it. It is like the old women who sell sugar-plums; they do not eat their own wares. But with you it will be different; you will bring an unsated palate. Your present, contrasted with your past, will be as a naked man standing against a background of old-gold brocade. Extraordinary being to have found out a new pleasure in thisjaded age, and that pleasure lying unnoticed before the eyes of all men. Look at that beggar man—are not his clothes the color of withered leaves? I have seen greens in old coats that no painter has ever seized. You would never guess my deep acquaintance with the ways of the poor, but I have been thrown in their way. Toto, I have a girlfriend.”
“Better say a dozen.”
“I know girls pursue me, but I cast them off. Angélique is not of the common order.”
“Who is Angélique, for goodness’ sake?”
“She is the only woman I love.”
“I have heard you say that a dozen times about a dozen women.”
“I was only pretending; in this world one hides one’s pearls and wears one’s glass beads. Angélique is very poor; she is apomponmaker.”
“What’s apompon?”
“Apomponis a thing women wear in their hats—a little fluffy feather, an absurdity, but it supports Angélique. In this world, Toto, some fate ordains that men live on each other’s absurdities.Absurdity is to men as grass to cattle, air to life. Could you place a great cupping-glass over Paris, and, with an air-pump, remove all its absurdity, the place would fall to pieces; ten thousand men would starve; the journals would wither like autumn leaves; Struve, Pelisson, De Brie, and a thousand others would vanish; women would no longer wearpomponsin their hats, and poor little Angélique would die from want of folly in others. Angélique has a lame brother who lives at Villers Cotterets; he is a great trial to us—an incessant drain. You often laugh at me for my expenses; the fact is, Toto, I am always being tapped, like a person with the dropsy. The affection between this brother and sister is a poem; I weep my money away over it. Now you are casting in your lot with art, Angélique rises up in my mind, and I hear her say “What will become of me?” I will not hide it from you that you have, through me, been the mainstay of an unfortunate man. Angélique knows it. Well, I want you to leave in my hands a certain provision for these people before you cut yourself off from your resources.”
“I’ll give you some money to-morrow; I want you to come and see me started.”
“Where shall I call for you?”
“At the Boulevard Haussmann.”
“In the morning?”
“Yes, and be sure that you say nothing of all this; I want no one to know what I am doing.”
“But your mother?”
“She does not care so long as the American does not know.”
“Do not yawn so, Toto.”
“I can’t help it; it’s the thought of my mother, and old De Nani, and all the lot. Do you know, some day or another I would have cut my throat if I had not met Célestin; she was like a breath of air—she understands me because she loves me. Oh, I’m so sick of womengrinningat me; Célestin is the only woman I have ever seen smile. Mlle. Powers is a nice girl; she means what she says, but she always talks to me as if I were her grandchild, and she calls me Toto. Won’t it be a joke when my mother finds out that I have given old Pelissona hundred thousand francs! I am fond of Pelisson, he’s the best of the lot; I’d do anything for him.”
“Pelisson has his limitations,” said Gaillard, and Toto yawned again.
Gaillard, who was somewhat of a philosopher, had once divided sorrow under two heads—the sorrows of life and the sorrows of art. He reckoned the necessity of getting up early chief amidst the mundane sorrows, and accepted it in a grumbling spirit; but this morning he did not grumble. He dressed rapidly and sadly, and departed for the Boulevard Haussmann, refusing the coffee and roll and butter offered to him by Mme. Plon.
“I cannot eat,” said Gaillard. “I am deeply disturbed.”
He found Toto dressed and in his atelier. He was looking at Sisera and Jael. Jael had the air and aspect of a stout housemaid nailing carpets down with energy.
“How could I have painted that beast?” asked Toto. “She is all flesh, she is an animal, she islike a bull-fighter in a skirt. Imagine a woman like that, and then imagine Célestin.”
“Are you going to remove these canvases to your new atelier?”
“Mon Dieu, no! I will remove nothing that reminds me of this place. I tell you what: I will make you a present of this picture. You can have the water-nymph too.”
“Thanks,” said Gaillard in an unenthusiastic voice. “I will not remove them at present; they would remind me too much of all the pleasant times that are gone. I feel very depressed this morning, Toto—I mean Désiré; one cannot get out of old habits in a hurry without shivering.”
He looked out of a side window and away over the roofs of Paris. The morning was sitting on the roofs pelting the city with roses; the city grumbled, Gaillard sighed.
“Oh, the good times, how they pass! Do you remember, Désiré, the night you won a thousand napoleons at the Grand Club? It is only a month ago, yet it seems a year.”
“The night we tied the two cats by the tail andhung them from a lamp-post? Where did De Mirecourt get those cats? He suddenly appeared with them. Do you remember thesergent-de-villewho tried to get them down?”
“I had forgotten the incident of the cats. I remember it dimly now—one was a tortoise-shell. Yes, those were pleasant times. Désiré, it is not too late to go back to them; consider your position well before you take this step.”
“Come,” said Toto, “I am going.”
“But have you said good-by to Mme. la Princesse?”
“She would never forgive me for waking her at this hour.”
“Mon Dieu!but you have no luggage.”
“I have a bag in the hall below.”
“Ah,mon Dieu!I hope this is all for the best. So you are going with only a bag? Désiré, have you forgotten Angélique?”
“I have three thousand francs in an envelope—it will keep you going. Do try and make it do for six months. Look at me; I have only three thousand for a year.”
“I will try. Ah,mon Dieu!I wish I had never seen this day; my heart is heavy. Thanks, I will not open the envelope till I meet Angélique; we will open it together. We are like two children sitting at a feast and pulling crackers; each day is like a cracker tied with dawn-colored ribbon. Sometimes Angélique weeps at the contents of these crackers, sometimes she laughs and claps her hands; she will clap her hands to-day. Come, let us go and follow our fates.”
“This is my luggage,” said Toto, picking up a huge Gladstone bag in the hall.
Gaillard opened the hall door, and they passed out into the bright morning. The clock of St. Augustin was striking eight; the sparrows were fighting in the sunshine; the earth seemed teeming with life and light and happiness.
“How good it all is!” said Toto, as they drove over the Seine. He was echoing Célestin’s eternal sentiment without knowing it. “What a lovely world it is, and how little we see of it! We snore in our beds during the best part of the day, and live the rest of our time by lamplight.”
“The world,” said Gaillard, “always reminds me of a poem written by a shopkeeper to advertise his stale wares, unpunctuated and filled with printer’s errors; that is why we read it by a dim light. It ought to have been burnt; it was unfortunately published and given to us to read. No one can make out what it is driving at; we have been spelling at it now a million years; we began when we were apes, and we will end, perhaps, when we are donkeys. I am sick of it; I would jump into the Seine, only that such an act would delight De Brie.”
The cab stopped at the doorway of Célestin’s house, and the concierge, Mme. Liard, greeted Toto effusively. Her heart was touched by the youth of the lovers and the fact of Toto being an artist; that he should take Célestin under his protection seemed to her as natural as the mating of sparrows, and a piece of very good fortune for Célestin.
Her trunk stood in the passage, and on the trunk the parrot cage, covered with green baize. From the cage came the occasional flirting sound ofwings, the occasional tinkle of the swinging ring—sounds that bespoke uneasiness in the mind of Dodor.
Then Célestin came down the steep stairs, blushing, and Gaillard had to admit that, even if the world were an ill-written poem, it had at least some very beautiful passages; for Célestin had made for herself a hat which was an amorous dream, and a girl friend, some lower Célestin of the Rue St. Honoré, had, in a fit of sentiment, confected for her a gown such as an angel in half-mourning need not have been ashamed of. Toto had bought her a new pair of shoes, and she wore openwork stockings. Toto kissed her before everyone; this was their only marriage service.
“It makes me feel young again!” cried Mme. Liard as she carried the parrot cage out, whilst the driver carried the trunk. “And I will come and see you in your new home; and oh, monsieur,”—to Gaillard,—“she ought to be careful, for her chest is not what it should be; it was what killed her mother.”
“I will see that she wears a muffler,” repliedGaillard, whilst Célestin got into the carriage, weeping from grief and happiness, and kissing her hand to Mme. Liard.
Then the vehicle drove away, Gaillard on the front seat, the lovers facing him, and Dodor’s cage beside the coachman.
Therapinof Paris is the sparrow of the artistic temple, but he is much more besides. For one thing, he is sometimes an eagle in disguise. He laughs as he paints, and plays dominoes with fantastic gravity. He is generally ugly, but he loves Beauty, and draws her in all postures, even immodest ones. Sometimes he becomes literary, and publishes a journal the size of a prayer-book, in which he has written nonsense and which lives for three months. In this way, I suppose, he takes a vague sort of revenge for all the nonsense that has been written about him.
I do not think you will find in Europe a more foul-minded person than therapin, or a more joyous, or a more lovable, or a more pitiable. And though he is certainly the most consequential creaturein the world, he is the greatest knocker-down of pedestals. Delacroix declared he could smell corruption in the air of Paris. I think he must have smelt therapin. Yet out of this dung spring the fairest flowers of art.
Toto, forsaking his world for a space, had cast in his lot with this creation, and Célestin, like an angel made blind by love, followed him. Dodor had no voice in the matter, yet he endeavored to put it in as he swung in his cage from the nail in the wall.
“Oh!” sighed Célestin next morning as she sat beside Toto on the couch opposite the stove. “Am I on earth still, or can it be that we are in heaven?”
In one day she had become a woman without ceasing to be an angel, and Dodor sang as if to assure her of the fact, whilst Toto kissed her, and a beam of sun through the top light touched the tulip.
That was their morning, spent amidst the great flowers of the chintz-covered couch, whilst time passed over them like a butterfly with blue wings,and Paris grumbled through the top light like a jealous monster.
In the afternoon Toto, in his blouse, settled his painting things and rearranged drapery, whilst his companion, whose fingers could not be still, turned the morning, gone now forever, into a hat. She murmured to the hat as she made it, telling it of her happiness—a most adorable soliloquy lost to the world forever, for Toto was too busy to note it down. Then, when the structure was finished, she held it out on her finger-tip for admiration. It blushed there as if ashamed of its beauty and happiness. And Toto said “It is beautiful,” in an abstracted voice, for he was hunting for a palette-knife.
They dined at a little restaurant near the Palais Bourbon, and spent their evening at the Porte St. Martin Theater, where a bloody drama was enacted, which caused Célestin to weep deliciously and shiver.
This was their honeymoon, for next day work began in earnest, and Toto started for Melmenotte’s studio, a large bleak room filled with canvasesand diligent students, a naked woman, large and solid and sitting on a throne, in their midst.
They hazed him at first, but he did not lose his temper, so they left him alone; besides, he showed no talent, therefore created no envy, hatred, or malice.
But Garnier, the man who worked on his right, took an interest in him just, perhaps, because the others voted him uninteresting and his work hopeless. It was Garnier’s way; he was a friend of failures, and took an interest in the forlorn. Sparrows, stray cats, or people like Toto appealed to him strangely.
He was an immense fellow, with Southern blood in his veins and hopes of humanity, and his secret ambition in life was to be a politician and set the world to rights. Nature, however, the sworn foe of secret ambitions, had placed all his talents in his eyes and fingers, insisting that this wayward child should be no politician, but a divine artist.
He had a great reputation as a scamp. He swore terrifically, and could out-talk a washerwoman. He was always borrowing, and spending, and lending,and giving, and he boasted that he kept a mistress. No one ever saw her; he kept her jealously hid, for she was eighty. He had, in fact, met her one day on one of the bridges crossing the Seine, and pensioned her forthwith because she reminded him of his mother, whom he had never beheld.
He was a love-child, it seems, and certainly a most terrible mixture as far as mind and morals were concerned, for his ideals were always very high, and his ideas often very low, and his language very often pornographic. To complete himself, he always stank of garlic, and his pockets were generally stuffed with cheap cigarettes and sweets, which he dispensed open-handed to his friends.
“Thanks,” said Toto, taking a cigarette from a dozen held out by Garnier.
It was the third morning of his attendance at the studio, and he was feeling depressed; he was also putting away his things, for it was Saturday, and work stopped at twelve.
“I,” said Garnier, “am going to enjoy myself, but the question is, How? Shall I go home and go to bed and read Eugène Sue, or shall I go tothe Tobacco-Pot and play dominoes? Jolly, have you any money?”
“None,” answered a lank-haired and evil-faced youth, darting out of the room, and clattering away down the stairs after the others.
“I have,” said Toto.
“How much?” inquired Garnier, with the air of a judge.
“Ten francs.”
“That settles it. We will go to the Tobacco-Pot. Ten francs, and this is Saturday!Mon Dieu, what a Rothschild you must be! Where did you get your money from?”
“My father.”
“What is he?”
“He keeps a shop.”
“Happy for you. You can paint away, and the old bird feeds you. Oh, I should like a shop—a little shop, where I would sell sweets and cigarettes, and live in my shirt-sleeves, and read theAmi du Peupleand kick my heels.”
“What do you think of my work?” asked Toto, glancing at the mediocre drawing upon his canvas.
“It’s capital,” said Garnier, his mind running on his little shop, where children would toddle in with their sou for sugar-sticks, and old women totter in for hap’orths of snuff: for, though Garnier loved all humanity, he perhaps loved the two extremes, childhood and old age, most.
“What made Melmenotte turn up his nose at it the way he did this morning when he came round?”
“He never praises anyone—he’s a fossil. Come, let us be off to the Tobacco-Pot. Annette will be here in a moment to clear up.”
“Come home with me and have somedéjeuner; that will be better than the Tobacco Pot,” said Toto, as they went down the stairs.
“To your father’s place?”
“Oh, no; my atelier—Rue de Perpignan. I will introduce you to my—wife.”
“Youmarried!” cried Garnier, stopping in astonishment, and clutching Toto’s arm. “Why, you are scarcely out of the egg!”
“I am twenty-two.”
“Mon Dieu!well, why not? it is the happiest life.Oh, I should like to have a wife and twelve little children all three years old. That is the age of all others; they talk like birds, and sentences from heaven slip into their conversation; and tumble on their noses, and pull one’s beard. I have always seen myself as I ought to be some day, with a big stomach, sitting in an armchair, the children pulling my watch-chain, and mamma plying her needle, whilst the cat purred on the hearth: and here are you, three years younger than I am, and you have it all. What an eye the Germans have for children! how they draw them!Mon Dieu!I can almost forgive them Sédan for the sake of those adorable little Fritzes and Gretchens one sees in their funny little books.”
They reached the Rue de Perpignan at last, and founddéjeunerwaiting. There was a little salad, some stewed beef, and a bottle of white wine, also some fruit on a plate.
As Toto and Célestin embraced, Garnier looked around him with a sigh. His room was an attic, yet I doubt if he would have exchanged his attic, where he lay abed on Sunday reading the “Mysteriesof Paris” and imagining himself Prince Rudolph, and of a week-day night reading theIntransigèantby the light of a tallow candle and imagining himself Henri Rochefort, for this atelier, even were Célestin thrown in—at least, at present.
Not that he undervalued Célestin, even at the first glance; far from it. The great, noisy Garnier was silent and quelled for quite ten minutes. He had never met Célestin before amidst all the women he had met, and he seemed undecided for a while as to whether an angel or a child was dispensing the cold stewed beef and the salad. Then he made up his mind, evidently, that it was a child, and began to play with her. He told stories, really droll little stories, that a child or a man might laugh over, and stainless as the white roads of Provence. And he mimicked old men and women without malice, and in such a way that Célestin wept from laughing.
Afterdéjeunerhe taught his hostess how to make cat’s cradles, and Dodor’s history was told to him whilst he sat on the couch and nursed his knee and smoked his villainous cigarettes of Caporal.
The guitar was taken down from the wall, and heplayedcafé-chantantsongs, things with the ghost of an air moving in a whirl of sound, and sang the “Girls of Avignon” with tears in his eyes, that seemed to behold the whirl of the farandole, the white road to Arles, the moonlight, the fireflies, and the orange trees shivering in the mistral.
Altogether it was a most enjoyable afternoon, and the excitement and laughter left Célestin quite spent. A fit of coughing seized her when the time came for them to go out to dinner, and she declared that she must lie down. So she lay down on her bed, and Toto covered her up with a shawl, and gave her one of the lozenges Mme. Liard had placed in her trunk to suck.
Then he went out with Garnier, and they dined at a little café for two francs each, wine included.
“I found this little café only three months ago,” said Garnier. “It is a wizard café. I dine here as often as I can, for some day I expect to find it vanished. Those whom the gods love die young, and I am sure the gods must love this little café. I cannot tell how they give one such a dinner for two francs, including a bottle of Maconolais. Thathare soup was a miracle. I suspect the miracle to be cats. But no matter; the taste was right. I save up on week-days, and dine here on Sundays.”
“How long have you been working at art?”
“Five years.”
Toto felt rather aghast.
“Have you been working at Melmenotte’s atelier all that time?”
“Oh, no; for the last two years I have been in his private studio; it is being altered just now, so I just come to herd with the rest to keep my hand in. I must be doing something.”
“Have you exhibited yet?”
“No; Melmenotte will not let me. I am to next year; I shall have a picture in the Salon next year.”
“How sure he is of himself!” thought Toto. “And how dull he must be to have worked five years without exhibiting!” Then to Garnier: “One of the fellows told me one could live by selling pot-boilers.”
“Yes; one could live by house-painting, for the matter of that. Who was it told you?”
“That young fellow with the long hair—Jolly you called him, I think.”
“He is an awful wretch, that man, but a fine artist. Beware of him; do not ask him to your home. I never speak bad of people; but Jolly is not a person: he is a genius who will die in a jail or a lunatic asylum. I’ve told him so often. It would not do for him to make the acquaintance of Mlle. Célestin.”
Garnier gave a little sigh as he ate a lark on toast, which he declared he suspected of being a rat. He seemed thinking a great deal of Célestin. The talk wandered over a number of topics, but somehow always back to or near Célestin.
Then Toto paid the score, and produced so much money that Garnier borrowed a napoleon in as natural a manner as that of a bee taking a suck at a flower. He then, as they walked away smoking Trabucos, bought a copy of theIntransigèant, and wandered home to read it, reminding Toto as they parted to give his regards to Célestin.
A weekpassed, making in all ten days of the new life, and still the novelty of it had not palled; but five hundred francs of the three thousand were gone. Where were they gone to? Toto scratched his head. Célestin helped him in his accounts, casting her beautiful eyes up as if for her angels to help her; but they were very bad mathematicians, these angels, though perfect milliners.
Garnier, in his big way, had declared to the studio that Toto was the best of good fellows when one got to know him. Jolly had pricked his ears at this, and instantly borrowed twenty-five francs from the new man, to send to his brother in the country; several others had done likewise, but this only accounted for eighty francs or so. True, they had paid the restaurateur and the washwoman; and they had gone the Sunday before to the Buttes Chaumont, so they finished making up their accountswith a kiss, and declared they must be more careful in the future.
“I will sell some hats,” said Célestin, “and, oh, I know: we will get a money-box. It is wonderful, a money-box. Dodor has quite a fortune since I started his. Money seems to grow in a money-box. Kiss me again, Désiré.”
Sometimes Toto thought of the world he had left. What were they all doing? Sometimes he felt slightly uneasy at the great absence of Gaillard. The poet had promised to call in three or four days, and, lo! ten had passed. His friends thought him in Corsica, but what was his mother doing? He had entered into a compromise with her not to bother him, and Helen Powers had promised to use her influence that he might be left alone to follow his art. Still, he felt nervous that some day Mme. la Princesse might break her word and arrive on the scene. She did not know his address, it is true; but, still, she had a way of finding things out.
He had worked fairly hard during these ten days, all things considered, and Garnier had dropped into visit them now and then, bringing presents of sweets for Célestin.
Toto in the eyes of Garnier seemed a very enviable person. His father had a shop, and all shopkeepers, in the eyes of Garnier, were desperately rich; besides, the littleménagein the Rue de Perpignan did his heart good. The lovers seemed so young and innocent, their way of life so ideal, and their conversation so charming, especially Célestin’s.
It was on the twelfth day that Gaillard burst in upon them. Célestin was out marketing, Toto was at home smoking cigarettes, for it was the day Melmenotte came round,—that is to say, Saturday,—and Toto had taken a dislike to the great painter: he was not a gentleman.
Gaillard had a debauched air, and three books under his arm; and Toto, who had somehow been very much in the blues, felt an unholy joy at the sight of the poet.
“Pantinis out,” said Gaillard, collapsing into a chair and flinging all his books on the floor. He produced a heavy and respectable-looking journalfrom his back pocket and cast it to the painter.
Toto scarcely glanced at it.
“Where have you been all this time?”
“Ah, my God! you may well ask me that. I have been at the beck and call of Pelisson. It is cruel; I have done all the work, and De Nani is getting all the praise; everyone is talking of De Nani—his jokes, his witticisms, his women, his wealth. And the old fool has not three ideas in his head, nor three sous in his pocket; no woman would look at him twice, and he never made abonmotin his life. My ‘Fall of the Damned’ came out the day before yesterday; no one is speaking of it, everyone is talking of De Nani. He has killed my little book, he andPantin. It is all Pelisson’s fault. He is only using De Nani as an advertisement. Struve was right: this old man is a goat; he smells like one, faugh! and he paints his face. Struve is the only man of sense of the lot. I always said so. Give me an absinthe, Toto; my nerves are gone.”
“But how did Pelisson get his paper out so quickly?” asked Toto, helping the poet to a glassof vermouth, and feeling a dim sort of pleasure at his trouble.
“He has been working like a mole for months. You know theTrumpet; it came to grief last month; he has bought the plant and offices for a song. They are situated near the offices of theFigaroin the Rue Drouot. Oh, you should see that villain of a De Nani; he has bought a white hat, or got it on credit. He dines every day with Pelisson in acabinet particulierat the Anglaise. No one is admitted, for fear they would find out the fraud, and the fact that he has no brains. Pelisson makes him drunk and sends him off in a cab to Auteuil, and then goes about telling people all the quaint things he has said. He is absorbing all Pelisson’s money. Pierre has never a sou now to lend to a friend, and one can’t dine with him, for he dines alone with De Nani. Conceive my feelings: this old beast has killed my book, cut off my supplies, and to crown all, wherever I go I hear nothing but De Nani, De Nani, De Nani! My God, I will go mad! Give me another vermouth.”
“What are those books?” asked Toto, handing the glass.
“Those? They are insult added to an injury—books for review, and such books! See here Fourrier’s ‘Social Economy’; I am to write a trenchant quarter-column review of it, and abuse it, for that will please the bourgeoisie. I know nothing of social economy, so how can I abuse it? I could praise it, for then Fourrier, whoever he is, would not reply; besides, one can praise a book with one’s eyes shut—bah! See here, a brochure on the American sugar trust.Mon Dieu!does Pelisson take me for a grocer? And here, again, a drama called ‘Henri Quatre,’ by some silly beast called Chauveau; all the lines limp, it is written in five-footed hexameters; and I am to praise it with discretion. With discretion, mind you! I wrote him a little poem for his abominablePantin; it was called ‘Carmine-Rouge.’ You know I scarcely ever touch color in poetry; but I made an exception for once. He would not publish it; it was indecent, forsooth, and would bring the blush to the cheek of the bourgeoisie. Between the bourgeoisieon one hand and De Nani on the other, I feel as if I were in a terrible nightmare.”
“Have you heard anyone speak of me?”
“No one; they think you are in Corsica. But I have seen Mme. la Princesse; she sent for me to inquire after your health, and how you were progressing.”
“And you said——”
“Oh, I said ‘Admirably’; it was the best thing to say. I promised to call again and inform her of your progress; she entreated me to implore you not to discard your woolen vests. There was also a message about an overcoat, which I have forgotten; it was either to wear one or not wear one, but I cannot tell which: you know a mother’s ways. Toto, I feel hungry; have you anything to eat in this atelier of yours?”
Toto got together some bread and butter, half a cold tongue, and a bottle of wine. Gaillard turned up his nose at the feast provided for him, but began to eat.
“Toto, how much longer are you going to remain in this wretched Rue de Perpignan? EverywhereI go the cry is ‘Where is Toto?’ or ‘When will Toto be back?’”
“Why, you said a moment ago nobody asked for me.”
“Neither do they, but they speak of you, nevertheless; they do not ask for you because they imagine you in Corsica, but they mourn your absence.”
“Oh, bother them—let them mourn!” said Toto in a gruff voice, chewing his cigarette in an irritable manner.
“And how is Art going on?” asked Gaillard, casting his eyes about as if he were looking for her.
“All right; don’t bother me. I’m sick of talking art; tell me, How is Struve?”
“Struve is very well, though he declares that De Nani makes him sick.”
He finished the wine in the bottle, and proceeded to the question of a loan.
“But,” said Toto in horror, “you surely have not spent all that three thousand francs I gave you?”
Gaillard laughed harshly.
“Do I ever spend money? I spend my life paying it out, it seems to me; but how much do I spend on myself, how much have I for pleasure? Not a denier. I assure you, Toto, if I have three francs in my pocket people seem to smell it. No sooner had I got home the other day than Mme. Plon appeared with a bill, which I had imagined paid. Then Brevoart attached me for seven hundred and fifty. It was my fault for dealing with a German tailor; he got an order against me, and would have attached my royalties had I not paid. People think you are in Corsica, and so they make raids on me—then there is Angélique.”
“But, see here: I am very hard up myself. You know I determined to do on three thousand; well, I have spent over five hundred in a fortnight.”
“Only five hundred!”
“But think what that means; if I go on at this rate, in a couple of months I shall have nothing.”
“Toto,” said Gaillard earnestly, “I speak to you as a friend: Why pursue this course? Were I an enemy of yours I would urge you on, and then, when you came to grief, laugh at your sufferings.I am your friend, and I say stop. You are a fine artist, and for that very reason you must fail in this course. Genius was never intended to buffet with the world, to pay rent and fight with tradespeople; it is always allied to a fine nature, and I predict the most horrible sufferings for you should you continue this fictitious and insane battle with the world. It is only the duffers and the dullards who succeed in this game; they have blunt noses, and they do not feel blows. Look at De Nani, a miserable wreck without an idea, of whom all Paris is talking. Look at me. Could I tell you one-half the hardships I have undergone in my struggle for art, you would stop your ears. Well, then, I say desist; you can only live once: why make a hell of life? Come back to us; you have made an experiment in life. It is like a curious philosophical experiment that dirties one’s hands; well, then, let us wash our hands, and turn down our cuffs again.”
“Even if I wanted to stop this life, which I do not,” said Toto, playing with Gaillard’s bait, “I couldn’t—sooner do anything than that.”
“Nobody knows; it’s a matter between you andyour conscience;Iwill never speak. You come back from Corsica in a hurry; well, what of that? it is a whim, and admirably in keeping with your character. Do, for Heaven’s sake, Toto, consider your position; and mine, for I feel that I am in some sort responsible for this act of yours, but I have been at least discreet, and, as I said before, nobody knows.”
“My mother knows.”
“What is a mother, if not a confidante of our little eccentricities?”
“And the American girl knows.”
“What! that American girl—would you give her a second thought?Mon Dieu!this is very funny. Oh,mon Dieu!this will kill me. An American pork butcheress; you told me yourself she was a pork butcheress. You are afraid of the jeers of this tripe-seller’s daughter. I passed to-day three American women in green veils; they were promenading the Rue St. Honoré, and screaming through their noses; they had alpenstocks, or at least little sticks, adorned with horn handles and branded ‘Rigi Kulm,’ ‘Rigi Scheideck.’ Theyhad ascended the Rigi, and were announcing the fact to the Rue St. Honoré; that is your American woman. They had faces like dollars, and for people like these you would inconvenience yourself.”
“I tell you I don’t want to go back. I am perfectly happy, perfectly contented. Don’t talk any more about it. And I wish you would not call me Toto.”
Gaillard turned the conversation to his own immediate wants, and the process of extraction was resumed till he had salved five hundred francs from this derelict, promising upon his honor to pay it back in three weeks. And scarcely had the money changed hands than Célestin entered, her arms full of parcels, and accompanied by Garnier. He had met her shopping, and accompanied her home, it being Saturday.
Then the poet took his departure, chuckling to himself about Garnier and the obvious worship of the big Provençal for the pretty Célestin; but for all that, he felt desperately uneasy about Toto. This foolishness might linger on for months like typhoid, and the best part of the year was comingon. At Christmas Toto had talked of hiring a steam yacht for the summer, and now this wretched Célestin and this vile art craze had spoiled it all. He could have wept as he walked hurriedly down the Rue de Perpignan looking for a cab to bear him to civilization, and after an absinthe, which acted on his trouble as stimulants on an abscess, heightening the inflammation and bringing it to a head, he sought Struve out in his rooms.
Struve was working in his shirt-sleeves at that book of his which made such a sensation a year later, “The Saint in Art.”
“I am very uneasy about Toto.”
“What’s wrong with him? Has he been butted by a moufflon?”
“Toto is not in Corsica; Toto is in Paris.”
“Oh, he’s come back, is he?”
“Do attend to me, Struve. Toto is in an attic.”
“What is he doing in an attic?”
“He is painting pictures.”
“Has he gone mad?”
“No, he is not mad; but I fear he will make a very great fool of himself.”
“I always said he would do that,” granted Struve, examining attentively a tiny colored picture of St. Cecilia that was destined to adorn “The Saint in Art.”
“I fear, if he is not stopped, he will make a very great mess of himself. He has taken only three thousand francs of his patrimony, and he swears that if he does not succeed on it he will cut his throat.”
“You don’t mean to say he has gone on with that foolishness?” asked Struve, leaning back in his chair and putting his hands in his pockets.
“I do indeed. It is a great piece of madness; but what is to be done?”
“Leave him alone.”
“But he will starve to death.”
“A little starvation will do him a lot of good; he has too much kick in him. The man is tired of playing the devil. He has tried everything, and now he is trying work. He will be back in a fortnight, a greater devil than ever. I like Toto. He is such a fool; but it’s rather a pity. You see, he is a moon, and he wants to be a sun. He is tired ofshining by the reflected glory of his fortune, and he wants to shine by his own light. He hasn’t any to shine by, and there you are.”
“He has certainly no genius, but he is a very facile painter.”
“Facile rubbish! He can’t paint.”
“Do you not think, Otto, if you were to call upon him, and speak to him, and explain——”
“Gott im Himmel!what do you think my time is made for? Here am I behindhand with my book, and Flammarion like a caged tiger waiting for it. Go and tell his mother, go and tell his aunt, go to the devil, go anywhere, but don’t bother me about it. I have no time to be running after Totos; I am not a wet-nurse. Go and get a perambulator and wheel him home. How isPantin?”
“Pantinis very well. Has not Pelisson offered you the art criticisms?”
“Yes; but I am too busy to be bothered byPantins.”
“You are right. Pelisson makes a rotten editor; he gives out books for review as if they were clothes for wash. And De Nani——”
“I know; he is an old fool. But do leave me now, like a good fellow,” lisped Struve. “My head is so full of saints, it has no room for De Nanis.”
Gaillard went off in a huff, but at the entresol returned to borrow a few cigarettes, for Struve’s cigarettes were a dream.
“I forgot to tell you,” said Gaillard as he lighted one, “not to say a word to anyone about Toto and his attic; he made me swear to tell no one.”
“Then why did you tell me, you infernal idiot!” cried Struve, half laughing, yet nearly weeping at all these interruptions to his work.
“I quite forgot,” said Gaillard, running off to confide his troubles to someone else, whilst the critic locked his door and bolted it.
The poet turned into the offices ofPantinin the Rue Drouot.
Since the birth of the new journal Pelisson had been pestered with a rain of old friends whom he had not seen for years, and some of whom he had never seen before. They all wanted employment,or, failing that, a loan. Gaillard’s long-suffering creditors, hearing that he was on the staff, all appeared seeking for their money—a procession as infinite as the Leonids, and on a business as apparently futile. The unfortunate Pelisson had also to supervise his leader writers, write leaders himself, and, worst of all, select the subjects. For this purpose he had to keep one eye fixed steadily upon the whole world—that is to say, Paris. The other eye was fully occupied by De Nani, who had caught on most amazingly. Everyone was craving to see De Nani. They saw glimpses only of him, and that made them crave to see more. De Nani’s white hat loomed mysteriously abovePantin; his caustic and cutting witticisms circulated in salon and club. Quite a number of old gentlemen took to wearing white hats and making cutting remarks about their wives, and in the Rue St. Honoré one might see De Nani waistcoats by the score. Kuhn’s window in the Rue de Rivoli exposed his portrait, the white hat tilted to one side above the fiendish old face. It was bought by the hundred, and Gaillard, like a periodic comet, turned up at this window dailyto grit his teeth with anguish and envy and walk on with rage in his heart.
Pelisson was right. He had caught an old wether and belled it, and the crowd followed like the proverbial sheep. But the bell-wether required incessant watching; besides, De Nani during the last forty years had improved borrowing into one of the fine arts, and he was taking a thousand francs a day out ofPantinin various legitimate and illegitimate ways. He tapped Pelisson, he tapped the staff, he had established a credit at three cafés, he tapped the proprietors. He came east every morning from Auteuil as an American farmer comes to his maple trees, or a physician to a hospital for dropsy. He patronized three tailors, and bundles of clothes were constantly being left at the offices ofPantin; in fact, he seemed to be laying in a store of clothes, not only for this life, but for the next.
“I wonder he does not get a coffin as well to complete the outfit,” said Gaillard once, viciously.
No doubt he would if he could have got a silver one to melt. He made up for his abstinence, however, in this respect by jewelry, scent, cosmetics,cigars, knickknacks. China mandarins, and varnished boots. It was not altogether his fault, for the tradesmen rushed upon him.
Pelisson did not much care what he got on credit, for he was editor only in name. If he lasted over the season it would be quite enough, forPantinwould then be well rooted, and any fiasco of bankruptcy would only makePantinbloom the more. One might fancy that the bankruptcy of the editor would shake the paper in the eyes of the bourgeoisie, but the wise Pelisson knew better. “There is nothing,” said he, “that a tradesman enjoys more than seeing another tradesman let in.”
Pantin, be it observed, was now read, not only by the shopkeepers, but by thebeau monde. Through its starch people observed a secret spirit at work. Its heavy sledge-hammer articles were supposed to be molding a crown. The journal was evidently a hit at the existing state of things; it was also strangely well informed, and the Ministry felt somewhat as a master might feel who suspected his butler of being a rogue, but could not prove the fact.
Amidst De Nani’s other vagaries, affairs withwomen figured chief, so you may imagine Pierre Pelisson had his hands full, and no ears for Gaillard’s tale of tribulation about Toto. But De Nani had; he was sitting in a room adjoining the inner office, and heard the whole story—everything, in fact, but Toto’s address.
LikePelisson, the atelier in the Rue de Perpignan had its limitations; like Pelisson, it was also at times noisy. From the Gare de Sceaux at night and in the early morning came the sounds of shunting and the plaintive “toot-toot” of locomotives, whilst the top light seemed the chosen rendezvous of all the cats of the neighborhood who were in love.
“Those frightful cats!” would murmur Célestin, trembling beside Toto lest his sleep should be broken.
There were also draughts not specified in the lease, and the sink had a habit of getting stopped up at least once a day; then there was sometimes a smell of cooking from the rooms below.
Toto grumbled a little sometimes, but not much at first. The new life was so entirely different from the life he had led heretofore, so free, and withal sojoyous, that for a little while he did not trouble himself as to the morrow. The only rose leaf that disturbed his rest during the first fortnight was the atelier of Melmenotte—art, in short.
Melmenotte had the air and aspect of avieux sabreur. He inspected a picture as an infantry colonel inspects a regiment of the line, generally with a frown, sometimes with a few cutting words, sometimes with dead silence. He had inspected Toto’s attempts with a damnatory sniff and passed on.
For this reason Toto avoided the atelier on the days when Melmenotte went round; for this reason, though he had dwelt now with art only a fortnight, he had, when Gaillard made his proposition of return, almost nibbled at it. Melmenotte and his crew had somewhat disillusioned him. They were such a coarse lot. Their conversation was generally silly, sometimes absolutely vile; they pelted him with bits of bread when Garnier was not looking, and even the little loans he made to them did not buy him much esteem. It leaked out that his father had a shop; not that that fact would have influencedthe students much one way or the other had he possessed talent, but, lacking talent, they saw in him an inevitable counter-jumper, and as a result would have made his life a misery to him but for Garnier, whose word was law, both on questions of art and conduct.
But Célestin knew nothing of these worries. She knew nothing and cared nothing about anything except Toto; she did not even know his surname, for, though he had told it to her once, she had forgotten it.
Neither did she inquire about his past. She knew in a vague sort of way that he had always lived in Paris, studying art, and being without guile, as a flower, she never made that hackneyed old inquiry, “Tell me, have you ever loved a woman before?”—to be answered by that hackneyed old lie, “Never.” Then, with that instinct which orders what we might call the good manners of love, she never loved him to weariness; she knew the psychological moment for a kiss, the right time for silence, and when to get upon his knee and cheer him up, and talk to him in the language sheused to Dodor. Always pretty, she had almost in a night become beautiful. Toto had presented her with this added charm, but he did not perceive it; this extra beauty made up for the amount she had lost by surrendering herself to him.
One day Mme. Liard called to see how they were getting on, and brought a box of Choiseul’s cough lozenges for Célestin as a sort of wedding gift. The good woman was greatly taken with the atelier, the couch which she sat on to sample and declared to be a marvel, and the great empty canvas on one of the easels.
“That is for his great picture,” said Célestin proudly. “Isn’t it beautiful? and will it not be large? And see our tulip”—pointing to the flower in the pot, which had burst into bloom. “Is it not beautiful? But Dodor is so jealous of it.”
“Tulips die so soon,” said Mme. Liard, who was a bit of a pessimist. “Give me a double geranium. But flowers—bless you! I cannot keep them, for no sooner do I get a flower than Mimi scratches it up.”
“Ah, Mimi!” said Célestin; “tell me how she is.”
And Mme. Liard plunged into the inexhaustible subject of her cat.
Gaillard came down on them now and then like the wolf on the fold, and ate up a great deal of provisions. In return, he taught them how to make coffee and told them fairy tales. He also borrowed little sums at parting, but that goes without saying. He also acted as a sort of intermediary between Toto and his mamma, and one day he brought them a ham from that lady, omitting to mention from whence it had come, presenting it as a gift of his own, in fact, and borrowing an extra five francs on the strength of it. He also brought to the Rue de Perpignan all his troubles, including the books for review doled out by Pelisson, and horrible stories about De Nani. The “Fall of the Damned” had been furiously attacked by a friend in the columns of theLibre Parole, yet it was far from flourishing. He brought a copy dressed in a fawn-colored wrapper, and adorned with red devils tumbling head over heels, and presumably into the pit.