Thenhe went home, and bathed and dressed and said “The club” when his mother, inpeignoirand morning paint, asked him where he had spent his night with that good, dear Marquis de Nani. Later in the day he wandered into Struve’s rooms.
“Go away, Toto,” said Struve, who was busy writing at his table. He supplied seven journals with his ideas, from theFremdenblattto theFigaro, and he seemed now engaged in writing for the whole seven at once. One could see nothing of the lisping, melancholy Struve of the night before in this lightning scribe. “Go away. I have no time for Totos. Come in three hours’ time.”
“What are you at?” inquired Toto, sinking into a chair and lighting a cigarette.
“Praising a man I hate.”
“See here: stop writing your gibberish for five minutes; I want to speak to you.”
Struve took out his watch and laid it on the table.
“I am listening.”
“You once said that if a man of talent were to start in Paris with three thousand francs and his ten fingers,—those were your words,—that if he did not get on he deserved to fail.”
“So he does; what more?”
“I have been thinking of having a try, working like a devil, and kicking over all this absurdity.”
“Do; it won’t do you any harm. What at—politics?”
“Oh, you owl!” cried Toto. “Politics—what do I care for politics! Art, that’s the only thing I care a button for. I’m going to dress in a blouse, and work like a common man—make my name off my own bat, as they say in England. I’m utterly sick of doing nothing; I must move—I must.” And Toto moved his arms. “And I am tied; no one takes me seriously. Look at old De Nani, praising me one moment, and then the next——Faugh! I’m a Prince; I am worth ten million francs when my mother dies. I play withart, that’s enough for people; they don’t see my work, they see me.”
“You are always so much in evidence,” said Struve. “That’s where the mischief is; you cut such antics that people have no time to observe your serious attempts. You have got a frightful lot of energy, and you are a Prince—that’s what is wrong with you; you must be doing, you are tired of the club, the Bois, cock-fighting at Chantilly. By the way, I see your name in theFigarothis morning under a thin disguise—Longchamps and all the rest of it. Your volcano is bunged up by ennui; you want a new opening for the lava to escape. Well, take my advice: move in the plane of least resistance; buy a coffee mill and grind it.”
“Do be serious,” said Toto; “I come to you as a friend.”
“Toto,” said the critic, “I am very serious, else I would not advise you to leave art alone. What’s the use? This, great, beautiful Moloch wants a whole life to eat, or nothing. There are a thousand men in Paris who have flung their all intothis furnace. What will come out of all this forlorn thousand? Half a dozen, and they will be filled with despair. The walls of the Musée de Louvre are painted with the blood of men, and that’s success. What of the failures? Their story would shock creation. Art lives on failures; they keep the paint shops going, and serve as a background to three or four stars. Now go away. God in heaven! it’s four, and the post for Germany goes out at six.”
“You are never so stupid as when you are serious,” blurted out Toto, as he rose and flung his cigarette-end into the grate.
But Struve did not even answer; he was writing away.
Toto then met the young Prince de Harnac, who invited him to dine at the Mirlitons; he refused, alleging a headache. Then he called on Pelisson, and found him out. He was wearily entering the Place de l’Opéra, when the devil flung him into the arms of Gaillard.
Gaillard’s collar seemed higher than ever, and he had a distracted air.
“I am running about looking for my dinner,” said Gaillard. “That infernal De Brie has gone off to his country house, and forgotten my check and left me to starve. I will turn an editor, and write no more poetry nor little articles for his journal. Dear Toto, come and give me my dinner, and lend me a thousand francs, and comfort me. Sit here with me, and have an absinthe, and look at Paris as it passes; and then we will go to the Maison Dorée and dine.”
“You are just the man I want,” said Toto, as they took their seats at a café, where the marble-topped tables had ventured out now that the weather was fine, and even a bit warm. “I want your help and advice. I’ve been with that villain Struve, and he has depressed me, and flung cold water on me.”
“Struve is a critic,” said Gaillard in a vicious voice; “he is one of the sorrows of art. I do not know what criticism is coming to. Have you seen that article in theTribuneon Mallarmé?—Mallarmé, that divine shadow moving in the twilight of the gods, even he is not safe from their mud.But what is this, Toto, you say about help and advice? Are you being worried by some woman? Is your mother tormenting? Unfold yourself to me.”
“Look here, Gaillard: you are a man of sense, you have sympathy. I am sick of life, living like a cabbage, and I want to live really, I want to be famous without the assistance of anyone; I have a talent.”
“You have an undoubted genius.”
“And I want to use it. I go to Struve, and he sneers at me, tells me to grind a coffee mill.”
“Oh, that Struve!” mourned Gaillard. “What led you to a critic for advice or sympathy? He told you to grind a coffee mill? Give me a cigarette, Toto; my case is empty; I will take three. He told you that! They fancy their cheap wit kills, these critics do; but you are not alone, Toto. Did you see the critique on my little poem ‘Satanitie’ in theÉcho de Paris? Well, that is what they fling nowadays at an artist, and call it wit. But Pelisson is replying by a counterblast in theDébats. Dear old Pelisson! He knows no more of poetrythan a rhinoceros; but he roars, and he has reduced the art of slaying a critic to a fine edge.”
“Yes, yes,” said Toto, trying to lead Gaillard from himself for a moment; “but what do you think of my plan? I am going to take an attic and work in a blouse—Iam; and, besides, do you know, Gaillard, I have met the most charming girl. She lives in an attic on three sous a day with a lark; she trims hats, and she has eyes just the color of Neapolitan violets. I have never loved a woman before.”
“You love her?” cried Gaillard, “and you would leave the world for her to live in an attic? Oh,mon Dieu! what a romance you might make of life! And is that idea all your own?Mon Dieu!you, a Prince, rich and young and charming, beloved by all the women of Paris—the very entry of such an idea into your brain proclaims you an artist. It is like the Prince in my little forest tale who renounced the world for a wood-nymph—my little tale called ‘Nymphomanie.’ You have read it.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“But I gave you a copy.”
“Oh, yes, I remember now—the nymph who turned into a sow. It was a beautiful story; but never mind it for a moment. Tell me, Gaillard: you are not saying that just to please me?”
“I,” said Gaillard; “I am charmed with the idea, the originality of it, the color of it. It has a perfume of violets—those violets that come in autumn as if to increase the sadness of the withered leaves. De Musset might have written a play upon it. I, ha! I will—I will write a poem on it.”
“For goodness’ sake, don’t!” said Toto in alarm. “I want no one to know. With my blouse I become a man like other men; I give myself a year, and then—we will see what Otto Struve and De Nani say.”
“But you are not serious, Toto?” cried Gaillard, who was now the man alarmed, for Toto was a little income to him, a cigarette mine, and a most joyous companion. “You would die, my child, under the hardships of such a life; you were not born to the blouse, you were born to the purple.”
“I am serious!” cried the Prince, greatly exasperated;“you are as bad as the rest of them. You are——”
“I am not;mon Dieu!do not freeze me, Toto, with that face. I was but thinking of your health; you have cast frost upon me, and I was feeling so happy; besides, a garret may be made most comfortable—it may indeed: you can have a little charcoal-fire when the weather is cold, and a garret need not be ugly. I saw an old oak chest in the Rue Normandie to-day; it cried out to me to buy it, but I had not the money; we will buy it to-morrow. We will not have the walls papered; most have, but we need not be vulgar though we are poor. Oh, Toto, poverty is a romance if it is taken in the right way; we will teach the poor how to endure their poverty romantically. No, we will not have paper—plain plaster and an etching or two of Albrecht Dürer’s, a little library confined to one bookshelf. Loti, Baudelaire, and a few mystics; a lark to sing to one whilst one paints or writes; a girl with blue eyes to love; a pipe to smoke—what more does one want? In the name of Heaven, what more does one want? I call upon Heaven towitness. I think the problem of modernity solved in the one word ’simplicity.’ We are too be-scented, embroidered, and diffuse; we eat too much and love too broadly; we want concentration. Genius is like a burning-glass; it must be focused so that the rays come together in a narrow point, else the rays will not burn. I saw a stove in bronze of Henri Quatre; we will get that—it’s in the same place, Rue de Normandie. Did you see that girl pass by? She pulled up her dress to show me her ankles; they were like cow heels. Some people have no discretion; they show what they ought to hide, and hide what they ought to show. I have noticed it in everything, even conversation. Well, we will get the stove and some other things—it will be like making a nest; and when all is ready you will spread out your wings and sing, and the female bird will come. Heavens! I know just the place you want, in the Rue de Perpignan. I have a friend there, a genius, but very weird; they call him Fanfoullard, no one knows his real name. He is one of the mysteries of Paris; he subsists by painting fans, and will not get out of bed till dusk;he says inspirations come to him only when he is in bed. That necessarily imposes limitations on his art, but his fans are poems; he spreads them with autumn and spring, and sends them fluttering over the world; he dreams of the beautiful women who will use them as he lies there unknown in his bed. Life is full of poetry; we find it in the most unexpected places. Well, the room below that of Fanfoullard is unlet—it was so, at least, a week ago; we will take it; it has a little room adjoining that will do for a bedroom. We will go hunting for the furniture, you and I, to-morrow.”
“But, see here, Gaillard: I am not playing at this, and I must be economical. I’m going to start on three or four thousand francs, and make that do. I’m deadly in earnest.”
“You are right,” said the poet. “It would be absurd to live in an attic with a bank-book; besides, you can always apply to your mother, Mme. la Princesse, should the wolf scrape too loudly at the door.”
“Oh, good gracious, you will drive me mad! If I don’t succeed I will hang myself; I would neverhave the face to come back; and what I mean by success is, success without help. I am stiff with sitting still and being waited upon; I want tobe.”
And Toto’s eyes gleamed madly in the gaslight, whilst Gaillard felt a decided shiver. Then he remembered Toto’s general eccentricities, and rubbed his chin, making his thin beard crackle. “It will last a month,” thought he; “and then we shall all drive home in a cab very hungry, and the Princesse will kill the fatted calf, and the girl will be pensioned.”
“Gaillard, what are you thinking of?” demanded Toto.
“I was thinking that I should like to be young again like you,” burst out Gaillard, a lot of lunatic ideas waking up and dancing like Bacchantes around the lie. “And be loved by a beautiful girl, and work for her, and fail, and die in her arms; those are the happiest lives, after all, failure ending in death with one’s beloved. Success ruins one’s life. I have never been happy since I met it, when I was young; but I was never young, I sucked nepenthe with my mother’s milk. I do not believeI was ever born; I was found in some field of poppies, and they hid the fact. When I have written my last song I shall drop in some field of poppies. Ah, me, wretched body of mine! Toto, let us go and dine and forget ourselves; let us become beasts for an hour, and then you will come to my rooms. Fanfoullard may be there; he always crawls out at dark and rides to the Rue de Rivoli in an omnibus with his eyes shut, for fear of seeing the terrible people who make use of those vehicles. They put him out in the Rue de Rivoli, and he opens his eyes. Should he have any fans finished, he takes them to Nadar, who monopolizes his work; then he always comes to my rooms and smokes—I leave tobacco for him on the mantel. He is my familiar. For days sometimes we do not meet, when I happen to be out, but I always know that he has been; he leaves a smell of withered flowers behind him. All my greatest poems are due to Fanfoullard. You remember, Schiller could never compose without rotten apples in his desk. Fanfoullard is my rotten apple. Come, let us go to the Maison Dorée.”
They rose from their seats and made languidly for the Boulevard des Italiens, Gaillard pausing at several toy shops to look in and admire the wares. In the Avenue de l’Opéra, at Brentano’s window, a little volume of poems by Verlaine called to him to buy it, and as he had no money Toto bought it for him. He carried the book tight clasped to his chest as they wandered along to the Maison Dorée, where they entered and dined.
Twohours later they came out, each smoking a big cigar; Gaillard’s held delicately between finger and thumb and whiffed at occasionally, Toto’s stuck in the corner of his mouth.
“Let us to the Moulin Rouge,” said Gaillard. “I have dined; I want to laugh.”
“But how about this Fanfoullard?”
The poet had quite forgotten Fanfoullard, the attic, the Henri Quatre stove, and all the rest of it.
“Oh, he will wait; Fanfoullard is eternal, like a tortoise. A hundred years hence you will find him painting his fans and crawling out at dark to sell them.”
“But I don’t want him in a hundred years; I want him now, to arrange about that room.”
“What room?”
“The room you spoke of.”
Gaillard groaned. He thought his companionhad forgotten all that, which showed that he only knew Toto by his surface.
“You will not find Fanfoullard interesting.”
“Don’t want to; but he will find me interesting, for I will pay him to see about the place and have it cleaned up.”
“But Fanfoullard——” said the poet, stopping to scratch his head, for there was no Fanfoullard; he was a mythical creature that had escaped through one of the cracks in Gaillard’s skull; he had never lived in the Rue de Perpignan, nor journeyed forth to sell fans in the dark with his eyes shut for fear of the frightful people one sees in omnibuses. It seemed almost a pity. “But Fanfoullard——” said his creator. “Ah, well; yes, let us go to my rooms and see if he has arrived.”
They made for the Rue de Turbigo, for Gaillard condescended to live in the Rue de Turbigo. Here he kept his Muse, or, to speak more correctly, she kept him, assisted by Toto, Pelisson, Struve, De Brie the editor, and a host of others.
“Tell me about this Fanfoullard,” asked Toto. “Is he a respectable sort of person?”
“Oh, eminently. My dear Toto, why walk so fast? I shall have indigestion.”
“He doesn’t practice on the violin or come in drunk, does he?”
“Never. Toto, tell me about this charming girl who has taken your heart; tell me her name?”
“Célestin.”
“Ah,mon Dieu!Célestin! What a name!—full of light.”
“Would you like to see her? Well, come to-morrow morning. I am going to meet her in the Champs Élysées at eight, and I’ll tell you what: we will all go and breakfast together, and then we will take a trip into the country. You will do for a chaperon; you can watch about and meet us as if by accident—will you?”
“Why, yes,” chirruped Gaillard, a vista of pleasure in the country, champagne, pretty girls, and April skies springing up before him, painted upon the night. “I shall be charmed. The country now is like a picture—the skies by Fantin, the blossoms by Diaz. I will come in a straw hat. Tell me, Toto: shall I bring a girl?”
“Confound it, no!” said the Prince. “Célestin is not that sort.”
Gaillard sighed.
They had reached the house in the Rue de Turbigo where he lived, and passed through the entresol and up, up, up a great many stairs, for the poet lived at the top of his tree.
“Fanfoullard has not come, then,” he cried in a voice of disappointment as he opened his door and revealed a big room lit by the remains of a fire. “Light a candle, Toto, whilst I build up the fire.”
“There are no candles,” said Toto, hunting about match in hand.
“True—I forgot,” cried the poet, running into the little bedroom adjoining and returning with a night-light in a soap-dish; “I used them all to-day.”
“Why, you don’t burn candles in the daylight?”
“Indeed,” said Gaillard, “I do. When I am working I always close the shutters and work by candlelight. My ideas are like moths; daylight dispels them, candlelight attracts them. They are like gray moths, the color of decay; could you lookin when I am at work, you would perhaps see them flitting about my head—reveling around their maker.Bon Dieu!this bellows is broken. Toto, hand me that bundle of wood. I have written by a night light. ‘Satanitie’ was written by a night-light, finished in the first rays of the dawn; that book was written at a single sitting in one night of sheer madness.”
“I know; you told me so the other day,” replied Toto, whilst Gaillard, his hat still on his head, and his frock-coat hanging round him like a skirt, squatted on his hams before the fire, putting pieces of stick upon it with finger and thumb, whilst the flames leaped up and, assisting the feeble flame of the night-light, illuminated the room.
The carpet was blue, the tablecloth red, the curtains maroon rep. Sundry German engravings adorned the walls. One represented an angel in a long chemise, saying, evidently, “Coosh!” to a lion in a den, whilst Daniel, with a head four sizes too large, stood by with an air of attention. Another, Tobias being haled along by an angry-looking seraph to the music of cherubs playing uponwooden harps and seated upon woolen clouds. Another, Ananias dying apparently of strychnine. There were three photographs on the mantel: one of a boy in plaid trousers clasping to his breast a wooden horse; another of a young man, wild of eye, and dressed in the uniform of the 101st of the line; a third, of a poet holding a little book in his hand. All three portraits were of Gaillard—Gaillard at ten, Gaillard at twenty-five, and Gaillard at thirty, as we know him.
In a bookshelf close to the mantel stood a volume of Schopenhauer, Baudelaire’s “Fleurs du Mal,” and ten volumes by Gaillard—that is to say, two volumes of each of his works; twinlets delicately bound, some gay as grisettes, but “Satanitie” ash-colored, with a black devil dancing on its back.
“Why,” said Toto, glancing at Daniel, “do you keep those odious prints in your room?”
“I don’t keep them,” said Gaillard, rising with a distracted air, and wiping his fingers on his coat. “My poverty keeps them; they are part of the furniture. Look at the carpet, look at the curtains—whata background! I am like a butterfly pinned to an outrageous tapestry, an indecent arras; they are my cross. I took them up with the rooms. Why do I remain in the rooms? They are haunted, Toto, by a man called Mirmillard. He was an opium-eater, and lived by writing for theQuartier Latin. You know theQuartier Latin? It is afarouchelittle journal of sixteen pages or so, and appears monthly, or is it quarterly? He blew his brains out just where you are sitting now; the hole was extant in the wall a month ago, but I had it stopped up with plaster. Have I seen his ghost? many times; it is one of my inspirations, and that is why I endure those terrible curtains, that terrible carpet, and, ah,mon Dieu!those terrible pictures. Toto, lend me your cigarette case; I will take three, and make you some coffee—I have all theimplementain this cupboard. Fanfoullard is not coming, it seems. No matter; I will seek him to-morrow myself. To-night perhaps, if we are lucky, we may see Mirmillard. He appeared to me only three nights ago, and the gash in his throat gaped.”
“I thought you said he blew his brains out?”
“He completed the work with a razor,” said Gaillard, putting the little kettle on to boil. “But enough of Mirmillard. These cigarettes are very good. Let us talk of flowers.”
“Oh, bother flowers!” said the Prince, lying luxuriously back on the old sofa, whose springs were bursting out below. “Tell me, Gaillard; have you ever been in love with a woman?”
Gaillard, squatting before the fire, looked at the kettle with an expression as though he were regarding the gash in Mirmillard’s throat. He had never seen that gash, simply because there was no Mirmillard, not even the ghost of one. He, like Fanfoullard, was one of Gaillard’s creatures, born to bedizen conversation.
He made no response to Toto’s question.
“For I am,” said Toto, without waiting for one. “I never thought I should be; but that girl’s eyes are quite different from other women’s. But you will see her yourself to-morrow. Deuce! what is this?”
A little bundle of papers was disturbing his reston the sofa. He picked them out. They were newspaper cuttings, paragraphs about an individual called Papillard. For the last few months a series of little stories had been attracting the attention of Paris to the pages ofGil Blas. They were naughty, but screamingly funny, and just long enough to read whilst smoking a couple of cigarettes or sipping a glass of absinthe. They were signed “Papillard.” Everyone was asking who Papillard was. Nobody knew but the editor, and editors never speak when they are told not.
“Why, hello!” cried Toto. “Do you know Papillard?”
“No,” said Gaillard, removing the kettle from the fire in a hurry.
“But see here: here are things about him, addressed to him and opened.”
“Oh,” said Gaillard, “I know. He’s a friend of Fanfoullard’s. He must have been yesterday, and no doubt left them. My dear Toto, do you like your coffee strong?”
Gaillard’s hand was shaking. He dared not admit that Papillard was himself. No one had everguessed it, for Gaillard, though a source of great humor, was believed to be utterly destitute of that quality, and so, in fact, he was. Papillard was a sprite that lived in the brain of his unwilling host. He was a creature like Fanfoullard and Mirmillard, only much more highly organized, for he was able to cling to his tenement and to exercise his abilities in literature. The stories of Papillard horrified his master when in print. There was something so abominably low about them. Servant girls giggled over them on back-stairs. Gaillard admitted to himself in secret that he wrote them, and enjoyed writing them, but he would sooner almost have died than admitted the authorship. One of the stories in question had for motive a cold leg of mutton. There is nothing particularly funny about a cold leg of mutton, but the story was killing. And it had been written by the author of “Satanitie”! Gaillard, when he remembered this fact, felt dizzy, and pinched himself to see if he was there. He was jealous, too, of Papillard’s fame. Wind of these trifles had even reached England, or, at least, theDaily Telegraph. “Satanitie” had never goneso far. When people cried “What a droll fellow this Papillard is!” Gaillard’s tongue had to lie mute at the bottom of his mouth—a cruel torture. You cannot be two people at once. You cannot be a mystical poet, and a buffoon—at least, before the eyes of the world. He had discovered his genius by accident, and too late. His self-love had crystallized round poetry, and, in fact, the poet was the truehim. Papillard was a clove of garlic in a bonbon box, placed there by accident or freak, smelt by everyone, but never localized.
He would have burnt Papillard’s stories, but they brought him money—much more money than “Satanitie” or “Nymphomanie” or “The Poisoned Tulip” or “The World Gone Gray” had ever brought him; and Gaillard was a sieve for gold—at the mercy of every woman he met, who robbed him of the money that ought to have gone to his tailors, bootmakers, hatters, and hosiers. Lately, indeed, he would have gone very much to pieces only for the fantastic labors of Papillard, and for these benefits he was ungrateful. You know the maxim of Rochefoucauld.
He handed Toto his coffee, and, to turn the conversation, reminded him of the loan of a thousand francs which he had requested on their first meeting that evening.
“It is indispensable to me,” said Gaillard.
“I will let you have it,” replied the Prince, “but not now. If you had money now, you would be off to the Moulin Rouge, and I should not see you in the morning. I will let you have it to-morrow evening when we come back.”
“But I have not a centime!” cried Gaillard, turning out his waistcoat pockets in despair. “And how can I meet you, how can I get to the rendezvous, in this condition?”
“It’s better for you to come like that than come, perhaps, tipsy. Besides, I will pay all expenses, and I will give you five francs now; that will pay your cab to the Champs Élysées in the morning. Stay at home and write poetry just for to-night, and think of all the fun you will have to-morrow night.”
“Mon Dieu!” said Gaillard, as the vision of the Moulin Rouge vanished before him into thin air.
Thenext morning broke fair. The sky over Paris held the blue of forget-me-nots, and the wind from the west, lazy and warm, ruffled the lilac of the Seine with streaks of sismondine. It was the summer end of April; she had still five days’ tenancy, and here May had arrived before her time, flushed and warm from her journey, but seemingly unspeakably happy.
“Ah,mon Dieu!’tis like an old Italian picture!” cried Gaillard as he opened his lattice in the Rue de Turbigo.
“Oh,ciel!” cried Célestin far away near the Rue de Babylone, as she stood by her open window and clasped her hands before all this beauty, whilst Dodor gave praise from the parrot cage till the brown sparrows, grubbing in the street below, cockedtheir impudent heads on one side, as if to say “What’s that? Who is making that noise?”
Célestin had been dreaming of Toto, and praying before she slept that the morrow might be fine and that he would not forget. What a day had come in answer to her prayers! She fully believed that her prayers had brought this angelic morning, tripping with blue parasol outspread across the fields of light, across the hills of dreams and the country of impossible primroses. Then the artist turned from the window and from heaven, and flung herself into a hat.
It had got the better of her yesterday. She had stared vainly at the foundation. Nothing came, only the vision of Toto beating the beggar man, Toto drinking his coffee, Toto declaring himself an artist, Toto’s eyes, Toto’s nose, the coat he had worn, his beautiful hands, his hair so well groomed, his white teeth, and his angelic smile. You cannot put these things into a hat—that is to say, immediately; but now, after twenty-four hours nearly had elapsed, the miracle was accomplished.
The result was a confection that made PrincesseKlein look ten years younger at the Countess Prim’s garden party. She did not know that she was wearing Toto upon her head, Toto idealized and converted into a hat by the joint endeavors of love and April, assisted by the fingers of Célestin Sabatier.
The doing of it took but an hour, and then she held it out on the point of her finger and smiled; Dodor broke into a song of triumph, and the little American clock on the shelf struck seven.
So she breakfasted—a cup of milk and a Vienna roll eaten in haste—and gave Dodor his morning fly round the room. Then she started, closing the door carefully for fear of Mme. Liard’s cat, and all the way down the steep and dusty stairs Dodor’s voice pursued her, seeming to cry “Come back! come back!”
Toto had dressed himself in his oldest suit of tweed; he wore also a revolutionary-looking felt hat. A Prince cannot break into a blouse in one morning any more than a tree can cast its leaves in one night, but he was advancing. He had also been waiting since ten minutes to eight—that is tosay, exactly five minutes—for at five minutes to eight Célestin appeared beneath the trees of the Avenue Champs Élysées, and Toto, who had been standing close to one of the little kiosks, came to meet her.
She wore a bunch of blue violets in her bosom, an artless adornment bought for a sou at the corner of the Rue de Varennes. She was in exactly the same dress as that she had worn on the previous morning, but her hands were gloved in honor of Toto.
They shook hands and laughed a little, and inquired after each other’s health. Then Toto led her to some chairs placed close to one of the little kiosks.
“Don’t let us sit on those,” said Célestin; “they charge for them. I once sat on a little chair just here, and a man came out and asked me for a sou; there was nothing to be done but pay him.”
“Never mind,” said the Prince; “let us be extravagant for once in our lives. Célestin, I have a treat for you—guess what it is.”
Célestin thought vaguely of what it could be;she could imagine nothing but a breakfast, hot rolls and butter and coffee, but somehow she did not care to tell of this imagining. She shook her head.
“I am going to take you for a day in the country and show you the flowers and things—that is, if you will come. Will you come, Célestin?”
“Oh, Désiré!” cried the girl. She could say no more; she held out both hands to Toto; her soul was in a tumult, and her eyes filled with tears of pure delight. The country, the mysterious country, the long-dreamt-of country, that land of her dreams compounded of old visions of Champrosay and the shrill sweetness of Dodor’s song! Had Israfel appeared before her offering a trip to the fields of heaven, I doubt if his offer would have been received with such delight.
Toto felt an extraordinary little thrill run through him as he took her hands. No one had ever called him Désiré before in a voice like that; women, when they knew him well enough, always called him Toto, generally with a little laugh—men too. Here was a being, lovely and lovable, whocalled him by his right name, and, oh, with what sweetness! It was a new revelation of himself; it was as if, glancing in a mirror, he saw, reflected in a new way, a face very much more handsome and manly than his own, and yet the true reflection of his face. He would have loved that mirror and disliked the false mirrors he had been accustomed to, just as he was beginning to love Désiré—I mean Célestin. He kissed each little hand and put them back in her lap, where they rested as if satisfied.
“But where shall we go?” asked Toto, glancing round to see if he could make out any sign of Gaillard, and almost hoping that he had overslept himself.
“Oh, anywhere,” said she. “What matter where, so that it is the country, where the trees are and the flowers? There is nothing so beautiful in the whole world as the trees; I dream of them sometimes, and they are lovely. Oh, see that white butterfly, white as an angel of heaven! he seems so glad, and he seems to know.”
“Bother!” said Toto.
“What?” asked Célestin, coming back from heaven.
It was Gaillard in the distance. The poet had dressed himself for pastoral pleasures; he wore a gray frockcoat, a white waistcoat, and a straw hat—one of those straw hats they manage better in France: it was soft, and the brim curled. He had also a green necktie, to be in keeping with the grass, a rose in his buttonhole, and a large stick with a crook handle.
“Ah, my dear Désiré!” screamed the poet when in speaking distance. He had been schooled overnight to forget the odious little name Toto. “I despaired of seeing you; you were not to be seen, and now I find you sitting on a seat.” He removed his hat and bowed low to Célestin.
“This is my friend M. Gaillard, the famous poet,” said Toto, putting in “the famous poet” as a sort of excuse for the gayety andbizarrerieof his friend’s dress, which he felt might frighten Célestin. But Célestin was not in the least frightened, though somewhat awed by the grandeur and white waistcoat of Gaillard. She had heard Mme. Liardspeak of poets, wonderful and fabulous beings who lived in the country. The country seemed coming to her in bounds, the gods descending in showers, the birds singing louder in the trees of the Champs Élysées as if to welcome God Gaillard. She felt very happy.
“I am char-r-r-med,” said Gaillard, bowing again and sinking into a chair. “Charmed to make Mlle. Célestin’s acquaintance. I have not been to bed. To—Désiré, I have passed the night pen in hand; the dawn came in upon me as I worked; then it was too late.”
He told this frightful lie with unction, for he had been, not only in bed, but snoring, when Mme. Plon, the concierge, tipped overnight by Toto, had actually come into his room and threatened to strip the clothes off him if he did not get up to go and meet Prince Cammora.
“Mon Dieu, monsieur!” had cried Mme. Plon. “Where will you get that hundred and ten francs you promised me for the rent but yesterday, should you fail to meet M. le Prince, and put His Highness in a bad temper?”
“How wonderful that is,” said Célestin timidly, “to be a poet!”
Gaillard swelled a bit under his white waistcoat; then he laughed a dreary little laugh.
“Ah, mademoiselle, on a morning like this, yes, it is a wonderful thing to be a poet; but the world is not always May, the world is not always May. Mademoiselle has, perhaps, never read my——”
“No, of course she hasn’t,” cut in Toto. “At least—but that’s not the question; tell me, where shall we go? We want a pleasant day. Now, what do you suggest?”
“But, mademoiselle——”
“She has already suggested anywhere; she is indifferent.”
“Well,” said Gaillard, who had the day’s festivity already sketched out in his head, “I would propose apetit déjeunernow, then drop in to the Louvre and look at the Primitives, then I would proposedéjeuner. After that, why not let us go to Montlhéry; we can take the train from the Gare d’Orléans. There is an old tower at Montlhéry that I love. We will dine at the ChatNoir; they have some very fine carp in a pond there, we will get the landlord to kill one and cook it for us. He knows me, and he manufactures a most delicious white wine sauce for carp. Well, then we will have a carriage back and supper at Foyot’s, in the Rue de Tournon.”
“That might do for M. Rothschild, but it is not simple enough for us,” said Toto, making suppressed grimaces at the poet. “If I had sold a picture even lately, but I haven’t.” A blank look began to overspread Gaillard’s face; he had not reckoned on this. “So we must be very economical. How much money have you?”
“I have nothing!” cried the unfortunate Gaillard, and he began, as was his wont, to turn his pockets inside out; then he remembered Célestin. “My publisher was out when I called upon him. My dear To—Désiré, how much have you?”
“Nineteen francs,” said Toto with a diabolical grin as he produced his money, “and a sou.” Célestin laughed and felt in her pocket for her little shabby purse, but Toto said “No.”
“We are rich. Poets and painters, you know,Célestin, have a way of getting along on air, like the birds—haven’t we, Gaillard?” But Gaillard only made a noise like a groan. “I know what we’ll do. But first come, and we will have ourpetit déjeunerat the littlecrémeriein the Rue du Mont Thabor. You remember thecrémeriewhere we breakfasted yesterday, Célestin?”
“That delicious littlecrémerie!” murmured Célestin, and they started.
They crossed the Place de la Concorde, Célestin laughing, Toto talking, and Gaillard walking silent like a froward child. He would have returned to the Rue de Turbigo had he not been absolutely penniless, for the five francs had all vanished, devoured by a rose, a cigar, and a cab.
“I will be silent,” thought Gaillard, “and spoil this wretched Toto’s pleasure; I will turn his feast into a funeral. Nineteen francs,mon Dieu!and three people, and a day in the country! The mind revolts!”
But ten minutes later he was calling for honey, declaring that he could not eat his roll and butter without it, and joining in the conversation. Hecould no longer endure the agony of holding his tongue; besides, he remembered the thousand francs Toto had promised him if he conducted himself decorously and with discretion.
“I know where we will go!” cried the Prince.
“Barbizon?” queried Gaillard, putting six lumps of sugar in his coffee.
“No, Montmorency; the chestnut trees will look splendid to-day. They are not in flower yet; but no matter—one cannot have everything.”
“True,” said Gaillard, trying to ogle Célestin and failing, for she was entirely engrossed with Toto and the bread and butter; “one cannot have everything. We will go to Montmorency, and sit beneath the chestnut trees and tell each other fairy tales.”
“Oh, how delightful!” murmured Célestin.
“I will tell you the tale of the giant and the dwarf,” resumed Gaillard. “It is my own—one of a series offin-de-sièclefairy tales I am writing for Lévy. There is a terrible battle in it, and the giant beats the dwarf. In the olden tales the dwarf beats the giant invariably, but I have changed all that.The giant in my story is the type of sin; he pelts the dwarf with roses, nothing more; the dwarf replies with mud; he is Virtue, and has a hump, and is hairy. Rousseau had a châlet at Montmorency; it is there still. I will leave you two amongst the primroses whilst I go and cast a stone at it—wretched man, murderer of his own children, destroyer of thehaute noblesse, progenitor of the bourgeoisie!”
“Oh, bother Rousseau!” cried the Prince, helping Célestin to more honey. “We don’t want to think of him; we want to be happy.”
“True,” said Gaillard; “you are young—we are all young; May is coming in. Désiré, a great idea has struck me: we will have a picnic. The inn at Montmorency may not be a good inn; I have my doubts about it. My children, listen to me: we will dine on the grass beneath those chestnut trees.”
“But——” objected Toto.
“Hear me out. I have a friend; we will call her Églantine. Do not laugh, Désiré. My friend lives close by; she is, in fact, very well-to-do, andowns a café. I will go to her, and she will pack me a luncheon basket, and so we will be at the mercy of no landlord.”
“Well, go,” said Toto, “but do not be long.”
“Half an hour is all I ask,” replied the poet, rising in a great hurry and departing.
Hepassed almost at a run down the Rue St. Honoré. A friend tried to stop him.
“I am busy,” cried Gaillard; “do not detain me!Mon Dieu!I will pay you to-night! Meet me at eight at the Café de la Paix.” Then, at a run, round the corner of the Rue Royale and into a large café just waking up: “Du Pont! Du Pont! Where is M. Du Pont?”
The proprietor, a large black-whiskered man in shirt-sleeves, appeared from the back premises, wiping his mouth with a serviette. This was Églantine.
“My dear Du Pont,” cried Gaillard, “here am I nearly mad! M. le Prince has arranged a little picnic, and Sarony has forgotten to send the luncheon basket.”
Du Pont flung up his hands as if the world had fallen in.
“Can you arrange a basket for three—cold fowl,tongue, and somepâté de foie gras, also champagne?”
“How many for—three?” cried M. du Pont, holding up three fingers. “Tenez!” and away he rushed.
In ten minutes the basket arrived, borne by a waiter; it was a capable-looking basket, and seemed heavy.
“At least, we shall not starve,” murmured Gaillard. “Charge it to M. le Prince, Du Pont. Adieu!” And he drove away in an open fly with the basket beside him, remembering, when it was too late, that he ought also to have ordered a box of cigars.
He met his companions in the Rue Mont Thabor; they had left thecrémerie, and were walking up and down in the sun.
Then the trio, with the luncheon basket in their midst, drove off, and were deposited at the Gare du Nord, that dreary station with its multitudinous platforms and engines that do not whistle healthily, but toot mournfully with a suggestion of phantom horns.
Here in the hurry and hubbub the poet could express his ideas on the third-class tickets which Toto insisted on buying, without fear of Célestin overhearing his plaints.
“My dear Toto, do not do this disgraceful thing. Consider my position in the world, if you forget your own. Should anyone see me,mon Dieu!it will be all over Paris, and they will say my books are not selling. Already they are saying that the editions are being faked. I will go back, I will commit suicide——”
“Oh, rubbish! I’m going third. Stay behind if you like.Ma foi!see over there standing beside that woman with the plum-colored face! It’s old De Nani, and he has seen us. Wait—wait for me, Célestin; I wish to speak to a friend. My dear Marquis,” cried Toto, dragging the old man aside, “I am going on a little private business into the country. In fact, I am going with a lady and my friend Gaillard, but I do not want her to know my identity—you understand.”
“Parfaitement,” replied the old beast, grinning under his paint and glancing at Célestin, and vowingin his own mind to do Toto an evil turn, if such a thing were possible.
For by a strange chance Struve’s enemy, to whose house he had been driven drunk on the previous morning, was also his most deadly enemy. The Comte de la Fosse was this gentleman’s name, and on descending in a flowered dressing gown on the previous morning to see what the hubbub was about, he had found M. le Marquis de Nani seated without his wig in the middle of the hall and singing ribald songs as he attempted to remove his boots. The Comte de la Fosse had ordered his enemy to be put to bed, and later in the day read him a pious lecture on the evils of drink and the disgrace he had brought on the old nobility. Toto was indirectly the cause of all this—directly, for all that old De Nani knew. Needless to say, he felt very bitter.
“And above all things,” said Toto, “I don’t want my mother to know.”
“I understand,” said De Nani. “I, too, am going into the country—to Chantilly.”
“Good-by.”
“Au revoir.But stay. Where shall I meet you again? Could I see you to-night?”
“Be at the Café de la Paix,” said Gaillard, who had come up to see what was going on, and what this old blood-sucker was saying to his Toto, “and ask for M. Théodore Wolf. Anyone will show you him. He is a journalist with a black beard. I have made a rendezvous for eight with him. We will be there.”
“Yes,” said Toto, “be there at eight.”
And De Nani left them, not for Chantilly, indeed, but to take a cab and drive to the Boulevard Haussmann and say to the Princesse de Cammora:
“Madame, something very strange is going on. Alas! it is not the fact of the young lady that alarms me, but, madame, he desired me not to mention her existence to you. Young men will be young men, but why this excessive secrecy? I have an intimate knowledge of the world, and I fear——I do not like this M. Gaillard, either; he indulges most intemperately.”
“Oh, Gaillard the poet,” said the Princesse; “there is not much harm in him.”
Still, she felt uneasy, and determined in her own mind to have an interview with Gaillard, and implore him to protect her precious Toto from the machinations of strange girls, and lead him into the right path—the path that led to Helen Powers.
“Why did you give that old fool a rendezvous at the Café de la Paix?” asked the Prince as the train whirled them along past green fields, on which Célestin’s eyes were fixed with pathetic rapture.
“I did not give him a rendezvous,” replied the poet, who had obtained Célestin’s assent to his smoking one of Toto’s cigarettes. “I shall not be there. Wolf will be there, and they will bore each other. Wolf is a dun, M. de Nani is a bore. I always appoint my duns and bores to meet each other at the Café de la Paix, the Café Américain, or the Grand Café. They dine together and speak ill of me whilst I am dining at Foyot’s, or the Café Anglais, or the Maison Dorée. I have made the fortune of three cafés by the people I have sent there to wait for me. They all ask for each other, and sit at the same table and wait for me; then theydine, and as a rule drink too much champagne to assuage themselves——”
“Mon Dieu, Célestin!” cried Toto, seizing both her hands; “what is this? You are crying!”
“I have just remembered Dodor,” sobbed Célestin. “I have left him shut up in my room, and, oh! should anyone open the door and leave it so, Mme. Liard’s cat may kill him.Whatshall I do?”
“Why, the girl has a baby!” thought Gaillard in astonishment.
“Well, this is a nuisance!” said Toto in a voice of tribulation.
“How old is Dodor, mademoiselle?” asked the poet.
“He is two years and a little bit,” wept Célestin.
“Ah, then be assured, mademoiselle, he is safe; cats never attack children of that age.”
Toto made horrible faces at his companion.
“He is not a child, monsieur,” murmured Dodor’s mistress—“I often wish that he were; he is my lark, and Mme. Liard’s cat may kill him.”
Gaillard’s eyes became filled with tears; a momentmore, and he might have allowed himself the pleasure of weeping.
“Did you lock your door?” asked Toto.
“Why, yes, I did!” cried Célestin, brightening through her tears and putting her hand into the back pocket of her dress; “and the key—I have it. Oh, how relieved I feel! Still, I ought not to have forgotten him; he was a treasure given me by the good God to keep. Ah, monsieur,” she said, turning to Gaillard, “you do not know how I love Dodor.”
Gaillard’s lachrymal works again began to threaten.
“Here we are,” said Toto, and the train drew up at Montmorency, with the trees waving in the wind.
They came along the white road leading to the little town, a boy hired for half a franc carrying the basket, Gaillard threatening him with untold terrors if he dropped it and herding him with his crook-handled stick.
The blue sky was dotted here and there with little white clouds, like a sparse flock of whitelambs tended by some invisible shepherd who had gone to sleep in the azure fields and left them to graze at their own sweet will. Beneath the sky and far away stretched the country, green as only April makes it, spread with apple blossom, the air filled with a sound one never hears in Paris—the hum of the wind in a million trees.
Célestin seemed tipsy. One can fancy a newly arrived angel in the fields of Paradise drunk with color and light. She dashed into hedgerows after wild flowers, and clapped her hands at butterflies, and cried out with happiness when she saw a lamb just like one of the lambs one sees in the Magazin du Louvre at Christmas time, but this one dancing round its mother in the middle of a field pied with daisies.
“She has gone mad,” said Toto, delighted with the delight of hisprotégée.
“’Tis the primitive woman breaking out,” said Gaillard. “Proceed, Alphonse, and if you drop that basket I will flay you! Believe me, Désiré, every woman is a nymph at heart. I know several women who are devotees when in Paris, butin the country they become hamadryadic; ’tis the influence of the trees—they remember Pan. Have you read my little brochure ‘Pan in Paris’? It appeared as a feuilleton inLucifer, the journal of the Satanists. I am not a Satanist; I despise the sect. I went to their church once; Satan in person was to appear. He did; the lights were lowered, but he did not frighten me, for I had heard him bleating in the vestry before he was brought on—it was a goat. Besides it was very dull; I left in the middle of the sermon, and Satan smelt dreadfully. I had to burn pastilles in my room for three days to help me to forget him.”
They skirted the happy little town, and made for a part of the chestnut forest declared by Alphonse to be suitable for picnics. Here, beneath the trees on the edge of the sunlight, the basket was deposited on the greensward, and Gaillard flung himself down to rest.
“I will leave you here,” said Toto, “to get the things ready, and I will take Célestin to the hill-top to see the view.”
“Leave me, then, your cigarette case,” murmuredGaillard, his hat over his eyes, and his arms flung out on either side; “and do not be long, Désiré, for I am famished.”
From the hill of Montmorency the whole world of April lay before them, in its midst Paris, the city of light, sixteen miles away, cream-colored and drab; Paris the noisy, silent amidst all that silent country stretching away in billows of tender green to the sky of pale and wonderful blue.
“Oh,ciel!” sighed Célestin, removing her gloves as she sat by Toto, and folding them carefully inside out and putting them in her pocket. “Can that be Paris, that little place? my thumb covers it when I hold it so. And, oh, the sky!—it seems to stretch to heaven. How happy the world is!”
“Do you find it happy?” asked Toto, tearing up wild violets and flinging them away to keep his hands employed.
“Yes,” said Célestin, breathing the word out in a manner that made it a prayer of praise.
“But you are not rich—you are like me; and they say the rich see more of the pleasure of the world than we do. Tell me, would you liketo be a great lady, one of those one sees in the Bois?”
“Oh, no!” said Célestin; “I would much rather be myself.”
“But!” said Toto, tearing a daisy’s head off, “imagine having money to spend, as much as one wanted.”
“I have.”
“Imagine having a carriage and horses.”
“That would be nice; at least, I would sooner, I think, go in omnibuses—one would be very desolate all alone in a carriage. It is the people who make omnibuses so delightful; one wonders where they are going to and what they have in their baskets; and some read books, and one tries to imagine what they read of. And then the hats one sees! they make one want to laugh and weep. Sometimes they are not so bad, but sometimes they are frightful; often have I wished to say, ‘Madame, let me retrim your hat; I will do it for love, and use my own thread,’ but I have never dared.”
“Well, imagine being able to ride in omnibuses all day long.”
Célestin smiled, and looked away into the blue distance, as if she were watching an ethereal omnibus filled with her familiar angels.
“Well, you could do that all day if you were rich.”
“I could not take Dodor.”
Toto, the tempter, felt that she had him there, but he was not tempting her in the ordinary acceptation of the word.
“You love Dodor very much?” Her eyes swept round to him, and rested full upon his. “Tell me, Célestin: could you not love me a little too?”
When they got back to the picnic they found the cloth spread, the places laid, and the Perigord pie eaten; they had, in fact, been away over two hours, and the poet had not waited.
There was cold tongue, and part of a fowl and rolls and butter left, all of which Gaillard offered with effusion; he had expected a scolding for beginning without them, but he did not get it. Toto did not care, Célestin did not know; cold tongue or Perigord pie, it did not matter—they were inlove. The poet smiled upon them like a father, and piled their plates, and gave them what was left of the champagne.
“Here’s to Églantine!” said Toto, toasting the provider of the feast in a glass of Mumm, from which Célestin had taken a sip. “Has she brown eyes or blue?”
“Blue,” said Gaillard. “Blue as the skies above Pentelicus.”
“Well, tell her what I say, and give me a cigarette.”
“There is only one left,” replied the poet, as he hastily lit it.
Theyreturned to Paris at five, leaving the luncheon basket at the Montmorency Station.
“Églantine will send for it,” said Gaillard.
At the Nord they took an open carriage driven by a cabman in a white beaver, and drawn by two white ponies. In this conveyance they tore down the Rue de Faubourg St. Denis, along the Boulevard Nouvelle, and down the Rue Richelieu. Toto sat beside Célestin; Gaillard on the front seat, his stick between his legs, chattered like a magpie, so delighted was he to find himself back in his dear Paris.
“Gaillard,” cried Toto, when Célestin had been deposited at her own door, with a whispered word in her ear and a promise on her lips for a rendezvous on the morrow, “I am in love.”
“Ma foi!I know.”
“You don’t; you know nothing of love, neitheryou nor any of us. I don’t know how many women have sworn that they love me; they do because I am a Prince, because I am jewelry, good dinners, and what not. (Boulevard Haussmann, you fool! I have told you twice; and make those pigs of horses travel faster—we are not a dung cart.) Yes, I am all that, and they love me. De Nani, for instance, is a pattern of truth and friendship, as we know it. I have never seen our world before; Célestin has lit it for me. My mother paints; good God! my father painted; he wore stays.”
“I, too, have worn stays,” declared Gaillard—“three years ago, when I was very young and foolish. I was then twenty-two. I discarded them because they were such a trouble to lace. I have even painted. What will you have? Youth must expend itself; but believe me, Toto, our world is not a bad world beneath the paint.”
“I tell you it is a vile world.”
“Well, perhaps it is, in parts. De Nani, for instance; beware of that old man, Toto. He is the type of excess. An old man drunk and a drunken old man are two different people. De Nani is ahabitual drunkard; I can read it in his eye. He is more dangerous than a cartful of women. Still, despite the fact of De Nani and a thousand like him, I have a childish faith in the world. I believe in humanity, or what I can see of it through the misery and mystery of life. I believe in flowers, I believe in trees. Have you read my ‘Rose Worship’?Mon Dieu!what was that? Only a dog we have run over. Animals, too, are part of my creed. I am thinking of having a book of my belief published, with colored plates. It would be the bible of childhood. Flowers, beasts, birds, and insects would be as the four Apostles. I was saved from atheism by a butterfly. It flew into my rooms in the Rue de Turbigo one day last August. Everyone was at the seaside; I was alone in Paris. De Brie had refused to advance me the money for a trip to Normandy. You, Toto, were at Trouville. The day was sultry, and, to add to my pain, a barrel-organ played in the street outside. Mme. Plon brought me a letter. It was a draft from my sister for five hundred francs. As I cast my eyes over it, a white butterfly flew in through my window,thrice around the room, and out again. It was the voice of the Unseen, saying ‘I am here.’ Yes, I believe—I believe in your Célestin. She is all nature, and to be loved by such a woman is a benediction.”
La Princesse de Cammora’s carriage was at the door. She had just returned from shopping, and tea was being served to her in the drawing room.
Gaillard loved tea and Princesses,—even Princesses of fifty,—so he left Toto to go upstairs and change, whilst he found his way to the drawing room.
The Princesse was not alone—Pelisson was with her. He had come to find Toto. His head looked larger than ever; it seemed bursting with some great idea, and, true to his nature, he was making a noise. He was also making the Princesse laugh. The tears were in her eyes as Gaillard entered.
Gaillard sipped his tea whilst the journalist finished his story. It was about an actress. Then the Princesse drew Gaillard into a corner, leavingPelisson to look over a bundle of engravings till the coming of Toto.
“Oh, M. Gaillard,” said the great lady in a motherly yet playful voice, “how naughty it is of you to lead my Toto astray! No, no, do not speak; it is not you I fear; but I have heard—no matter: a little bird told me. Now, this journey to the country. Who is she, M. Gaillard?”
“Madame, I swear to you——”
“Nay, nay, I do not want you to tell tales out of school; but you have been seen—the three of you—this morning at the Nord. Tell me, now—her name!”
“Madame, be assured, it was a most innocent freak. She is a most charming and innocent girl.”
“Oh, this is dreadful!” murmured the Princesse. “M. Gaillard, I speak to you as a mother to a son. I do not mind Toto’s Mimis and Lolottes,—one cannot keep a young man in a cage,—but I dread these innocent girls. I have seen, alas! so much of life. They come to the house and make disturbances; they have relations, old men from the country,who come and sit in one’s hall till asergent-de-villeis called. One need not be straitlaced, but one need not beat a tin pan over one’s indiscretions. Besides, Toto is at a very critical age. I have a match at heart for him, a girl pure and beautiful as an angel. But she is an American, and they do not understand the little ways of young men. She is also a good match, even for Toto. So you see it is a mother’s heart that speaks. I pray you tell me her name.”
“Her name is Lu-lu,” said Gaillard, Papillard coming to his aid.
“Lu-lu. Ah, that sets my heart at rest, M. Gaillard. There was never an innocent girl in Paris with that name.”
“Madame,” said the poet, “I think your perception is very clear. I would not disparage Mlle. Lu-lu’s innocence; still, she has a habit of casting her eyes about, and speaks of ‘larks.’”
“And tries to persuade poor Toto that she is an innocent. M. Gaillard, I have read your beautiful poems, and I know your mind, for I have seen it in your works. I have no fear of Toto whilst youare by; stay near him, M. Gaillard, watch over him.”
“I will.”
“And let me know how things go on. Hush! here he is.”
Toto entered in evening dress, covered with a light overcoat.
“Hello, Pelisson!”
“M. Pelisson has called to take you to dine with him,” said the Princesse. “He has some great journalistic feat to perform, and he wants your aid. Go, all of you, and be happy.”
“I am bursting!” cried Pelisson, when they were in the street. “Toto, take my arm; Gaillard, give me yours. Cab! No, I must work my electricity off by walking. We will dine at the Café de la Paix. I met Wolf an hour ago; he told me he would be there.”
“Stop,” said Gaillard. “I do not want to go to the Café de la Paix.”
“Why, Wolf told me you had a rendezvous with him.”
“It was arendezvous de convenance,” said thepoet. “He is bothering me. Never knew a man to bother so over a paltry hundred francs.”
“I will pay it,” said Pelisson. “Come along. What’s that you say: Old De Nani will be there—the Marquis? He’ll do; I am in want of a cheap Marquis. Really, the gods are working. Hearken to Paris—it hums; I will make it roar. The Ministry is down. Have you not heard? Oafs! where have you been? Well, then, the time is coming; it only wants the men to bring it.”
“The time has come for what?” asked Gaillard.
“For a general rooting out, all the rotten sticks into the fire. What will be the end of it?—who knows? The restoration of the Bourbons, I believe. The republic is a rotten hoarding, papered with Panama scrip. What’s behind the hoarding? ah, ah, my children! wait and see. I am going to bring out a paper; everything is ready down to the printer’s ink. I want from you a hundred thousand francs, Toto. I want your brains, Gaillard. Struve we will pull into it also. I have four other men; all the talent in Paris will be with me. It isto be a dull paper full of ideas. It will lick the boots of the bourgeoisie, and wink behind it at the throne. It will slaver, and stink, and shuffle along, but it will build barricades in the world of thought. Gaillard, can you write an ode to a yard-stick?”
“I can write an ode to anything beautiful.”
“What is more beautiful than a bourgeois? He is the emblem of commerce.”
“Looking at him in that light, he has his dim sort of beauty; besides, I would do anything to vex De Brie. He pays one for one’s work as if one were a butcher selling legs of mutton. He reduces literature to the level of a trade. He would be mad if he thought I were on the staff of another journal.”
“He’ll be madder when he sees my paper break out like the smallpox; but you must be dull.”