ART AND COMMERCE
It was some two or three days after the interview just related that the
apothecary of the rue Royale found it necessary to ask a friend to sit
in the shop a few minutes while he should go on a short errand. He was
kept away somewhat longer than he had intended to stay, for, as they
were coming out of the cathedral, he met Aurora and Clotilde. Both the
ladies greeted him with a cordiality which was almost inebriating,
Aurora even extending her hand. He stood but a moment, responding
blushingly to two or three trivial questions from her; yet even in so
short a time, and although Clotilde gave ear with the sweetest smiles
and loveliest changes of countenance, he experienced a lively renewal of
a conviction that this young lady was most unjustly harboring toward him
a vague disrelish, if not a positive distrust. That she had some mental
reservation was certain.
"'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Aurora, as he raised his hat for good-day,
"you din come home yet."
He did not understand until he had crimsoned and answered he knew not
what--something about having intended every day. He felt lifted he knew
not where, Paradise opened, there was a flood of glory, and then he was
alone; the ladies, leaving adieus sweeter than the perfume they carried
away with them, floated into the south and were gone. Why was it that
the elder, though plainly regarded by the younger with admiration,
dependence, and overflowing affection, seemed sometimes to be, one might
almost say, watched by her? He liked Aurora the better.
On his return to the shop his friend remarked that if he received many
such visitors as the one who had called during his absence, he might be
permitted to be vain. It was Honoré Grandissime, and he had left
no message.
"Frowenfeld," said his friend, "it would pay you to employ a regular
assistant."
Joseph was in an abstracted mood.
"I have some thought of doing so."
Unlucky slip! As he pushed open his door next morning, what was his
dismay to find himself confronted by some forty men. Five of them leaped
up from the door-sill, and some thirty-five from the edge of the
_trottoir_, brushed that part of their wearing-apparel which always fits
with great neatness on a Creole, and trooped into the shop. The
apothecary fell behind his defences, that is to say, his prescription
desk, and explained to them in a short and spirited address that he did
not wish to employ any of them on any terms. Nine-tenths of them
understood not a word of English; but his gesture was unmistakable. They
bowed gratefully, and said good-day.
Now Frowenfeld did these young men an injustice; and though they were
far from letting him know it, some of them felt it and interchanged
expressions of feeling reproachful to him as they stopped on the next
corner to watch a man painting a sign. He had treated them as if they
all wanted situations. Was this so? Far from it. Only twenty men were
applicants; the other twenty were friends who had come to see them get
the place. And again, though, as the apothecary had said, none of them
knew anything about the drug business--no, nor about any other business
under the heavens--they were all willing that he should teach
them--except one. A young man of patrician softness and costly apparel
tarried a moment after the general exodus, and quickly concluded that on
Frowenfeld's account it was probably as well that he could not qualify,
since he was expecting from France an important government appointment
as soon as these troubles should be settled and Louisiana restored to
her former happy condition. But he had a friend--a cousin--whom he would
recommend, just the man for the position; a splendid fellow; popular,
accomplished--what? the best trainer of dogs that M. Frowenfeld might
ever hope to look upon; a "so good fisherman as I never saw! "--the
marvel of the ball-room--could handle a partner of twice his weight; the
speaker had seen him take a lady so tall that his head hardly came up to
her bosom, whirl her in the waltz from right to left--this way! and
then, as quick as lightning, turn and whirl her this way, from left to
right--"so grezful ligue a peajohn! He could read and write, and knew
more comig song!"--the speaker would hasten to secure him before he
should take some other situation.
The wonderful waltzer never appeared upon the scene; yet Joseph made
shift to get along, and by and by found a man who partially met his
requirements. The way of it was this: With his forefinger in a book
which he had been reading, he was one day pacing his shop floor in deep
thought. There were two loose threads hanging from the web of incident
weaving around him which ought to connect somewhere; but where? They
were the two visits made to his shop by the young merchant, Honoré
Grandissime. He stopped still to think; what "train of thought" could he
have started in the mind of such a man?
He was about to resume his walk, when there came in, or more strictly
speaking, there shot in, a young, auburn-curled, blue-eyed man, whose
adolescent buoyancy, as much as his delicate, silver-buckled feet and
clothes of perfect fit, pronounced him all-pure Creole. His name, when
it was presently heard, accounted for the blond type by revealing a
Franco-Celtic origin.
"'Sieur Frowenfel'," he said, advancing like a boy coming in after
recess, "I 'ave somet'ing beauteeful to place into yo' window."
He wheeled half around as he spoke and seized from a naked black boy,
who at that instant entered, a rectangular object enveloped in paper.
Frowenfeld's window was fast growing to be a place of art exposition. A
pair of statuettes, a golden tobacco-box, a costly jewel-casket, or a
pair of richly gemmed horse-pistols--the property of some ancient
gentleman or dame of emaciated fortune, and which must be sold to keep
up the bravery of good clothes and pomade that hid slow starvation--went
into the shop-window of the ever-obliging apothecary, to be disposed of
by _tombola_. And it is worthy of note in passing, concerning the moral
education of one who proposed to make no conscious compromise with any
sort of evil, that in this drivelling species of gambling he saw nothing
hurtful or improper. But "in Frowenfeld's window" appeared also articles
for simple sale or mere transient exhibition; as, for instance, the
wonderful tapestries of a blind widow of ninety; tremulous little
bunches of flowers, proudly stated to have been made entirely of the
bones of the ordinary catfish; others, large and spreading, the sight of
which would make any botanist fall down "and die as mad as the wild
waves be," whose ticketed merit was that they were composed exclusively
of materials produced upon Creole soil; a picture of the Ursulines'
convent and chapel, done in forty-five minutes by a child of ten years,
the daughter of the widow Felicie Grandissime; and the siege of Troy, in
ordinary ink, done entirely with the pen, the labor of twenty years, by
"a citizen of New Orleans." It was natural that these things should come
to "Frowenfeld's corner," for there, oftener than elsewhere, the critics
were gathered together. Ah! wonderful men, those critics; and,
fortunately, we have a few still left.
The young man with auburn curls rested the edge of his burden upon the
counter, tore away its wrappings and disclosed a painting.
He said nothing--with his mouth; but stood at arm's length balancing the
painting and casting now upon it and now upon Joseph Frowenfeld a look
more replete with triumph than Caesar's three-worded dispatch.
The apothecary fixed upon it long and silently the gaze of a
somnambulist. At length he spoke:
"What is it?"
"Louisiana rif-using to hanter de h-Union!" replied the Creole, with an
ecstasy that threatened to burst forth in hip-hurrahs.
Joseph said nothing, but silently wondered at Louisiana's anatomy.
"Gran' subjec'!" said the Creole.
"Allegorical," replied the hard-pressed apothecary.
"Allegoricon? No, sir! Allegoricon never saw dat pigshoe. If you insist
to know who make dat pigshoe--de hartis' stan' bif-ore you!"
"It is your work?"
"'Tis de work of me, Raoul Innerarity, cousin to de disting-wish Honoré
Grandissime. I swear to you, sir, on stack of Bible' as 'igh as
yo' head!"
He smote his breast.
"Do you wish to put it in the window?"
"Yes, seh."
"For sale?"
M. Raoul Innerarity hesitated a moment before replying:
"'Sieur Frowenfel', I think it is a foolishness to be too proud, eh? I
want you to say, 'My frien', 'Sieur Innerarity, never care to sell
anything; 'tis for egs-hibby-shun'; _mais_--when somebody
look at it, so," the artist cast upon his work a look of languishing
covetousness, "'you say, _foudre tonnerre!_ what de dev'!--I take dat
ris-pon-sibble-ty--you can have her for two hun'red fifty dollah!'
Better not be too proud, eh, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?"
"No, sir," said Joseph, proceeding to place it in the window, his new
friend following him about spanielwise; "but you had better let me say
plainly that it is for sale."
"Oh--I don't care--_mais_--my rillation' will never forgive me!
_Mais_--go-ahead-I-don't-care! 'T is for sale."
"'Sieur Frowenfel'," he resumed, as they came away from the window, "one
week ago"--he held up one finger--"what I was doing? Makin' bill of
ladin', my faith!--for my cousin Honoré! an' now, I ham a hartis'! So
soon I foun' dat, I say, 'Cousin Honoré,'"--the eloquent speaker lifted
his foot and administered to the empty air a soft, polite kick--"I never
goin' to do anoder lick o' work so long I live; adieu!"
He lifted a kiss from his lips and wafted it in the direction of his
cousin's office.
"Mr. Innerarity," exclaimed the apothecary, "I fear you are making a
great mistake."
"You tink I hass too much?"
"Well, sir, to be candid, I do; but that is not your greatest mistake."
"What she's worse?"
The apothecary simultaneously smiled and blushed.
"I would rather not say; it is a passably good example of Creole art;
there is but one way by which it can ever be worth what you ask for it."
"What dat is?"
The smile faded and the blush deepened as Frowenfeld replied:
"If it could become the means of reminding this community that crude
ability counts next to nothing in art, and that nothing else in this
world ought to work so hard as genius, it would be worth thousands
of dollars!"
"You tink she is worse a t'ousand dollah?" asked the Creole, shadow and
sunshine chasing each other across his face.
"No, sir."
The unwilling critic strove unnecessarily against his smile.
"Ow much you tink?"
"Mr. Innerarity, as an exercise it is worth whatever truth or skill it
has taught you; to a judge of paintings it is ten dollars' worth of
paint thrown away; but as an article of sale it is worth what it will
bring without misrepresentation."
"Two--hun-rade an'--fifty--dollahs or--not'in'!" said the indignant
Creole, clenching one fist, and with the other hand lifting his hat by
the front corner and slapping it down upon the counter. "Ha, ha, ha! a
pase of waint--a wase of paint! 'Sieur Frowenfel', you don' know not'in'
'bout it! You har a jedge of painting?" he added cautiously.
"No, sir."
"_Eh, bien! foudre tonnerre_!--look yeh! you know? 'Sieur Frowenfel'?
Dat de way de publique halways talk about a hartis's firs' pigshoe. But,
I hass you to pardon me, Monsieur Frowenfel', if I 'ave speak a lill
too warm."
"Then you must forgive me if, in my desire to set you right, I have
spoken with too much liberty. I probably should have said only what I
first intended to say, that unless you are a person of independent
means--"
"You t'ink I would make bill of ladin'? Ah! Hm-m!"
"--that you had made a mistake in throwing up your means of support--"
"But 'e 'as fill de place an' don' want me no mo'. You want a
clerk?--one what can speak fo' lang-widge--French, Eng-lish, Spanish,
_an'_ Italienne? Come! I work for you in de mawnin' an' paint in de
evenin'; come!"
Joseph was taken unaware. He smiled, frowned, passed his hand across his
brow, noticed, for the first time since his delivery of the picture, the
naked little boy standing against the edge of a door, said, "Why--," and
smiled again.
"I riffer you to my cousin Honoré," said Innerarity.
"Have you any knowledge of this business?"
"I 'ave.'
"Can you keep shop in the forenoon or afternoon indifferently, as I may
require?"
"Eh? Forenoon--afternoon?" was the reply.
"Can you paint sometimes in the morning and keep shop in the evening?"
"Yes, seh."
Minor details were arranged on the spot. Raoul dismissed the black boy,
took off his coat and fell to work decanting something, with the
understanding that his salary, a microscopic one, should begin from date
if his cousin should recommend him.
"'Sieur Frowenfel'," he called from under the counter, later in the day,
"you t'ink it would be hanny disgrace to paint de pigshoe of a niggah?"
"Certainly not."
"Ah, my soul! what a pigshoe I could paint of Bras-Coupé!"
We have the afflatus in Louisiana, if nothing else.