The next morning broke fair. The sky over Paris held the blue of forget-me-nots, and the wind from the west, lazy and warm, ruffled the lilac of the Seine with streaks of sismondine. It was the summer end of April; she had still five days’ tenancy, and here May had arrived before her time, flushed and warm from her journey, but seemingly unspeakably happy.

“Ah, mon Dieu! ’tis like an old Italian picture!” cried Gaillard as he opened his lattice in the Rue de Turbigo.

“Oh, ciel!” cried CÉlestin far away near the Rue de Babylone, as she stood by her open window and clasped her hands before all this beauty, whilst Dodor gave praise from the parrot cage till the brown sparrows, grubbing in the street below, cocked their impudent heads on one side, as if to say “What’s that? Who is making that noise?”

CÉlestin had been dreaming of Toto, and praying before she slept that the morrow might be fine and that he would not forget. What a day had come in answer to her prayers! She fully believed that her prayers had brought this angelic morning, tripping with blue parasol outspread across the fields of light, across the hills of dreams and the country of impossible primroses. Then the artist turned from the window and from heaven, and flung herself into a hat.

It had got the better of her yesterday. She had stared vainly at the foundation. Nothing came, only the vision of Toto beating the beggar man, Toto drinking his coffee, Toto declaring himself an artist, Toto’s eyes, Toto’s nose, the coat he had worn, his beautiful hands, his hair so well groomed, his white teeth, and his angelic smile. You cannot put these things into a hat—that is to say, immediately; but now, after twenty-four hours nearly had elapsed, the miracle was accomplished.

The result was a confection that made Princesse Klein look ten years younger at the Countess Prim’s garden party. She did not know that she was wearing Toto upon her head, Toto idealized and converted into a hat by the joint endeavors of love and April, assisted by the fingers of CÉlestin Sabatier.

The doing of it took but an hour, and then she held it out on the point of her finger and smiled; Dodor broke into a song of triumph, and the little American clock on the shelf struck seven.

So she breakfasted—a cup of milk and a Vienna roll eaten in haste—and gave Dodor his morning fly round the room. Then she started, closing the door carefully for fear of Mme. Liard’s cat, and all the way down the steep and dusty stairs Dodor’s voice pursued her, seeming to cry “Come back! come back!”

Toto had dressed himself in his oldest suit of tweed; he wore also a revolutionary-looking felt hat. A Prince cannot break into a blouse in one morning any more than a tree can cast its leaves in one night, but he was advancing. He had also been waiting since ten minutes to eight—that is to say, exactly five minutes—for at five minutes to eight CÉlestin appeared beneath the trees of the Avenue Champs ÉlysÉes, and Toto, who had been standing close to one of the little kiosks, came to meet her.

She wore a bunch of blue violets in her bosom, an artless adornment bought for a sou at the corner of the Rue de Varennes. She was in exactly the same dress as that she had worn on the previous morning, but her hands were gloved in honor of Toto.

They shook hands and laughed a little, and inquired after each other’s health. Then Toto led her to some chairs placed close to one of the little kiosks.

“Don’t let us sit on those,” said CÉlestin; “they charge for them. I once sat on a little chair just here, and a man came out and asked me for a sou; there was nothing to be done but pay him.”

“Never mind,” said the Prince; “let us be extravagant for once in our lives. CÉlestin, I have a treat for you—guess what it is.”

CÉlestin thought vaguely of what it could be; she could imagine nothing but a breakfast, hot rolls and butter and coffee, but somehow she did not care to tell of this imagining. She shook her head.

“I am going to take you for a day in the country and show you the flowers and things—that is, if you will come. Will you come, CÉlestin?”

“Oh, DÉsirÉ!” cried the girl. She could say no more; she held out both hands to Toto; her soul was in a tumult, and her eyes filled with tears of pure delight. The country, the mysterious country, the long-dreamt-of country, that land of her dreams compounded of old visions of Champrosay and the shrill sweetness of Dodor’s song! Had Israfel appeared before her offering a trip to the fields of heaven, I doubt if his offer would have been received with such delight.

Toto felt an extraordinary little thrill run through him as he took her hands. No one had ever called him DÉsirÉ before in a voice like that; women, when they knew him well enough, always called him Toto, generally with a little laugh—men too. Here was a being, lovely and lovable, who called him by his right name, and, oh, with what sweetness! It was a new revelation of himself; it was as if, glancing in a mirror, he saw, reflected in a new way, a face very much more handsome and manly than his own, and yet the true reflection of his face. He would have loved that mirror and disliked the false mirrors he had been accustomed to, just as he was beginning to love DÉsirÉ—I mean CÉlestin. He kissed each little hand and put them back in her lap, where they rested as if satisfied.

“But where shall we go?” asked Toto, glancing round to see if he could make out any sign of Gaillard, and almost hoping that he had overslept himself.

“Oh, anywhere,” said she. “What matter where, so that it is the country, where the trees are and the flowers? There is nothing so beautiful in the whole world as the trees; I dream of them sometimes, and they are lovely. Oh, see that white butterfly, white as an angel of heaven! he seems so glad, and he seems to know.”

“Bother!” said Toto.

“What?” asked CÉlestin, coming back from heaven.

It was Gaillard in the distance. The poet had dressed himself for pastoral pleasures; he wore a gray frockcoat, a white waistcoat, and a straw hat—one of those straw hats they manage better in France: it was soft, and the brim curled. He had also a green necktie, to be in keeping with the grass, a rose in his buttonhole, and a large stick with a crook handle.

“Ah, my dear DÉsirÉ!” screamed the poet when in speaking distance. He had been schooled overnight to forget the odious little name Toto. “I despaired of seeing you; you were not to be seen, and now I find you sitting on a seat.” He removed his hat and bowed low to CÉlestin.

“This is my friend M. Gaillard, the famous poet,” said Toto, putting in “the famous poet” as a sort of excuse for the gayety and bizarrerie of his friend’s dress, which he felt might frighten CÉlestin. But CÉlestin was not in the least frightened, though somewhat awed by the grandeur and white waistcoat of Gaillard. She had heard Mme. Liard speak of poets, wonderful and fabulous beings who lived in the country. The country seemed coming to her in bounds, the gods descending in showers, the birds singing louder in the trees of the Champs ÉlysÉes as if to welcome God Gaillard. She felt very happy.

“I am char-r-r-med,” said Gaillard, bowing again and sinking into a chair. “Charmed to make Mlle. CÉlestin’s acquaintance. I have not been to bed. To—DÉsirÉ, I have passed the night pen in hand; the dawn came in upon me as I worked; then it was too late.”

He told this frightful lie with unction, for he had been, not only in bed, but snoring, when Mme. Plon, the concierge, tipped overnight by Toto, had actually come into his room and threatened to strip the clothes off him if he did not get up to go and meet Prince Cammora.

“Mon Dieu, monsieur!” had cried Mme. Plon. “Where will you get that hundred and ten francs you promised me for the rent but yesterday, should you fail to meet M. le Prince, and put His Highness in a bad temper?”

“How wonderful that is,” said CÉlestin timidly, “to be a poet!”

Gaillard swelled a bit under his white waistcoat; then he laughed a dreary little laugh.

“Ah, mademoiselle, on a morning like this, yes, it is a wonderful thing to be a poet; but the world is not always May, the world is not always May. Mademoiselle has, perhaps, never read my——”

“No, of course she hasn’t,” cut in Toto. “At least—but that’s not the question; tell me, where shall we go? We want a pleasant day. Now, what do you suggest?”

“But, mademoiselle——”

“She has already suggested anywhere; she is indifferent.”

“Well,” said Gaillard, who had the day’s festivity already sketched out in his head, “I would propose a petit dÉjeuner now, then drop in to the Louvre and look at the Primitives, then I would propose dÉjeuner. After that, why not let us go to MontlhÉry; we can take the train from the Gare d’OrlÉans. There is an old tower at MontlhÉry that I love. We will dine at the Chat Noir; they have some very fine carp in a pond there, we will get the landlord to kill one and cook it for us. He knows me, and he manufactures a most delicious white wine sauce for carp. Well, then we will have a carriage back and supper at Foyot’s, in the Rue de Tournon.”

“That might do for M. Rothschild, but it is not simple enough for us,” said Toto, making suppressed grimaces at the poet. “If I had sold a picture even lately, but I haven’t.” A blank look began to overspread Gaillard’s face; he had not reckoned on this. “So we must be very economical. How much money have you?”

“I have nothing!” cried the unfortunate Gaillard, and he began, as was his wont, to turn his pockets inside out; then he remembered CÉlestin. “My publisher was out when I called upon him. My dear To—DÉsirÉ, how much have you?”

“Nineteen francs,” said Toto with a diabolical grin as he produced his money, “and a sou.” CÉlestin laughed and felt in her pocket for her little shabby purse, but Toto said “No.”

“We are rich. Poets and painters, you know, CÉlestin, have a way of getting along on air, like the birds—haven’t we, Gaillard?” But Gaillard only made a noise like a groan. “I know what we’ll do. But first come, and we will have our petit dÉjeuner at the little crÉmerie in the Rue du Mont Thabor. You remember the crÉmerie where we breakfasted yesterday, CÉlestin?”

“That delicious little crÉmerie!” murmured CÉlestin, and they started.

They crossed the Place de la Concorde, CÉlestin laughing, Toto talking, and Gaillard walking silent like a froward child. He would have returned to the Rue de Turbigo had he not been absolutely penniless, for the five francs had all vanished, devoured by a rose, a cigar, and a cab.

“I will be silent,” thought Gaillard, “and spoil this wretched Toto’s pleasure; I will turn his feast into a funeral. Nineteen francs, mon Dieu! and three people, and a day in the country! The mind revolts!”

But ten minutes later he was calling for honey, declaring that he could not eat his roll and butter without it, and joining in the conversation. He could no longer endure the agony of holding his tongue; besides, he remembered the thousand francs Toto had promised him if he conducted himself decorously and with discretion.

“I know where we will go!” cried the Prince.

“Barbizon?” queried Gaillard, putting six lumps of sugar in his coffee.

“No, Montmorency; the chestnut trees will look splendid to-day. They are not in flower yet; but no matter—one cannot have everything.”

“True,” said Gaillard, trying to ogle CÉlestin and failing, for she was entirely engrossed with Toto and the bread and butter; “one cannot have everything. We will go to Montmorency, and sit beneath the chestnut trees and tell each other fairy tales.”

“Oh, how delightful!” murmured CÉlestin.

“I will tell you the tale of the giant and the dwarf,” resumed Gaillard. “It is my own—one of a series of fin-de-siÈcle fairy tales I am writing for LÉvy. There is a terrible battle in it, and the giant beats the dwarf. In the olden tales the dwarf beats the giant invariably, but I have changed all that. The giant in my story is the type of sin; he pelts the dwarf with roses, nothing more; the dwarf replies with mud; he is Virtue, and has a hump, and is hairy. Rousseau had a chÂlet at Montmorency; it is there still. I will leave you two amongst the primroses whilst I go and cast a stone at it—wretched man, murderer of his own children, destroyer of the haute noblesse, progenitor of the bourgeoisie!”

“Oh, bother Rousseau!” cried the Prince, helping CÉlestin to more honey. “We don’t want to think of him; we want to be happy.”

“True,” said Gaillard; “you are young—we are all young; May is coming in. DÉsirÉ, a great idea has struck me: we will have a picnic. The inn at Montmorency may not be a good inn; I have my doubts about it. My children, listen to me: we will dine on the grass beneath those chestnut trees.”

“But——” objected Toto.

“Hear me out. I have a friend; we will call her Églantine. Do not laugh, DÉsirÉ. My friend lives close by; she is, in fact, very well-to-do, and owns a cafÉ. I will go to her, and she will pack me a luncheon basket, and so we will be at the mercy of no landlord.”

“Well, go,” said Toto, “but do not be long.”

“Half an hour is all I ask,” replied the poet, rising in a great hurry and departing.

CHAPTER II.
FÊTE CHAMPÊTRE.

He passed almost at a run down the Rue St. HonorÉ. A friend tried to stop him.

“I am busy,” cried Gaillard; “do not detain me! Mon Dieu! I will pay you to-night! Meet me at eight at the CafÉ de la Paix.” Then, at a run, round the corner of the Rue Royale and into a large cafÉ just waking up: “Du Pont! Du Pont! Where is M. Du Pont?”

The proprietor, a large black-whiskered man in shirt-sleeves, appeared from the back premises, wiping his mouth with a serviette. This was Églantine.

“My dear Du Pont,” cried Gaillard, “here am I nearly mad! M. le Prince has arranged a little picnic, and Sarony has forgotten to send the luncheon basket.”

Du Pont flung up his hands as if the world had fallen in.

“Can you arrange a basket for three—cold fowl, tongue, and some pÂtÉ de foie gras, also champagne?”

“How many for—three?” cried M. du Pont, holding up three fingers. “Tenez!” and away he rushed.

In ten minutes the basket arrived, borne by a waiter; it was a capable-looking basket, and seemed heavy.

“At least, we shall not starve,” murmured Gaillard. “Charge it to M. le Prince, Du Pont. Adieu!” And he drove away in an open fly with the basket beside him, remembering, when it was too late, that he ought also to have ordered a box of cigars.

He met his companions in the Rue Mont Thabor; they had left the crÉmerie, and were walking up and down in the sun.

Then the trio, with the luncheon basket in their midst, drove off, and were deposited at the Gare du Nord, that dreary station with its multitudinous platforms and engines that do not whistle healthily, but toot mournfully with a suggestion of phantom horns.

Here in the hurry and hubbub the poet could express his ideas on the third-class tickets which Toto insisted on buying, without fear of CÉlestin overhearing his plaints.

“My dear Toto, do not do this disgraceful thing. Consider my position in the world, if you forget your own. Should anyone see me, mon Dieu! it will be all over Paris, and they will say my books are not selling. Already they are saying that the editions are being faked. I will go back, I will commit suicide——”

“Oh, rubbish! I’m going third. Stay behind if you like. Ma foi! see over there standing beside that woman with the plum-colored face! It’s old De Nani, and he has seen us. Wait—wait for me, CÉlestin; I wish to speak to a friend. My dear Marquis,” cried Toto, dragging the old man aside, “I am going on a little private business into the country. In fact, I am going with a lady and my friend Gaillard, but I do not want her to know my identity—you understand.”

“Parfaitement,” replied the old beast, grinning under his paint and glancing at CÉlestin, and vowing in his own mind to do Toto an evil turn, if such a thing were possible.

For by a strange chance Struve’s enemy, to whose house he had been driven drunk on the previous morning, was also his most deadly enemy. The Comte de la Fosse was this gentleman’s name, and on descending in a flowered dressing gown on the previous morning to see what the hubbub was about, he had found M. le Marquis de Nani seated without his wig in the middle of the hall and singing ribald songs as he attempted to remove his boots. The Comte de la Fosse had ordered his enemy to be put to bed, and later in the day read him a pious lecture on the evils of drink and the disgrace he had brought on the old nobility. Toto was indirectly the cause of all this—directly, for all that old De Nani knew. Needless to say, he felt very bitter.

“And above all things,” said Toto, “I don’t want my mother to know.”

“I understand,” said De Nani. “I, too, am going into the country—to Chantilly.”

“Good-by.”

“Au revoir. But stay. Where shall I meet you again? Could I see you to-night?”

“Be at the CafÉ de la Paix,” said Gaillard, who had come up to see what was going on, and what this old blood-sucker was saying to his Toto, “and ask for M. ThÉodore Wolf. Anyone will show you him. He is a journalist with a black beard. I have made a rendezvous for eight with him. We will be there.”

“Yes,” said Toto, “be there at eight.”

And De Nani left them, not for Chantilly, indeed, but to take a cab and drive to the Boulevard Haussmann and say to the Princesse de Cammora:

“Madame, something very strange is going on. Alas! it is not the fact of the young lady that alarms me, but, madame, he desired me not to mention her existence to you. Young men will be young men, but why this excessive secrecy? I have an intimate knowledge of the world, and I fear——I do not like this M. Gaillard, either; he indulges most intemperately.”

“Oh, Gaillard the poet,” said the Princesse; “there is not much harm in him.”

Still, she felt uneasy, and determined in her own mind to have an interview with Gaillard, and implore him to protect her precious Toto from the machinations of strange girls, and lead him into the right path—the path that led to Helen Powers.

“Why did you give that old fool a rendezvous at the CafÉ de la Paix?” asked the Prince as the train whirled them along past green fields, on which CÉlestin’s eyes were fixed with pathetic rapture.

“I did not give him a rendezvous,” replied the poet, who had obtained CÉlestin’s assent to his smoking one of Toto’s cigarettes. “I shall not be there. Wolf will be there, and they will bore each other. Wolf is a dun, M. de Nani is a bore. I always appoint my duns and bores to meet each other at the CafÉ de la Paix, the CafÉ AmÉricain, or the Grand CafÉ. They dine together and speak ill of me whilst I am dining at Foyot’s, or the CafÉ Anglais, or the Maison DorÉe. I have made the fortune of three cafÉs by the people I have sent there to wait for me. They all ask for each other, and sit at the same table and wait for me; then they dine, and as a rule drink too much champagne to assuage themselves——”

“Mon Dieu, CÉlestin!” cried Toto, seizing both her hands; “what is this? You are crying!”

“I have just remembered Dodor,” sobbed CÉlestin. “I have left him shut up in my room, and, oh! should anyone open the door and leave it so, Mme. Liard’s cat may kill him. What shall I do?”

“Why, the girl has a baby!” thought Gaillard in astonishment.

“Well, this is a nuisance!” said Toto in a voice of tribulation.

“How old is Dodor, mademoiselle?” asked the poet.

“He is two years and a little bit,” wept CÉlestin.

“Ah, then be assured, mademoiselle, he is safe; cats never attack children of that age.”

Toto made horrible faces at his companion.

“He is not a child, monsieur,” murmured Dodor’s mistress—“I often wish that he were; he is my lark, and Mme. Liard’s cat may kill him.”

Gaillard’s eyes became filled with tears; a moment more, and he might have allowed himself the pleasure of weeping.

“Did you lock your door?” asked Toto.

“Why, yes, I did!” cried CÉlestin, brightening through her tears and putting her hand into the back pocket of her dress; “and the key—I have it. Oh, how relieved I feel! Still, I ought not to have forgotten him; he was a treasure given me by the good God to keep. Ah, monsieur,” she said, turning to Gaillard, “you do not know how I love Dodor.”

Gaillard’s lachrymal works again began to threaten.

“Here we are,” said Toto, and the train drew up at Montmorency, with the trees waving in the wind.

They came along the white road leading to the little town, a boy hired for half a franc carrying the basket, Gaillard threatening him with untold terrors if he dropped it and herding him with his crook-handled stick.

The blue sky was dotted here and there with little white clouds, like a sparse flock of white lambs tended by some invisible shepherd who had gone to sleep in the azure fields and left them to graze at their own sweet will. Beneath the sky and far away stretched the country, green as only April makes it, spread with apple blossom, the air filled with a sound one never hears in Paris—the hum of the wind in a million trees.

CÉlestin seemed tipsy. One can fancy a newly arrived angel in the fields of Paradise drunk with color and light. She dashed into hedgerows after wild flowers, and clapped her hands at butterflies, and cried out with happiness when she saw a lamb just like one of the lambs one sees in the Magazin du Louvre at Christmas time, but this one dancing round its mother in the middle of a field pied with daisies.

“She has gone mad,” said Toto, delighted with the delight of his protÉgÉe.

“’Tis the primitive woman breaking out,” said Gaillard. “Proceed, Alphonse, and if you drop that basket I will flay you! Believe me, DÉsirÉ, every woman is a nymph at heart. I know several women who are devotees when in Paris, but in the country they become hamadryadic; ’tis the influence of the trees—they remember Pan. Have you read my little brochure ‘Pan in Paris’? It appeared as a feuilleton in Lucifer, the journal of the Satanists. I am not a Satanist; I despise the sect. I went to their church once; Satan in person was to appear. He did; the lights were lowered, but he did not frighten me, for I had heard him bleating in the vestry before he was brought on—it was a goat. Besides it was very dull; I left in the middle of the sermon, and Satan smelt dreadfully. I had to burn pastilles in my room for three days to help me to forget him.”

They skirted the happy little town, and made for a part of the chestnut forest declared by Alphonse to be suitable for picnics. Here, beneath the trees on the edge of the sunlight, the basket was deposited on the greensward, and Gaillard flung himself down to rest.

“I will leave you here,” said Toto, “to get the things ready, and I will take CÉlestin to the hill-top to see the view.”

“Leave me, then, your cigarette case,” murmured Gaillard, his hat over his eyes, and his arms flung out on either side; “and do not be long, DÉsirÉ, for I am famished.”

From the hill of Montmorency the whole world of April lay before them, in its midst Paris, the city of light, sixteen miles away, cream-colored and drab; Paris the noisy, silent amidst all that silent country stretching away in billows of tender green to the sky of pale and wonderful blue.

“Oh, ciel!” sighed CÉlestin, removing her gloves as she sat by Toto, and folding them carefully inside out and putting them in her pocket. “Can that be Paris, that little place? my thumb covers it when I hold it so. And, oh, the sky!—it seems to stretch to heaven. How happy the world is!”

“Do you find it happy?” asked Toto, tearing up wild violets and flinging them away to keep his hands employed.

“Yes,” said CÉlestin, breathing the word out in a manner that made it a prayer of praise.

“But you are not rich—you are like me; and they say the rich see more of the pleasure of the world than we do. Tell me, would you like to be a great lady, one of those one sees in the Bois?”

“Oh, no!” said CÉlestin; “I would much rather be myself.”

“But!” said Toto, tearing a daisy’s head off, “imagine having money to spend, as much as one wanted.”

“I have.”

“Imagine having a carriage and horses.”

“That would be nice; at least, I would sooner, I think, go in omnibuses—one would be very desolate all alone in a carriage. It is the people who make omnibuses so delightful; one wonders where they are going to and what they have in their baskets; and some read books, and one tries to imagine what they read of. And then the hats one sees! they make one want to laugh and weep. Sometimes they are not so bad, but sometimes they are frightful; often have I wished to say, ‘Madame, let me retrim your hat; I will do it for love, and use my own thread,’ but I have never dared.”

“Well, imagine being able to ride in omnibuses all day long.”

CÉlestin smiled, and looked away into the blue distance, as if she were watching an ethereal omnibus filled with her familiar angels.

“Well, you could do that all day if you were rich.”

“I could not take Dodor.”

Toto, the tempter, felt that she had him there, but he was not tempting her in the ordinary acceptation of the word.

“You love Dodor very much?” Her eyes swept round to him, and rested full upon his. “Tell me, CÉlestin: could you not love me a little too?”

When they got back to the picnic they found the cloth spread, the places laid, and the Perigord pie eaten; they had, in fact, been away over two hours, and the poet had not waited.

There was cold tongue, and part of a fowl and rolls and butter left, all of which Gaillard offered with effusion; he had expected a scolding for beginning without them, but he did not get it. Toto did not care, CÉlestin did not know; cold tongue or Perigord pie, it did not matter—they were in love. The poet smiled upon them like a father, and piled their plates, and gave them what was left of the champagne.

“Here’s to Églantine!” said Toto, toasting the provider of the feast in a glass of Mumm, from which CÉlestin had taken a sip. “Has she brown eyes or blue?”

“Blue,” said Gaillard. “Blue as the skies above Pentelicus.”

“Well, tell her what I say, and give me a cigarette.”

“There is only one left,” replied the poet, as he hastily lit it.

CHAPTER III.
THE GENESIS OF “PANTIN.”

They returned to Paris at five, leaving the luncheon basket at the Montmorency Station.

“Églantine will send for it,” said Gaillard.

At the Nord they took an open carriage driven by a cabman in a white beaver, and drawn by two white ponies. In this conveyance they tore down the Rue de Faubourg St. Denis, along the Boulevard Nouvelle, and down the Rue Richelieu. Toto sat beside CÉlestin; Gaillard on the front seat, his stick between his legs, chattered like a magpie, so delighted was he to find himself back in his dear Paris.

“Gaillard,” cried Toto, when CÉlestin had been deposited at her own door, with a whispered word in her ear and a promise on her lips for a rendezvous on the morrow, “I am in love.”

“Ma foi! I know.”

“You don’t; you know nothing of love, neither you nor any of us. I don’t know how many women have sworn that they love me; they do because I am a Prince, because I am jewelry, good dinners, and what not. (Boulevard Haussmann, you fool! I have told you twice; and make those pigs of horses travel faster—we are not a dung cart.) Yes, I am all that, and they love me. De Nani, for instance, is a pattern of truth and friendship, as we know it. I have never seen our world before; CÉlestin has lit it for me. My mother paints; good God! my father painted; he wore stays.”

“I, too, have worn stays,” declared Gaillard—“three years ago, when I was very young and foolish. I was then twenty-two. I discarded them because they were such a trouble to lace. I have even painted. What will you have? Youth must expend itself; but believe me, Toto, our world is not a bad world beneath the paint.”

“I tell you it is a vile world.”

“Well, perhaps it is, in parts. De Nani, for instance; beware of that old man, Toto. He is the type of excess. An old man drunk and a drunken old man are two different people. De Nani is a habitual drunkard; I can read it in his eye. He is more dangerous than a cartful of women. Still, despite the fact of De Nani and a thousand like him, I have a childish faith in the world. I believe in humanity, or what I can see of it through the misery and mystery of life. I believe in flowers, I believe in trees. Have you read my ‘Rose Worship’? Mon Dieu! what was that? Only a dog we have run over. Animals, too, are part of my creed. I am thinking of having a book of my belief published, with colored plates. It would be the bible of childhood. Flowers, beasts, birds, and insects would be as the four Apostles. I was saved from atheism by a butterfly. It flew into my rooms in the Rue de Turbigo one day last August. Everyone was at the seaside; I was alone in Paris. De Brie had refused to advance me the money for a trip to Normandy. You, Toto, were at Trouville. The day was sultry, and, to add to my pain, a barrel-organ played in the street outside. Mme. Plon brought me a letter. It was a draft from my sister for five hundred francs. As I cast my eyes over it, a white butterfly flew in through my window, thrice around the room, and out again. It was the voice of the Unseen, saying ‘I am here.’ Yes, I believe—I believe in your CÉlestin. She is all nature, and to be loved by such a woman is a benediction.”

La Princesse de Cammora’s carriage was at the door. She had just returned from shopping, and tea was being served to her in the drawing room.

Gaillard loved tea and Princesses,—even Princesses of fifty,—so he left Toto to go upstairs and change, whilst he found his way to the drawing room.

The Princesse was not alone—Pelisson was with her. He had come to find Toto. His head looked larger than ever; it seemed bursting with some great idea, and, true to his nature, he was making a noise. He was also making the Princesse laugh. The tears were in her eyes as Gaillard entered.

Gaillard sipped his tea whilst the journalist finished his story. It was about an actress. Then the Princesse drew Gaillard into a corner, leaving Pelisson to look over a bundle of engravings till the coming of Toto.

“Oh, M. Gaillard,” said the great lady in a motherly yet playful voice, “how naughty it is of you to lead my Toto astray! No, no, do not speak; it is not you I fear; but I have heard—no matter: a little bird told me. Now, this journey to the country. Who is she, M. Gaillard?”

“Madame, I swear to you——”

“Nay, nay, I do not want you to tell tales out of school; but you have been seen—the three of you—this morning at the Nord. Tell me, now—her name!”

“Madame, be assured, it was a most innocent freak. She is a most charming and innocent girl.”

“Oh, this is dreadful!” murmured the Princesse. “M. Gaillard, I speak to you as a mother to a son. I do not mind Toto’s Mimis and Lolottes,—one cannot keep a young man in a cage,—but I dread these innocent girls. I have seen, alas! so much of life. They come to the house and make disturbances; they have relations, old men from the country, who come and sit in one’s hall till a sergent-de-ville is called. One need not be straitlaced, but one need not beat a tin pan over one’s indiscretions. Besides, Toto is at a very critical age. I have a match at heart for him, a girl pure and beautiful as an angel. But she is an American, and they do not understand the little ways of young men. She is also a good match, even for Toto. So you see it is a mother’s heart that speaks. I pray you tell me her name.”

“Her name is Lu-lu,” said Gaillard, Papillard coming to his aid.

“Lu-lu. Ah, that sets my heart at rest, M. Gaillard. There was never an innocent girl in Paris with that name.”

“Madame,” said the poet, “I think your perception is very clear. I would not disparage Mlle. Lu-lu’s innocence; still, she has a habit of casting her eyes about, and speaks of ‘larks.’”

“And tries to persuade poor Toto that she is an innocent. M. Gaillard, I have read your beautiful poems, and I know your mind, for I have seen it in your works. I have no fear of Toto whilst you are by; stay near him, M. Gaillard, watch over him.”

“I will.”

“And let me know how things go on. Hush! here he is.”

Toto entered in evening dress, covered with a light overcoat.

“Hello, Pelisson!”

“M. Pelisson has called to take you to dine with him,” said the Princesse. “He has some great journalistic feat to perform, and he wants your aid. Go, all of you, and be happy.”

“I am bursting!” cried Pelisson, when they were in the street. “Toto, take my arm; Gaillard, give me yours. Cab! No, I must work my electricity off by walking. We will dine at the CafÉ de la Paix. I met Wolf an hour ago; he told me he would be there.”

“Stop,” said Gaillard. “I do not want to go to the CafÉ de la Paix.”

“Why, Wolf told me you had a rendezvous with him.”

“It was a rendezvous de convenance,” said the poet. “He is bothering me. Never knew a man to bother so over a paltry hundred francs.”

“I will pay it,” said Pelisson. “Come along. What’s that you say: Old De Nani will be there—the Marquis? He’ll do; I am in want of a cheap Marquis. Really, the gods are working. Hearken to Paris—it hums; I will make it roar. The Ministry is down. Have you not heard? Oafs! where have you been? Well, then, the time is coming; it only wants the men to bring it.”

“The time has come for what?” asked Gaillard.

“For a general rooting out, all the rotten sticks into the fire. What will be the end of it?—who knows? The restoration of the Bourbons, I believe. The republic is a rotten hoarding, papered with Panama scrip. What’s behind the hoarding? ah, ah, my children! wait and see. I am going to bring out a paper; everything is ready down to the printer’s ink. I want from you a hundred thousand francs, Toto. I want your brains, Gaillard. Struve we will pull into it also. I have four other men; all the talent in Paris will be with me. It is to be a dull paper full of ideas. It will lick the boots of the bourgeoisie, and wink behind it at the throne. It will slaver, and stink, and shuffle along, but it will build barricades in the world of thought. Gaillard, can you write an ode to a yard-stick?”

“I can write an ode to anything beautiful.”

“What is more beautiful than a bourgeois? He is the emblem of commerce.”

“Looking at him in that light, he has his dim sort of beauty; besides, I would do anything to vex De Brie. He pays one for one’s work as if one were a butcher selling legs of mutton. He reduces literature to the level of a trade. He would be mad if he thought I were on the staff of another journal.”

“He’ll be madder when he sees my paper break out like the smallpox; but you must be dull.”

“I would endeavor even to be dull,” said Gaillard, “to vex De Brie.”

“But see here,” said Toto. “What is the use of another paper? There are hundreds of papers.”

“There is no paper like mine,” said Pelisson. “Wait till you see it! it will begin with a grunt and end in a yell. Ma foi! yes. There are a hundred dull papers pretending to be clever, but there is no clever paper pretending to be dull. I am going to be respectable, and wear a scorpion’s tail. I am going to give more business news than any other paper. M. Prudhomme will read me after dinner; and I will tickle him under the ribs, and then some day I will bite him behind, and make him jump from his easy-chair and pull things down. You will hear Paris crack. Here we are!”

They had reached the CafÉ de la Paix; De Nani and Wolf were there already.

“For goodness’ sake, Pelisson,” said Gaillard, “give this wretched Wolf his hundred francs, or he will be making innuendoes all dinner-time! It is a way he has; he is most spiteful and has no reserve.”

Wolf was a journalist, with a long black beard, a high forehead, and spectacles. His forte was interviewing. He entered one’s house like a wolf, and swallowed one—house, wife, furniture, and all; the backyard and the front garden were not beneath him. Then he vomited the remains into the columns of fifty papers, and went and devoured someone else. But he was a good-natured wolf, ready to lend to a friend in distress, but a terrible creditor, for, to use Gaillard’s expression, he tortured one so.

Pelisson drew him aside and promised him payment, and then they dined, the journalist sketching out his plan between the courses to the delight of his listeners, excepting Toto.

The wretched Toto had no part in the scheme; they asked him for money to help them, but they did not invoke his brains. He felt the slight, but not severely; literature was not his path. He had no hankering after distinction as a journalist, so he agreed to supply the hundred thousand francs, if he could get them.

“I will give you bills at three months, and leave you to discount them. I am going to Corsica to shoot moufflon.” And he touched Gaillard’s foot under the table to remind him of CÉlestin and the attic in Bohemia.

“But,” said De Nani, who had remained sober, for the gout was threatening, and, besides, there seemed to be a chance of money in all this, “what is the name of this journal to be?”

“Pantin,” replied Pelisson. “I have sifted a hundred thousand names in my head during the last three days, and Pantin is the only one that stuck. It fits my idea like a glove; it has several meanings. It is like a stroke on a gong.”

Pantin’s health was drunk, then the conversation ran on, everyone talking except Toto, who was drinking.

Toto, to do him credit, rarely drank much; he drank to-night because the joy of the others depressed him. He could not share their excitement; he felt himself to be the drone in this hive; they were all famous in their way, these men, except De Nani. He and De Nani, the representatives of birth—what a pair! He drank double on account of De Nani.

They all rose from the table and trooped out, Pelisson’s hand on everybody’s shoulder, Wolf with his spectacles glittering in the gaslight, Gaillard gesticulating, De Nani sniggering, Toto smoking. They were going to Pelisson’s rooms to formulate their plans on paper. Unhappy Toto, had he known the nasty trick Pantin was destined to play him!

CHAPTER IV.
RECEIPT FOR STUFFING A MARQUIS.

Some days later Gaillard was lying in bed. It was noon, and the blinds of his room were down. Toto burst in.

“Go away, Toto,” said the poet in a feeble voice. “I am dying.”

“What are you dying of?”

“Misery,” murmured Gaillard, turning his face to the wall.

Toto pulled up the blind.

“Never mind the misery. Get up and come out; I want you. What’s the matter?”

“The world; it comes upon me like this sometimes, the horror of the whole thing. Besides, someone stole all my money last night. Where is God? I do not know. Go away, and leave me to myself.”

“You haven’t taken poison or anything, have you?”

“No—not yet.”

“Well, get up, and I will give you some money, and we will go and have dÉjeuner.”

Gaillard moved uneasily.

“Do be quick, or I will go without you.”

The poet rose rapidly, and began to dress.

“I have seen CÉlestin,” said Toto, standing by the window, and looking out on the street.

“Ah, that charming CÉlestin!” sighed Gaillard, putting on his trousers with a weary air.

“And I have taken an atelier in the Rue de Perpignan. I spent the whole afternoon yesterday hunting for that fool Fanfoullard; no one knew of such a person, but I found very nice rooms.”

“Fanfoullard has left Paris—gone to NÎmes. But, Toto, what is this you tell me? Are you really going to start on this crusade—become a painter?”

“I am a painter.”

“I mean, live in this dreadful way? Toto, I predict that there will be great trouble. Your mother is very anxious; she is anxious for you to make a good match.”

“That’s all right.”

“How all right?” asked Gaillard, scratching his head.

“I saw the American girl yesterday, and told her what I was going to do. She is going to keep my mother quiet; she fell in with the idea at once. She is the only person who understands me.”

“Did you tell her of CÉlestin?”

“No, of course I did not; I am not that sort of person. I never talk of one woman before another. Go on dressing.”

“And I suppose you will end by marrying the beautiful American, when you are famous?”

“I will never marry anyone but CÉlestin. She is the only woman I have ever loved.”

“But, mon Dieu! you are not going to marry her?”

“No; I would if she wanted to, but she doesn’t. A priest mumbling over us will not make us love each other any more. Don’t put on that awful green necktie, for goodness’ sake; take that plaid one, it looks better.”

“And you are going to start your mÉnage to-morrow?” asked Gaillard, putting on the desired necktie carefully before the glass.

“Yes, and that is what I am going to start on.”

He held out three bank-notes for a thousand francs each.

“It won’t last you a month.”

“It will have to last me a year.”

“Toto, are you serious?”

“What the deuce!” blazed out Toto. “Everyone asks me that when I want to do anything that is not foolish. When I took to painting first, that fool De Harnac raised his stupid eyebrows and said: ‘Toto, are you serious?’ When I told Helen Powers yesterday, the first thing she said was, ‘Toto, are you serious?’ And now you. Am I a buffoon? And stop calling me by that odious name: I am Toto no longer—I am DÉsirÉ. Are you dressed? Let us go, then.”

“But I do not know what will become of me,” said Gaillard, as they descended the stairs. “What will become of me, all alone in Paris, without you? I shall be bored; I shall die of yawning.”

“You can come over every day and see us.”

“It is so far.”

“You can take an omnibus.”

“A what? An omnibus! I!”

“They are good enough for CÉlestin; they are good enough for me; but see here, Gaillard: above all things, you must not tell anyone what I am going to do or where I am going. I am going to amuse myself. Well, what does it matter to people whether I am amusing myself by shooting in Corsica or by painting in the Rue de Perpignan?”

“I will be mute as a fish.”

“I have joined a studio—Melmenotte’s. I want to do a lot at the nude. I will sell my studies as I go on. A student there told me it was quite easy to live by pot-boiling, but I am going to have a great work in hand. How can a man work leading the life we lead? The other morning, just as I was settling down to a picture, Valfray came and dragged me off to that cock-fight at Chantilly. I got a blouse yesterday for six francs. Come in here, I want to see Pelisson; he is sure to be here at this hour.”

They entered a cafÉ on the Boulevard des Capucines, and there sure enough sat Pelisson; he had finished his dÉjeuner and was reading letters.

“How’s Pantin?” asked Gaillard.

“Blooming, or going to bloom. I am besieged with firms who want to advertise.”

“Have you fixed on your editor?”

“De Nani”

“What!” asked Gaillard in a horrified voice. “That drunken old wretch!”

“Pah! he is only the figurehead. I am the editor; no one knows him, that is the charm. He has been lying perdu at Auteuil for half a century, and now I have got him, he is only a skin; I am going to stuff him—stuff him with Pelisson. Already people are asking who is this Marquis de Nani, and people are answering he is the editor of the new journal that is going to be, Pantin, the wittiest man in Paris, and discovered by Pelisson. I am circulating bonmots of De Nani’s; they are mine, but nobody knows that. In a week’s time everyone will be talking of De Nani, this Marquis who is a genius; everyone will be craving to see him. You know Paris. The old fool is wise enough to dodge round comers, for he knows his own stupidity; should anyone find it out, they will put it down to his cleverness. Wolf is publishing an interview with him written by me. Oh, yes! Pantin will be a success, and you will have your hundred thousand francs back, Toto, and a hundred thousand on top of it.”

“You got the bills discounted?”

“Oh, yes.”

“What is this I hear about a new journal?” asked Struve, who had come in unobserved, slipping into a chair beside Pelisson.

The newspaper man explained whilst Toto and Gaillard breakfasted.

“And Toto pays for all this?”

“He has good security; besides, he only pays a third. I have two hundred thousand francs from a little syndicate, and the promise of five hundred thousand if the thing takes. Toto has a lien on the advertisements; he is perfectly safe.”

“What’s De Nani’s salary?”

“I give him a dinner every day and ten francs.”

“Have you a cash-box?”

“Why?”

“Keep it locked. Pelisson, you are a fool.”

“Why?”

“To have let that old goat into your affair.”

“You wait and see.”

“I will.”

“You are not going?”

“I am.”

“But see here: I want a man to do the art criticism.”

“You’ll find lots.” And Struve vanished.

“He always throws cold water on everything,” said Toto, remembering the advice about the coffee mill.

“He’s a critic,” said Gaillard.

“He’s a clever man,” said Pelisson, knitting his brows an instant; “but he’s wrong here.”

“Oh, the middle of the day!” cried Toto in a voice of tragedy as he took the poet’s arm half an hour later and lounged out of the cafÉ. “What a frightful institution it is! I would like to be born into a world where the days had no middles.”

“You are right; it is a most inartistic flaw in the scheme of things. The night has no such blunder; that is why I love it. The night always reminds me of the exquisite masterpiece of some forgotten painter in the gallery of some bourgeois millionaire. Every twelve hours we slip into the exquisite poem of darkness, and then out again into this villainous prose. Pah! if I had the key of the meter that feeds our great chandelier, men would have a three-hours’ day; it is quite long enough.”

“Quite. I am going to look at my new rooms; will you come? We will take a cab.”

They drove to the Rue de Perpignan; it was a long street situated in what remains of the Latin Quarter. Gaillard shivered at the everyday appearance of the place. He had never been in it before; the name, floating loose in his head, had attached itself to the name of Fanfoullard; he wished now that he had never imagined the fan-painter.

“It is a great way from everywhere, do you not think, DÉsirÉ? Why put the Seine between one’s self and civilization? One can hide one’s self just as easily a hundred yards from the Rue St. HonorÉ as a hundred miles.”

Toto made no answer, but led the way upstairs.

The atelier was certainly large enough; men were at work settling the stove; another man was mending the top light. The place was almost studiously bare; a tulip in the bud in a red-tile pot stood on a table; an old guitar hung on the wall; there was a throne and drapery, an easel, or, at least, three. Some of these things had belonged to the last tenant. The tulip in the pot had, however, only just arrived. It suited the surroundings, which were those of an ordinary atelier; yet there was something about the place suggestive of a scene in a theater. Perhaps it was the guitar. But one felt the hand of Henri Murger over it all.

“This,” said Toto, touching a nail in the wall, “is for Dodor’s cage.”

Gaillard’s heel struck against the handle of a little frying-pan that protruded from a bundle.

“We will have our meals sent in, but it is useful sometimes to be able to cook at home—sausages and things. You must come and teach us how to make coffee.”

Gaillard poked his nose into an adjoining room; it was a bedroom. He observed that the washing-jug was cracked.

“Well,” said Toto, “what do you think of it all?”

“I envy you.”

CHAPTER V.
ANGÉLIQUE.

“I envy you,” said Gaillard as they returned to civilization; “I envy you because you are young, rich, and a Prince. I do not envy you for these things, but rather for the enjoyment they can give you. To be twenty-two, poor, and in love—what can be better than that? You are twenty-two, and in love, and you are so rich that you can allow yourself the luxury of being poor. What a change for you, and how you will taste it all! Poverty falls to the poor; they have it every day, but they do not enjoy it. It is like the old women who sell sugar-plums; they do not eat their own wares. But with you it will be different; you will bring an unsated palate. Your present, contrasted with your past, will be as a naked man standing against a background of old-gold brocade. Extraordinary being to have found out a new pleasure in this jaded age, and that pleasure lying unnoticed before the eyes of all men. Look at that beggar man—are not his clothes the color of withered leaves? I have seen greens in old coats that no painter has ever seized. You would never guess my deep acquaintance with the ways of the poor, but I have been thrown in their way. Toto, I have a girlfriend.”

“Better say a dozen.”

“I know girls pursue me, but I cast them off. AngÉlique is not of the common order.”

“Who is AngÉlique, for goodness’ sake?”

“She is the only woman I love.”

“I have heard you say that a dozen times about a dozen women.”

“I was only pretending; in this world one hides one’s pearls and wears one’s glass beads. AngÉlique is very poor; she is a pompon maker.”

“What’s a pompon?”

“A pompon is a thing women wear in their hats—a little fluffy feather, an absurdity, but it supports AngÉlique. In this world, Toto, some fate ordains that men live on each other’s absurdities. Absurdity is to men as grass to cattle, air to life. Could you place a great cupping-glass over Paris, and, with an air-pump, remove all its absurdity, the place would fall to pieces; ten thousand men would starve; the journals would wither like autumn leaves; Struve, Pelisson, De Brie, and a thousand others would vanish; women would no longer wear pompons in their hats, and poor little AngÉlique would die from want of folly in others. AngÉlique has a lame brother who lives at Villers Cotterets; he is a great trial to us—an incessant drain. You often laugh at me for my expenses; the fact is, Toto, I am always being tapped, like a person with the dropsy. The affection between this brother and sister is a poem; I weep my money away over it. Now you are casting in your lot with art, AngÉlique rises up in my mind, and I hear her say “What will become of me?” I will not hide it from you that you have, through me, been the mainstay of an unfortunate man. AngÉlique knows it. Well, I want you to leave in my hands a certain provision for these people before you cut yourself off from your resources.”

“I’ll give you some money to-morrow; I want you to come and see me started.”

“Where shall I call for you?”

“At the Boulevard Haussmann.”

“In the morning?”

“Yes, and be sure that you say nothing of all this; I want no one to know what I am doing.”

“But your mother?”

“She does not care so long as the American does not know.”

“Do not yawn so, Toto.”

“I can’t help it; it’s the thought of my mother, and old De Nani, and all the lot. Do you know, some day or another I would have cut my throat if I had not met CÉlestin; she was like a breath of air—she understands me because she loves me. Oh, I’m so sick of women grinning at me; CÉlestin is the only woman I have ever seen smile. Mlle. Powers is a nice girl; she means what she says, but she always talks to me as if I were her grandchild, and she calls me Toto. Won’t it be a joke when my mother finds out that I have given old Pelisson a hundred thousand francs! I am fond of Pelisson, he’s the best of the lot; I’d do anything for him.”

“Pelisson has his limitations,” said Gaillard, and Toto yawned again.

CHAPTER VI.
THE DEPARTURE.

Gaillard, who was somewhat of a philosopher, had once divided sorrow under two heads—the sorrows of life and the sorrows of art. He reckoned the necessity of getting up early chief amidst the mundane sorrows, and accepted it in a grumbling spirit; but this morning he did not grumble. He dressed rapidly and sadly, and departed for the Boulevard Haussmann, refusing the coffee and roll and butter offered to him by Mme. Plon.

“I cannot eat,” said Gaillard. “I am deeply disturbed.”

He found Toto dressed and in his atelier. He was looking at Sisera and Jael. Jael had the air and aspect of a stout housemaid nailing carpets down with energy.

“How could I have painted that beast?” asked Toto. “She is all flesh, she is an animal, she is like a bull-fighter in a skirt. Imagine a woman like that, and then imagine CÉlestin.”

“Are you going to remove these canvases to your new atelier?”

“Mon Dieu, no! I will remove nothing that reminds me of this place. I tell you what: I will make you a present of this picture. You can have the water-nymph too.”

“Thanks,” said Gaillard in an unenthusiastic voice. “I will not remove them at present; they would remind me too much of all the pleasant times that are gone. I feel very depressed this morning, Toto—I mean DÉsirÉ; one cannot get out of old habits in a hurry without shivering.”

He looked out of a side window and away over the roofs of Paris. The morning was sitting on the roofs pelting the city with roses; the city grumbled, Gaillard sighed.

“Oh, the good times, how they pass! Do you remember, DÉsirÉ, the night you won a thousand napoleons at the Grand Club? It is only a month ago, yet it seems a year.”

“The night we tied the two cats by the tail and hung them from a lamp-post? Where did De Mirecourt get those cats? He suddenly appeared with them. Do you remember the sergent-de-ville who tried to get them down?”

“I had forgotten the incident of the cats. I remember it dimly now—one was a tortoise-shell. Yes, those were pleasant times. DÉsirÉ, it is not too late to go back to them; consider your position well before you take this step.”

“Come,” said Toto, “I am going.”

“But have you said good-by to Mme. la Princesse?”

“She would never forgive me for waking her at this hour.”

“Mon Dieu! but you have no luggage.”

“I have a bag in the hall below.”

“Ah, mon Dieu! I hope this is all for the best. So you are going with only a bag? DÉsirÉ, have you forgotten AngÉlique?”

“I have three thousand francs in an envelope—it will keep you going. Do try and make it do for six months. Look at me; I have only three thousand for a year.”

“I will try. Ah, mon Dieu! I wish I had never seen this day; my heart is heavy. Thanks, I will not open the envelope till I meet AngÉlique; we will open it together. We are like two children sitting at a feast and pulling crackers; each day is like a cracker tied with dawn-colored ribbon. Sometimes AngÉlique weeps at the contents of these crackers, sometimes she laughs and claps her hands; she will clap her hands to-day. Come, let us go and follow our fates.”

“This is my luggage,” said Toto, picking up a huge Gladstone bag in the hall.

Gaillard opened the hall door, and they passed out into the bright morning. The clock of St. Augustin was striking eight; the sparrows were fighting in the sunshine; the earth seemed teeming with life and light and happiness.

“How good it all is!” said Toto, as they drove over the Seine. He was echoing CÉlestin’s eternal sentiment without knowing it. “What a lovely world it is, and how little we see of it! We snore in our beds during the best part of the day, and live the rest of our time by lamplight.”

“The world,” said Gaillard, “always reminds me of a poem written by a shopkeeper to advertise his stale wares, unpunctuated and filled with printer’s errors; that is why we read it by a dim light. It ought to have been burnt; it was unfortunately published and given to us to read. No one can make out what it is driving at; we have been spelling at it now a million years; we began when we were apes, and we will end, perhaps, when we are donkeys. I am sick of it; I would jump into the Seine, only that such an act would delight De Brie.”

The cab stopped at the doorway of CÉlestin’s house, and the concierge, Mme. Liard, greeted Toto effusively. Her heart was touched by the youth of the lovers and the fact of Toto being an artist; that he should take CÉlestin under his protection seemed to her as natural as the mating of sparrows, and a piece of very good fortune for CÉlestin.

Her trunk stood in the passage, and on the trunk the parrot cage, covered with green baize. From the cage came the occasional flirting sound of wings, the occasional tinkle of the swinging ring—sounds that bespoke uneasiness in the mind of Dodor.

Then CÉlestin came down the steep stairs, blushing, and Gaillard had to admit that, even if the world were an ill-written poem, it had at least some very beautiful passages; for CÉlestin had made for herself a hat which was an amorous dream, and a girl friend, some lower CÉlestin of the Rue St. HonorÉ, had, in a fit of sentiment, confected for her a gown such as an angel in half-mourning need not have been ashamed of. Toto had bought her a new pair of shoes, and she wore openwork stockings. Toto kissed her before everyone; this was their only marriage service.

“It makes me feel young again!” cried Mme. Liard as she carried the parrot cage out, whilst the driver carried the trunk. “And I will come and see you in your new home; and oh, monsieur,”—to Gaillard,—“she ought to be careful, for her chest is not what it should be; it was what killed her mother.”

“I will see that she wears a muffler,” replied Gaillard, whilst CÉlestin got into the carriage, weeping from grief and happiness, and kissing her hand to Mme. Liard.

Then the vehicle drove away, Gaillard on the front seat, the lovers facing him, and Dodor’s cage beside the coachman.