THE HANGING GARDENS OF PARIS
Henceforth Phil had glorious days. Poufaille, whom he made his
assistant gardener, dug and watered and trimmed the alleys. It
increased Phil’s expenses, but what a pleasure for him, after work, to
pursue his dreams as he walked amid the flowers!
Long months had gone by since Phil’s reception into the studio. He
had passed through many trials since then, and known discouragements
and dogged labor and the joy of progress. Should he walk on a ball to
earn his bread or hold the globe in his hand like a Cæsar? An effort,
and then another, and an effort once more! The periods of want did not
discourage him. Still he had a sad existence, and his only amusement
was to come up here and breathe the pure air.
The garden of the Louvre, on top of Perrault’s colonnade, was a
resting-place for the pigeons in their flight over Paris. They lighted
there in bands, heedless of Phil and Poufaille. But one day the birds
were all a-flutter. The hanging garden had its Semiramis—Helia!
Phil, while they held their dismayed flight above him, sat at the feet
of Helia, who looked down and smiled at him. To the young girl it was a
strange place. For thirty years the inspector of the Louvre roofs—the
same man whom Phil had already seen at Mère Michel’s—had been making
this garden, bringing up little by little the earth in which the plants
grew, and the pebbles which covered the alleys. Boxes hidden among
the foliage held great shrubs; the perfume of iris and gillyflower, of
mignonette and roses, breathed from the flower-beds. Hanging over the
borders were ripening currants and peaches and apples; and laurels gave
their purple flowers. A whole row of statues and busts outlined the
plots. Helia pointed to the busts.
“The one who looks like a circus-rider with his big mustaches—who is
he?”
“Napoleon III,” Phil answered.
“And that other with his hair brushed up to a point like a clown?”
“That is Louis-Philippe.”
“And this one? and that one?”
Phil went on explaining his aërial paradise.
“This is Grévy, that is Carnot; here is M. Thiers—these are all
official busts. When the government changes they pack them off to the
attic, and the inspector has put them here to ornament his garden.”
“And this arm-chair on which I am sitting, with all its gilding rubbed
off? Is that official also?” Helia asked, examining the wood, carved
with palms, and the red velvet embroidered with the attributes of Law
and Justice.
“It’s a relic of the Revolution of ’48,” answered Phil; “we found it
only lately in the attic—it was King Louis-Philippe’s throne.”
“A king’s throne!” Helia said, jumping up. “How can you think of it for
a poor girl like me? You would be better in it, Phil. Seat yourself; I
wish you to—I command you!” she said, imitating what she considered the
royal tone.
“Well, since you wish it—”
“Yes; it’s your place—and here is mine,” she added, as she seated
herself at Phil’s feet. “Stay there, Phil—leave me at your feet. I am
so happy!”
Happy! She could not have found words to express it all! For months
and months and months she had thought of Phil every day and every
hour—Phil, friend of her childhood and youth, who had loved her well,
who would have protected her against Cemetery—Phil, her hero! And now
she saw him again; he was there before her, her head was resting on his
knees, in the calm of the beautiful day. How could she have told her
happiness?
Phil, on his arrival in Paris, had thought less about Helia at
first, overburdened as he was with all his new impressions; but the
environment in which he lived was not pleasant to him. His illusions
had been cast to earth; he was in an abyss of temptations from which
he could not, like Suzanne, free himself by a smile or a shrug. But he
soon regained possession of himself; he made of Helia an ideal. He knew
no young girl of his own sphere, and he took refuge in the thought of
Helia as in a place of safety. She personified his innocent youth. Phil
still had in him the old Puritan austerity—he whose family Bible showed
on its margin this proud device written in faded ink by some persecuted
ancestor: “No judge but God, no woman but the wife!” He was grateful to
Helia because her remembrance protected him; because she seemed to him
always so pure.
Accordingly, when Helia came back, with the superb confidence of youth
which believes in the everlastingness of things, Phil looked on her
again with joy. In spite of the rude life she was leading, she was more
modest and charming than ever; and she was so beautiful! Helia came
into Phil’s life at a dangerous moment—an accomplice of the sun and the
fragrance of roses.
“How beautiful she is!” Phil thought, as he looked at her faultless
features and her eyes, in which a flame seemed burning.
“How handsome you are!” Helia said to him, scanning his firm expression
and look of frankness.
They talked of one thing and another, thinking of each other all the
while; or else they remained without speaking, he on his throne, she
at his feet, their gaze lost in the tumultuous, motionless ocean of
houses.
Paris was around them with its muffled murmur. At the height where they
were, a pigeon’s cooing subdued the noise of three million human beings;
at their feet carriages filled the streets, moving on ceaselessly, like
a silent river. Helia looked to the horizon before her. First of all
she descried, among the trees of the Quai de Conti, on the other side
of the Seine, Phil’s little window. That was her first halting-place.
La Monnaie (the Mint), with all its millions on one side, and the
Institut (the palace of the Academy), with its Immortals, on the other,
interested her less. For her they were simply side-pieces, setting
Phil’s attic in relief. Just behind, over an immensity of roofs, the
Palais du Luxembourg served as a background. Farther still, to right
and left and everywhere, even in the distant blue, could be seen
cupolas and spires, towers and domes. The church of the Sacré-Cœur
rose above this ocean like a cliff at whose foot the smoke beat up like
waves.
“How beautiful it is! Oh, Phil, is it not beautiful? And how happy I
am!” said Helia.
In those first days the strangeness of the place intimidated her;
even the busts took from the privacy of the spot. But she soon came
to look on them as old friends, treating them as equals, as sovereign
to sovereign. When Phil was painting and herself posing for him, she
would tranquilly disembarrass herself of her collar and place it on the
shoulders of Napoleon III and crown the blessed head of Louis-Philippe
with her flowery hat. She sat on the old throne, and presided without
ceremony over the assembled monarchs.
The little garden seemed immense to her, for it held their happiness.
In reality, it occupied only one angle of the middle pediment above the
colonnade which looks toward Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois.
From that corner, flat as a Russian steppe, stretched the immense
oblong of the zinc roofs which surround the court of the Louvre,
forming a desert six hundred yards long by thirty wide. Farther on,
pointed roofs and _pavillons_ and deep gutters invited to adventure,
and they amused themselves in exploring their domain.
Especially the side toward the river attracted them. They went along
the balustrade above the Place Saint-Germain, and turned to the right
above the Quai du Louvre. An enormous piece of decoration, composed of
bucklers and lances and fasces of piled arms sculptured in the stone,
terminated the flat roof, like an army watching over the frontier of
their empire. They went down a little iron ladder across the Galerie
des Bijoux and turned to the left above the Galerie d’Apollon. Helia
followed hesitatingly; it seemed to her that the whole city was looking
at them.
In reality, no one could see her. They were shut off from the Seine by
the leafy tree-tops; only the cries of children playing on the lawns
came up to them, mingled with the twittering of sparrows. The next
moment they found themselves in gutters deep as the beds of rivers.
They discovered peaceable corners which the old kings of France seemed
to have built expressly for themselves. At times they might have
thought themselves in gardens of stone.
There were lofty chimneys profusely carved with garlands; the leaves of
acanthus and laurel and oak were interlaced with strange flowers, among
which laughed the loves and satyrs of the Renaissance. Cornucopias
poured at their feet their marble fruits; and goddesses, standing
against the blue sky, trumpeted through their shells the happiness of
their loves.
In the distance their own garden seemed like an oasis of greenery.
After long reveries it was sweet to them to come back and breathe the
air of its roses and to hear the birds twitter in the shrubbery of
their paradise.
Helia, since she had made Phil’s acquaintance, blushed for her
ignorance. She had given to reading all the time left her by her
exercises; there was in her something else than superb physical
beauty. Sometimes, with the blood in her face and glad to be alive,
after scaling with an acrobat’s agility the obstacles of the roof,
she would stop and ask Phil questions which showed a thoughtful mind.
She listened to his replies with attention, little by little ridding
herself of the common speech and narrow views of her trade.
“Say, Phil,” she remarked to him one day as they were looking out over
the great courtyard of the Louvre beneath them, “Blondin would have
crossed that, dancing on a tight-rope! I believe I could do it, too,”
she added, so light and strong did she feel. But she soon saw that such
ideas were not pleasing to Phil: he loved her in spite of her being a
circus-girl and not because she was one.
At once she spoke of other things.
“No one ever taught me anything, Phil; teach me, you who speak so well.”
Phil was radiant. Encouraged by her desire to know, he willingly became
her educator and poured out his knowledge for her. He modeled Helia’s
mind on his own. She belonged to him more and more. She thought like
him, through him, for him. Her maiden intelligence gave itself up to
him. Phil was grateful to her for the progress she was making. A look
from her limpid eyes, a grasp of her hand, were his sweet reward. They
moved him more deeply than words of love could have done; and more and
more Helia grew to be a part of him. Phil talked to her of Paris and of
the persons he knew there. Helia answered with her clear good sense.
“The dirty banks of the Bièvre—what an idea—when the Seine is so pretty
at Saint-Cloud! But perhaps ugliness is easier to paint?”
“Perhaps,” said Phil. “That must be the reason.” “As for me,” Helia
said, “I’m only an ignorant girl—I love beautiful things!”
“Look, Phil, what is that we see down there?” she said one day, as she
was leaning over a skylight.
Phil looked; they were just above one of the halls of the Egyptian
Museum, and they saw strange objects beneath them—statues of gods,
mummies of kings, a pell-mell of fallen grandeur. A squatting Sphinx
lifted its head and stared at them. Through the dusty glass they might
have thought they were looking into an entire past, engulfed in the
depths of the sea. A broken column spoke of the crumbling of temples, a
mutilated god of the overthrow of altars, a dun-colored sarcophagus of
the heaping up of the sand beneath desert winds. Phil explained these
dead things to Helia and gave them life.
“Ah,” Helia said, “what happiness it is to know!”
They were alone, half kneeling on the roof, their heads bent toward
the skylight; around them Paris murmured like an ocean. They could
have imagined themselves the survivors of a world destroyed—the only
woman and the only man escaped from the cataclysm, while the mysterious
Sphinx raised its head as if to say: “Love! for life passes as a
dream!”
Phil and Helia arose in silence and came back to their oasis, while
above them, in the blue sky, the doves pursued one another.
[Illustration: On the Roofs of the Louvre]
“Look at the birds,” said Helia. “Come quick and give them their grain.”
The doves, as free as those of St. Mark’s or of the Guildhall, had
quickly accustomed themselves to her, and the presence of Helia did not
trouble them.
It was a pleasure to Phil to see Helia in the midst of their cooings
and the beating of their wings. They came to eat from her hand. As one
of them lighted on her shoulder, Helia had an inspiration. She took the
dove and gave a long kiss to its wings.
“Here, Phil! Do like me!” she said, presenting the other wing to him.
“And now, fly away!” she added, letting loose the bird, who in its
flight seemed to sow Paris with kisses.
And so the days passed. It was usually in the afternoons that they met.
In the mornings Phil worked and Helia studied at home or else rehearsed
at the circus. Poufaille took care of the garden. The inspector made
his rounds, and sometimes, in the afternoon, watched Helia and Phil
from his hiding-place behind a bush.
The old man “of my time” confessed that lovers still existed, and that
these were real and kissed each other as they did in “his time” under
the Third Empire. But usually they were alone. Suzanne came only now
and then to pick a rose.
“What bears you are!” she said as she looked at Phil and Helia. “How
can you stay in this desert, with nothing but flowers and flowers, and
pigeons and pigeons? You’ll not come to the Bon Marché? Good-by, then!”
And she would go tumbling down the stairs.
Phil painted a few studies from Helia. She posed for her portrait
amid the flowers. Sometimes, in hours of discouragement, when his work
went badly and his future seemed doubtful and the struggle became too
painful, Phil would dream as he looked at Helia.
“I will take her out of the life she is leading,” he said to himself.
“I’ve promised her! I will tear her from her surroundings; I will make
a cultivated woman of her yet. It is God who has led her to cross my
path. I—I—”
And for a long time he would remain lost in thought.
In truth, it was a serious moment for him. Phil was too young, too much
left to himself, to be content for any length of time with this simple
rôle of friendship. He was caught at his own game; and, seeing her
day by day more beautiful and good, it seemed to him that he could no
longer live without her.
What, then? Should he play with love, taking it for a toy? Should
he fashion her heart only to break it? No! The blood which his veins
inherited forbade him such meanness. He would have despised himself as
if he had been the dust of Sodom.
Should he marry her, then?
“Helia is devotedness itself, tenderness, grace,” he thought; “her
poverty is the sister of my own: we are equal. And yet, no! it is
impossible, really! I cannot marry Helia—a circus-girl!”
But this objection disappeared before the lofty, frank, luminous look
of Helia and the candor of her smile.
And still the days passed on. It was splendid weather. Never had they
so appreciated their little oasis, where there was always some breeze
while at their feet the city was stifling in the dull heat; though even
they themselves were sometimes almost overcome by it.
One afternoon Phil stuck up his canvas in the tool-shed and stretched
himself in the shade near Helia. They talked of a thousand things or
were silent for a time, clasping each other’s hands. Suddenly Phil
jumped up.
“Let us go!” he said. “It is time. We never stayed so late.”
But they found the door closed.
The guardian, no doubt, had glanced around the oasis, and, seeing no
one, had closed the door and gone down.
“He must have thought we had gone away,” said Phil. “We are prisoners
till to-morrow!”
“What an adventure!” said Helia. Both laughed heartily.
Their supper was delightful. Poufaille would have regretted there was
no garlic or potatoes; but there were strawberries, and two cakes which
Phil had brought for lunch, and good fresh water instead of wine. They
had never eaten better; it was as charming as child’s play. Helia cut
the fruits, dividing the oranges and arranging the parts on leaves from
the bushes. To drink, she dipped the glass in a bucket of water at her
side.
“Here, Phil, drink!” she said, as she offered him the glass.
“You first!” answered Phil.
Helia touched her lips to the water, and Phil drank off the glass.
“It’s better than champagne,” he said.
“Here, Phil, here’s a beautiful strawberry!”
“Taste it first!” said Phil.
Helia put the berry between her lips, and Phil took it from her with a
kiss. The child’s play was growing dangerous.
“_Marchons!_ Now let’s take a walk!” said Phil.
“_C’est ça!_ Let’s climb our Himalaya!” cried Helia.
This was the name they had given to the Pavilion Sully, which lifts its
enormous bulk between the Louvre courtyard and the Cour du Carrousel.
It was the culminating-point of the roof. But the excursion was
impossible in full daylight; they would have been seen from below; by
night no one could see them.
They passed through their wilderness and, following the roof on the
other side, came to the foot of the _pavillon_. There, in the shadow of
a chimney as big as a tower, iron steps had been placed along the dome
from bottom to top, and an iron rod at the side served as a hand-rail.
“_En route!_” said Phil.
The ascent, which was at first straight up, curved little by little
over the round dome; then there was again a straight-up ascent along
the crown of the dome; and when this was passed they were at the top.
Helia followed without difficulty—it was nothing for her.
They were on their Himalaya. To right and left opened the abysses of
the courtyards below, and on every side the immense roofs with their
humps and turrets and projections stood out black as ebony against the
glow of Paris. Lights sparkled above and below—in the heavens and from
the city, which seemed another heaven at their feet.
La Villette, the Trocadéro, Montrouge, and the Bastille lighted up
their constellations. The Champs-Élysées stretched out like a comet.
Montmartre shone palely along the horizon like a far-off nebula;
the great circle of the boulevards belted the city with a Milky Way.
High up among the stars the Eiffel Tower lifted its torch, like the
pole-star.
“How grand it all is!” said Helia. She was on the wide parapet, and her
hair, loosened as she climbed up, floated in the wind; her breast rose
and fell as she caught her breath again. A thousand broken lights came
to them where they stood amid the stars. You might have said they were
Youth and Love in the center of the universe.
“How beautiful you are!” said Phil.
“Let us go down,” said Helia.
But as they climbed down there was a sudden cry. A rusty step yielded
under Phil’s weight, and, letting go the hand-rail, he glided toward
the abyss.
Without losing her head, with the rapidity and cool decision of a
trained acrobat, stretching out one arm and holding hard with the
other, and with her breast flat against the wounding rungs, Helia by a
mighty effort grasped Phil’s wrist as he slid past her. The hand-rail
held firm, and Phil was saved. Then they came back again to their
oasis.
“Without you I should have been lost,” said Phil.
“Oh, no!” Helia answered, laughing bravely. “We were almost down, close
to the roof; you would have had a slide, that’s all!”
Phil was moved to tears.
“Come, pull yourself together,” Helia said, “and then to supper!”
She reached out her hand and took an apple gracefully and offered it to
Phil.
“Here, eat!”
Her simple gesture in offering him the apple had, to Phil’s mind,
something grandly Biblical in it, and the idea overpowered him. As she
held out her hand Phil saw that it was bleeding, and exclaimed with
anxiety.
“It is nothing,” she answered; “it was just now—perhaps while I was
holding on to the railing.”
With infinite respect he put his lips to the wound—and suddenly he
seemed to be drinking love at its source; the fire ran through his
veins; he seized Helia with both arms and kissed her full on the mouth,
crushing his lips against hers!
“Helia, I love you! I love you, and you shall be my wife!”
“Your wife! Alas, a poor girl like me! How can you think of it, Phil?”
“And I will serve you on my knees!” said Phil.
He pressed Helia to his heart, and the girl wept for joy. Phil drank
the tears on her cheeks, and murmured words of love—with Heaven as
witness.