The room was filled with an odor of Nice violets, fur, and the faint scent of caravan tea. A number of candles burning under rose-colored shades lit the place subduedly, whilst through the great windows the broad white expanse of the Boulevard Haussmann reflected the cold light of the April evening with a suggestion of snow.

The Princesse de Cammora’s “Five-o’clock” was exhausting itself, Madeline FrÉmont of the ComÉdie FranÇaise having just departed, also the Duchesse M—— de M——, the wheels of whose barouche had a moment ago rumbled away round the corner of the Rue de Courcelles.

Nothing was left now but for the remaining few to take their departure. There was nothing to keep them, yet they clung after the fashion of grounds to the bottom of a coffee-cup.

There were three ancient dames and an old Marquis, all relics of the Empire, all boring each other to death, and lingering on in the dim hope of being asked to dinner. A pretty girl in furs and picture hat stood at one of the windows, her furs thrown open, and her eyes fixed meditatively upon the street. M. le Marquis Sobrahon de Nani was explaining to two old Empire women the difference between the ComÉdie FranÇaise now and “then,” whilst the Princesse de Cammora sat near the tea-table with its little cups and dishes of petits fours and what-nots, conversing volubly with another Princesse, painted, after the fashion of her hostess, with the roses of eighteen on the parchment of fifty.

“I should never have called him Toto,” wailed the Princesse de Cammora, whilst the girl at the window pricked her ears beneath her picture hat, and seemed more than ever absorbed by the Boulevard Haussmann. “It was the wretched Nounou’s fault; she came from Tarbes. Really, if I had known the worry of nurses, I would never have had a child. She stole everything she could lay her hands upon—my bracelets, my rings, the drops off the grand chandelier; everything was found in her box; it was like the nest of a magpie. She spoke as if she held pins in her mouth, and she could never pronounce the name DÉsirÉ, so she called him Toto. Her husband was an Italian from Ventimiglia, and he was called Toto, and so it pleased the good God that my child should receive this outrageous nickname. Everyone calls him Toto now, and the wretched boy, when I accuse him of his wildnesses, throws the name in my teeth, and asks me how he can live seriously with such a pug-dog name attached to him. I assure you, my dear Mathilde, the amounts I have paid during the last month would horrify you—bills that he has run up! Oh, no, never give a child a thoughtless name! I assure you, in this world things often begin in jest which end very much in earnest. If you could only guess one-half of this mad boy’s wickedness and absurd”—here the other Princesse made a grimace at Helen Powers, the American millionairess in the picture hat, as if to say, “She is listening”—“and absurd good-nature!” resumed the mother of Toto, snapping her scent-bottle lid—“wickednesses without a particle of real wickedness in them, but none the less annoying to a mother for that. Only the other night he came home without any money. It seems he had met a poor old woman near the Madeleine, and for a freak upset the basket of apples she was carrying; then, to pay her for her apples, what must he do but empty all the money in his pocket—some seventeen napoleons, as I afterwards learnt—into her lap! That is the sort of wickedness my Toto indulges in.”

“Ah!” moaned the other, shaking a crumb off her muff, “such wickednesses are enough to open the gates of heaven. And this poor old woman?”

“She has retired into the country to live on this bounty. Toto, I believe, went to-day to see her and carry her some more assistance. Mon Dieu!”

Someone who had slipped into the room, and who had been standing unobserved behind the heavy curtains of the door listening to the lies in the air, slipped out now like a hound freed from the leash, and embraced the Princesse de Cammora, nearly dislocating her neck, and brushing the bloom off her right cheek. It was Toto.

Never was created a more debonair or devil-may-care-looking person than Toto; the name fitted him like a glove, at least now, as he stood helping himself to sweets from the table and laughing at his mother. He looked about eighteen; his real age, however, was twenty-two, and he possessed that brightness of eye and vivacity of manner which sometimes indicates genius, and sometimes excellent health, combined with a highly strung nervous temperament. Affecting Longchamps and art, the society of pugilists and men of letters, shining here as a flÂneur, there as the patron of little poets, and lately—somewhat in secret—as a painter of pictures painted all by himself, he presented a queer variety of that always amusing insect, the “child of the age.”

“Where the devil can Toto have come from?” asked Otto Struve, the art critic, one day, tilting his hat back in momentary astonishment. “His father, on his own showing, was a miser; his mother never laughed. They marry, and live for ten years unproductive as a pair of icebergs, and then produce Toto, who only stops smiling when he laughs or yawns, and spending money when he sleeps; whose head produces the most extraordinary ideas in Paris; whom God constructed with one eye on the gingerbread fair, and whom the devil made a prince of—a prince of twenty, with the ideas of ten and the vices of sixty!”

“I am a changeling,” had replied Toto, bonneting Otto Struve’s hat in such a manner that it had to be cut off with scissors.

Now he saluted everyone at once—Helen Powers, and his mother, and the old Princesse de Harnac. The Empire decadents came out of their corner like lizards towards sunshine, and he promptly invited them to stay to dinner, knowing that his mother hated them, and that he would be dining out himself.

“I have been to a cock-fight at Chantilly,” he explained, glancing down at the suit of tweed in which he was dressed. “The police broke it up, and we had to run; but they wired, and the police stopped me at the Nord. They let me go when I gave my address; then I took a cab from the Nord, and coming downhill we ran over a dog—nothing but accidents.”

The old Marquis de Nani lifted up his hands in pretended horror to please his hostess, and lowered them again and took a pinch of snuff when that lady frowned slightly.

“I do not see any particular harm in cock-fighting,” said Toto’s mother, appealing to the company generally, and Helen Powers in particular. “I know it sounds cruel, but, then, they say the cocks enjoy it.”

“That must be so,” said the Marquis, replacing his snuff-box in his pocket, “or else they would not fight.”

“But——” said Miss Powers, and stopped. Her eyes had met Toto’s eyes. He was standing almost behind his mother and making grimaces, as if to say, “For goodness’ sake don’t begin an argument, or we shall never get away.” “But,” said Miss Powers, shamelessly turning the conversation in the wished-for direction, “you promised me, M. le Prince, to show me those pictures on which you were engaged.”

“That is why I came back in such a hurry,” replied Toto. “And if you will accompany me now to my studio, come on, and M. le Marquis also, for he is a connoisseur. No one else; my bashfulness will not hold more than two comfortably.”

He led the way, laughing, out of the room and up the great staircase, Helen Powers following and the old Marquis de Nani toiling after, his Empire legs unaccustomed to such unstately swiftness. On the top landing Prince Toto opened a door and switched on the electric light, exposing to view a large square studio.

One could see at a glance that this was the atelier of no dilettante. Work was written on the place from the top light to the boarded floor. Several massive easels stood about with the air of willing laborers awaiting their jobs; there was a throne and some drapery; a painting-jacket hung suspended from a nail in the wall, along which a number of canvases stood with their backs to the room like children undergoing punishment.

Helen Powers felt utterly astonished. She had known Toto some time, and she liked him more, perhaps, than she had ever liked another man; but she was alive to his faults, his irresponsibility, his childish wildnesses. Here, then, was a revelation of honest hard work more amazing than a jewel in a toad’s head.

“I know the place is rather bare,” said Toto apologetically, “but it’s good enough to work in. It’s a bit cold now, but I light a fire when I am working at the nude, and then it is like a furnace. Here’s a thing.”

He took one of the canvases in Coventry and placed it upon an easel.

“Oh, my God, how beautiful!” said the old Marquis de Nani, putting on his pince-nez as the electric light fell full upon the indifferent-looking daub exposed so ruthlessly to view.

“Everyone says that,” said Toto, so innocently and so frankly that the tears almost rose to Helen Powers’ eyes.

“I have never seen a picture quite like that,” continued the Marquis. “There is an air about it, a something indefinable about it. Those bulrushes”—it was a naked nymph trying to screen herself behind bulrushes—“those bulrushes seem to quiver in the wind.”

“Otto Struve said Ingres might have painted it,” said Toto, with a smile that made him look like an angel by Raphael. He had several smiles at his command, and most of them made him look like a good-humored devil. “But they turned it away from the Salon, though I’d had half of the hanging committee to dinner the night before and made them jolly. Otto said the other half were jealous. I’ll have the whole lot next time if I can get them. Here’s a John the Baptist. What do you think of that?”

John the Baptist was brought forth, and a Sisera and Jael, all treated in the old original manner, with a difference due to want of skill. A lamentable Holofernes appeared and vanished.

“Those are all classical,” said the author after De Nani had almost bleated himself hoarse in their praise, revolving in his own mind the while a project which had for aim the borrowing of five hundred francs from this illustrious artist. “But this is original, or, at least, I think so.”

He exposed a blind beggar and his daughter, filled with a mawkish sentimentality strangely at variance with the known character of the Prince.

Helen Powers looked on. Her liking for Toto had rapidly altered. This art show had supplied the crystallizing thread for her feelings to seize upon. She was now mournfully in love with him. It was as if he had suddenly become maimed and needful of her pity. Her mind became filled with anger against Otto Struve and old De Nani and all the other sycophants or sneerers who had belauded this poor boy and his works. She felt a kindness for cock-fighting as she gazed upon the blind beggar and his whining yellow-ocher daughter, a strange emotion in the breast of a delicately nurtured girl, and, so to speak, one of the minor miracles wrought by art.

Toto, as anxious for praise as a baby for milk, looked at her with dark expectant eyes.

“I don’t know what to say,” said the poor girl. “I know nothing about art, but I think I like Jael the best; but don’t take my opinion, please, for I am an utter ignoramus. What a time it must have taken you to paint all these!”

“That’s just what it didn’t,” replied the artist joyously, as if he had outwitted art by some clever trick. “I paint like lightning. You see, I haven’t much time to spare; but I love it, and give all the time I can. I have often thought of throwing everything else over and giving all my time to art.”

“Oh, do!” said Helen earnestly.

“Do what?” asked the lightning artist.

“Give up all your time to it, be in earnest over it. Nothing is done in this world without earnestness of purpose. I am sure you would be—would be—a great artist if you worked. Give up cock-fighting and all that, and take seriously to art.”

“Do you know,” said Prince Toto, putting the blind beggar away, “I have often thought of kicking the world over. I’ve seen everything and done everything worth doing, and I feel as old as the hills.”

“He, he, he!” bleated the Marquis de Nani.

“Then why not begin at once?” said Helen. “If you are only in earnest and have purpose, you will succeed, for I am sure you have genius.”

The unlucky little word had escaped unweighed by the speaker. Toto nodded reflectively, as if to some thought that had just left the shelter of his curly head to take visible form.

“I am sure that M. le Prince has more genius in that head of his than resides in all those palette-scrapers one sees in the Louvre,” declared the Marquis de Nani, taking a pinch of snuff and making a little old-fashioned bow, as if to the observation that had just escaped from him. He held out his box, and the amateur genius took a pinch and sneezed frightfully.

“And genius,” continued the old gentleman reflectively, adding on two hundred and fifty francs to the intended loan, “it seems to me, never has a more charming home than with a man of birth; birth comes out even in a picture. That blind beggar and his little daughter. Ah, my God! cannot one see the sympathy of the well-born for the poor illuminating it? I never praise—old age has made a wreck of my enthusiasm; but my heart rekindles when I see art thus wrested from the hands of the hateful canaille by one of us.”

“Indeed!” said Helen Powers, whose father had been a pig-slaughterer.

“Indeed yes, mademoiselle!” replied the old man, winking and blinking like a delirious goat, whilst Toto looked on with a grin. “I have left all my ambition behind me, buried beneath the ruins of the Empire, else would I wish to be young like M. le Prince, and gifted like the painter of these treasures.”

“Now I must be going,” said Helen Powers.

“And I,” said Toto; “I have a dinner on at the Grand CafÉ.”

“Why,” cried the Marquis, seeing his seven hundred and fifty francs vanishing, “I thought you were going to dine here, at home!”

“Not I indeed!” said Toto; “I am giving a little dinner of my own.”

“Alas!” moaned the old man, “I had counted upon your pleasant company. I am desolated.”

“Well, bring your desolation to my feast.”

“But——” said M. le Marquis, glancing down at his frock-coat.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” replied Toto; “I am going to dine in these.”

“Then,” said the other, “I will go down and make my excuses to the Princesse. Pardon me, mademoiselle.”

“With pleasure,” answered Helen Powers, and he tripped away like a boy.

“Toto,” said the girl,—she called him Toto sometimes when no one was by,—“beware of that old man and all these people who praise you; there’s nothing so bad for an artist as praise. Art,” she continued, gazing at him and speaking as if she knew all about it, “is always capable of improvement. I mean the artist is. Don’t mind what he says about the canaille—remember Millet; go and get a blouse like a common man, work like a common man. All people are common in art till they have made princes of themselves like Raphael and Michael Angelo.”

“That is what I have been thinking lately,” said the unhappy Toto, imbibing this lesson greedily because it fitted in with his whim, and whims with Toto sometimes lasted for months—Mlle. Dumaresque lasted for three, and cost him sixty thousand francs. “Just what I have been thinking: what is the use of all this life? I’m sick of it. If one could invent a new way of spending money or something new to eat—but it’s just the same old round. I’ve thought of committing suicide, sometimes.”

“Oh, don’t, Toto—don’t speak like that!”

“I won’t; besides, I didn’t think of it seriously.”

“Tell me, Toto,” said Helen, in the voice of a mother speaking to a child, “do you ever think seriously of anything?”

“I think I do,” said Toto, rubbing his cheek against a corner of her sealskin jacket, because it was soft and gratified his sensual nature. “I have thought seriously of running away from here, and living by my painting—seriously.”

A look came into his face that astonished her, a look of iron determination or leaden obstinacy, she could not tell which; but it made her feel sure that if he ever did commit such a folly he would adhere to it till he was famous or, a more probable eventuality, dead.

“For” said Toto, “I have got a queer sort of feeling lately: it’s money-hate. It’s awfully funny, for it’s not exactly money-hate, but it’s a want to make money and not spend it. It’s like a man that wants to dig.”

Helen looked at him proudly.

“Here,” thought she, “is the man breaking out; the boy is dying away. Toto will be a great man yet.” Alas for Helen’s thoughts! What woman can ever understand a man? what woman could ever have understood Toto? Otto Struve alone got him in a true focus, but of that anon.

“Besides,” said Toto, still rubbing his cheek softly against the fur, a caress which Helen took to herself, “I feel that I—I want to protect someone, to feed them and work for them, and I haven’t anyone to—protect, for everyone I know is so rich.”

Helen’s eyes became dim. She was just about to say something hopeful in reply, when the old Marquis entered the room, jubilant like a schoolboy going to a treat.

“Now good-by,” said Helen, pressing Toto’s hand. “No, don’t come with me; I’ll find my way. Good-by, M. le Marquis;” and she vanished to say good-by to her hostess and find her coachman, who for the last two hours had been outside shivering in the cold April evening.

As Toto and his companion passed the drawing-room door, the Princesse appeared for a moment and drew the old fellow aside.

“Be sure and take care of my boy, Marquis, and give him good advice.”

“Princesse, be assured,” replied the gentleman of the old school, placing his hand upon his heart, “I will give him good advice; and,” he whispered, “it is all right in that quarter. She called him a genius, and that tickles a young man’s vanity, and I am almost sure kisses passed between them during my absence from the room. I am not a bad judge of these affairs, and I predict——”

He nodded mysteriously, and the Princesse de Cammora smiled under her paint and powder the smile of the happy mother.

CHAPTER II.
THE GOOD ADVICE OF M. DE NANI.

“Tell me, my dear boy,” bleated old De Nani, who wanted to get the affair over and done with before dinner, “could you till the end of next month, when my rents from Normandy will be due—could you accommodate me with a little loan?”

“Yes, rather,” said Toto. “How much?”

“Seven hundred and fifty francs would save me the necessity of approaching a money-lender,” said the old fellow, trembling in his shoes at the amount for which he was asking. “But——”

Toto stopped under the lamp at the corner of the Rue de Courcelles where it cuts the Boulevard Haussmann. He took a note-case from his pocket.

“Here’s a note for a thousand. You can let me have it some time. I haven’t anything smaller.”

“A million million thanks!” cried De Nani, grabbing the note and gritting his false teeth to think that he might have asked for two thousand and obtained it just as easily—“a million thanks! Why, my dear boy, what a doleful yawn! One might fancy you bored.”

“I am, to death.”

“May I make you a little prescription?” inquired the old man, in whom the prospect of the coming dinner operated like an elixir of youth.

“A prescription for ennui? Yes.”

“Get married.”

“I have been thinking that myself.”

“She is a very charming girl.”

“Who?”

“Mlle.—what do you call her?—Powhair?”

“Bah!” said Toto. “I’d as soon think of marrying the Bank of France.”

“Parbleu!” murmured De Nani. “What an extraordinary remark! But everything that comes from Prince Toto is extraordinary, even his pictures.”

He had the bank-note safe in his pocket, and could allow himself the luxury of a little irony in the guise of praise.

“Firstly,” said Toto, “she’s too rich; and secondly, my mother wants me to marry her.”

“True,” said De Nani. “She is also gauche, and speaks through her beautiful nose like a trumpet.”

“She is good enough as a girl,” said the Prince with a frightful yawn as they turned down the Rue Tronchet.

“Well, then,” said De Nani, “try a mistress.”

“I have four,” replied Toto dolorously.

“Dismiss them.”

“I have, but they cling on.”

“Get drunk.”

“Can’t. I was born drunk, and am beginning to get sober. That is what’s the matter with me, I think.”

“Try opium.”

“Makes me sick.”

“Ether capsules.”

“Worse.”

“Go into the country and make love to a milkmaid.”

“Never done that,” said Toto reflectively.

“I did once when I was young. Mon Dieu! she followed me to Paris. No, I would advise you to leave that alone; nothing clings like a milkmaid. Try, try, try a glass of absinthe.”

They stopped at a cafÉ and had a glass of absinthe, for which Toto paid.

“I would like to get drunk on absinthe and die in my cups,” said De Nani, who was a man of original sins, frost-bound by poverty, but blossoming now under the warm influence of Toto.

“Let’s,” said the Prince, beginning to laugh.

“Now I have made you laugh!” cried the old fellow triumphantly. “And here we are at the Grand CafÉ. No, my Toto, we will not die just yet, while there are Grand CafÉs, and good dinners, and pretty girls adorning the world. Tu, tu, tu! how the lights flare!”

They entered, the old man following Toto and pursing out his hideous old lips. One could see his stomach working through his face as they passed first to the lavatory with the frescoed ceilings, where Toto washed himself vehemently with his coat off, and De Nani looked on. Then, led by the assistant head-waiter, they ascended to the private room where the Prince’s friends were waiting.

Three men only—Pelisson, of the Journal des DÉbats; Gaillard, a mystical poet, pantheistic, melancholic, with no very fixed belief in anything, save, perhaps, the works of Gaillard; and Otto Struve, the art critic.

Pelisson, a powerfully built fellow, singularly like De Blowitz, even to the pointed whiskers, was of the type of man who pushes the world aside with his shoulders, whilst he pushes it forward with his head. Gaillard, who was remarkable for his high collars, pointed beard, and the childish interest he took in little things unconnected with his profound art, sat astride a chair watching Pierre Pelisson juggling with a wine-glass, a fish-knife, and a serviette. By the fireplace stood Otto Struve, a man with a hatchet-shaped face, who seemed in the last stages of consumption, and weighed down by the cares of the whole world, which he bore with suppressed irritation.

Toto’s entrance was the entrance of money. Everyone forgot everyone else for a moment; the electric lamps seemed to blaze more brightly; waiters suddenly appeared, mutes shod with velvet and bearing the hors d’oeuvre.

“M. le Marquis de Nani,” said Toto, introducing his friend; and they took their seats.

Old De Nani ate his oysters, glancing sideways, this way and that way, at the triumvirate of talent, as if to say, “Who the devil are you?” and “Who the devil are you?” Pelisson groaned and grunted; he was writing the beginning of a leading article in that wonderful head of his, where a clerk always sat taking notes in indelible ink, an artist beside him taking sketch-portraits of everyone and pictures of everything. Toto looked bored and the dinner unpromising, till suddenly Struve broke the ice by choking over his soup. With the laughter, conversation broke out and babbled. The fish was served, and one might have fancied twenty people were talking, Toto’s voice raised shrill against Gaillard’s periods, and the trumpet tones of Pelisson dominating all like the notes of a sax-horn.

“I don’t believe in God, you say?” said Gaillard, savagely attacking a fillet of sole. “Well, perhaps not, according to your ideas; according to mine, I have the pleasure of worshiping a god. He has fifty-three names. The Chinese call him Fot; benighted Asiatic tribes, Buddha; Kempfer, by the way, wrote it——”

“No, no, no!” cried Toto. “No theology, or I’ll turn M. le Marquis de Nani upon you, and he’ll eat you up, for he’s an atheist.”

“An atheist!” cried Pelisson, turning his broad face on De Nani. “I thought they were all dead. M. de Nani, beware! They’ll kill you and stuff you for the MusÉe Carnavalet.”

“I’ll stuff him,” shouted Toto, imagining himself a wit. “What shall it be, Marquis—bran, sawdust?”

“Ortolans,” answered De Nani, too busily engaged in stuffing himself to find passage for more than one word.

“By my soul, the Marquis is right!” cried the great newspaper man. “An atheist stuffed with ortolans is all they want to complete their collection now they have crowned their idiocy by buying ——’s collection of bronzes.”

“Talking of crowns,” came the insidious lisp of Struve, “have you heard the news? Willy Hohenzollern has—guess what.”

“Written a farce?”

“Painted his face?”

“Become a telegraph clerk?”

“Gone mad,” replied Struve.

“What’s his madness?” roared Pelisson, glaring at this opposition newsman.

“They say he fancies himself an Emperor.”

“Throw flowers over him to cool him,” cried Toto, snatching a rose out of a dish and flinging it in Struve’s face as the entrÉe was brought in.

De Nani listened to the random conversation as he ate, or at least seemed to; a dull flush was apparent under the paint on his face. Each guest had his own attendant, and the service was conducted with the precision of mechanism. The glass of the Marquis was always full, yet he was continually emptying it; like the old gentleman at M. de Richelieu’s feast, he felt his teeth growing again, and for a little while, under the influence of the powerful Rhone wines, his youth seemed to return.

“Talking of art,” said Gaillard, fingering the stem of his wineglass delicately and turning to Toto, “a rumor reached me to-day through De Brie, the editor of the Boulevard—you know De Brie? It was to the effect that our host——”

“Yes.”

“That our host,” continued Gaillard, turning to the others, “wearied by the incapacity of the two salons to appreciate genius——”

“To appreciate genius,” echoed Struve.

“Is about to found an art school.”

De Nani leaned back in his chair and slipped a button of his waistcoat, as if to give room for the sycophant to ramp.

“And who,” said he, “would be fitter to found an art school than our host—ahu!—who, may I ask, M. Veillard?”

“Gaillard.”

“Maillard—than our illustrious host, ahu! I have seen his works, ventre St. Gris! Ahu! I am not a man of yesterday, M. Baillard; my memory carries me back to the time before women wore hoops.”

“Indeed,” murmured Struve, who had placed the rose flung at him by Toto with its stalk in his glass of champagne, and was staring at it with the rapt air of a poet.

“Indeed yes, monsieur, I was born on the edge of the First Empire. I saw the new Napoleon rise—you, sir, have only seen him vanish.”

“I have seen many a napoleon vanish,” mourned Struve; “but go on—your tale charms me. Pelisson, listen.”

“Go to the devil!” said Pelisson, who was now writing with the speed of fire and a stylographic pen on a long strip of paper, using the table for a desk.

“I have seen the art galleries of Europe,” continued De Nani, now three parts drunk, and unconscious that he was making a fool of himself before the first art critic in Europe, “and I unhesitatingly proclaim M. le Prince’s work to be on a level—allowing of course for youth—on a level with the best I have seen.”

“Oh, rot! oh, rubbish!” cried Toto, blushing furiously and flinging flowers at the great bent head of Pelisson, whilst that journalist, wallowing in his journalese, only grunted and growled in a far-away manner and wrote the more quickly. “I can’t paint, I can’t draw—might if I took to it really. Pelisson, you pig! wake up and eat your pudding.”

“I have said what I have said,” concluded De Nani, attacking his ice-pudding with all the youthful nonchalance of your man who wears false teeth.

“And my rose is drunk,” said Struve, as the rose tumbled out of the glass.

“I can’t paint,” murmured Toto again with the air of a spoilt child.

“Toto!” demanded Struve, placing the rose languidly in his coat, “how much wine have you drunk?”

“Why?”

“Because a lot of truth is escaping from you.”

Toto laughed; he always believed Struve to be jesting when in earnest, and in earnest when jesting. Then he sat watching De Nani, and wondering at his capacity for champagne.

“Cigars, cigars!” cried Pelisson, finishing his article with a dash, flinging down his pen and bursting out like a sun. “What’s this? pudding!” He devoured it like a pig, and then roared again for cigars. Three boxes were swiftly passed in from the outside.

He placed one before him, sent his article off to the Journal des DÉbats office, which lies near by, and, leaning back in his chair with thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, blew clouds of smoke at the gilded ceiling, and cried: “Let’s make a noise.”

“What’s up now?” inquired Toto.

“The Ministry will be down to-morrow!” cried Pelisson, flapping the sides of his chest with his turtle-fin hands. “You’ll hear the tumble of portfolios—flip, flap, flop; and I’ve helped to pull them, ehu! Let us make a noise; it’s the only thing worth living for. I’d die in a world where I couldn’t make a noise; you couldn’t make me a worse hell than a padded room. You, Toto—how do you live without making a noise? Gaillard squeaks in the Revue des Deux Mondes, Struve grumbles in the Temps, I roar in the DÉbats; you, wretched child! are silent: take up a pen or a paint-brush and make a noise.”

“I would if I could,” mourned Toto.

“You mean you could if you would!” retorted Pelisson. “Write a little book of poems, and I’ll abuse them; I’ll make your name rattle like a pea in a bottle. Write an ode to the Pope or paint a modest picture—there’s two ideas for you gratis, each a fortune. Give me some coffee.”

“I wouldn’t give a pin for fame unless I earned it,” said Toto, handing the coffee. “I’d just as soon swing a rattle as have a work of art of mine”—Struve groaned—“made famous by my friends or my position.”

“Why,” cried Pelisson, “he’s talking sense, this boy is!”

“He’s talking nonsense,” said Struve.

“He’s talking divinity—I mean (hic) divinely,” said Gaillard, who was finishing his second bottle of champagne, and writing poetry on his cuffs with the stylographic pen that had just helped in the destruction of a Ministry.

De Nani was dumbly digesting; he had filled his pockets with cigars, and was wishing he had brought a sack. He was also drunk—in fact, to put it plainly, very drunk.

“I’m talking sense,” cried Toto with flashing eyes.

“He can’t paint,” suddenly broke out De Nani, the drunkenness lifting like a veil and disclosing his true thoughts. “He’s only pretending. Doesn’t want to paint—’sgot four mistresses.”

He slipped away from his chair as if sucked down by a whirlpool. A roar of laughter went up that shook the ceiling, and then, to everyone’s horror, Toto the debonair, the hero of cock-fights and what not, broke into tears.

At this extraordinary sight Gaillard first gazed with a grin, and then burst out like a firework touched off, wringing his hands and calling upon God.

“Devil take that old scoundrel!” cried Pelisson, kicking at the body of De Nani, which seemed quite flaccid now that the truth had got out of it. “Where did you pick him up?—he’s a scamp, he’s a scamp!”

“Toto, my dear Toto,” lisped Struve, “paint a picture to-morrow, and I’ll make it famouth for you. So help me God! I will, or my name’s not Struve.”

“Alas!” cried Gaillard, drinking off a glass of brandy, “I am touched at the soul. Toto, my Toto, our Toto, do not grieve. I, too, will write a little poem, and it will make your picture famous. Where is that wretch? Kick him, Pelisson!”

“Don’t let the waiters in,” choked Toto. “It’s only stupidity”—sniff, sniff—“the old fellow is drunk; don’t kick him, P-P-Pelisson, he’s an old man. I p-picked him up at my mother’s; he’s only stupid. There, I’m all right.”

“Oh, dear me!” sighed Struve; “we are all right now, let us play baccarat.”

“I am desolated,” mourned Gaillard, who had now to be comforted. “And my little poem is spoiled.” He looked at his shirt cuffs and broke into tears.

CHAPTER III.
THE FAG END OF A NIGHT AND THE BEGINNING OF A MORNING.

When Gaillard was at last comforted and set writing poems in a corner, the waiters were admitted, the table was cleared, and cards produced.

“Shall we go to the club?” asked Toto.

“No, play here,” answered Struve.

They played loo, and Pelisson kicked the senseless body of De Nani, which had been pushed right under the table for propriety’s sake, when luck went against him.

Toto played furiously, partly to drown the remembrance of his unmanly tears, partly to be successful. His eyes burned, his cheeks were like carnations, and his luck was frightful; but he played with the dogged determination peculiar to him in little things, the pig-headed obstinacy which, had it been allied with talent and poverty, might have landed him in the Ministry or Academy.

A few men dropped in now and then, glanced at the play, saw that the stakes were small,—for Pelisson kept them down,—and yawned out again.

“Toto,” said Struve, as the clock struck twelve, “you’ll be ruined at this rate; better stop.”

“Go on! go on!” cried Toto, like a man pursued by wolves. “The luck will turn.”

It turned a bit, but not for long, and the play went on till a voice under the table asked “Where am I?” and then began moaning for a grilled bone.

“It’s four o’clock!” cried Pelisson, glancing at the timepiece on the mantel, as Gaillard, waking in his corner, rubbed his eyes. “It’s four o’clock, and here comes M. le Marquis de Nani from under the table. Bon jour, Marquis; I thought there was a dog under the table, and I have been kicking at him for the last hour.”

“I dreamt I was being kicked by a mule,” said the Marquis, rising erect and buttoning his waistcoat. “Who will dispute the truth of dreams after this?” and he looked at his false teeth in the mirror upon the wall.

The garÇon de nuit entered with the bill—a yard long.

“I have only a five-franc piece,” said Toto. “Let it stand, and bring us up some supper, some coffee and some champagne; also cigarettes—I want a cigarette. Ai de mi! what a duffer I am! I cannot even win at cards.”

“He who is unfortunate at cards is fortunate in love,” said De Nani, fumbling to feel if the thousand-franc note was safe in his pocket, whilst the waiter respread the table with all sorts of cold things—oysters, mayonnaise, and galantine.

“I,” said Gaillard, “am unfortunate at both.”

He attacked some oysters like a wolf, whilst Struve, with the withered rose in his coat, whistled a mournful air of Berlioz’ whilst he cut a sardine in three and put a pinch of pepper on it.

De Nani was at the champagne again like a leech, whilst he feasted like a man off a wreck. He looked a horribly wicked old man in the dawn, which mixed with the electric light; the paint from his cheeks was on his nose and chin, and his wig was awry. It was a cheerless party; Pelisson was half asleep, and Toto as white as a ghost. Gaillard, his cuff scribbled over with lunatic poetry, cast his mournful eyes at the dawn peeping in white over the silent Boulevard des Capucines.

“I was once a youth,” said Gaillard. “That is what the world says to us in the dawn. The dawn ever fills me with despair—a delicious despair. I do not know why, but it seems forever linked to that divine forlorn hope, love. This is the light from which we rebuild old castles and recall vanished faces. In the faint wind that moves we hear the whisper of voices. Fair women walk in vanished gardens, and the sound of the dew recalls their tears.”

“Ah!” cried De Nani, “is this a harp I hear, or the voice of a mortal man?”

“Have you read my little poem,” continued Gaillard, “commencing,

“Oh, stop!” said Toto. “Your poetry makes me want to commit suicide.”

“That,” said Gaillard, “shows but the beauty of it. My ambition is to write a quatrain that will be as poisonous to hope as strychnine. Hope, that accursed allurement born of the——Heaven! I am going to be ill; I have swallowed a bad oyster.” “Run to the window,” commanded Toto.

“Brandy,” suggested Pelisson.

“I am better,” declared the poet. “The taste has passed. The question is, Will it prove poisonous? Mon Dieu! and the proofs of my ‘Fall of the Damned’ are not corrected.”

“Never mind,” said Toto gloomily. “You can correct them as you are falling. Oh, what a wretched world this is! I’m going to drown myself in the Seine.” He rose, yawning, from his chair. “Who will follow me?”

“I will as far as the door,” said Struve, rising also. “Pelisson, where are you for?”

“Home and go to bed,” said Pelisson, rising also. “M. de Nani—why, he’s drunk again!”

M. le Marquis de Nani had risen from his seat, and seemed trying to walk upstairs through the air. It was the back blow of the night.

“I never saw a man slip into drink, like a girl into her shift, so swiftly and with such divine simplicity,” lisped Struve. “Do wash his face, someone; he is painted like a demi-mondaine, and the paint has broken loose over his nose. Can’t possibly take him into the street such a disgraceful figure.”

They washed De Nani’s face with white wine and Toto’s handkerchief, whilst the old man struggled and resisted like a child. It was a mournful spectacle, and Toto did not laugh as the others did.

“That’s what’s the end of all,” he thought. “Eugh! what a beastly thing life is!”

“Now put on his hat,” commanded Pelisson, who acted as master of the ceremonies, “and jam it down—that’s right. I will carry his cane. Drive him before you, and call a cab,” he cried to the garÇon, handing him a napoleon for pourboire.

They got the old man into a fiacre, weeping and protesting and fighting like a lunatic with his keepers.

“Where shall we send him to?” asked Pelisson.

“I don’t know where he lives; send him to the Morgue, send him to the Prefecture, send him anywhere you like,” said Toto.

“I know,” said Struve. “I have an enemy—he’s a Legitimist; I’ll send him a drunken Marquis for a present.” And he gave the name and address of his enemy to the driver, with half a napoleon to pay the fare. “Get him into the house at any price,” commanded Struve; “he’s the father of the gentleman who lives there. There goes the old nobility.”

He finished as the cab drove away, leaving a thin stream of curses on the morning air. And little did Toto dream where those curses would come to roost.

“What a jolly night we have had!” said Gaillard, as they parted at the corner of the Rue de la Paix.

“And we have all done something,” said Pelisson. “You have written a poem,—don’t have that shirt washed, they’ll sell it in strips after you are dead,—and I have written my article, and Struve has made a present to his enemy of De Nani, who has made a beast of himself.”

“And I,” said Toto, “have made a fool of myself.”

“That’s what you were born for,” said Pelisson. “But never mind, Toto, you make a most charming fool.”

Then Toto found himself alone at the corner of the Rue de la Paix.

Some she-asses were passing, and he stopped the auvergnat driving them, and had a glass of milk, because that was chic, and when he had drunk the milk he wished he had not, because there was no one to look; and, besides, he was tired of being chic. Then, with the asses’ milk still upon his lips, he came along down the Rue de la Paix in the direction of the river.

The change of his five-franc piece the auvergnat had given him mostly in copper; it bulged out his trousers-pocket, and made a clanking sound as he walked. Paris was waking up, the lidlike shutters of the shops were rising through a thousand streets; and as he passed through the Place VendÔme several early morning cabs laden with luggage from the Nord Station tore by.

In the Rue Castiglione he stopped. What should he do? It was too early to go home, too late for the club; the world he knew had gone to bed, the world he dimly knew of was waking up. A world in its shirt-sleeves, clean, bright, busy, and apparently happy. The dinner, the supper, the Marquis de Nani, Pelisson’s roaring voice, Struve’s lisp, and Gaillard’s melancholic poetry, all pursued him like Eumenides of a low sort, impotent, yet able to tease.

On the Pont de Solferino he stood to look at the river, and might have thrown himself in had not the water looked so cold, and had he not remembered that he was unable to swim.

Then, turning back, he came along the arcade of the Rue de Rivoli, walking leisurely and listening to the birds singing in the trees of the gardens of the Tuileries.

The Place de la Concorde seemed horribly immense, and the far-away Eiffel Tower looked like a filmy giant straddling his legs, his hands in his pockets, and wearily waiting for something to do. Crossing the Place de la Concorde came a solitary girl carrying something in her hand; following the girl came a man.

CHAPTER IV.
THE POETRY OF HATS.

Toto saw that the man was begging from the girl, and the girl was walking quickly. The man was a horrible-looking scoundrel.

“And here,” said Toto, “is something to do.”

He advanced rapidly and obliquely upon the pursued and pursuer, who, when he saw that the game was up, called out a vile word and turned to run. But he had reckoned without Toto.

It was all over in a minute, and from a distance it looked like a sparrow-fight, Toto in his brown tweeds, and the Barrier bully in his antique, rusty, long-tailed coat. The next our bully was running for his life towards the Pont de la Concorde, bawling and holding his nose, and the Prince, with his hat on the back of his head, was talking to the girl.

“Look!” cried Toto, screaming with laughter. “Three gendarmes are after him.”

“Oh, monsieur!” murmured the girl,—she had blue eyes and the air of a fluttered dove,—“how can I thank you for having saved me?”

“Let us hurry away,” said the Prince. “I see a gendarme shading his eyes at us over there. Let’s dodge away down the arcade. Look! he’s coming towards us. Run!”

They ran down the arcade hand in hand, to the wonder of the boys who were taking down the shop shutters. There was no earthly occasion for this flight. But Toto always embroidered upon a position; he could not behold a cat-fight without mentally suggesting betterments; besides, it was outrÉ.

“Now we are safe,” said he, as they turned up a by-street. “Oh, what fun! Tell me, mademoiselle, may I not carry your little parcel? No? May I not accompany you, then, to your journey’s end?”

“Oh, yes!” said the girl. “My parcel is but a hat I am taking to M. Verral in the Rue St. HonorÉ. I do not live there, monsieur; I work for him at home. I live all alone in a little room near the Rue de Babylone—I and Dodor;” and she cast up her April-blue eyes as if through the rim of her hat she saw Dodor in the blue April skies, together with a vision of angels.

“Who is Dodor?” inquired Toto in a gruff and almost jealous voice.

“He is my lark,” said the girl; and Toto brightened.

“You have a lark?”

“Oh, yes, monsieur; and if you could hear him sing! He brings the green fields to Paris in his voice.”

“You keep him in a cage?” asked Toto, searching for conversation to fit a lark of this description, and not finding much.

“I keep him in a very big cage, monsieur. Ah! his cage ought to be the blue heavens; but, then, how could I hear him sing? I bought him in a little cage—not so big; but the parrot of Mme. Liard, our concierge, dying, I bought its cage—one, oh, so big;” and she measured the width of a wine-tun with hands that fluttered out like white butterflies, for Toto had wrested from her the parcel; also, she wore no gloves.

“Dear me! how funny! And you call him Dodor. This is Verral’s, is it not? Now, may I—please don’t think me rude—may I wait for you? I have nothing to do—I mean, I want to hear more about Dodor. I cannot say ‘mademoiselle’; it sounds so stiff. My name is To—DÉsirÉ Cammora.”

“And mine, monsieur, is CÉlestin Sabatier. I will run in with the hat. If I can see the forewoman, Mme. HÜmmel, I will not detain you long.”

“Don’t call me ‘monsieur,’” said Toto; but she had vanished.

It was an extraordinary find, this—a real live Henri Murger grisette. She might have stepped out of “The Mysteries of Paris,” without her cap, of course, but even more charming in a hat. She was “all there,” even to the lark in the parrot cage. The parrot cage made him certain that the lark was no trumped-up tale; she would never have thought of inventing a parrot cage. He remembered with a sort of satisfaction the poverty and neatness of her dress.

Ten minutes passed, and then she came out again, like April after a cloud has passed, smiling, and with an air of triumph.

“Mme. HÜmmel is so pleased, and I am so happy!” cried CÉlestin, as they walked away down the Rue St. HonorÉ, all beautiful with the morning. “She has given me an extra franc. Just think!” And she held out three in the pink shell of her palm.

“How much do you get for making a hat?” asked Toto.

“Two francs, and I find my own thread; but for this hat I have received three. It was an inspiration. Do you know, monsieur, that hats come to one? Sometimes I am perplexed. There lie all the materials,—the tulle, ribbons, flowers, what-not,—and there sit I, so like a stupid girl it seems impossible that I should make the hat—impossible as building the Eiffel Tower. And then, suddenly, something comes to me. I see the hat, and it is made. That is when I am stupid. At other times they come to me in hundreds—hats more beautiful than a dream; and, oh! if I had a hundred hands I could find work for them all. Yesterday it was a gloomy morning. Dodor drooped in his cage, and I felt very dull. Then the sun broke out—you remember how beautifully—and Dodor sang, and the blue sky looked in through the window and brought me this hat like a gift from the good God. Mme. HÜmmel said it was April itself. And is it not strange, monsieur, that the seasons should help one so? For Spring helps me in her way, and Summer and Autumn in their way, even Winter a little,—and he helps few,—but of all of them I like Spring the best,” sighed CÉlestin, casting her eyes up once more at the sky of her imagination and the angels she seemed always to see there.

“I suppose people wear more hats in the spring,” was the reply of Toto to this revelation of an artist’s work, and for that reply he deserved damning as an artist.

“Oh, yes,” said CÉlestin. “The spring is the time of all others; one makes more money in the spring.”

Toto had steered the way into the Rue du Mont Thabor, a little street that lies parallel to the Rue St. HonorÉ, and just behind the HÔtel Lille et Albion.

Here there was a crÉmerie, into which he invited her to enter. They took their seats at a little marble-topped table, which was soon spread with coffee, white bread, and butter.

CÉlestin quite cast away her reserve; she never had much, and what she had was that of a timid child. This creature, gentle as a bird, and thriving by her own quaint and lovely art in the midst of the great, white, cruel, beautiful city, was in herself a revelation—God, one might almost fancy, supporting her with his fingers as he supports the snowdrops above the snow; Art, one might almost fancy, turning from the Louvre and all its treasures, and smiling towards the Rue de Babylone and this humble slave interpreting her dreams by ribbon and tulle.

“I?” said Toto with his mouth full of bread and butter, and speaking in answer to a question of his companion. “I am an artist—a painter, you know.”

CÉlestin lowered the cup she was raising to her lips. He had won her admiration forever by beating the bully, and now he was an artist.

“I have never met one before,” murmured CÉlestin. “How great that must be, to be an artist! I have seen them at the Louvre. I sometimes go to the Louvre; the rooms are so beautiful, and the ceilings,”—the child evidently had her limitations,—“and one sees such strange people—English women in such strange hats. And do you paint in the Louvre?”

“No, CÉlestin; I work in an atelier of my own.”

Never before in the course of his brief artistic career had praise thrilled him like this, the frank and artless homage of a girl of eighteen who found herself for the first time in her life in the presence of a real artist; there were no ateliers in the street off the Rue de Babylone, only workshops.

“At the Porte St. Martin,” said CÉlestin, “where sometimes Mme. Liard takes me,—she is a friend of the doorkeeper, and sometimes he gives her permits,—I have seen a very sad play. It was about an artist: he was very poor—that is to say, not so very poor at first, but he got poorer as the play went on, and thinner, till at last his cheeks were like this.” She sucked her cheeks in. “Then in the last act he tied a rope to a beam in the ceiling, and made a noose in the rope and put his head through it; I clung to Mme. Liard, I was so frightened. You cannot think how terrible it was till the door broke open and his father rushed in,—he was the son of a duke in disguise,—and the concierge came after, and a lot of people, and they cut him down. Everyone wept. There was a villain in the piece, and, oh! such a pretty girl,” finished CÉlestin. “But I liked the artist best. Are all artists very poor, M. DÉsirÉ?”

“Oh, we manage to scrape along,” said Toto, “when we can sell our pictures; we can’t always do that—we can’t always get them exhibited, even. I sent one last year to the Salon.”

“The Salon—where is that?” asked CÉlestin.

“It’s a picture show; they give prizes for the best pictures.”

“And did your picture get a prize?”

“No,” said Toto mournfully. “They would not even hang it on the walls—it was too classical, some people said; and one man, a man who ought to know, told me it was jealousy.”

“Ah, mon Dieu! how terrible! It was so with the artist in the play: he was betrayed by a man who was jealous of him—oh, poor M. DÉsirÉ!”

“CÉlestin,” said Toto, “do not call me monsieur; call me DÉsirÉ.”

“DÉsirÉ,” said CÉlestin, like an obedient child.

“That’s right; and now tell me, CÉlestin, how comes it that you live all alone with this lark of yours.”

“My mother died when I was so high,” said CÉlestin, holding one hand three feet from the floor. “And I bought Dodor at the Halles Centrales; he cost three francs.”

This was the history of her life as given by CÉlestin, with a mournful little gesture of the hands, as if to say “That’s all.”

“But,” said Toto, “you must have found it very dull—I mean, you must have had to work for yourself; you have no brothers or sisters, have you? or cousins, or people of that sort?”

“Oh, no! I have always been alone; but people are very good to me; I love the world—it is very good, and it is so beautiful. On Sundays, sometimes, I go with Mme. Liard to the Buttes Chaumont; I think heaven must be like that.”

“Is that as far as you have been?”

“I have been to Champrosay once when I was very little. I can remember it still, but it is like a dream.”

Toto was producing his coppers to pay the bill, and thinking how fortunate it was that the auvergnat had given him change in coppers, also how fortunate it was that he had bought the asses’ milk, for these coppers were eminently in keeping with the struggling artist. He also kept his coat buttoned to hide his watch-chain, for Toto was now being driven by an idea half formed, yet fully potent, just as the asses had been driven up the Rue de la Paix by the man in sabots, armed with a stick.

CÉlestin drew out her little purse as if to help in the settlement of the account, and then put it back with a sigh of contentment at Toto’s gesture. One could see her satisfaction at not having to part with her centimes, for she did not in the least try to hide it. She crossed herself and moved her lips as if giving thanks to the good God for the breakfast he had sent her, and then she cried, “Oh, how wicked I have been!”

“Why?” cried Toto, turning from a dispute about fifty centimes with the waiter.

“I have forgotten Dodor, and he has been waiting for his breakfast, and I—I have been thinking of other things.”

She rose with the rapidity and grace only given to us when the knees are young. She seemed as if she must spread out a pair of wings and fly at once to Dodor. So Toto relinquished his fifty centimes and accompanied her. He proposed that they should take a cab.

“Oh, no!” cried CÉlestin, “that would be far too extravagant. I think you are very extravagant, mons—DÉsirÉ; as for me, I have never been in a cab.”

“Never what?” said Toto.

“Never been in a cab. I always walk—sometimes I take the omnibus; but that is when it is wet, omnibuses are so expensive; but they are delightful. It is such fun seeing the people, and they are so friendly; I would like to spend all my life driving in omnibuses. Old gentlemen have often helped me out and walked home with me to see me safe.”

“Good gracious! what do they say to you?”

“Three old gentlemen have seen me home,” said CÉlestin. “And——”

“Three all together?”

“Oh, no! at different times; and one had a red rosette in his buttonhole.”

“And what did they say to you?”

“That’s the funny thing: they all wanted me to go to the theater, and of course I was delighted,—just imagine!—and we were to meet at different places; and then we talked of other things, and they all took such an interest in Dodor and asked so many questions all about how I lived; and one, the one with the red rosette, gave me a great five-franc piece—he said it was a present for Dodor. But the funny thing was, when we reached home they had forgotten about the theater, and said they had other engagements, and that they would come some other evening. The old gentleman with the rosette gave me another five-franc piece for myself, only this one was in gold, a very small one, and he told me to remember and always be a good girl, for the angels were watching me; and I said I would, and he kissed my hand and went away. But I never saw them again, for one never meets the same person twice in an omnibus, you know.”

Toto assented. He was thinking of this lark that flew so mysteriously between CÉlestin and sin, and lived in a parrot cage.

They had crossed the Place de la Concorde by this, crossed the Pont de la Concorde, and were heading for the Eiffel Tower. They were walking quickly, too, for was it not to the relief of Dodor, pining for his groundsel, or whatever larks are fed upon?

The exercise began to tell upon CÉlestin. She coughed a little, and put her hand to her chest high up near the collar-bone.

“You are not strong?”

“Oh, yes, I am very strong, only my chest pains me at times, and I cough at nights sometimes—a little, not much.”

“CÉlestin,” said Toto, in a very serious voice, “I want you to meet me again. Will you?”

“Oh, dear!” sighed CÉlestin; “I forgot that we had to part.”

“But we shall meet again.”

“When?”

“Could you meet me to-morrow morning?”

“Yes.”

“At eight?”

“Yes.”

“At the corner just where the Champs ÉlysÉes joins the Place de la Concorde?”

“Yes—oh, yes! And you will be there?”

“I will. And, CÉlestin, look here: we are not rich, you know, and we ought to help each other. Look here.” He took out a handful of coppers and some silver pieces, all that he had remaining from the five-franc piece. “We will divide, and take half each.”

“No—oh, no!”

“Yes,” said Toto, “you must.”

“But you will want it.”

“No, I shan’t. You want it more than I do. Besides,” continued the Prince, “I have not a lark to keep up.”

They divided, squabbling over an odd sou, and when the accounts were settled they walked on.

“How good you are!” said CÉlestin, almost in tears at the manifold bounties God was heaping upon her this fine April morning. “I will put it in the money-box for Dodor. Oh, dear! why did I think of dying just then? It must have been the thought of Dodor. I often lie awake and think what would become of him if I died. I have a money-box for him to give to someone to be kind to him in case I got ill and died. The five-franc piece is in it, and other money as well. I will put yours, too. See, this is where I live.”

They had reached a gloomy street sprinkled with a few shops, and filled with the boom of an adjacent factory. A gloomy house of four stories was the house where CÉlestin lived.

“Now I shall know where to find you in case you fail to meet me to-morrow,” said Toto, as they shook hands.

“I will not fail,” she replied. “I have never broken a promise in my life—only once.”

“When was that?”

“This morning, when I promised Dodor to be back in half an hour.”

Then he kissed her hand just as the old gentleman with the red rosette had done, and wandered away, his head filled with thoughts of her. For it was a peculiarity of CÉlestin’s that, whilst she must have appealed to the angels in heaven, she also appealed strongly to Porte St. Martin minds.

Then he went home, and bathed and dressed and said “The club” when his mother, in peignoir and morning paint, asked him where he had spent his night with that good, dear Marquis de Nani. Later in the day he wandered into Struve’s rooms.

“Go away, Toto,” said Struve, who was busy writing at his table. He supplied seven journals with his ideas, from the Fremdenblatt to the Figaro, and he seemed now engaged in writing for the whole seven at once. One could see nothing of the lisping, melancholy Struve of the night before in this lightning scribe. “Go away. I have no time for Totos. Come in three hours’ time.”

“What are you at?” inquired Toto, sinking into a chair and lighting a cigarette.

“Praising a man I hate.”

“See here: stop writing your gibberish for five minutes; I want to speak to you.”

Struve took out his watch and laid it on the table.

“I am listening.”

“You once said that if a man of talent were to start in Paris with three thousand francs and his ten fingers,—those were your words,—that if he did not get on he deserved to fail.”

“So he does; what more?”

“I have been thinking of having a try, working like a devil, and kicking over all this absurdity.”

“Do; it won’t do you any harm. What at—politics?”

“Oh, you owl!” cried Toto. “Politics—what do I care for politics! Art, that’s the only thing I care a button for. I’m going to dress in a blouse, and work like a common man—make my name off my own bat, as they say in England. I’m utterly sick of doing nothing; I must move—I must.” And Toto moved his arms. “And I am tied; no one takes me seriously. Look at old De Nani, praising me one moment, and then the next——Faugh! I’m a Prince; I am worth ten million francs when my mother dies. I play with art, that’s enough for people; they don’t see my work, they see me.”

“You are always so much in evidence,” said Struve. “That’s where the mischief is; you cut such antics that people have no time to observe your serious attempts. You have got a frightful lot of energy, and you are a Prince—that’s what is wrong with you; you must be doing, you are tired of the club, the Bois, cock-fighting at Chantilly. By the way, I see your name in the Figaro this morning under a thin disguise—Longchamps and all the rest of it. Your volcano is bunged up by ennui; you want a new opening for the lava to escape. Well, take my advice: move in the plane of least resistance; buy a coffee mill and grind it.”

“Do be serious,” said Toto; “I come to you as a friend.”

“Toto,” said the critic, “I am very serious, else I would not advise you to leave art alone. What’s the use? This, great, beautiful Moloch wants a whole life to eat, or nothing. There are a thousand men in Paris who have flung their all into this furnace. What will come out of all this forlorn thousand? Half a dozen, and they will be filled with despair. The walls of the MusÉe de Louvre are painted with the blood of men, and that’s success. What of the failures? Their story would shock creation. Art lives on failures; they keep the paint shops going, and serve as a background to three or four stars. Now go away. God in heaven! it’s four, and the post for Germany goes out at six.”

“You are never so stupid as when you are serious,” blurted out Toto, as he rose and flung his cigarette-end into the grate.

But Struve did not even answer; he was writing away.

Toto then met the young Prince de Harnac, who invited him to dine at the Mirlitons; he refused, alleging a headache. Then he called on Pelisson, and found him out. He was wearily entering the Place de l’OpÉra, when the devil flung him into the arms of Gaillard.

Gaillard’s collar seemed higher than ever, and he had a distracted air.

“I am running about looking for my dinner,” said Gaillard. “That infernal De Brie has gone off to his country house, and forgotten my check and left me to starve. I will turn an editor, and write no more poetry nor little articles for his journal. Dear Toto, come and give me my dinner, and lend me a thousand francs, and comfort me. Sit here with me, and have an absinthe, and look at Paris as it passes; and then we will go to the Maison DorÉe and dine.”

“You are just the man I want,” said Toto, as they took their seats at a cafÉ, where the marble-topped tables had ventured out now that the weather was fine, and even a bit warm. “I want your help and advice. I’ve been with that villain Struve, and he has depressed me, and flung cold water on me.”

“Struve is a critic,” said Gaillard in a vicious voice; “he is one of the sorrows of art. I do not know what criticism is coming to. Have you seen that article in the Tribune on MallarmÉ?—MallarmÉ, that divine shadow moving in the twilight of the gods, even he is not safe from their mud. But what is this, Toto, you say about help and advice? Are you being worried by some woman? Is your mother tormenting? Unfold yourself to me.”

“Look here, Gaillard: you are a man of sense, you have sympathy. I am sick of life, living like a cabbage, and I want to live really, I want to be famous without the assistance of anyone; I have a talent.”

“You have an undoubted genius.”

“And I want to use it. I go to Struve, and he sneers at me, tells me to grind a coffee mill.”

“Oh, that Struve!” mourned Gaillard. “What led you to a critic for advice or sympathy? He told you to grind a coffee mill? Give me a cigarette, Toto; my case is empty; I will take three. He told you that! They fancy their cheap wit kills, these critics do; but you are not alone, Toto. Did you see the critique on my little poem ‘Satanitie’ in the Écho de Paris? Well, that is what they fling nowadays at an artist, and call it wit. But Pelisson is replying by a counterblast in the DÉbats. Dear old Pelisson! He knows no more of poetry than a rhinoceros; but he roars, and he has reduced the art of slaying a critic to a fine edge.”

“Yes, yes,” said Toto, trying to lead Gaillard from himself for a moment; “but what do you think of my plan? I am going to take an attic and work in a blouse—I am; and, besides, do you know, Gaillard, I have met the most charming girl. She lives in an attic on three sous a day with a lark; she trims hats, and she has eyes just the color of Neapolitan violets. I have never loved a woman before.”

“You love her?” cried Gaillard, “and you would leave the world for her to live in an attic? Oh, mon Dieu! what a romance you might make of life! And is that idea all your own? Mon Dieu! you, a Prince, rich and young and charming, beloved by all the women of Paris—the very entry of such an idea into your brain proclaims you an artist. It is like the Prince in my little forest tale who renounced the world for a wood-nymph—my little tale called ‘Nymphomanie.’ You have read it.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“But I gave you a copy.”

“Oh, yes, I remember now—the nymph who turned into a sow. It was a beautiful story; but never mind it for a moment. Tell me, Gaillard: you are not saying that just to please me?”

“I,” said Gaillard; “I am charmed with the idea, the originality of it, the color of it. It has a perfume of violets—those violets that come in autumn as if to increase the sadness of the withered leaves. De Musset might have written a play upon it. I, ha! I will—I will write a poem on it.”

“For goodness’ sake, don’t!” said Toto in alarm. “I want no one to know. With my blouse I become a man like other men; I give myself a year, and then—we will see what Otto Struve and De Nani say.”

“But you are not serious, Toto?” cried Gaillard, who was now the man alarmed, for Toto was a little income to him, a cigarette mine, and a most joyous companion. “You would die, my child, under the hardships of such a life; you were not born to the blouse, you were born to the purple.”

“I am serious!” cried the Prince, greatly exasperated; “you are as bad as the rest of them. You are——”

“I am not; mon Dieu! do not freeze me, Toto, with that face. I was but thinking of your health; you have cast frost upon me, and I was feeling so happy; besides, a garret may be made most comfortable—it may indeed: you can have a little charcoal-fire when the weather is cold, and a garret need not be ugly. I saw an old oak chest in the Rue Normandie to-day; it cried out to me to buy it, but I had not the money; we will buy it to-morrow. We will not have the walls papered; most have, but we need not be vulgar though we are poor. Oh, Toto, poverty is a romance if it is taken in the right way; we will teach the poor how to endure their poverty romantically. No, we will not have paper—plain plaster and an etching or two of Albrecht DÜrer’s, a little library confined to one bookshelf. Loti, Baudelaire, and a few mystics; a lark to sing to one whilst one paints or writes; a girl with blue eyes to love; a pipe to smoke—what more does one want? In the name of Heaven, what more does one want? I call upon Heaven to witness. I think the problem of modernity solved in the one word ’simplicity.’ We are too be-scented, embroidered, and diffuse; we eat too much and love too broadly; we want concentration. Genius is like a burning-glass; it must be focused so that the rays come together in a narrow point, else the rays will not burn. I saw a stove in bronze of Henri Quatre; we will get that—it’s in the same place, Rue de Normandie. Did you see that girl pass by? She pulled up her dress to show me her ankles; they were like cow heels. Some people have no discretion; they show what they ought to hide, and hide what they ought to show. I have noticed it in everything, even conversation. Well, we will get the stove and some other things—it will be like making a nest; and when all is ready you will spread out your wings and sing, and the female bird will come. Heavens! I know just the place you want, in the Rue de Perpignan. I have a friend there, a genius, but very weird; they call him Fanfoullard, no one knows his real name. He is one of the mysteries of Paris; he subsists by painting fans, and will not get out of bed till dusk; he says inspirations come to him only when he is in bed. That necessarily imposes limitations on his art, but his fans are poems; he spreads them with autumn and spring, and sends them fluttering over the world; he dreams of the beautiful women who will use them as he lies there unknown in his bed. Life is full of poetry; we find it in the most unexpected places. Well, the room below that of Fanfoullard is unlet—it was so, at least, a week ago; we will take it; it has a little room adjoining that will do for a bedroom. We will go hunting for the furniture, you and I, to-morrow.”

“But, see here, Gaillard: I am not playing at this, and I must be economical. I’m going to start on three or four thousand francs, and make that do. I’m deadly in earnest.”

“You are right,” said the poet. “It would be absurd to live in an attic with a bank-book; besides, you can always apply to your mother, Mme. la Princesse, should the wolf scrape too loudly at the door.”

“Oh, good gracious, you will drive me mad! If I don’t succeed I will hang myself; I would never have the face to come back; and what I mean by success is, success without help. I am stiff with sitting still and being waited upon; I want to be.”

And Toto’s eyes gleamed madly in the gaslight, whilst Gaillard felt a decided shiver. Then he remembered Toto’s general eccentricities, and rubbed his chin, making his thin beard crackle. “It will last a month,” thought he; “and then we shall all drive home in a cab very hungry, and the Princesse will kill the fatted calf, and the girl will be pensioned.”

“Gaillard, what are you thinking of?” demanded Toto.

“I was thinking that I should like to be young again like you,” burst out Gaillard, a lot of lunatic ideas waking up and dancing like Bacchantes around the lie. “And be loved by a beautiful girl, and work for her, and fail, and die in her arms; those are the happiest lives, after all, failure ending in death with one’s beloved. Success ruins one’s life. I have never been happy since I met it, when I was young; but I was never young, I sucked nepenthe with my mother’s milk. I do not believe I was ever born; I was found in some field of poppies, and they hid the fact. When I have written my last song I shall drop in some field of poppies. Ah, me, wretched body of mine! Toto, let us go and dine and forget ourselves; let us become beasts for an hour, and then you will come to my rooms. Fanfoullard may be there; he always crawls out at dark and rides to the Rue de Rivoli in an omnibus with his eyes shut, for fear of seeing the terrible people who make use of those vehicles. They put him out in the Rue de Rivoli, and he opens his eyes. Should he have any fans finished, he takes them to Nadar, who monopolizes his work; then he always comes to my rooms and smokes—I leave tobacco for him on the mantel. He is my familiar. For days sometimes we do not meet, when I happen to be out, but I always know that he has been; he leaves a smell of withered flowers behind him. All my greatest poems are due to Fanfoullard. You remember, Schiller could never compose without rotten apples in his desk. Fanfoullard is my rotten apple. Come, let us go to the Maison DorÉe.”

They rose from their seats and made languidly for the Boulevard des Italiens, Gaillard pausing at several toy shops to look in and admire the wares. In the Avenue de l’OpÉra, at Brentano’s window, a little volume of poems by Verlaine called to him to buy it, and as he had no money Toto bought it for him. He carried the book tight clasped to his chest as they wandered along to the Maison DorÉe, where they entered and dined.

CHAPTER VI.
FANFOULLARD, MIRMILLARD, AND PAPILLARD.

Two hours later they came out, each smoking a big cigar; Gaillard’s held delicately between finger and thumb and whiffed at occasionally, Toto’s stuck in the corner of his mouth.

“Let us to the Moulin Rouge,” said Gaillard. “I have dined; I want to laugh.”

“But how about this Fanfoullard?”

The poet had quite forgotten Fanfoullard, the attic, the Henri Quatre stove, and all the rest of it.

“Oh, he will wait; Fanfoullard is eternal, like a tortoise. A hundred years hence you will find him painting his fans and crawling out at dark to sell them.”

“But I don’t want him in a hundred years; I want him now, to arrange about that room.”

“What room?”

“The room you spoke of.”

Gaillard groaned. He thought his companion had forgotten all that, which showed that he only knew Toto by his surface.

“You will not find Fanfoullard interesting.”

“Don’t want to; but he will find me interesting, for I will pay him to see about the place and have it cleaned up.”

“But Fanfoullard——” said the poet, stopping to scratch his head, for there was no Fanfoullard; he was a mythical creature that had escaped through one of the cracks in Gaillard’s skull; he had never lived in the Rue de Perpignan, nor journeyed forth to sell fans in the dark with his eyes shut for fear of the frightful people one sees in omnibuses. It seemed almost a pity. “But Fanfoullard——” said his creator. “Ah, well; yes, let us go to my rooms and see if he has arrived.”

They made for the Rue de Turbigo, for Gaillard condescended to live in the Rue de Turbigo. Here he kept his Muse, or, to speak more correctly, she kept him, assisted by Toto, Pelisson, Struve, De Brie the editor, and a host of others.

“Tell me about this Fanfoullard,” asked Toto. “Is he a respectable sort of person?”

“Oh, eminently. My dear Toto, why walk so fast? I shall have indigestion.”

“He doesn’t practice on the violin or come in drunk, does he?”

“Never. Toto, tell me about this charming girl who has taken your heart; tell me her name?”

“CÉlestin.”

“Ah, mon Dieu! CÉlestin! What a name!—full of light.”

“Would you like to see her? Well, come to-morrow morning. I am going to meet her in the Champs ÉlysÉes at eight, and I’ll tell you what: we will all go and breakfast together, and then we will take a trip into the country. You will do for a chaperon; you can watch about and meet us as if by accident—will you?”

“Why, yes,” chirruped Gaillard, a vista of pleasure in the country, champagne, pretty girls, and April skies springing up before him, painted upon the night. “I shall be charmed. The country now is like a picture—the skies by Fantin, the blossoms by Diaz. I will come in a straw hat. Tell me, Toto: shall I bring a girl?”

“Confound it, no!” said the Prince. “CÉlestin is not that sort.”

Gaillard sighed.

They had reached the house in the Rue de Turbigo where he lived, and passed through the entresol and up, up, up a great many stairs, for the poet lived at the top of his tree.

“Fanfoullard has not come, then,” he cried in a voice of disappointment as he opened his door and revealed a big room lit by the remains of a fire. “Light a candle, Toto, whilst I build up the fire.”

“There are no candles,” said Toto, hunting about match in hand.

“True—I forgot,” cried the poet, running into the little bedroom adjoining and returning with a night-light in a soap-dish; “I used them all to-day.”

“Why, you don’t burn candles in the daylight?”

“Indeed,” said Gaillard, “I do. When I am working I always close the shutters and work by candlelight. My ideas are like moths; daylight dispels them, candlelight attracts them. They are like gray moths, the color of decay; could you look in when I am at work, you would perhaps see them flitting about my head—reveling around their maker. Bon Dieu! this bellows is broken. Toto, hand me that bundle of wood. I have written by a night light. ‘Satanitie’ was written by a night-light, finished in the first rays of the dawn; that book was written at a single sitting in one night of sheer madness.”

“I know; you told me so the other day,” replied Toto, whilst Gaillard, his hat still on his head, and his frock-coat hanging round him like a skirt, squatted on his hams before the fire, putting pieces of stick upon it with finger and thumb, whilst the flames leaped up and, assisting the feeble flame of the night-light, illuminated the room.

The carpet was blue, the tablecloth red, the curtains maroon rep. Sundry German engravings adorned the walls. One represented an angel in a long chemise, saying, evidently, “Coosh!” to a lion in a den, whilst Daniel, with a head four sizes too large, stood by with an air of attention. Another, Tobias being haled along by an angry-looking seraph to the music of cherubs playing upon wooden harps and seated upon woolen clouds. Another, Ananias dying apparently of strychnine. There were three photographs on the mantel: one of a boy in plaid trousers clasping to his breast a wooden horse; another of a young man, wild of eye, and dressed in the uniform of the 101st of the line; a third, of a poet holding a little book in his hand. All three portraits were of Gaillard—Gaillard at ten, Gaillard at twenty-five, and Gaillard at thirty, as we know him.

In a bookshelf close to the mantel stood a volume of Schopenhauer, Baudelaire’s “Fleurs du Mal,” and ten volumes by Gaillard—that is to say, two volumes of each of his works; twinlets delicately bound, some gay as grisettes, but “Satanitie” ash-colored, with a black devil dancing on its back.

“Why,” said Toto, glancing at Daniel, “do you keep those odious prints in your room?”

“I don’t keep them,” said Gaillard, rising with a distracted air, and wiping his fingers on his coat. “My poverty keeps them; they are part of the furniture. Look at the carpet, look at the curtains—what a background! I am like a butterfly pinned to an outrageous tapestry, an indecent arras; they are my cross. I took them up with the rooms. Why do I remain in the rooms? They are haunted, Toto, by a man called Mirmillard. He was an opium-eater, and lived by writing for the Quartier Latin. You know the Quartier Latin? It is a farouche little journal of sixteen pages or so, and appears monthly, or is it quarterly? He blew his brains out just where you are sitting now; the hole was extant in the wall a month ago, but I had it stopped up with plaster. Have I seen his ghost? many times; it is one of my inspirations, and that is why I endure those terrible curtains, that terrible carpet, and, ah, mon Dieu! those terrible pictures. Toto, lend me your cigarette case; I will take three, and make you some coffee—I have all the implementa in this cupboard. Fanfoullard is not coming, it seems. No matter; I will seek him to-morrow myself. To-night perhaps, if we are lucky, we may see Mirmillard. He appeared to me only three nights ago, and the gash in his throat gaped.”

“I thought you said he blew his brains out?”

“He completed the work with a razor,” said Gaillard, putting the little kettle on to boil. “But enough of Mirmillard. These cigarettes are very good. Let us talk of flowers.”

“Oh, bother flowers!” said the Prince, lying luxuriously back on the old sofa, whose springs were bursting out below. “Tell me, Gaillard; have you ever been in love with a woman?”

Gaillard, squatting before the fire, looked at the kettle with an expression as though he were regarding the gash in Mirmillard’s throat. He had never seen that gash, simply because there was no Mirmillard, not even the ghost of one. He, like Fanfoullard, was one of Gaillard’s creatures, born to bedizen conversation.

He made no response to Toto’s question.

“For I am,” said Toto, without waiting for one. “I never thought I should be; but that girl’s eyes are quite different from other women’s. But you will see her yourself to-morrow. Deuce! what is this?”

A little bundle of papers was disturbing his rest on the sofa. He picked them out. They were newspaper cuttings, paragraphs about an individual called Papillard. For the last few months a series of little stories had been attracting the attention of Paris to the pages of Gil Blas. They were naughty, but screamingly funny, and just long enough to read whilst smoking a couple of cigarettes or sipping a glass of absinthe. They were signed “Papillard.” Everyone was asking who Papillard was. Nobody knew but the editor, and editors never speak when they are told not.

“Why, hello!” cried Toto. “Do you know Papillard?”

“No,” said Gaillard, removing the kettle from the fire in a hurry.

“But see here: here are things about him, addressed to him and opened.”

“Oh,” said Gaillard, “I know. He’s a friend of Fanfoullard’s. He must have been yesterday, and no doubt left them. My dear Toto, do you like your coffee strong?”

Gaillard’s hand was shaking. He dared not admit that Papillard was himself. No one had ever guessed it, for Gaillard, though a source of great humor, was believed to be utterly destitute of that quality, and so, in fact, he was. Papillard was a sprite that lived in the brain of his unwilling host. He was a creature like Fanfoullard and Mirmillard, only much more highly organized, for he was able to cling to his tenement and to exercise his abilities in literature. The stories of Papillard horrified his master when in print. There was something so abominably low about them. Servant girls giggled over them on back-stairs. Gaillard admitted to himself in secret that he wrote them, and enjoyed writing them, but he would sooner almost have died than admitted the authorship. One of the stories in question had for motive a cold leg of mutton. There is nothing particularly funny about a cold leg of mutton, but the story was killing. And it had been written by the author of “Satanitie”! Gaillard, when he remembered this fact, felt dizzy, and pinched himself to see if he was there. He was jealous, too, of Papillard’s fame. Wind of these trifles had even reached England, or, at least, the Daily Telegraph. “Satanitie” had never gone so far. When people cried “What a droll fellow this Papillard is!” Gaillard’s tongue had to lie mute at the bottom of his mouth—a cruel torture. You cannot be two people at once. You cannot be a mystical poet, and a buffoon—at least, before the eyes of the world. He had discovered his genius by accident, and too late. His self-love had crystallized round poetry, and, in fact, the poet was the true him. Papillard was a clove of garlic in a bonbon box, placed there by accident or freak, smelt by everyone, but never localized.

He would have burnt Papillard’s stories, but they brought him money—much more money than “Satanitie” or “Nymphomanie” or “The Poisoned Tulip” or “The World Gone Gray” had ever brought him; and Gaillard was a sieve for gold—at the mercy of every woman he met, who robbed him of the money that ought to have gone to his tailors, bootmakers, hatters, and hosiers. Lately, indeed, he would have gone very much to pieces only for the fantastic labors of Papillard, and for these benefits he was ungrateful. You know the maxim of Rochefoucauld.

He handed Toto his coffee, and, to turn the conversation, reminded him of the loan of a thousand francs which he had requested on their first meeting that evening.

“It is indispensable to me,” said Gaillard.

“I will let you have it,” replied the Prince, “but not now. If you had money now, you would be off to the Moulin Rouge, and I should not see you in the morning. I will let you have it to-morrow evening when we come back.”

“But I have not a centime!” cried Gaillard, turning out his waistcoat pockets in despair. “And how can I meet you, how can I get to the rendezvous, in this condition?”

“It’s better for you to come like that than come, perhaps, tipsy. Besides, I will pay all expenses, and I will give you five francs now; that will pay your cab to the Champs ÉlysÉes in the morning. Stay at home and write poetry just for to-night, and think of all the fun you will have to-morrow night.”

“Mon Dieu!” said Gaillard, as the vision of the Moulin Rouge vanished before him into thin air.