CHAPTER VI.

FANFOULLARD, MIRMILLARD, AND PAPILLARD.

Two hours 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 companion had 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 look in 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 upon wooden 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—what a

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 the

_Quartier Latin_. You know the _Quartier Latin_? It is a _farouche_

little 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 the _implementa_ in 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 rest on 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 of

_Gil 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 ever guessed 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, the _Daily Telegraph_. “Satanitie”

had never gone so 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 true

_him_. 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.

Part II.

CHAPTER I.

IT IS NOT ALWAYS MAY.

The next 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, cocked their 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 Princesse Klein 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 to say, 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, who called 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 and _bizarrerie_

of 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. Liard

speak 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 a _petit déjeuner_ now, then drop in to

the Louvre and look at the Primitives, then I would propose _déjeuner_.

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 Chat Noir; 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 our _petit déjeuner_ at the little

_crémerie_ in the Rue du Mont Thabor. You remember the _crémerie_ where

we breakfasted yesterday, Célestin?”

“That delicious little _crémerie_!” 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. He could 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 of _fin-de-siècle_ fairy 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 the _haute 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, and owns 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.

CHAPTER II.

FÊTE CHAMPÊTRE.

He passed 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 some _pâté

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 the

_crémerie_, 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 vowing in 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 they dine, 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. _What_ shall 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 moment more, 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 white lambs 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 his

_protégée_.

“’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, but in 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 in

_Lucifer_, 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,” murmured Gaillard, 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 like to 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 in love. 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.

CHAPTER III.

THE GENESIS OF “PANTIN.”

They returned 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, neither you 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 a habitual 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,

leaving Pelisson 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 a _sergent-de-ville_ is

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 you are 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 a _rendezvous de convenance_,” said the poet. “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 is to 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.”

“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, and _Pantin_ is 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’s_ health 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 with his 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 trick _Pantin_ was destined to

play him!

CHAPTER IV.

RECEIPT FOR STUFFING A MARQUIS.

Some days 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 have

_déjeuner_.”

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 your _ménage_ to-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 his _déjeuner_ and was reading

letters.

“How’s _Pantin_?” 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 lying _perdu_ at 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 circulating _bonmots_ of 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

dodge round 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! _Pantin_ will 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

just as 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—sausages and 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.”

CHAPTER V.

ANGÉLIQUE.

“I envy you,” 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 this jaded 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 a _pompon_ maker.”

“What’s a _pompon_?”

“A _pompon_ is 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

wear _pompons_ in 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 women

_grinning_ at 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 Pelisson

a 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.

CHAPTER VI.

THE DEPARTURE.

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 is like 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 and hung them from a

lamp-post? Where did De Mirecourt get those cats? He suddenly appeared

with them. Do you remember the _sergent-de-ville_ who 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 of wings, 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,” replied Gaillard, 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.

Part III.

CHAPTER I.

GARNIER.

The _rapin_ of 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

the _rapin_, or a more joyous, or a more lovable, or a more pitiable.

And though he is certainly the most consequential creature in 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 the _rapin_. 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

canvases and 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 to

the 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 the _Ami du Peuple_

and 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 some _déjeuner_; 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.”

“_You_ married!” 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 found _déjeuner_

waiting. 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 “Mysteries of Paris”

and imagining himself Prince Rudolph, and of a week-day night reading

the _Intransigèant_ by 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.

After _déjeuner_ he 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 he played _café-chantant_

songs, 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. That hare

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 the _Intransigèant_, and wandered home to read it, reminding

Toto as they parted to give his regards to Célestin.

CHAPTER II.

THE SORROWS OF GAILLARD.

A week passed, 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

accounts with 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 in to 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 little _ménage_ in 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.

“_Pantin_ is out,” said Gaillard, collapsing into a chair and flinging

all his books on the floor. He produced a heavy and respectable-looking

journal from 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 a _bonmot_ in 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 and

_Pantin_. 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 glass of vermouth, and feeling a dim sort of

pleasure at his trouble.

“He has been working like a mole for months. You know the _Trumpet_;

it came to grief last month; he has bought the plant and offices for

a song. They are situated near the offices of the _Figaro_ in 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 a

_cabinet particulier_ at 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 abominable

_Pantin_; 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 bourgeoisie on 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? Everywhere I 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 and your conscience; _I_ will

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.’ They had 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 coming on. 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 of

shining 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 is _Pantin_?”

“_Pantin_ is very well. Has not Pelisson offered you the art

criticisms?”

“Yes; but I am too busy to be bothered by _Pantins_.”

“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 of _Pantin_ in 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 above _Pantin_; 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

daily to 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 of _Pantin_ in 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 of _Pantin_; 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,

for _Pantin_ would then be well rooted, and any fiasco of bankruptcy

would only make _Pantin_ bloom 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 the _beau 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 with women 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.

CHAPTER III.

THE SORROWS OF ART.

Like Pelisson, 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 so joyous, 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 a _vieux 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 influenced the 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 she used 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 the _Libre

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.

“The cover,” said Gaillard, “has spoiled the sale a good deal. You

have no idea of the influence of a cover on a book: devils have gone

out of fashion in the last month. It’s all owing to that exposure of

the Satanists—silly fools!—and of course it is just my luck, for I

have a little brochure in proof called ‘Bon Jour, Satan.’ Well, then,

I must change the title, and what does that mean? Why, rewriting the

book. People are turning religious, it seems; that is where art hits

one. The silly public takes a whim into its head; the artist must meet

it or starve. I had a meeting with Chauvin, my publisher, to-day. You

should have seen his face. He declares the market for poetry is dead,

and the silly fool wants me to write him something manly and religious.

We nearly came to words, but we made it up. I am actually like a rat in

a horrible trap. Do, Toto, act as a friend in this matter, and till the

end of the month, when my royalties are due——”

“It is absolutely disgusting,” Gaillard would murmur to himself as he

made for home after these expeditions. “It is like asking a loan from a

laborer. He takes out a few francs and looks at them as if they were

his last, and that little Célestin, I believe she puts him up to resist

lending; I believe she puts all his spare money into the money-box of

that wretched lark. I believe she is in love with that great fat beast

who smells of garlic, and who always runs away when I come, as if he

feared the presence of a gentleman; that is the lark she is saving up

for. Yes, some day Toto will wake up to find nothing but a smell of

garlic and Célestin flown. It will serve him right.”