troubles on the back of Célestin, always sure of attention and
commiseration. And smoking his eternal cigarettes, he would pour into
her ear the horrors of life, the futility of Pelisson, the detestable
nature of De Brie, and the villainy of De Nani. Sometimes Toto,
returning after one of these séances had lasted an hour or so, would
find Célestin looking almost old, and with tears in her heavenly eyes.
“I have been telling her a society fairy tale,” would say Gaillard.
CHAPTER IV.
BOURGEOIS—BANKER—PRINCE.
It was now June, and lately Toto had become subject to moods, or, to
speak more correctly, fits of moodiness. He had now for a month or more
been living face to face with Art, and the prolonged interview with
that lady was bearing fruit in his manners and customs.
Three weeks ago he would not have cared very much had Paris known of
his mode of life and ridiculed him for it. Cocksure, and blinded by the
_fata Morgana_ of success, he would have shaken his palette in the face
of Paris; but Art had changed all that.
“Art is not a wanton, to be hired for a night,” said Garnier one day in
answer to a remark of Toto’s. “_Mon Dieu!_ no; she is like that woman
in the Bible whose courting took seven years, and then again seven
years, and seven years again. Work, and don’t think, work and don’t
think.”
Easy advice to give. Toto was now continually thinking. He was in a
worse Bastille than that from which Latude made his escape, for he had
devised his own bondhouse, and the prison a man makes for himself is of
all prisons, perhaps, the most difficult to leave.
He dreaded now meeting anyone that he knew, and in the street going to
and from the studio glanced about him with the eyes of a frightened
hare. As yet no one knew of his folly but Gaillard, Helen Powers, and
his mother, but, indeed, that audience, together with his self-respect,
were quite enough to keep him performing a little while longer.
Then there was Célestin. The unutterable contentment and bliss of
Célestin with her new life filled the heart of Toto sometimes now with
a vague sort of terror. She seemed to think that this sort of thing was
to go on forever. Her love for him, expressed in a thousand different
ways, seemed to spring from infinity itself, and love like this is to
the beloved either a blessing beyond all blessings or a curse. To Toto
just now it was not a blessing.
Of course, by a cab to the Nord, or the L’Ouest, or the Orleans
railway, and a ticket to anywhere, and a few months’ absence, he could
have put everything to rights. Paris, like a cold gray sea, would
have washed over Célestin and Dodor, washed away the furniture of the
atelier, washed away his memory from the _rapins_ at Melmenotte’s, and
obliterated all traces. Paris, whose motto is “I have forgotten,” would
not trouble even to repeat those funereal and final words over this
small escapade.
But Toto was not the person to leave Célestin and Dodor to the mercies
of Paris. In some unaccountable way Célestin had drawn the better parts
of his nature to herself; to wound her would be to wound himself. If
he thought Célestin were weeping alone in some attic, it would have
taken the pleasure from life, and spoiled his digestion, and filled his
nights with nightmares, for his better parts would have been weeping
with her. In short, though capable of a foolish action, he was as yet
incapable of a ruffianly, and as a result he was unhappy. A perfectly
happy fool must always, I think, be a ruffian.
One day Garnier, who called frequently now as a friend of the family,
found Célestin on the verge of tears. The tulip in the red-tile pot had
died, and she was inconsolable. She declared that she would never keep
another when Garnier offered to replace it.
“Never mind,” said the painter; “I will procure you a flower that will
not die.”
A juggler who had lodged once in the same house had instructed him
in the manufacture of roses that never die, immortal tulips, and
decay-defying camellias. They were made from turnips cunningly carved
and dyed in cochineal. Camellias were the easiest to make, roses more
difficult, whilst tulips, strange to say, were the most difficult of
all. The tulip had first to be blocked out roughly from the succulent
root; then the exterior had to be carved, and lastly, the whole thing
hollowed neatly.
So Garnier took a day off, and procured a turnip and a knife, some
cochineal, and all the other necessary paraphernalia, and, with his
work cut out before him, locked his door. This room of Garnier’s was
close to the roof, and from its window one could see the spires of
Notre Dame by standing on a chair. A desperate-looking cat lived here,
whose life had been saved by the artist one morning as he was starting
to work. It had repaid him lately by kittening under his bed. In one
corner of the room lay a pile of newspapers, on the chimney-piece some
books—Rousseau’s “Nouvelle Héloïse” in paper covers; a little book of
German fairy tales, which he could not read, but which he treasured
because of the delightful pictures; “The Mysteries of Paris,” which he
had read four times; and a few others.
On this floor also there was a large atelier kept up by three young men
from the South, who did their own cooking, so that the place was always
filled with the sound of frying and the smell of garlic. They did their
own washing, too, and so defied the laundress; they also at times
defied the landlord when he threatened to turn them out. They had got
an old banjo from somewhere, and, needless to say, they played on it.
Garnier worked in this atelier when he was not working elsewhere. He
loved its discords, and never painted better than when Castanet was
playing the banjo, Lorillard accompanying him on a comb, and Floquet
frying things over the stove, for then he imagined himself back in
Provence, and the atelier became flooded with the light that never was
in Paris except on the canvas of a Diaz or a Garnier.
Floquet had a sweetheart, who sat to him for love, and of course also
to his friends. She darned Castanet’s stockings, for he wore them out
in some miraculous way quicker than anyone else. As for Lorillard, he
never wore stockings—at least, in summer—and laughed at people who did.
Altogether they were as disreputable a colony as one could find in the
whole quarter, but as good-hearted as they were jolly. Castanet, be it
observed, was a law student; he lived with the others just as the owl
lives with the prairie-dogs, because he liked them.
All these people noticed a change that had come over Garnier during the
last fortnight. He was abstracted, he sighed, he laughed at nothing,
burst out laughing sometimes as he painted, in a happy manner, as if
a child had performed some antic for his amusement, and then a few
minutes later he would give a little groan. He no longer cast his
brushes joyously aside when Floquet turned the shrieking and fizzing
pan of fish stewed in garlic onto a dish; his appetite had diminished.
The fact was, the great Garnier was miraculously in love. When an
elephant falls into a pit he does it in a whole-hearted manner; so fell
Garnier into this passion. Célestin had been for him that dangerous
thing—a revelation. She had eclipsed the _Intransigèant_, and robbed
Henri Rochefort of his power; she had touched Prince Rudolph, and he
had slunk back into his impossible mysteries; she had taken the charm
from garlic, and even the wizard café lost its fascination.
Yet for all this he was not in love with Célestin in the ordinary
acceptation of the term. He never dreamt of marriage with her, simply
because during the last twelve days he had become miraculously married
to her. She dwelt with him always now in that atelier he called his
head. There she made her hats, trimming them with sunbeams, and turning
to him for admiration with her celestial smile.
She was the wife of his soul. Never was there a purer passion begotten
of man and woman; yet, strangely enough, it did not purify him. He
talked of women in the same old free-and-easy way, and the jokes of
Castanet, Lorillard, Floquet & Co. did not shock him.
Had Célestin lived in a romance, she would doubtless have cast her
light on womanhood. She would have elevated Garnier, and he certainly
would have been none the worse for that. In reality, however, her
effulgence showed him nothing but herself.
She had such pretty ways. Her slightest movement had a deeply artistic
meaning. She interpreted unspoken sentences with a motion of her hands.
A poppy swaying in the wind had not the grace of Célestin crossing the
floor to put the little kettle on the stove. Her talk seemed a strange
sister of Dodor’s song. And then the way she had of casting her eyes up
to heaven! Her gaze always seemed to return bluer from that journey,
and filled with light gathered from the ghostly distance.
She was all those twelve children he had longed for rolled into one,
and much more besides. She was one of those delightful little cherubs
over the fonts in the Church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois; she was the
wind that waved the trees at Barbizon, the flowers that blew to the
wind, and the sparrows that flew in the street; she was Mistigris, the
cat who lived under his bed, and each of Mistigris’s six kittens. For
all of these things that he loved when he thought of, beheld, or felt
them, reminded him of Célestin.
He labored away over his tulip, carving at it with infinite care.
Castanet came and kicked at his door, and asked him what he was doing,
and then he felt the eye of Castanet peering through the key-hole, and
heard his voice informing Floquet that Garnier was writing a letter to
his sweetheart. Then the banjo struck up, and the doleful sound of
the comb laboring out “Partant pour la Syrie” mixed with the sound of
Lorillard washing his shirt and beating it between his hands as a sort
of accompaniment to the music.
Then the flower was at last accomplished—a bit too thick in the petal,
perhaps, but still a fairly accurate representation. He dyed it with
the cochineal, and mounted it on a little green stick he had prepared
to do duty for a stalk. It was a poor child for so great an artist to
produce, yet he smiled at it in a satisfied manner, for it reminded him
of Célestin.
He then went to the atelier of Castanet & Co. to see if he could get a
piece of fish for Mistigris, who had come out from under the bed with a
kitten in her mouth, as if to remind him that she was the mother of a
family and required sustaining. And when he had fed her, he darted off
with the tulip in his hand, making for the Rue de Perpignan, regardless
of the ribaldry of his compatriots, who were watching him from their
window away up near the roof. He hurried along like a man pursuing
fortune, or as if fearful that the tulip would wither. Toto was out,
but Célestin was at home mending a glove.
“Ah, _ciel_!” cried Célestin, as she held the tulip out between finger
and thumb. “What a marvelous thing! You made it, and from a turnip! It
is a miracle!”
“We will plant it!” cried Garnier, running about with the red-tile pot
in his hand, and looking for some place in which to throw the dead
flower. There was a sink outside the door; he cast it there.
Then they planted the new tulip, pressing the mold tightly around the
base of the stick, and hardly was the thing accomplished when Toto
entered, looking worried, and as if he had been walking in a hurry.
“Yes, it is very nice,” said Toto in the manner of an absent-minded
parent as they called upon him to admire their handiwork.
He kissed Célestin without fervor, and then, pulling Garnier aside by
the arm, invited him to come outside for a moment and have a glass of
beer, and give his advice about a picture.
“I have had a row at the studio,” said Toto, when they were in the
street.
“Eh! what? with Melmenotte?”
“No, that fool Jolly. I knocked him down.”
“What! you did that? _Boufre!_ but it will do him a lot of good, that
same Jolly. I have often wished to do so myself, but I am too big, and
he is too small. You are more of his size. And why did you knock him
down?”
“He told me I wasn’t able to paint, that any _demi-mondaine_ had more
art in painting her face than I had in painting a picture.”
“But that is nothing; we all tell each other things like that.”
“Yes, but he meant it; and, he said it in such an insulting manner,
and, besides, he only said it because I had refused to lend him more
money.”
“So you knocked him down!” cried Garnier, breaking into a roar of
laughter. “_Mon Dieu!_ and I missed it! I would have given five francs
to have been there.”
They entered a little café, and Toto called for two bocks.
“I am very unhappy,” said Toto as he sipped his beer.
“What! about that rascal Jolly?”
“Oh, no; it is not that. I am unhappy about a lot of things. I wish I
had never come to the Rue de Perpignan.”
“Oh!”
“Yes, tell me something seriously. How long do you think it will be
before I am able to exhibit?”
Garnier shifted about in his seat. He did not know exactly what to
say; he had never considered Toto’s art seriously. His father had a
shop, and the son, after dabbling a while with art, would doubtless end
happily behind the counter. He was having his _Wanderjahr_ now. Even at
the worst he might become a great artist. Who could tell? And who was
Garnier that he should throw water on another man’s aspirations?
“Five years,” said Garnier. “You see, you are only beginning. The
great thing in art is time; nothing is done without time and patience.
Another thing: one must not think. Work away and don’t think. Don’t
ask ‘How am I getting on?’ or, at least, only on New Year’s Day. Then,
enjoy yourself, and keep your eyes open. Paris is a big atelier. An
artist wants to study movement as well as the nude. I never walk down
the street but I pick up something; it all comes in handy. If you want
to paint life, you must dip your brush in everything, even mud. Those
old men who spent their lives painting pots and pans and saints leave
me cold. I would like to clap the Rue St. Honoré into a canvas—will,
too, some day. I don’t think there is anything more fine in nature than
a fire-engine going full speed to a fire, except, maybe, a dragon-fly.”
Garnier buried his nose in his glass, and Toto put his chin on his
palm, his elbow on the table, and stared before him, as if gazing at a
cheerless view.
“Or a girl flinging up her arms to yawn,” continued Garnier. “Girls are
all art—that is why they make such rotten artists; but they are natural
when they are flinging up their arms to yawn, or stooping to tie their
garters, because then they think no one is looking at them, or they
don’t care.”
He held out a handful of cigarettes, and Toto took one.
“I have never seen Célestin yawn,” said Toto in a meditative voice, as
he lit the cigarette.
“Heavens! no,” said Garnier.
“Why not?”
“The gift of weariness is not given to her. Have you ever seen a
butterfly yawn, or a happy child?”
“She _is_ happy!” said Toto in a half-regretful voice.
“She is happiness, you mean. _Mon Dieu!_ yes, she is happiness; as
for me, when I see her I always feel ten years younger, twenty years
younger when she speaks, thirty years younger when she smiles.”
“You are only twenty-five.”
“Oh, yes; so you see, Mlle. Célestin’s smile puts me back to five years
before my birth. I was then an angel, a fat little angel in the cherub
cage; there I would have been still had not the Father Eternal put in
his hand and taken me out, and flung me to the blue, crying ‘Try your
wings.’ That is how the business is managed: the world is pursued by a
flock of cherubs in search of a roost; when they overtake the world,
they take it by storm, people want to marry, and that makes spring;
when the world outstrips them that makes winter. I have never begotten
a child, so I have never given a perch to one of those sparrow angels,
worse luck!” and Garnier sighed and called for more beer.
“Shall I tell you something?” asked Toto, who had been slowly making up
his mind as the painter prattled.
“Why, yes!”
“Well, you remember, when I met you first, you asked me what my father
was. I said he had a shop. Well, I told you a lie.”
“_Ma foi!_ why not? What do I care what your father is?—you are a good
fellow. That is enough for me. We all boast a bit, we artists.”
“I was not exactly boasting,” said Toto, knocking the ash off his
cigarette in a nervous manner. “My father made all his money out of a
bank.”
“You don’t mean to say he is a banker!” said Garnier, opening his eyes
in astonishment, for a banker to Garnier was a much more extraordinary
person than even one of those cherubs he talked about.
“No; not exactly a banker: he was a partner in a great bank. He was
always awfully ashamed of the bank. He is dead, you know.”
“Ashamed of being a banker!” gasped Garnier. “What sort of man was he?”
“He was an awfully funny old fellow. I can just remember him. He
scarcely ever spoke to me; he was very stiff and straight, and he used
to paint his face and wear stays.”
“He was mad, then?” said Garnier.
“Not he; he was as sane as I am—saner; for I believe I am cracked. No
matter, it’s not my fault; I did not make myself.”
“Paint his face and wear stays and ashamed of being a banker,” murmured
Garnier. “You are not making an April fish of me? No, you can’t be, for
it is the second of June.”
“No, I wish I was; but I have a lot more to tell. You know I came down
here to paint and live in the Rue de Perpignan a little more than a
month ago. Well, I thought I was going to be a great artist. No, worse
than that: I thought I was a great artist.”
“So do we all, till we find out the right side of our palettes,” said
Garnier.
“Well, I am only a dauber; don’t say no—I have been finding it out in
the last week. I didn’t want that fellow Jolly to tell me; that’s what
made me so angry, I suppose, for I knew he was telling me the truth.
Well, I am sick of it all; the pleasure is all gone from my life. I
have a lot of anxieties; it is like being in prison. When I go out on
the street, even here in this quarter, where I am not likely to come
across anyone, I have to be always on the watch for fear of meeting
anyone I know; I always look down a street before I walk down it.”
“Ah, yes! I know that feeling. There are three streets forbidden to me
just at present; they are barricaded by creditors.”
“Oh, it is not creditors I fear.”
“What then?”
“Friends.”
“_Mon Dieu!_ what a funny man you are! What is there pleasanter to meet
than a friend?”
“Yes; but don’t you understand? I don’t want my friends to know that I
am an artist.”
“And, for Heaven’s sake, why not?”
“Well, for one thing, they would laugh at me.”
“Laugh at you for being an artist! Sacred Heaven! what a funny man you
are, and what funny friends you must have! And why should they laugh at
you for being an artist?”
“Well, you see, they don’t know anything about art, for one thing.”
“Ah, I can see those friends of yours!” said Garnier, with an inspired
air. “Old religious ladies, aunts, and what not,—they drive in
carriages with pug dogs,—and old gentlemen with the Legion of Honor.”
“Not at all; my friends are quite young.”
“Who are they, then?”
“Well, there is Eugène Valfray, son of the railway man.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Then there is the Prince de Harnac—Gustave.”
“What, you know a Prince!”
“Why, man, I am a Prince.”
“You are a what?”
“I am a Prince,” said Toto shamefacedly.
“Ah, _mon Dieu!_ what a droll you are!” cried Garnier, breaking into a
laugh. “First you are a bourgeois, then you are a banker, then you are
a Prince.”
“I am not joking; I am what I say.”
“But,” cried Garnier, sobered by the serious face of Toto, “you a
Prince, sitting here at the Trois Frères with me! Come now! a joke is
all very well up to a certain point; beyond that it makes one feel
giddy. Besides, you are not like a Prince.”
“For Heaven’s sake, what _is_ a Prince like?” asked Toto, half
laughing, half vexed. “I have never seen a Prince that was different
from anyone else; they are generally more stupid, perhaps, but that is
all.”
“But what are you Prince of?” cried the painter, belief and disbelief
battling in his mind.
“My father was a prince of the Roman Empire. I am the same, of course,
now that he is dead.”
“But, my dear child!” cried the Provençal, to whom a Prince was a
Prince, no matter what empire he belonged to, “what made you come
amongst us at Melmenotte’s? it is like what one reads in a romance,
all this. I could not have believed it. And what made you come to live
in the Rue de Perpignan? And Célestin! Ah, _ciel!_ I see it all now:
she is a Princess; that is what makes her different from other people.
A Princess! she has made me coffee, whilst I have talked to her as to
a child. I have carved for her a tulip out of a turnip, and I never
guessed who she was, when it was plain before me written all over her——”
“You are wrong,” said Toto in a troubled voice. “She is not a Princess;
I wish she were. Listen, my friend, and I will tell you all. I want
your advice.”
He told the little story of his meeting with Célestin, everything; he
sketched rapidly a portrait of his mother; then he paused to let the
tale sink in, and Garnier rubbed his chin.
“But what made you do all this?” asked the painter at last. “You could
have painted at home.”
“I don’t know; I was so sick of it all. I wanted a change, I wanted to
do for myself; it seemed so jolly to have an atelier, and live in a
blouse and work; then, besides—I can’t explain exactly, but I felt as
if I wanted to grow: a lot of people had deceived me. They did not mean
it, I suppose, but they praised my work; besides, I felt that they were
laughing at me behind my back.”
He told the story of De Nani, and the truth that had escaped from him
in drink; he felt no shame in confiding his troubles to Garnier. All
great-minded people have this in common. They resemble priests; we
confess to them openly what we would not whisper to little minds.
“Ah, well,” said Garnier, “there are rogues in every trade, and that
old man is a rogue. _Mon Dieu!_ I am not straitlaced; but there are
two things I cannot stand by and see: an old man drunk, and an old man
following a woman. Do not think of him, but tell me now, what does it
feel like to be a Prince? Oh, I should like to be a Prince just for an
hour! I would dress myself in ermine and walk down the Rue de Rivoli.
Ah! you are laughing, but I would. I would call my servants and give
them orders, just to hear them call me M. le Prince. I would call at
Melmenotte’s, and walk about the atelier trailing my skirts. _Mon
Dieu!_ yes, I should like to be a Prince just for an hour.”
“And then?”
“Oh, I would kick off my togs and come back and be an artist. Just as
you will kick off your togs and go back to be a Prince; one always
returns to one’s trade.”
“You think I will go back to be a Prince?”
“Why, of course.”
“Would you advise me to?”
“Why, of course, when you are tired of your atelier you will put on
your crown.”
“I have no crown,” said Toto; “but I will no doubt return and put on a
tall hat. What troubles me is Célestin.”
“Ah! Célestin!”
“She does not know who I am.”
Garnier frowned slightly.
“She would not have loved me, I think, if I had told her, poor child!
She has a great awe of titled people; she makes hats for them. She will
never do that again, anyhow.”
“Still,” said Garnier, “you ought to have told her.”
“Why? I don’t see why.”
“You have told me, yet you would hide what I know from that angel of
light. That is not as it should be. Take it as a man. How would you
like Mlle. Célestin to deceive you? The thing is impossible, but,
still——”
“Perhaps you are right; and I wish I had never met her.”
Garnier frowned again.
“You do not love her, then?”
“Oh, yes; I do. It is not that, but my mother, and all the people I
know. Not that I care a button—not a button; let them all go to the
devil.”
“Ah, now you speak like a man! And will you tell Célestin all that you
have told to me?”
“I will. I will tell her this evening.”
But when evening came, and he sat alone with Célestin on the couch in
the lamplight, and when he took her hand saying “I want to tell you
something; I ought to have told it to you before,” the words dried up;
he could not tell her of his position in the world; besides, he knew
her inevitable answer, “What matter, so long as we love each other?” It
always came when difficulties arose—if the beef was understewed or the
wine sour, if the cats kept them awake or if the door of Dodor’s cage
got jammed.
“Célestin, I ought to have told you before; but do you know that,
though we live here in this atelier and are happy enough, God knows—do
you know that I am—awfully poor?”
“What matter? What does anything matter, so long as we love each
other?” sighed Célestin.
“I will tell you all about myself some day,” said Toto. “I have not
told you I have a mother.”
“Ah, how I would love to see her! How happy, that is, to have a mother!
As for me, I never had a mother.”
“Perhaps it is just as well you had not.”
“I will tell you,” said Célestin: “we will share your mother. I will
take one-half of her heart, and you will have the other, like those
ogres in that fairy tale of dear M. Gaillard’s.”
“Thanks,” said Toto; “you may have it all.”
CHAPTER V.
THE SHOWER.
“Dodor, we are very poor,” said Célestin next morning. She had taken
the lark from its cage, and was holding the little warm, brown body to
her breast.
Toto had gone out to slink about the streets in a miserable state of
mind. He was deadly tired of his atelier—Art had pulled his ears; yet
he was ashamed to go home. Besides, how about Célestin?
He felt like a child who had stolen a fiddle, unable to play on it,
tired of it, afraid to return it, and wavering for a moment ere he
throws it into the nearest ditch. It was ten o’clock in the morning.
“So,” continued Célestin, putting the lark back in its cage, “I am
going to make some money.”
Her head was full of echoes begotten of Toto’s words last night, “I am
very poor,” and plans begotten of the echoes. She had all her life
been well-to-do; by some special provision of God’s, instead of her
seeking work, work had always stolen to seek her fingers; the winds
had blown tulle and artificial roses across her path; Mme. Hümmel had
supplied her with foundations, and art had done the rest.
So it was a new sensation to hear the wolf scratch at the door, rather
fearful, yet almost pleasurable: for was not Toto with her, and so long
as they loved each other what did anything matter?
She had three hats finished—four, in fact, but only three for sale. For
the fourth was the one she had made that morning,—the morning of the
honeymoon,—and it was not for sale. She could not think of allowing
another woman to wear it, so she put it on her head, determining to
wear it herself.
She had on a dress of lilac-colored nun’s cloth. She made the three
hats up in a parcel, and then drew on a pair of lilac-colored gloves.
“How grand Mme. Hümmel will think I have become!” said Célestin, as she
departed.
Even the old Rue de Perpignan looked young this morning. It was a
blissful and dreamy day; heavy showers had fallen in the early morning,
leaving a perfume in the air, faint, as if from the gardens of Paradise.
She reached Verral’s in the Rue St. Honoré without any surprising
adventure, and entered by the side door that leads to the workrooms.
These lay behind the showrooms, the buzz and murmur of which penetrated
the thin partitions dividing the one from the other. The atmosphere was
warm and filled with that oppressive smell which comes from millinery
in a mass. Size, varnish, and glue contributed their odors, whilst the
air vibrated with the whir of sewing machines from the rooms above.
“Ah, the little Célestin!” cried Mme. Hümmel, a stout Alsatian in black
silk, and with a good-natured face.
“I sent a girl to the Rue de Babylone only last week to see if you were
dead, and they said you were married. Bad child not to have told me! I
was frightened. I could not sleep at night, saying to myself, ‘Where
is that Célestin?’ So you have brought me some hats?”
She led the way to her private room, and looked at the hats, and
praised them a little: for it does not do to lavish praise on
employees; they are apt to wax fat on it and kick for higher prices, as
Mme. Hümmel had learnt in the course of her experience.
Then she ran away to get some money, and Célestin stood by the table,
on which lay feathers, patterns of silk, and those _pompons_ which,
according to Gaillard, were the mainstay and support of the mysterious
Angélique.
“This is for the work,” said Mme. Hümmel, paying the stipulated amount,
“and this is for yourself. It is a wedding gift. Poor child! are you
happy?”
“Oh, very happy!” said Célestin, putting the napoleon just given to her
for a wedding gift into her glove, and the six francs into her purse.
“Happier than I can tell. How good it is of you! A whole napoleon! I
never thought—I——”
“No, do not thank me. You are a good child, and I am sure you will make
him happy. You must bring him to see me some Saturday. I will lecture
him for you. And is he dark or fair? and what is his name?”
“He is dark, and his name is Désiré.”
“And his other name?”
“I don’t know,” said Célestin. “He told me once, and I have forgotten.
How stupid it is of me!”
Mme. Hümmel smothered a little laugh.
“So you do not know his surname? _Mon Dieu!_ what a droll child you
are!”
“I don’t remember it. My head will not hold names; it is like a sieve.
I am very silly.” And Célestin, blushing and shaking the good woman by
the hand, departed, whilst Madame cried after her, “Be sure and bring
him some Saturday for me to lecture him,” little thinking that this
young man with the forgettable surname was Toto, son of Verral’s best
customer, Mme. la Princesse de Cammora.
Célestin walked away, so lost in her napoleon that she did not notice
the clouds hurrying up from the southwest. Like everything fortunate,
the napoleon was a gift from the good God. Toto was one of these
gifts, or, rather, the chief of them; and as she made her way along the
busy street, she cast her eyes up several times as if returning thanks
through the brim of her hat to those favored angels, her guardians.
A thought had crossed her mind. She would get a money-box for Toto and
save up for him, for what would happen if she were to die, and he were
left like the artist in that terrible play at the Porte St. Martin?
Already, in fancy, she was supporting him by her hats whilst he pursued
his beautiful art to fame.
But if she were to die? Her lips trembled. Those two children of
hers, Toto and Dodor! They crossed her imagination together, feckless
creatures, one so like the other in character, either jumping about
on their perches, or moping, irresponsible, and terribly in need of
someone to tidy their cages, talk to them, and love them.
She was passing a frightful criticism on Toto, but she did not know it.
Perhaps the only people who criticise us justly are the people who love
us, for our perfections and imperfections are to them all one country,
and of that country perhaps our imperfections are the fairest part.
Just as she reached the middle of the Place de la Concorde the clouds
burst. It was like a huge shower bath, of which the string had suddenly
been pulled. In a second the Madeleine and Rue Royale on one hand, and
the big letters announcing the Chamber of Deputies on the other, were
veiled by sheets of rain.
Célestin awoke suddenly from her painful, half-pleasurable reverie,
to find herself drenched. She had no umbrella, and her friends the
omnibuses were not near, so she ran through sheets of rain, till her
hat was ruined, and then she hid in a doorway, panting, and with her
hand to her breast. The shower spent itself in ten minutes, and the
day smiled out again brighter than ever. So she pursued her way to
the Rue de Perpignan, wet to the skin, and rejecting the idea of an
omnibus because of the expense for one thing, and, besides, she was wet
already, and it was safer to walk and keep warm.
When she reached the atelier she found Toto carefully drying himself at
the stove. He, too, had been caught by the rain, but not so badly.
She insisted upon his taking off his coat, and whilst it was drying she
talked to him and laughed to cheer him up. Then she spread the cloth
on the table, for it was time for _déjeuner_, and lastly she went to
the bedroom, like a prudent person, and changed her things. But the
beautiful hat was ruined beyond redemption, and as she gazed at it she
gave a little shiver.
That evening, when the lamp was lit, she told Toto all about Mme.
Hümmel, the selling of the hats, the gift of the napoleon, and the
desire of the forewoman to see him and lecture him.
Toto listened half unconsciously. He was already revolving in his mind
plans of escape from his cage. He had fixed upon Gaillard as the man of
all others to help him, but he had not seen Gaillard now for four days.
As Célestin finished her story—she was sitting upon the floor, her head
resting against Toto’s knee—a shudder ran through her, and her teeth
chattered.
“Why,” cried Toto, “what is this? What makes you shiver so?”
“I don’t know,” said Célestin, half laughing. “I did not do it on
purpose;” and again the rigor seized her, as if someone were shaking
her by the shoulder. “I will go to bed,” she said, rising to her feet.
“My head swims.”
“I hope she is not going to be ill,” thought the Prince to himself.
“And I do wish Gaillard would come. What can have happened to him?”
Part IV.
CHAPTER I.
ADAM FROISSART.
Nothing in particular had happened to Gaillard, yet the poet was in
tribulation. To begin with, all his friends were too busy to attend
to or amuse themselves with him. Struve was writing his book, or,
rather, correcting the proof sheets, an employment that kept him short
of temper and time; Pelisson had only one idea—_Pantin_; Toto was
crabbedly finding out his own stupidity in the Rue de Perpignan; whilst
De Brie had turned very acid over his connection with the new journal,
and flung him commissions for little articles or volumes for review as
if they were bones to a dog.
Then his publisher had informed him, with a very long face, that only
three hundred copies of “The Fall of the Damned” had sold in three
weeks, whereas three thousand of “Satanitie” had gone off in the same
time.
To make matters worse, Papillard had stopped working; De Nani had
frozen him. De Nani he felt to be the cause of all his misfortunes, and
he only continued to exist—so he told himself—that he might witness De
Nani’s downfall.
You may imagine, then, how pleased he felt when, on the morning after
the same showery day that drenched Célestin, Pelisson appeared in his
rooms before eight o’clock, and pulled up his blinds.
“Wake up! I want Adam Froissart’s address,” cried Pelisson, standing
over the poet, and poking him with his stick to rouse him.
“Froissart!” cried Gaillard, rubbing his eyes. “He is not in Paris.”
“Where is he, then?”
“He is in—Amiens,” said Gaillard.
Froissart was a spiteful genius who possessed the unsavory humor
of Papillard. No one had ever seen him, and his sole title to
consideration lay in three malevolent articles leveled against De Brie
and his political tendencies. They had been submitted to Pelisson by
Gaillard, and so had found their way into the _Débats_. Pelisson,
who noted down everything, had made a memorandum of this gentleman’s
abilities. De Brie had done likewise, and though he hated this unknown
journalist, he would have given a good deal to secure him as a member
of his staff. He had expressed the desire in the hearing of Gaillard,
and he might have obtained his wish, only that Froissart’s genius for
malevolence was useless when expended against anyone else than De Brie.
Needless to say, there was no Froissart. He belonged to the shadowy
band that included Fanfoullard, Mirmillard, Papillard, Églantine, and
Angélique.
“This is a great nuisance,” grumbled Pelisson, rubbing his chin.
“What do you want of Froissart?”
“I am going to sack De Nani, and I want a man to take his place.”
Gaillard’s countenance became glorified.
“But, my dear Pierre, why seek for Froissart? Are there not plenty of
men of ability in Paris to take the place of this silly old villain of
a De Nani?”
“Hundreds, but no use to me. I don’t want one of your bright diamonds—I
want a man in the rough; I don’t want an editor—I want a creature,
a clever one, too, now: for, upon my soul, I am becoming exhausted
between keeping _Pantin_ and De Nani going at the same time. You said
this Froissart was poor.”
“Frightfully.”
“That’s just what I want.”
“But I believe he has an aunt who is very rich, and I heard she was
dying some little time ago. I would not seek Froissart, Pierre; believe
me, he is a very acid man, and quite unfit for an editor. If you want
the sort of person you say you want, why not try me? I will do whatever
you wish, and write whatever you wish.”
“No, no!” cried Pelisson hastily; “it would not do. You are a
poet—stick to your last. Besides, I have been bombarded with your
creditors; I’ve had enough of that. That is one of the reasons I am
sacking De Nani. The old fool has burst the bladder. Someone went to
Auteuil to make inquiries, and found he was living in three rooms,
and owed money to his laundress. You can fancy how the news has flown
amongst his creditors. Next thing someone will find out that he is a
fool.”
“But why not edit the thing yourself?”
“So I do; but I want a shield. _Pantin_ will begin to bellow soon.
Well, no matter; I am off for Amiens. I won’t be back till to-morrow.
What’s this man’s address?”
“He lives in a cottage near the railway station; you will easily find
it—there are roses on the porch. But, see here; who’s taking charge
till you return?”
“De Nani, nominally; he cannot do any harm in one day. Besides, I have
left everything cut and dried.”
“Does he know he is getting the sack?”
“I should think so. He and I have been at the office all night talking
things over. He is quite resigned—going to cut and run. I left him
asleep on the sofa. Now good-by. The cottage near the railway station,
you say. _Mon Dieu!_ I will scarcely have time to catch the train.”
He darted off, and Gaillard sank down again in bed filled with the
bliss of satisfied hatred. De Nani was down at last; the little world
of æsthetic people who required “Satanities” and “Falls of the Damned”
would now, perhaps, give their Gaillard undivided attention. He never
once thought of Pelisson gone off on a wild-goose chase to Amiens,
and soon he forgot even De Nani, immersed in visions of an impossible
Gaillard worshiped by an impossible world.
Mme. Plon came in and placed _Pantin_ on the foot of his bed, and a
letter in a blue envelope. The letter looked like a bill, so he left
it whilst he glanced at the journal with languid interest. Then he
picked up the letter, which had been left by a messenger, and, to his
surprise, found that it was from De Nani.
“My Dear M. Gaillard [said De Nani]: May I ask you to call upon me
immediately on receipt of this? It is of the utmost importance that
I should see you without a moment’s delay.”
It was written upon the office paper, bearing the stamp “_Pantin_, No.
——, Rue Drouot. Rédacteur, M. le Marquis de Nani. Cable and telegraphic
address: ‘Pouf.’ Telephone: No. 1654320.” Over all, the motto and
watchword of the journal: “_Qui vive?_”
“Now, what can he want?” murmured Gaillard. “It is like his
impertinence to send for me as if I were his footboy. I shall not go.”
And he turned over on his side. But no mongoose was ever of a more
inquisitive nature than our friend Gaillard. What could De Nani want,
and without a moment’s delay? He tried to imagine and failed, and then
arose and dressed.
M. le Marquis de Nani was in the inner office. Since the night of
Toto’s dinner-party at the Grand Café he had grown fat, or, at least,
decidedly fatter. His raiment was superb; he had adorned his stomach
with a gold and platinum watch-chain. He wore a shawl waistcoat, and
his cuff-links, of dull gold, were enameled with pictures of tiny
champagne bottles and opera dancers.
He was standing before the indifferent looking-glass that adorned the
mantel, examining his face and informing Scribe, the cashier, that
_Pantin_ had given him ten new wrinkles. A café near by had just sent
in _déjeuner_ for two and a bottle of Pommery.
“I am expecting M. Gaillard to breakfast,” explained De Nani. “A most
promising young man, whose interests I have at heart.”
Scribe bowed and left the room. He was a shock-headed man, with musical
instincts and a genius for figures; he held the Marquis in great
reverence, and had an implicit faith in him that somewhat troubled
Pelisson. Yet what could Pelisson do? You cannot tell the cashier to
beware of the editor? This implicit faith of Scribe’s was perhaps one
factor in the sacking of De Nani, although goodness knows there were
others enough.
“You sent for me, I believe,” said Gaillard rather stiffly, as he
entered the inner office and made a little bow to his editor, whilst
he glanced at the nice little _déjeuner_ on the table.
“_Ma foi_, yes; I trust you will excuse the _brusquerie_ of my note,
my dear M. Gaillard. Will you not join me at breakfast? That is right.
I will explain myself as we eat; we shall not be interrupted, for
Pelisson has gone off somewhere for the day.”
“Pelisson will not be back till to-morrow,” said Gaillard, thawing
visibly as he flung a bundle of papers off a chair and took his seat at
the table. “He has gone to Amiens.”
De Nani hid his satisfaction at this remark, as he unwired the
champagne. Then the two, hobnobbing across the table, shared a Perigord
pie, and conversation became general; it swiftly became indelicate, and
then confidential.
“You are right,” said the Marquis, in answer to a remark dropped by his
_vis-à-vis_. “Pelisson has his limitations—ahu!”
“Pelisson is a journalist, a recorder of this ill-written tragedy which
we are condemned to act in, and which we call, for want of a better
name, ‘life.’ Oh, this life that they are always prating about! A
scoundrel only the other day accused me of insincerity to life. Could
he have paid me a higher compliment?”
“No, egad. Ha! the infernal scamp said that, did he? What will you
have?—they must have ‘copy’; that is the watchword of this villainous
world, that stinks of printer’s ink. ‘Copy, copy’—I will give them some
copy. A word in your ear, M. Gaillard.”
“I am all attention.”
“I feel safe in admitting you into my little secret, for you are a man
of honor. I feel safe in admitting you into the secret of my little
surprise, inasmuch as it concerns Pelisson, who is not your friend, M.
Gaillard.”
“Have you heard him saying things about me?” asked Gaillard, who was
under the fixed belief that one half of the world spent its existence
in slandering his works to the other half.”
“I have heard him say——”
“Yes?”
“No matter; what is the use of repeating the words of a man like
Pelisson—ahu! They are like the crackling of thorns under a pot, as
that delightfully humorous book, the Bible, has it. I should not have
mentioned the chattering of this magpie. Fill your glass, M. Gaillard.”
“But, my dear Marquis, I implore you to tell me what this Pelisson has
been uttering about me; it is always well to know one’s friends.”
“Well, egad, he said so much I have forgotten half of it. One day—it
was last week—he said, ‘This Gaillard thinks himself a poet.’ Harmless
words, but it was the tone of his voice that set all the office
laughing. I did not laugh, it was bad form; but there is no form
in this journalistic world. I am leaving it, I have had words with
Pelisson; and before I take my departure it is my humble ambition to
make Pierre Pelisson dance.”
“He ought to be dancing on an organ,” said Gaillard in a bitter voice.
“It is all he is fit for.”
“He ought to be dancing on an organ, as you very truly remark; but I
will endeavor to find a broader platform from whence to amuse Paris.
And he will not dance a waltz, M. Gaillard, nor yet will he indulge
his limbs in the graceful movements of the mazurka. He will dance the
can-can, will Pierre Pelisson—ahu!”
“You are going to play a practical joke on him?”
“Oh, no! I am only going to make him dance for my amusement; but to do
so, I want Prince Toto’s address. He is in Paris?”
“He is living at No. 10, Rue de Perpignan,” said Gaillard, finishing
the champagne. “But I doubt if he will help you.”
“I don’t want him to,” said De Nani, entering the address in his
tablets. “I only want the number of the house and the name of the
street.”
“I ought not to have told you!” cried Gaillard, suddenly remembering
his promise to Toto.
“Why not?”
“He made me promise to tell no one where he is living, nor about
Célestin.”
“Ah, have no fear!” said De Nani, making another entry in his tablets.
“Toto will not object to my knowing his address; he knows that I am a
safe man, a man to be trusted—ahu, _ventre St. Gris_! Could I tell you,
M. Maillard——”
“Gaillard.”
“Paillard,” continued De Nani, who, now that he had obtained all or
nearly all the information he wanted, began to put on frills and forget
names. “Could I tell you, M. Paillard, how I love this dear Toto, you
might with your genius make from it a little poem; it transcends the
love of David for Jonathan, this affection of mine for Toto. He is so
joyous, he is so young, he is such a charming host. You remember that
delightful dinner where we first made acquaintance; I feel I can never
repay Toto for that piece of hospitality. But I will try, as far as in
me lies—I will try.”
“I tell you what,” said Gaillard, putting on his hat and lighting a
cigarette: “you would do Toto a great service if you could induce him
to leave that wretched hole he is in, and give up art and all that
nonsense.”
“And Célestin?”
“Yes; she is worse than art. Between you and me, I don’t know how he
can stand it, living with an illiterate woman like that; she has not
two ideas in her head. I don’t believe she can read, and, what is
worse, I don’t believe she wants to. They do their own cooking. Imagine
a man of Toto’s position in the world—faugh! it makes me ill.”
This was an untruth—cooking was rarely done in the atelier of Toto, for
Célestin was the worst cook in the world, excepting perhaps Toto; but
it was true enough for De Nani.
“And this Célestin—what was she before Toto took her from the mud?”
“She was a hat-maker—she is still. Trims hats and that sort of thing.”
“Whilst Toto paints those delightful pictures of his?”
“Yes. But the worst is, he cannot sell them,—I know by his face,—and he
is frightfully hard up.”
“Soon,” said De Nani, with a horrid leer, “our friend Toto will cast
his brushes aside, and live upon the diligence of this pretty Célestin.
It is what all these artists do when unsuccessful. We must save him
from this.”
“I wish you would.”
“Before to-morrow evening,” said De Nani, “I hope to cure this charming
Toto of his fever for fame and his hunger for art. Who is this? Why, it
is M. Wolf. I must bid you now good-day, M. Gaillard, as I have some
matters of importance to transact with M. Wolf.”
Wolf came in, hat in hand and spectacles gleaming, as Gaillard went
out. De Nani removed the remains of the _déjeuner_ from the table onto
the floor, and greeted the newcomer.
“You are just the man I want,” said the Marquis. “I have an interview
to write, and I want you to assist me. I have all the facts. That is
right, take a seat and a pen.”
Gaillard went off feeling rather huffed at the summary manner in
which De Nani had dismissed him. His hatred of the old man, which
had vanished before the champagne and the knowledge of his downfall,
returned somewhat. He determined, having nothing better to do, to
betake himself to Toto’s atelier, and spend the afternoon smoking
cigarettes and talking to Célestin about his poems. Célestin made
an admirable audience for a minor poet, even although she was an
illiterate woman and scarcely knew how to read. She had the power
of sympathy, and she listened to Gaillard just as she listened to
Dodor and Toto. When Gaillard would spout a sonnet, and then abuse
it, declaring that it was too full of color, or too sharp in sound,
or destitute of perfume, and that he wished he had never written it,
Célestin, raising her eyes from her work, would cry, “Oh, but I am sure
it is beautiful. It could not be more beautiful. I seem to see those
roses you speak of. And how sad, the roses were unhappy! That seems so
dreadful, does it not, Désiré?” And then Toto, if he were busy, would
give a grunt, and Gaillard would repeat again the sonnet, and declare
that the roses were glad now because Célestin had pitied them.
But she would gladden no roses to-day.
“She has a cold,” said Toto, pointing to the closed bedroom door. “She
got her feet wet yesterday. How glad I am that you have come!”
He was sitting near the stove, and he rose and put on his hat. Someone
had a fit of coughing in the bedroom, and Gaillard stood staring at the
tulip manufactured by Gamier as though it were a dragon.
“Surely, my dear Désiré, you have not descended to things like these!”
He touched the pot warily with the point of his stick, as if fearful of
infection.
“Oh, that!” said Toto carelessly. “It is not mine; it is Célestin’s. Do
not touch it; she is awfully proud of it. Come out with me; I want to
talk to you.” In the street Toto took Gaillard’s arm. “I am so glad you
have come. I am in need of a friend. I am in a state of misery. What
shall I do with that girl?”
“Why, has she been troubling you? _Mon Dieu!_ Désiré, tell me, what is
this?”
“No,” said Toto, “she has not been troubling me. I only wish she had, I
only wish she had. That woman—pah! she is not a woman, she is an angel.”
“So are all women till you find them out. But go on, Désiré. Why all
this terrible excitement?”
“Why? My God! it is very easy for you to talk. She loves me. Well,
then, what am I to do? I have been nearly mad these last few days, and
not a soul to speak to. You don’t care. You have been off to the Moulin
Rouge and Heaven knows where every night!”
“I swear, Désiré,” cried Gaillard, “I have been in a worse condition
than you. I have been on the edge of suicide. Moulin Rouge! I have
not been to the Moulin Rouge. I took to my bed three days ago to read
‘Aucassin and Nicolete’ and try to forget that I was alive. I have not
eaten—morphia and cigarettes alone have passed my lips during the last
forty-eight hours. Then I thought of you; then I came, and for reward I
am accused like this! No matter.”
“If she were an ordinary girl,” said Toto, disregarding Gaillard’s
fantasies, “I would give her five thousand francs and set her up in
business, and there would be an end of it.”
“Ah, Désiré! ah, Désiré!” gasped Gaillard, like a man trying to speak
in a shower bath. “Can it be that at last you are going to return to
us? Can——”
“Call me Toto,” cried the Prince. “I hate that vile name Désiré. I put
it on with this foolishness—this rotten art business. Don’t mind me,
my dear fellow; let me rave. I have had no one to talk to for days but
Garnier and Célestin. They do not understand me.”
“Go on, go on,” said Gaillard, as if Toto had swallowed poison and he
was urging him to vomit. “Speak away, it will do you good; relieve your
mind—it will save you perhaps from madness. Ah, I can understand—I
can understand what you must have suffered, my poor Toto! I have been
through it all myself.”
“Come in here,” said Toto, stopping at a small café; “we can sit down
and talk.”
“Yes, let us enter,” said Gaillard. “No, do not touch absinthe in a
place like this; if you wish to die, choose an easier poison. Beer?
Yes, let us have some beer. And now, Toto, continue your troubles.”
“I have only one trouble,” said Toto, “and that is Célestin.”
“Ah, _mon Dieu!_ that is a trouble easily got rid of.”
“How?”
“Leave Célestin to me.”
“What would you do with her?”
“I?—nothing. I would simply say, ‘Mlle. Célestin, M. Désiré has been
called away to the death-bed of an aunt in the country. She will leave
him her entire fortune if he marries at once and according to her
desires.’ Then I would say, ‘The girl upon whom his aunt has fixed——’”
“Oh, rubbish! I could do that myself. Do you think if I wanted to I
could not kick Célestin over in half an hour? You do not understand.
She is like no one else. She is like a child. I cannot hurt her. She
would haunt me forever, she and that lark. Oh, why did I ever meet her?
But for her I would have been back days ago out of this abominable Rue
de Perpignan. If it had not been for her, I would never have come here
at all. She drove me on to this stupidity, I don’t know why.”
“If,” said Gaillard rather stiffly, “you still love this girl so much——”
“But I don’t. I mean this: I thought I was in love with her, and,
somehow, now everything seems to have gone to pieces all at once; the
pleasure went out of my life all at once. I am lingering on in this
infernal part of the town like a thing with a broken back. I don’t know
what I am to do.”
“I know,” said Gaillard.
“What?”
“Take a little cottage in the country and put your Célestin there with
her lark.”
“Yes, I might do that; only I will have to go there every day or live
there.”
“In the name of Heaven, why?”
“Because it will break her heart if I leave her. I tell you you do not
know her. She has wound herself round me.”
“Well, unwind her.”
“She lives for me—I can see it. I did not know that there were such
women in the world, and, of course, it is my luck to meet one of them
and get myself in this tangle with her. It is very easy for you to sip
your beer and say ‘Unwind her.’ Suppose a child were to run up to you
and put its arms round you, could you box its ears? And, besides, I
have wound myself a bit round her. I have an affection for her, though
I am weary of this love business. I do love her as a child, but then
one does not want to spend one’s life in the nursery.”
“Take a little cottage,” reiterated Gaillard; “place her in it. We
will go down together, you and I, each day for a fortnight. Then we
will drop a day by degrees, and wean her, so to speak. It will take
you the whole summer. Well, it is an idealistic way of spending the
warm weather. We will have a cottage with clematis on the porch, and a
garden filled with old-fashioned flowers. There she will, so to speak,
gain her legs, and when she is able to run alone, trust her, she will
find a playmate.”
“The first thing to be done,” said Toto thoughtfully, “is to get away
from this part of the town before anyone finds out I am here. I do not
want this affair advertised all over Paris. You are certain that no one
knows about it. You have hinted it to no one?”
“Absolutely certain—no one. You are in Corsica; that is enough.”
“Have you seen my mother lately?”
“I dined with her only yesterday.”
“Why, I thought you said you had been in bed for the last four days.”
“So I have; but I got up yesterday evening and called upon Mme. la
Princesse in reply to a summons. She detained me to dinner.”
“What did she want?”
“Only to make inquiries as to you.”
“And you said?”
“Oh, I said you were progressing charmingly.”
“I hope no one else was there?”
“No, we dined _tête-à-tête_.”
“Well, I think it is the best thing I can do.”
“What?”
“That idea of yours about the country. I could take rooms for a while
somewhere. The only thing is, Célestin cannot be moved till this cold
is better. Isn’t it vile luck? It will mean several days before I can
get away from this place.”
“Could you not move her in a cab?”
“No, she is not strong, and if she got another cold on top of this one
it might kill her.”
“Have you given her any medicine?”
“I gave her some lozenges, and Garnier brought her some sugar-candy.”
“Who is Garnier?”
“He is a painter.”
“Oh, one of these wretched _rapins_. Take my advice, Toto, and have a
doctor in; he will cure her more quickly than if she were left alone.”
“I wanted to, but she implored me not. She has a horror of doctors and
medicine.”
“Have you put poultices on her chest?”
“Mercy, no!”
“You ought to poultice her. I frequently suffer from colds in the early
spring, and Mme. Plon declares that I would not be alive but for her
poultices. It will cut it short. Have you a bronchitis kettle?”
“No; she hasn’t got bronchitis; she has only got a cough and a pain in
the side.”
“No matter; it would stop her from getting bronchitis. You ought also
to give her sweet spirits of niter. I assure you, Toto, you never can
tell what a cold turns to; and this girl, should she get really ill,
may keep her bed for a month, and then where would you be? In cases
like this, we ought to act on the principle of the firemen, who play on
unconsumed buildings in order to prevent them from catching fire. If I
were you, I would insist on a doctor. Well, well, I do not press the
point—she is not mine. Let us talk on other things. Have you heard that
Pelisson has cut De Nani adrift? No, of course you have not.”
“How can I know what is going on in this place?”
“True; but, even so, it only occurred last night. De Nani seems quite
resigned, but I would not wonder if he played some trick upon our
friend Pelisson. He wanted your address.”
“Pelisson?”
“No, De Nani,” said Gaillard, who almost bit his tongue for letting
this cat out of its bag.
“I hope you did not give it to him.”
Gaillard shrugged his shoulders.
“For that old man is my evil star. I do not believe I would have been
here now but for his insult that night. You remember? Well, I am going
back to the atelier.”
“How much money have you left, Toto?”
“I have only five hundred francs.”
“You had better let me bring you some more. Give me a check. You have
not your check-book? Well, write one out for five hundred francs on a
piece of paper, and I will take it and cash it for you, and bring you
the money to-morrow.”
“You will not turn up again if I let you have all that.”
“Toto!”
“I know you so well. See here, what time will you promise to turn up,
if I give you my check?”
Gaillard debated with himself.
“I will be at your atelier at one o’clock, punctually.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
CHAPTER II.
THE STORY OF FANTOFF AND BASTICHE.
They went back to the atelier, and Toto, who had not breakfasted, got
together some wine and bread and cold stewed beef. Gaillard sat down
to table also, to keep him company. Then the poet ventured into the
bedroom to talk to the sick girl and cheer her up.
Célestin was lying on her side, facing the door, with very bright eyes
and flushed cheeks. On the wall over the bed hung a colored print
of our Lord Jesus carrying a lamb; she had brought it with her from
her room near the Rue de Babylone. An orange lay on the quilt, one
of six brought by Garnier that morning; she had eaten the other five
and swallowed the pulp, an act which would have caused a physician to
shudder. On a rush-bottomed chair near by lay the lozenges given to her
by Mme. Liard,—redoubtable lozenges, according to the label on the
box,—also the sugar candy of Garnier.
Gaillard sat down beside the bed; he took the sick girl’s hand, and,
stroking it like a mother, called her his _pauvre petite_ Célestin. She
quite touched his heart—her sickness, her pitiable air of helplessness;
the orange on the quilt, and the picture of the Lord Jesus watching
over her.
She had been in great pain all the morning,—a cruel pain, like a
hot-iron, in her right lung,—but she was better of the pain now and the
cough; she told him so in a mutter, and then asked for a fairy tale.
Toto looked in, munching a biscuit; he nodded his head as if satisfied
and withdrew, whilst Gaillard in a fit of genius improvised a fairy
tale. It was about a green giant called Fantoff. He was quite green,
his hair was grass, and his feet were like roots uprooted in some
terrible upheaval; his fingers were like carrots, and he turned brown
every autumn with the leaves, the larks in spring mistaking his head
for a field built on it; so that in this happy season of the year
wherever he walked larks sang above him, and whenever he scratched
his head a dozen nests were destroyed. At this Célestin, with Dodor in
her mind, said “No, no.” So the poet passed on to the cat Mizar and
the dwarf Blizzard, whom the giant had, one day in a fit of idleness,
carved from a forked carrot; and Célestin, remembering Garnier’s tulip,
believed that this might possibly be true.
Blizzard, forgetful of the debt of creation, dared to fall in love
with the lady beloved by Fantoff, whose name was Primavera, and whose
abode was the Castle of Flowers. A hundred thousand tulips defended
this castle from behind a holly hedge. They were divided into five
armies—red, white, yellow, chocolate, and striped; and Célestin in a
half-dream beheld the valiant host whilst Gaillard rambled on.
The gardener generalissimo of this army was blind,—he had been blinded
by the beauty of Primavera,—and one day as he was wheeling back to the
castle a barrow full of roses, who had gone out to fight the camellias
and had been badly beaten. Blizzard the dwarf slipped into it under
the roses, intent on gaining an entrance to the castle at all hazards,
there to declare his love. What happened? Simply this: Algebar, the
bird of Paradise, flapped its sapphire wings and shrieked out, “Beware!
A carrot is trying to enter the Castle of Flowers. Beware, beware!” and
before the faithful bird could call it thrice the door opened, and out
came Bastiche, the porter.
Bastiche was a giant, who had once been a clothes basket; he was seven
hundred feet high, and creaked as he walked. Primavera in a fit of
foolishness had endowed him with life, and as he stood on the castle
steps he opened his lid and shut it again. He also quite forgot the
warning of Algebar, for at that moment rose up from behind the holly
hedge the great green head of Fantoff, the larks singing above it
merrily.
Fantoff, be it observed, was quite unconscious of the scheme of
Blizzard. He had determined to raid the castle that day on his own
account, just as Blizzard had determined to sneak in. Well, listen.
There stood Fantoff in all his glory. The tulips shuddered at the
sight, and the blind gardener put down his barrow, for he felt in some
manner that something was about to happen; and there stood Bastiche,
creaking with anger, whilst little Blizzard in the barrow shook the
dead roses with laughter. Fantoff and Bastiche stared at each other,
Fantoff with derision, Bastiche with envy and hate, whilst Algebar flew
through the garden and screamed.
Bastiche, then, as if oblivious of the presence of a foe, gazed up at
the clouds and sniffed, and asked the sky where could the smell of
manure be coming from; whilst Fantoff inquired of the tulips whether
this was the washing-day at the castle? This allusion to his birth
quite upset the calm of Bastiche, who descended the steps, opened the
garden gate, and like a fool left the protection of the tulip army and
holly hedge.
Then, on the plain before the Castle of Flowers, ensued a battle such
as never before was witnessed in Fairyland. The mushrooms formed a
ring seven miles in diameter, and in this ring the heroes struggled;
the sound filled the air for many miles, mixed with the sounds of many
things hastening to see the fight. At the end of an hour the plain was
strewn with unwashed clothes, and the battle was with Fantoff. He tore
the lid off Bastiche, and, not content with this, what must he do but
insert his great green head into the yawning opening, to tear the heart
of his enemy out with his teeth. But Bastiche had no heart, and here
lies one of the morals of the story. For Fantoff had no knowledge of
anatomy and he did not know the impossibility of slaying a man without
a heart—a critic for instance, or a Bastiche. What did he do? Burrowing
deeper and deeper to find his heart, he got his shoulders implicated
in the creaking body of Bastiche, and burrowing deeper still he was
implicated to the loins.
“He creaks,” cried Fantoff, “so he is still alive!” and went deeper
till he was in to the knees. Then he found that he could not get out,
for Bastiche had in death taken upon him the revenge of a clothes
basket. The fairies tried to pull him out, and also the cat Mizar,
but it was of no avail; so they wheeled him away, and the cat Mizar
followed to the grave.
In the Castle of Flowers the Lady Primavera turned from watching the
fight and its miserable conclusion; she saw an object at her feet. It
was Blizzard the dwarf; he had left the barrow during the fight, and,
entering the castle by the scullery door, sneaked upstairs, and now
upon one knee was declaring his love; and she returned his passion, it
seems. But their bliss was of short duration. For one day, chancing to
fall asleep in the kitchen, the cook, who was short of vegetables, cut
him up and put him in the pot, and the Lady Primavera ate him in her
soup, and so there was an end of Blizzard.
For Fantoff read genius; Primavera, fame; Bastiche, the spiteful
critics; Blizzard, the popular author, whose books sell by the ton;
Mizar, the faithful few. The story also as told by Gaillard had several
immoral meanings quite Greek to Célestin. It was, in fact, the work of
Papillard, for the downfall of De Nani had thawed that humorist in his
cell.
“That is all,” said Gaillard. “To-morrow, if you are better, I will
tell you of the adventures of the cat Mizar, and of all that happened
when he saw his reflection in the looking-glass of the wizard Fantoum.
Fantoum had a blue face; he was half-brother to Fantoff, and his enemy
was the giant Boum-Boum, whose children under the spell of the wizard
were turned into drums before the age of twenty; that is to say, the
boys—the girls turned into drumsticks. I will tell you a story each
day, my little Célestin, and then we will print them all in a pretty
volume bound in butterfly-blue vellum, and call them ‘Tales Told to
Célestin.’ With the money from its sale we will buy a cottage at
Montmorency and keep bees; we will support ourselves on bees and fairy
tales. And now I must say adieu, and run away until to-morrow.”
“Ah, Montmorency!” murmured Célestin, as Gaillard’s high collar and
frock-coat vanished and the door closed on them, leaving her alone.
Toto gave the poet his check, imploring him to wait a little longer and
keep him company.
But Gaillard had now the check in his pocket, and the vision of
Pleasure was kicking her skirts before his eyes, a box of cigars in one
hand, a bottle of champagne in the other. So he took the opportunity
of Garnier’s entrance to make his exit, swearing to return on the
morrow at noon, and ran down the Rue de Perpignan, making for the right
side of the Seine just as a thirsty animal makes for water.
Then Garnier, like the poet, came in to see the patient; his pockets
were bulging with things, and he held in his hands a square paper
parcel; it was a little picture he had painted for Célestin—a droll
little picture of a Cupid with a cold, an ominous little picture,
perhaps, for, as Gaillard truly said, who can tell what a cold may turn
to?
CHAPTER III.
THE REVENGE OF M. DE NANI.
That night Célestin, it would seem, grew worse. Toto, who had made his
bed on the couch in the atelier, slept so soundly that he did not hear
her delirious and rambling conversation.
Gaillard’s fairy people visited her, and Bastiche and Fantoff commanded
her terrified attention as they did battle once more on the greensward
in front of the Castle of Flowers, whilst Fantoum watched them across
the holly hedge. Then the battle scene vanished, and Mizar the cat
came and took his seat upon her chest. His eyes were pale blue, and
flickered like spirit lamps in a draught; she implored of him to give
her water to drink, and for answer he changed into Gaillard.
Through all these fancies ran the form of an old man. It was De Nani,
whom she had seen once for a moment as he talked to Toto at the Gare
du Nord: his lascivious and painted face peeped at her here and there
from behind hedges and trees in this phantom land, whilst over all flew
Algebar, the paradisiacal bird, rending the attenuated air with the
constant mournful cry, “Beware! beware! A carrot is trying to enter the
Castle of Flowers.”
With daylight all these strange fancies vanished, and at seven o’clock,
when Toto entered her room to inquire how she felt, she answered that
she was quite well, but had been dreaming terrible things. She implored
him in her husky whisper to bring in Dodor, and having placed the cage
close to the bed and removed the green cover, he made some coffee and
brought her some with half a buttered roll.
She drank the coffee, and when he was gone she hid the buttered roll
so that he might think she had eaten it. At all hazards she must keep
up the appearance of not being “very bad,” for if Toto were alarmed he
would, without doubt, send for a doctor, and that meant spending money.
Fully five hundred times had Mme. Liard recounted to her the frightful
expense M. Liard had put her to in his last illness; she always spoke
of the doctor’s bill with hands outstretched a yard wide.
“Pills—a little box not bigger than a thimble, three francs—three
francs, as I am an honest woman! and plasters a yard wide that did
nothing, as far as I could see, but put the good man in pain; and not
only plasters, but bottles of stuff, sometimes twice a day, red and
brown and yellow, and always changing till one grew giddy; and then
when he had killed him wanted to cut him open to see what he died of.
May I never reach heaven if I tell a lie! That is what doctors are!”
No wonder Célestin dreaded the craft, and much preferred Choiseul’s
lozenges and Garnier’s sugar candy to the ruinous bottles and the pills
at three francs a thimbleful, and the chance of being cut open “to see
what she died of.”
Cough lozenges and sugar candy are not perhaps the most effective
remedies for acute pneumonia, especially when the patient has only one
lung; but perhaps, taking that fact into consideration, they were as
serviceable as any others.
At nine o’clock the concierge, a stolid woman, deaf as a stone,
came up to settle the bedroom and see to the patient. She brought up
with her a newspaper that had just been left in by a little boy. The
wrapper was addressed in a crabbed hand to “M. Cammora, No. 10, Rue de
Perpignan,” and Toto wondered whose the handwriting could be, for he
had never seen the scrawl of M. le Marquis de Nani.
It was a copy of that morning’s _Pantin_. The first page was occupied
with foreign news and a heavy leading article by Pelisson on the
prospects of beet sugar turning foreign sugars out of the market, and
ending with a regret that the Minister of Agriculture had let several
chances slip for the betterment of the prospects of France.
Toto turned to the second page and came upon a long article marked
with pencil. He thought at the first glance that it was the review of
a novel, for it was headed “Painter and Prince.” Then after six lines
he discovered it was an interview, after twelve lines that it was an
interview with himself.
The interviewer, it seems, had discovered that a certain illustrious
young Prince whom the whole world had imagined to be in Corsica
stalking the nimble moufflon, was in fact in Paris, stalking
art—working, in fact, like any child of the people in an attic, Rue de
Perpignan, No. 10. And as Toto saw his address thus publicly proclaimed
the hair of his head stood on end.
The interview was written in Wolf’s chatty manner. Wolf had three
manners: the worshipful manner, which he applied to geniuses, great
statesmen, and successful tradesmen, when those gentry fell into his
hands; the cut-and-dried, for strike leaders, members of the chamber,
people whose houses had caught fire suspiciously; and the chatty, for
actresses, successful clowns, prominent divorcees, etc. The chatty
interview generally began on the stairs, with a short description of
first impressions.
The stairs of Toto’s house, it seems, gave one the impression of abject
poverty.
“When we reached the first floor,” said this mouthpiece of De Nani,
“we inquired of a charwoman for the young Prince ——. She declared her
ignorance of such a person, no Prince to her knowledge having ever
inhabited the house.
“The interviewer, thus left to his own resources, pursued his quest
through this frightful house, which recalled nothing so much as the
Maison Corbeau of Victor Hugo. On the fourth floor, a hissing sound
rewarded his ear, and knocking at a door, a well-known voice desired
him to enter. Here he found a picture that would have gladdened the
heart of Jean Jacques Rousseau.
“By the window of a poverty-stricken room sat a girl trimming hats—a
girl of the people, exquisitely pretty, and possessing that innate
refinement common to all Parisiennes, no matter how humble their
origin. By the little stove stood a handsome young man, preparing the
modest meal they were evidently to share together.
“It was the Prince, who laughed joyously, and placed the little pan
upon the floor, whilst he shook the interviewer warmly by the hand.”
The whole thing had a most horribly actual air. The teeming brain of
Wolf had supplied little details impossible, one would say, to be
false. The foolish lovers who had renounced, one her home, the other
his world, for the sake of art and love in an attic, stood before one
in the flesh. Wolf, inspired by champagne and the dictation of his
editor, had worked with the fervor and insight of a poet; and one
almost wept over the struggling pair, till one remembered that the
Prince was worth half a million of money, and then one laughed till
one’s sides ached.
“We are very happy,” said the Prince, at the conclusion of this weird
interview. “Tell all my friends to come and see me, now that you have
found me out. Tell them also that there is only one true happiness—to
be young and poor, and mated to the woman one loves.”
“That last line,” had murmured De Nani to himself, “will, I have no
doubt, vastly amuse Mme. la Princesse and Mlle. Powhair.”
Toto let _Pantin_ drop, and turned his white face to the window, as
if he expected to see all Paris looking in and laughing. He knew,
as indeed was the fact, that men were tumbling out of bed bursting
with laughter, and running into their wives’ bedrooms _Pantin_ in
hand; that starch-faced valets were shaking under their starch, as
they handed _Pantin_ to their masters on silver salvers with cups of
chocolate; that young De Harnac, who was more English than his own
bulldog, was crying “My Gawd!” and kicking his legs about in bed with
delight as he read _Pantin_; that Mme. la Princesse was prostrated,
and Mlle. Powhair—he could not imagine what Helen Powers was saying or
thinking. The thought of her was somehow the worst part of all this
trouble.
His lips were dry, and they felt as if they never could become moist
again. He was quite calm, but this calmness of Toto’s would have
frightened his mother to behold. He neither shrieked nor tore his
hair; but, indeed, the latter feat would have been impossible, for a
fortnight ago he had had it cropped to the bone in imitation of Garnier.
The hilt of this dagger was the ingratitude of Pelisson, Gaillard &
Co.—the men who had been his guests, to whom he had lent money, and
who had now stabbed him in this cruel manner before all Paris. Little
did he know of the raving Pelisson, who, having sought vainly for
Froissart, had returned by the night mail, which stops at Amiens and
arrives in Paris at seven in the morning, only to find this horrible
snake curled in _Pantin_. Pelisson at this moment was dragging the
terrified Gaillard out of bed, who was protesting that he knew nothing
of the matter, just as Scribe ten minutes ago had protested that
eighteen thousand francs were missing from the safe, he could not tell
how; and as Saxe, the German foreman, had declared that the usual big
edition of _Pantin_ was out, and could not be got back, not if God came
out of Himmel, and that it was not Saxe’s fault that this _schweinhund_
article had crawled into print—whilst Struve, whose practical joke
had long ago laid the seeds of all this mischief, was the only man
unconcerned by it as he lay asleep after a hard night’s work, and
dreaming of stained-glass windows and saints who had strayed into art.
But Toto knew nothing of all this: he thought this cruel and spiteful
trick the work of his friends. He had always liked Pelisson, and he had
liked Gaillard. Gaillard had been, in fact, a kind of necessity to
him—a sort of dry-nurse, who wiped his nose and said “There, there!”
when he was fretful, and listened to his secrets, and told him tales,
and put him up to resist his mother.
A man of the world would have seen at once that some trick had been
played on _Pantin_. Pelisson, of all men in the world, was the last to
let such an article appear in his paper; especially as it was leveled
against a man who was virtually part proprietor. Gaillard, too, was
entirely out of court. But Toto was not a man of the world, and the
bitterest thing to him in this severe humiliation was the supposed
authorship.
He took up _Pantin_, folded it, and hid it under one of the cushions of
the couch. The act, performed on the impulse of a moment, revealed to
him in a dramatic manner his position. Of what use was the hiding of
one copy of _Pantin_ under a cushion when fifty thousand _Pantins_ were
bellowing his shame all over Paris? So he snatched it out and flung
it open on the table as if for everyone to read—a useless act, for
everyone was reading it.
Then he smoked a cigarette. In an hour of semi-delirium he smoked
ten. The thing was so immensely vile, so wanton, such bad form, that
the very enormity of it calmed him. A man who learns that the bank
has smashed, that his wife has eloped, and that his house is burnt to
the ground all at the same moment, ten to one receives the news with
calmness—the blow stuns him. He feels that Fate and Death and other
heroic personages have condescended to turn their undivided attention
for a moment to his affairs—he is almost a hero, in fact.
So Toto turned from blank horror to the heroic mood. The whole world
was against him; well, he would stick to his guns. He almost felt glad
that all this had happened, and lit another cigarette just as Garnier
entered, bearing in his hand a huge bunch of black grapes for Célestin.
They were muscatels, and must have cost him a little fortune, unless he
stole them, or, what is more probable, obtained them on credit.
“Garnier,” said Toto, his cheeks flushing slightly, “see here,” and he
pointed his cigarette with a wave at _Pantin_ lying open on the table.
“And she?” asked Garnier, as he made a sign towards the closed door of
Célestin’s room, laying his grapes down on the table and taking up the
paper all at the same time.
“She is better.”
“Ah, this which is marked with crosses?”
“Yes, read it.”
Garnier began to read, standing under the top-light and holding the
paper at full length before him. In a moment he folded the sheet in
a more comfortable manner and continued reading calmly and without
any sign of astonishment. At one place he frowned slightly, where
Célestin’s name appeared, then when he had finished he laid _Pantin_
back on the table beside the grapes.
“Well?” inquired Toto.
“I do not think that is in very good taste,” said Garnier dryly.
“What! is that all you have to say—not in very good taste?”
“My friend,” said Garnier, “it is no affair of mine; but it makes my
fingers tingle none the less. Were it an affair of mine, I would make
you eat that journal and all it contains—_vé_! I have spoken.”
“Ah, stupid!” cried Toto, uncrossing his legs and moving his arms
about. “You think _I_ have written that!” and the corners of his mouth
went up in a very mirthless rictus.
“But surely——”
“I? Why, cannot you see that it is a hoax? No one came here to see me—I
was not frying things over the stove. Do you think for a moment I would
expose myself like that, and give my address? It was done to make fun
of me—everyone will be laughing at me. Can’t you see?”
“Oh, my friend,” said Garnier, “forgive me, forgive me! How could I
have been so stupid and so blind? Ah, owl that you are!” and he gave
his great chest a thump with his great fist, and then came to the
couch and sat by Toto, and rested his hand on his knee, and poured out
consolation in the language of Arles, punctuated with explosive oaths.
“Oh, it does not matter. Do you think that I care? I do in a way, for
it shows me the villainy of the world.”
“Ah, you are right; this villain of a world—it is a beast! But _tenez_!
my dear friend, I hear the little Célestin coughing. I will give her a
grape.”
He ran into Célestin’s room with the bunch of grapes, and Toto heard
his voice murmuring to her, mixed with Dodor’s voice trying over a few
bars of a song in a despondent sort of manner; for Célestin’s illness
seemed to have put him out of heart during the last couple of days.
Then Garnier came back, closing the door softly behind him, and raising
up his hands at Célestin’s weakness.
“Say, my dear friend,” said Garnier, “do you not think a doctor ought
to see her? As for me, I do not believe in them, but still—but still——”
He stopped speaking, and followed the direction of Toto’s frozen stare.
At the door of the atelier, just pushed open, appeared the
semi-hysterical figure of Gaillard, his hat tilted back, his long
frock-coat hanging loose, and his necktie hastily put on. He had
evidently dressed in a hurry, for he wore odd boots—one patent leather
and the other plain kid.
“Do you see that man?” said Toto, clutching Garnier’s arm. “Do you see
that man?”
“_Mais oui._”
“Then you see the biggest scoundrel in Paris,” said Toto, and he struck
a match and lit a cigarette to show his coolness, averting his eyes at
the same time from the apparition at the door.
Gaillard raised up his two hands like one of Struve’s stained-glass
saints, and then dropped them with a flop. He did not cross the
threshold, for he was perhaps afraid of being kicked out.
“Do not be afraid to come in,” said Toto; “I will not assault you. I
am too utterly lost in admiration of your charming insolence—it is a
masterpiece.”
“Afraid!” said Gaillard, coming in very slowly. “Afraid—afraid of
what? I have no fear left; Toto, Désiré, my friend, we are all ruined.
Pelisson is in despair; Wolf is committing suicide—I saw him myself
being held down by four men. That villain—that villain—that villain of
a De Nani, the cause of it all, has vanished. All the money is gone
from the safe; Scribe is in a state of dementia. I escape from this
inferno and rush to you for sympathy, and I am greeted as a scoundrel!”
“What do I care about De Nani?” inquired Toto. “Look at that.”
“Yes,” said Gaillard, “look at that; but I have no need to look at
that—it is burnt into my brain. I could have slain Wolf with my two
hands when he confessed an hour ago, but, _ma foi!_ he was too much
slain already; besides, it was not his fault. Whose fault? Why, De
Nani’s. Pelisson left him in charge; did I not tell you so yesterday?”
“De Nani?”
“Yes. Wolf has confessed he wrote the article under the inspiration of
that scoundrel. The old man dictated it word for word; it was a parting
shot at Pelisson. My back feels broken. Why, who is this?”
A sound of cackling laughter came from outside, and the foolish and
foppish form of young De Harnac appeared at the door, followed by the
figure of Valfray, his little black mustache twisted up at the ends
and his eyeglass in his eye.
They saw Toto seated on the chintz-covered couch beside Gaillard, a
momentary vision ere they found themselves being led like two naughty
children across the dusty landing towards the stairs by a huge man with
a Provençal accent.
“It is not good to laugh at one’s friends when they are in trouble,”
said Garnier in his large way, and with a perfume of garlic. “You
will go, please, immediately, and call another day. These are the
stairs—yes, _if_ you please.”
“Oh, what have you done?” said Toto, when he came back. “Those two
fools will run all over Paris telling lies about me now—no matter!
Gaillard, my dear friend, come with me into the street; I must speak to
you alone. Garnier, my friend, you will see to Célestin till I return,
will you not?”
He ran into her room for a moment. She tried to hold up her arms to
him, and he kissed her, but he did not see her face; her sunken eyes,
the blueness of her lips, all those signs which spoke of that terrible
pneumonia which kills like the dagger of an unskillful assassin—with
great pain, but none the less surely. He saw only the smooth head of De
Harnac, the black mustache and glittering monocle of Valfray, and the
broad back of Garnier interposing.
“I am going out for a little; I will not be long, and Garnier will see
that you want nothing till my return.”
“Oh, Désiré, do not leave me! I am very ill—not so very ill, but
still—— Oh, what will become of you should I die—and Dodor? Is he in
the cage? I have not heard him move.”
“I will be back soon,” said Toto, “and Dodor is all right.”
“But I have not heard him move.”
He lifted the parrot cage, and held it up to show that the bird was
safe, and Dodor spread his wings like a little eagle, as if indignant
that anyone should touch his house but Célestin. She glanced at him as
if satisfied.
“Does it rain?”
“No.”
“I hear the sound of rain—do not get wet. You will return?”
“Very soon.”
He did not know what he was saying; it was like a conversation in a
dream. Then he left her and took his hat, and left the atelier leaning
on Gaillard’s arm, whilst Garnier sat on the couch and mused.
“I must leave Paris at once—I must leave Paris at once!” burst out
Toto when they were in the Rue de Perpignan. “I must leave it forever;
nothing like this ever happened to anyone before. My God! I am going
mad. It is like one of those dreams when we seem to be walking about
the streets naked. Did you see that fool De Harnac’s face, and Valfray
looking all round with his eyeglass?”
“It is all dreadful,” said Gaillard. “Let us, for Heaven’s sake, sit
down somewhere and think—let us, in the name of Heaven, get some brandy
somewhere. I was drunk last night,—I confess it without shame,—and my
nerves are in pieces. Look at my hand—is that the hand of a person
who ought to be troubled? Suppose a fit were to overtake me? Well,
then—yes, let us leave Paris. Oh, my God, I have odd boots on! Did you
see that woman?—she laughed at them. I must have been absolutely insane
all this morning not to have noticed them before. I have been walking
about all the morning like this.”
“Yes, I must leave Paris at once. Come in here and sit down. _Garçon_,
brandy, a decanter, and some Apollinaris water.”
“It is the first warning—I knew it was coming; ataxia always begins
like this. My dear Toto, you know nothing about it; I have read
the whole subject up in the Bibliothèque Nationale. It begins with
forgetfulness in little things; one finds one’s self walking down the
street in slippers, or forgetting how to spell one’s name, and one dies
like a raving maniac. Then, one has tremor of the hand—look at my hand.”
“Drink some brandy,” said Toto, rousing up a bit from his own misery.
“You will be all right; I have often been like that myself.”
“No matter; if I die, Pelisson will have killed me. He burst into
my room absolutely like a tiger; you can fancy the shock to one in
my condition. I was absolutely dragged from my bed—threatened with
violence if I did not divulge all that I knew about this infamous
article.”
“Don’t _speak_ of it!” cried Toto, “don’t, don’t! I want to get to some
quiet place where I know no one. Come, I am going to Struve’s rooms; I
must see him and ask him to take some money to this girl. I will write
you a check at his rooms and you can go and cash it; then I will go to
some country place. You will come with me, will you not? You are the
only friend I have.”
“To the ends of the earth,” answered Gaillard. “This brandy has saved
my reason if not my life; I will finish what is in the little decanter
if you will not.”
He finished the brandy, and then, rising, took Toto’s arm.
It was half-past eleven now, and the day promised to be very warm—a
perfect summer’s day with scarcely a breeze or cloud. The narrow street
was black in the shadow, gold in the sunshine, and a barrel-organ was
playing “Santa Lucia.”
“Yes, I am better now; the world is not so distinctly horrible as it
was a moment ago. But, Toto, if you are intent on going to Struve’s
rooms, how are we to get there? We are sure to meet people we know.”
“We must take a carriage. Curse it! I wish it were winter; there are no
closed carriages. You can get a brougham to take me to the station when
we reach Struve’s, but how are we to get there? I can’t parade myself
before Paris. I know,—it is the only thing we can do,—we will take an
omnibus from the Boul’ Miche. We shall meet no one that we know in an
omnibus.”
In the Boul’ Miche they were fortunate enough to find an omnibus just
stopped and disgorging some passengers—one, moreover, that would drop
them actually at Struve’s door; but they had to wait whilst three other
passengers got in before them. There was a girl in a summer hat that
would have brought tears to Célestin’s eyes, a priest, and a fat lady
bearing a lobster tied to a string; then they found that there was
only one inside place left.
“You must go outside,” said Toto.
“But, Désiré, think for a moment. I cannot possibly do this; everyone
will see me. Let us wait and take the next.”
“Struve may be out if we delay,” said Toto, getting into the vehicle
wearily, and, as it was starting, Gaillard was forced to mount on the
outside, where he sat with his handkerchief to his face as if his nose
were bleeding and his hat tilted over his eyes. Fortunately, no one saw
him, though he imagined in his agony that all Paris was watching him
from the sky, the housetops, the windows, and the street.
Struve was at breakfast. He had evidently been reading _Pantin_, for
it was open before him, and he put a dish of kidneys over the damnable
article in a pathetic attempt to hide it as the poet and the painter
entered his room, with all the dejection of a couple of cats that have
just been washed.
“We are going away,” said Gaillard.
“Sit down,” lisped Struve, jumping up. “Toto, I am very glad to see
you—have a cigar, have a cigarette? Now what is all this nonsense I
have heard? Gaillard, for goodness’ sake put your head straight; you
are not a lily. Pelisson has been here—I know all this cursed nonsense;
he has been let in by old De Nani. I always told him he would; everyone
is cursing poor old Pelisson for a fool. Well, then, what matter? it
will soon blow over.”
“We are going away,” said Toto, taking up Gaillard’s whine; “at least,
I am—forever!”
“So,” said Struve, lighting a cigarette, “you are going away forever;
and when are you coming back? Toto, for goodness’ sake, don’t think
that I am joking. I know what Paris is, and for Heaven’s sake don’t go
about with that long face! Laugh, laugh, and you are clad in triple
brass; no one ever laughs at a man who is laughing—they always laugh
with him. Laugh at Pelisson, laugh at De Nani, do as they do at the
carnival ball; a jester strikes me with his bauble, I strike Jules,
Jules Alphonse, and so it goes on. Don’t take this thing seriously.”
“I cannot laugh,” said Toto, looking at his boots with the air of a
martyr.
“Well, then, smoke.”
“Thanks, yes, I will take a cigarette. I want to speak to you; but
first I want Auguste to do something for me.”
He sat down at the writing table and made out a holograph check for ten
thousand francs, and dispatched Gaillard with it to the bank.
“Go to Porcheron’s and get a brougham, and come back in it, my dear
fellow.”
“But your luggage?”
“Oh, I will buy things wherever I go.”
Gaillard departed, and Toto resumed his seat.
“I want to tell you all,” he said. “There is a girl; she brought this
mischief upon me, though it was not entirely her fault.”
“Oh, these girls!” murmured Struve.
“I know they are frightful, but, still, I must do something for this
girl.”
“Pah! Give her five hundred francs—I know what girls are—and forget
her.”
“Oh, for the matter of that, she is not—she loves me, I think, in her
way—of course she does not know all the mischief she has done: how
could she? No matter. I want you to call this afternoon and explain
that I am gone away for a while.”
“I say, you know,” said Struve, who did not relish the idea of acting
as ambassador between Toto and some hussy, who would probably pull his
hair for his pains, “would it not be better for you to write? There is
something much more final about a letter left in by a postman than a
message taken by a friend.”
“I could not write to her, and I want you to give her some money.
Gaillard is bringing ten thousand francs back; I will give her three.
Of course I will provide for her afterwards. Do, my dear fellow, help
me in this, and I will be forever grateful; besides, you will never see
me again.”
“All right,” said Struve; “I will do as you ask.”
The three thousand francs decided him. There were few women of this
kind who would pull the hair of a messenger armed with the consolation
of a three-thousand-franc note; besides, he felt a sympathy for the
unfortunate Toto, this sparrow who had built too high. They sat for
half an hour smoking.
“Of course,” said Toto, “the affair does not end here between De Nani
and me. When I have time to breathe I will find him out.”
“What for?”
“To make him fight.”
The idea of a duel between Toto and De Nani was almost too much for
Struve’s gravity. However, he did not laugh.
“You will not find De Nani; he has vanished. Pelisson says the safe
has been cleaned out. It was that fool Scribe, the cashier; he lent De
Nani the keys for a moment the day before yesterday, and the old fellow
must have taken an impression of them in wax. The worst of it is,
Pelisson cannot prosecute—the old fellow knows too much about the inner
workings of _Pantin_. And yet Pelisson always thought him a fool. No,
you will not find De Nani; and if you did, he would not fight. It is my
impression that he is a very deep card, this Marquis. You see, Pelisson
thought him only a drunken old man who would be wax in his hands. Who
is this?”
Gaillard appeared.
“I have a brougham at the door,” said Gaillard in a mournful voice,
“and here is the money, dear Toto, partly in notes, partly in gold.”
CHAPTER IV.
ENVOY.
Meanwhile, Garnier, left alone in the atelier, sat musing on the
strangeness of things, and waiting for Toto’s return. Ten minutes
passed by, and half an hour. Through the top-light, which was pulled
a bit open, he could hear the sparrows bickering on the roof, and the
voice of a hawker in the Rue de Perpignan crying “Strawberries!” whilst
a broad dash of sunlight, falling upon the lower part of the wall
opposite to him, lit the place with an effulgence of its own, like a
great lamp radiating sunbeams.
It seemed such a pity that Célestin should be ill this glorious
weather. Presently he heard her voice calling for Désiré in a muffled
manner.
“He will be back very soon, my little Célestin,” said Garnier, as he
stood beside the bed, smiling down upon the patient. “_Mon Dieu!_ my
poor child, how blue your lips have become, even within so short a
time. Say to me, Célestin, how you feel.”
“I feel choking,” murmured Célestin, with a terrible look of appeal,
as though she had but that moment recognized the extent of her illness
with the fact that Toto had gone out.
Garnier made a little dramatic back-step, which he corrected by folding
his hands loosely in front of him and rubbing them slightly one upon
the other as if nothing was the matter. The frightful truth suddenly
broke upon him that Célestin, his little Célestin, was terribly ill.
“I feel choking—it is terrible—my friend.”
“Oh, yes,” said Garnier, dropping beside her on his knees. “What is it?
You frighten me. Have you pain? Speak, Célestin, and tell me.”
“Oh, no pain, but I cannot breathe. Stay, I am better now—the weight
has gone a bit; but it will come back. I am afraid to die; what will
he do? I would have worked for him; but it is no use—I cannot if I am
dead. And he was in trouble; I could see it on his face. We are so
poor, you know.”
Garnier felt horrified, paralyzed in the knees and unable to move.
“What is this you say? what is this you say?” he murmured.
“Is it raining?”
“Oh, no, it is very fine. What is this I hear you say, Célestin? Are
you very ill? It is bright sunshine outside; there is no rain.”
“I hear the sound of rain.”
“It does not rain,” said Garnier in a heart-broken voice as he watched
her eyes wandering about the room as if pursuing some fugitive vision.
“Can you not see the sun shining at the window?”
Célestin sighed.
“Désiré has gone out. When did he go? Ah, yes, I remember now; he would
not be a moment, he said.”
“He will not be a moment,” said Garnier, stumbling to his feet. “I will
run and see if I can fetch him. I will not be absent one little moment.”
He stole out of the bedroom, through the atelier, and rushed down the
stairs, hatless and as if the top of the house were on fire. There was,
fortunately, a doctor in the street; he lived but a few doors away,
and by good luck had just returned from his round of morning visits.
He was a depressed-looking young man with a pointed beard, somewhat
like Gaillard in face, but not nearly so well dressed. He came at once
with Garnier, and as he took his seat beside Célestin he laid his
polished silk hat, crown downwards, upon the floor.
Garnier stood at the end of the bed looking on. He suddenly felt a
strong belief in doctors. Dr. Fénélon seemed to him a god; his manner
was so assured, and he had the air of one who knew, coupled with the
gravity of a judge. He noticed that the doctor wore a bone stud in
his white shirt front, and every little detail of his dress, to the
patent-leather toecaps of his dull kid boots.
The doctor spoke to Célestin, just a few words by way of introducing
himself, and then drew out a watch to assist him in feeling her
pulse. The watch had a large spider hand which went hopping along,
making sixty hops to the minute. This spider hand deepened Garnier’s
confidence, as did the binaural stethoscope which the doctor drew out
of his breast pocket and swung about his neck.
Garnier turned his face away whilst the physician unbuttoned Célestin’s
nightdress at the neck. A moment he paused, as if undecided as to
stripping her to the waist, Hôtel Dieu fashion, then shook his head,
and, slipping the ear-pieces in his ears, began his auscultation.
Garnier, standing with his face averted, heard the sparrows on the roof
and an occasional pr-rt, pr-rt from Dodor’s cage, as the lark changed
his perch, also a piano-organ, the thinnest of sounds fluctuating on
the faint breeze blowing from the direction of the Seine.
Sometimes Dr. Fénélon cleared his throat, or said “Pardon.” Then he
began to percuss, and the little blows sounded as if against something
solid.
Garnier turned; the examination was over, and the doctor, the
stethoscope swinging still from his neck, was buttoning the top button
of the nightdress. This accomplished, he stood just for a second with
hands folded, overlooking the patient from head to feet; one might
almost have imagined him measuring her with his eye.
Célestin, whose eyes had been half closed, suddenly opened them, and
muttered something in an alarmed manner.
“What is it?”
“Fantoum,” she muttered, shrinking slightly as if from some vision in
the air.
The doctor led Garnier into the atelier, and by the way he closed the
bedroom door Garnier knew that it was all up.
“Your wife?” asked the doctor, removing the instrument from his neck
and placing it folded in his breast-pocket.
“Oh, no, the wife of a friend—simply that. Ah, my God! I fear she is
worse than we thought.”
“So then I can speak: she is moribund. I can absolutely do nothing.
You understand? What can I do? One lung is gone. Well, then, the other
is greatly touched at the apex—absolutely solid with pneumonia at the
base. She is living by a piece of lung not so large as my hand. We
cannot change all that.”
“Can nothing be done?”
“My dear friend, she is to all intents and purposes dead. She has been
dying some time—probably since yesterday.”
“Ah, I hear you say all that; you say she is dead. I have never heard
a thing like that before so frightful. I have heard of doctors keeping
people alive. Well, then, look: it is not the question of payment; it
is not a question of one, two, three napoleons, but thousands! You are
not speaking to a fool; I am a great painter. I have only to close my
hands on the money, and half of what I earn is yours. I am Gustave
Garnier; I never told a lie. Ask Melmenotte what I can do.”
“My dear friend,” sighed Dr. Fénélon, “I would save her for nothing,
but I am not God.”
“Nothing can be done?”
“Nothing.”
“Brandy?”
“I would not trouble her with brandy—it might even put the flame out;
she is just trembling;” and he held out his hand, imitating the motion
of a butterfly poised.
“How long?”
“Perhaps not for hours, possibly a day; perhaps in half an hour—a few
minutes. Were she to sit up in bed, she would expire as if shot.”
“Ah, well, we must face it. You will come in again? Oh, my God!”
“I will come in this evening. My dear child,” continued the doctor,
taking the great arm of Garnier in his thin hand, “I would stay if I
could be of use; I can only leave her to you. No, I would not trouble
her with a priest; she is, I am afraid, delirious.”
Garnier returned to the bedroom, a look of terrible perplexity on his
face. He could not grasp the facts. Full of life and strength, he had
never troubled to think of death, it was all so remote; and here it was
grasping Célestin.
She was semi-conscious again, and the one word kept repeating itself on
her lips, “Désiré, Désiré!” It was like a person crying for water.
“Oh, why does he not come?” murmured Garnier, remembering again of a
sudden the existence of Toto and his long absence.
“He is coming,” he murmured, holding her hand; “he will be here in a
little while. Oh, my dear little Célestin, what can I give you—what can
I do for you?”
He saw the bunch of grapes, and plucked one off and held it to her
lips. She sucked it feebly, and then cast her eyes up to heaven in the
old familiar way, an action that tore Garnier’s heart as if a knife had
ripped it up. Then she seemed to forget Toto, for she lay still, and
the man beside her prayed God to send him quickly, for nothing could be
more frightful than her reiterated request for this man who had gone
away.
He did not feel jealous; it was all one now. She wanted Toto. It was as
if she had wanted water to drink; he would not have felt jealous of the
water, so why should he feel jealous of Toto? He would have given his
whole prospects in life for the return of the Prince.
As if in answer to his prayer came the sounds of footsteps in the
atelier, and Dodor moved restlessly in his cage as the door was
cautiously opened. It was a priest whom the deaf concierge had sent
for after inquiring of Dr. Fénélon the state of his patient.
He was an elderly man with a large stomach and a kind, sweet face.
Garnier glanced at him, and threw up his eyes, as if to say “No use,”
but he felt glad of the presence of the holy man.
The priest took a chair on the opposite side of the bed, as if to rest
his stomach for a moment, and breathed hard and pursed out his lips;
then he knelt by the chair to pray. Garnier, kneeling by his side of
the bed, was as still as the effigy of the Lord Jesus which hung above.
And so the time went on, Célestin rousing herself occasionally to call
for Toto, and relapsing into stupor. Once she cast her eyes at the bird
moping in its cage, and moved her lips at it, as if trying to tell it
of her trouble.
It was now late in the afternoon. To Garnier it seemed a very long
time since, stopping near the Panthéon, he had bought the grapes for
his little Célestin, and brought them so joyously to the atelier.
His hearing, strained to the utmost for the footsteps of Toto, was
rewarded by all sorts of futile sounds, far away and near.
At five Dr. Fénélon looked in again, and found his patient unconscious.
He shook his head and vanished, for Garnier did not attempt to detain
him; he had lost all faith in doctors.
“But who is this Désiré she has been calling for?” whispered the good
priest, leaning towards Garnier. “Could we not send for him?”
Garnier shook his head. He had gone out with Gaillard—where he could
not tell.
Towards six, Célestin, still unconscious, gave a little shiver, as if
at the coldness of her lover, and Dodor in the cage fluttered his wings
as if in fear.
The priest, who had been standing patiently, fell upon his knees, and
prayed with fervor for the passing soul.
* * * * *
Struve told me most of this story as we sat one day before a café on
the boulevards.
“That is the man,” he said, indicating a good-looking young fellow on a
coal-black horse, who was riding by, accompanied by a girl with auburn
hair, mounted on a magnificent gray; “that is Toto.”
“But the girl?”
“His wife, the Princesse; she was Helen Powers.”
“But surely—is she married to him?”
“Very much so. He confessed all his sins, and she gave him absolution.
No woman, you see, can withstand a confession of folly; you see, it is
a far more genuine thing than a confession of love—with ordinary men.”
“You do not think Toto an ordinary man?”
“I have never thought of him as a man. Come, it is five o’clock; I am
tired of sitting still.”
“A moment. Where has old De Nani gone to?”
“He is living at Monte Carlo. He lost a hundred thousand francs there,
and they have pensioned him; they give him sixty francs a week, I
believe.”
“Pelisson did not prosecute him?”
“Oh, no! all that did _Pantin_ a lot of good.”
“If I had been Toto, I would have made him fight.”
“Thank goodness we were saved from that! A duel between Toto and De
Nani was the only thing wanted to cap the business and kill everyone
outright.”
“Kill them?”
“With laughter.”
“And about Garnier?”
“Ah, Garnier—he only wanted one thing before he met Célestin.”
“What was that?”
“Célestin—she has made him. Célestin is not dead; she will never die
so long as men have eyes and Garnier’s pictures exist. She might have
lived with Toto and produced little Totos; she lives instead with
Garnier, and through him will live forever.”
“A moment. What of Gaillard?”
“He has grown very fat. You know, Toto shook him off when he married,
Pelisson forsook him, De Brie gave him the cold shoulder; and what did
he do? He sat down and wrote ‘Poum-Poum,’ and turned all the minor
poets into ridicule, and sold a hundred thousand copies in a month, and
‘slew art,’ to use his own expression, because it tried to slay him. He
is making eighty thousand francs a year, if he is making a sou. I am
glad of it; he is not a bad sort—Gaillard.”