Part 9

The sketch artist sauntered over and sat down at our table to have a chat with Bishop. He was a singular fellow. His manner was smoothed by a fine and delicate courtesy, bespeaking a careful rearing, whose effects his loose life and promiscuous associations could not obliterate. His age was about thirty-two, though he looked much older,--this being due in part to his hard life and in other part to the heavy whiskers that he wore. An absurd little round felt hat sat precariously on his riotous mane, and I was in constant apprehension lest it should fall off every time he shook his head. Over his shoulders was a blue cape covering a once white shirt that was devoid of a collar. His fingers were all black with the crayon that he had used in sketching. He said that he had already earned twelve sous that evening, making portraits at six sous a head! But there was not so much money to be made in a place like this as in the big _café_s,--the frequenters were too poor.

I asked him where he had studied and learned his art, for it could be easily seen that he had had some training; his portraits were not half bad, and showed a knowledge of drawing. He thereupon told me his story.

He had come to Paris thirteen years before from Nantes, Brittany, to study art. His father kept a small grocery and provision-shop in Nantes, and lived in meagre circumstances. The son having discovered what his father deemed a remarkable talent for drawing when a boy, the father sent him to Paris, with an allowance of a hundred francs a month, and he had to deny himself severely to furnish it. When the young man arrived at Paris he studied diligently at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts for a while, and became acquainted with many of the students and models. He soon found the easy life of the _café_s, with the models for companions, more fascinating than the dull grind of the school. It was much pleasanter to enjoy the gayety of the nights and sleep all day than drone and labor at his easel. As his small allowance did not permit of extravagance, he fell deeply into debt, and gave more heed to absinthe than his meals,--it is cheaper, more alluring, and brings an exhilaration that sharpens wit and equips the soul with wings.

For a whole year the father was in total ignorance of his son's conduct, but one day a friend, who had seen the young man in Paris, laid the ugly story in his father's ear. This so enraged the father that he instantly stopped the remittances and disowned his son. All appeals for money, all promises to reform, were in vain, and so the young madcap was forced to look about for a means of subsistence. And thus it was that he drifted into the occupation of a sketch artist, making portraits in the _café_s all night and sleeping in daytime. This brought him a scant living.

But there was his mistress, Marcelle, always faithful to him. She worked during the day at sewing, and shared her small earnings with him. All went fairly well during the summer, but in winter the days were short, Marcelle's earnings were reduced, and the weather was bitter cold. Still, it was not so bad as it might be, he protested; but underneath his easy flippancy I imagined I caught a shadow,--a flitting sense of the hollowness and misery and hopelessness and shame of it all. But I am not certain of that. He had but gone the way of many and many another, and others now are following in his footsteps, deluding self-denying parents, and setting foot in the road which, so broad and shining at the beginning, narrows and darkens as it leads nearer and nearer to the rat- holes under the bridges of the Seine, and to the grim house whose lights forever shine at night under the shadow of Notre-Dame.

Had monsieur a cigarette to spare? Monsieur had, and monsieur thought that the thanks for it were out of all proportion to its value; but they were totally eclipsed by the praises of monsieur's wonderful generosity in paying for a glass of absinthe and sugar for the man who made faces at six sous apiece.

The quiet but none the less high tension of the place, the noise of the singing, the rattling of glasses and saucers, the stifling foul air of the room, filled me with weariness and threatened me with nausea. Things had moved in a constant whirl all night, and now it was nearly four o'clock. How much longer will this last?

"Till five o'clock," answered the musician; then all the lights go out, and the place is closed; and our friends seek their cold, cheerless rooms, to sleep far into the afternoon.

We paid for our saucers, and after parting adieux left in company with the musician and the aesthetic poet. How deliciously sharp and refreshing was the cold, biting air as we stepped out into the night! It seemed as though I had been breathing molasses. The fog was thicker than ever, and the night was colder. The two twisted gas-lamps were no longer burning as we crossed the slippery stone-paved court and ascended to the narrow street. The musician wrapped a gray muffler about his throat and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. The poet had no top-coat, but he buttoned his thin jacket tightly about him, and shivered.

"Shall we have some lait chaud and a croissant?" inquired the musician.

Yes, anything hot would be good, even milk; but where could we get it?

"Ah, you shall see!"

We had not gone far when it gave me a start to recognize a figure that we had seen in the Boul' Mich' on our way to the Soleil d'Or. It was that of an outcast of the boulevards, now slinking through the shadows toward the river. We had been accosted by him in front of one of the brilliant _café_s, as, trembling and rubbing his hands, a picture of hopeless dejection and misery, and in a quavering voice he begged us to buy him a drink of brandy.

It probably saved him from an attack of delirium tremens that night, but here he was drifting, with a singular fatality, toward the river and the Morgue. Now, that his day's work of begging was done, all his jackal watchfulness had disappeared, and an inner vision seemed to look forth from his bleared eyes as their gaze strained straight and dull toward the black river. It may have been a mere fancy, but the expression in his eyes reminded me strongly of similar things that I had seen on the slabs in the Morgue.

We crossed the Rue du Haut-Pavé again to the river wall, and arrived at the bridge leading back of Notre-Dame and past the Morgue. On the farther end of the bridge, propped against the parapet, was a small stand, upon a corner of which a dim lamp was burning. In front were a number of milk-cans, and on a small counter were a row of thick white bowls and a basket of croissants. Inside, upon a small stove, red with heat, were two kettles from which issued clouds of steam bearing an odor of boiling milk. A stout woman, her face so well wrapped in a shawl that only the end of her red nose was visible, greeted us,--"_Bon jour, messieurs. En voulez-vous du bon lait bien chaud?_"

She poured out four bowls of steaming milk, and gave us each a roll. For this luxury we paid three sous each; and a feast it was, for the shivering poet, at least, for he licked the hot bowl clean and ate the very crumbs of his croissant.

As we were bound for widely separated quarters, our Bohemian friends bade us an affectionate good-night, and were soon swallowed up in the gloom. We turned towards home and the Boul' Mich'. All the _café_s were closed and dark, but the boulevard was alive with canal-boatmen, street- sweepers, and rumbling vegetable- and milk-carts. The streets were being washed clean of all evidences of the previous day's life and turmoil, and the great city was creeping forth from its lair to begin another.

THE CAFÉ PROCOPE

IN the short, busy little street, the Rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie, which runs from the Boulevard St. Germain, in a line from the Théâtre National de l'Odéon and connecting with the Rue Mazarin, its continuation, the heavy dome of the Institut looming at its end, is to be found probably the most famous _café_ in Paris, for in its day it has been the rendezvous of the most noted French littérateurs, politicians, and savants. What is more, the Procope was the first _café_ established in Paris, originating the appellation "_café_" to a place where coffee is served, for it was here that coffee was introduced to France as an after-dinner comforter.

That was when the famous _café_ was in its glory. Some of the great celebrities who made it famous have been dead for nearly two hundred years, though its greatest fame came a century afterwards; and now the _café_, no longer glorious as it was when the old Théâtre Français stood opposite, reposes in a quiet street far from the noise and glitter and life of the boulevards, and lives on the splendid memories that crowd it. Other _café_s by the thousand have sprung into existence, and the word has spread to coffee saloons and restaurants throughout Christendom; and the ancient rive droite nurses the history and relics of the golden days of its glory, alone in a quiet street, surrounded by tightly shut shops, and the calm of a sleeping village.

Still, it retains many of its ancient characteristics and much of the old-time quaintness peculiar to itself and setting it wholly apart, and it is yet the rendezvous of littérateurs and artists, who, if not so famous as the great men in whose seats they sit, play a considerable rôle in the life of modern Paris.

The front of the _café_ is a neat little terrace off the street, screened by a fanciful net-work of vines and shrubbery that spring from green painted boxes and that conceal cosey little tables and corners placed behind them. Instead of the usual showy plate-windows, one still finds the quaint old window-panes, very small carreaux, kept highly polished by the tireless garçon apprentice.

Tacked to the white pillars are numerous copies of _Le Procope_, a weekly journal published by Théo, the proprietor of the _café_. Its contributors are the authors, journalists, and poets who frequent the _café_, and it publishes a number of portraits besides, and some spirited drawings. It is devoted in part to the history of the _café_ and of the celebrities who have made it famous, and publishes portraits of them, from Voltaire to Paul Verlaine. This same journal was published here over two hundred years ago, in 1689, and it was the means then by which the patrons of the establishment kept in closer touch with their contemporaries and the spirit of the time. Théo is proprietor and business manager, as well as editor.

The following two poems will give an idea of the grace of the matter contained in Le Procope:

À UNE ESPAGNOLE

Au loin, quand, l'oil rêveur et d'ennuis l'âme pleine,

Je suivrai sur les flots le vol des alcyons

Chaque soir surgira dans les derniers rayons

Le profil triste et doux d'Ida, de ma sirène.

La figure et de lys et d'iris transparente,

Ressortira plus blanche en l'ombre des cheveux

Profonds comme un mystère et troublants et mes yeux

Boiront dans l'Idéal sa caresse enivrante.

Et je rechercherai l'énigme du sourire

Railleur ou de pitié qui luisait dans ses yeux

En des paillettes d'or sous ses beaux cils ombreux....

Et je retomberai dans la tristesse... et dire

Qu'un seul mot me rendrait et la vie et l'espoir:

Belle, mon rendez-vous n'est-il point pour ce soir?

L Birr.

PETITE CHANSON DÉSOLÉE

Je suis seul dans la grande ville

Où nul n'a fêté mon retour,

Cour vide, et cerveau qui vacille,

Sans projet, sans but, sans amour

Je suis seul dans la grande ville.

Le dos voûté, les bras ballants,

Je marche au hasard dans la foule

A longs pas lourds et nonchalants,

On me pousse, heurte, refoule,

Le dos voûté, les bras ballants.

Je suis accablé de silence,

De ce silence intérieur,

Tel un brouillard subtil et dense,

Qui tombe à plis lourds sur le cour,

Je suis accablé de silence.

Ah! quand viendront les jours heureux,

Quand viendra la chère attendue

Qu'espère mon cour amoureux,

Qu'implore mon âme éperdue,

Ah! quand viendront les jours heureux!

Achille Segard.

Here is a particularly charming little poem, written in the musical French of two or three centuries ago:

UN BAYSER

Sur vostre lèvre fraîche et rose,

Ma mye, ah! laissiez-moi poser

Cette tant bonne et doulce chose,

Un bayser.

Telle une fleur au jour éclose,

le vois vostre teint se roser;

Si ie vous redonnois,--ie n'ose,

Un bayser.

Laissiez-moi vous prendre, inhumaine,

A chascun iour de la sepmaine

Un bayser.

Trop tôt viendront vieil aage et peine!

Lors n'aurez plus, l'eussiez-vous reine,

Un bayser.

Maistre Guillaume.

The modern gas illumination of the _café_, in contrast to the fashion of brilliant lighting that prevails in the showy _café_s of the boulevards, must nevertheless be a great advance on the ancient way that it had of being lighted with crude oil lamps and candelabra. But the dim illumination is in perfect keeping with the other appointments of the place, which are dark, sombre, and funereal. The interior of the Procope is as dark as a finely colored old meerschaum pipe. The woodwork, the chairs, and the tables are deeply stained by time, the contrasting white marble tops of the tables suggesting gravestones; and with all these go the deeply discolored walls and the many ancient paintings,--even the caisse, behind which sits Madame Théo, dozing over her knitting. This caisse is a wonderful piece of furniture in itself, of some rich dark wood, beautifully carved and decorated.

Madame Théo is in black, her head resting against the frame of an old crayon portrait of Voltaire on the wall behind her. A fat and comfortable black cat is asleep in the midst of rows of white saucers and snowy napkins. The only garçon, except the garçon apprentice, is sitting in a corner drowsing over an evening paper, but ever ready to answer the quiet calls of the customers. For in the matter of noise and frivolity the Café Procope is wholly unlike the boulevard _café_s. An atmosphere of refined and elegant suppression pervades the place; the roystering spirit that haunts the boulevards stops at the portals of the Procope. Here all is peace and tranquillity, and that is why it is the haunt of many earnest and aspiring poets and authors; for hither they may bring their portfolios in peace and security, and here they may work upon their manuscripts, knowing that their neighbors are similarly engrossed and that intrusion is not to be feared. And then, too, are they not sitting on the same chairs and writing at the same tables that have been occupied by some of the greatest men in all the brilliant history of France? Is not this the place in which greatness had budded and blossomed in the centuries gone? Are not these ancient walls the same that echoed the wit, badinage, and laughter of the masters? And there are the portraits of the great themselves, looking down benignly and encouragingly upon the young strugglers striving to follow in their footsteps, and into the ghostly mirrors, damaged by time and now sending back only ghosts of shadows, they look as the great had looked before them. It is here, therefore, that many of the modern geniuses of France have drawn their inspiration, shaking off the endless turmoil of the noisy and bustling world, living with the works and memories of the ancient dead, and working out their destiny under the magic spell that hovers about the place. It is for this reason that the habitués are jealous of the intrusion of the curious and worldly. In this quiet and secure retreat they feel no impinging of the wearing and crippling world that roars and surges through the busy streets and boulevards.

M. Théo de Bellefond is the full name of the proprietor, but he is commonly known as M. Théo. He is a jolly little man, with an ambitious round stomach, a benevolent face covered with a Vandyke beard, and a shining bald head. A large flowing black cravat, tied into an artistic négligé bow, hides his shirt. M. Théo came into possession of the Procope in 1893, a fact duly recorded on a door panel, along with the names of over a score of the celebrities who have made the Procope their place of rest, refection, and social enjoyment. M. Procope was a journalist in his day, but now the ambition that moves him is to restore the ancient glory of the Procope; to make it again the centre of French brains and power in letters, art, and politics. To this end he exerts all his journalistic tact, a fact clearly shown by the able manner in which he conducts his journal, _Le Procope_. He has worked out the history of the _café_, and has at the ends of his fingers the life- stories of its famous patrons.

The Café Procope was founded in 1689 by François Procope, where it now stands. Opposite was the Comédie Française, which also was opened that year. The _café_ soon became the rendezvous of all who aspired to greatness in art, letters, philosophy, and politics. It was here that Voltaire, in his eighty-second year, while attending the rehearsals of his play, "Irène," descended from his chaise-à-porteur at the door of the Café Procope, and drank the coffee which the _café_ had made fashionable. It was here also that he became reconciled to Piron, after an estrangement of more than twenty years.

Ste.-Foix made trouble here one day about a cup of chocolate. A duel with the proprietor of the _café_ was the immediate result, and after it Ste.-Foix, badly wounded, exclaimed, "Nevertheless, monsieur, your sword-thrust does not prevent my saying that a very sickly déjeuner is une tasse de chocolat!"

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, after the successful representation of "Le Devin de Village," was carried in triumph to the Procope by Condorcet, who, with Jean-Jacques on his shoulders, made a tour of the crowded _café_, yelling, "Vive la Musique Française!" Diderot was fond of sitting in a corner and manufacturing paradoxes and materialistic dissertations to provoke the lieutenant of police, who would note everything he said and report it to the chief of police. The lieutenant, ambitious though stupid, one night told his chief that Diderot had said one never saw souls; to which the chief returned, "M. Diderot se trompe. L'âme est un esprit, et M. Diderot est plein d'esprit."

Danton delighted in playing chess in a quiet corner with a strong adversary in the person of Marat. Many other famous revolutionists assembled here, among them Fabre d'Eglantine, Robespierre, d'Holbach, Mirabeau, Camille Desmoulins. It was here that Camille Desmoulins was to be strangled by the reactionists in the Revolution; it was here that the first bonnet rouge was donned. The massacre of December, 1792, was here- planned, and the killing began at the very doors of the _café_. Madame Roland, Lucille Desmoulins, and the wife of Danton met here on the ioth of August, the day of the fall of the monarchy, when bells rang and cannon thundered. It was later that Bonaparte, then quite young and living in the Quai Conti, in the building which the American Art Association now occupies, left his hat at the Procope as security for payment for a drink, he having left his purse at home. In short, the old _café_ of the Rue des Fossés-St.-Ger-main (its old name) was famous as the meeting-place of celebrities. Legendre, the great geometrician, came hither. One remembers the verses of Masset: "Je joue aux dominos quelquefois chez Procope." Here Gambetta made speeches to the reactionist politicians and journalists. He engaged in more than one prise de bec with le père Coquille, friend of Veuillot. Coquille always made sprightly and spirited replies when Gambetta roared, thundered, and swore.

Since then have followed days of calm. In later times Paul Verlaine was a frequenter of the Procope, where he would sit in his favorite place in the little rear salon at Voltaire's table. This little salon, in the rear of the _café_, is held sacred, for its chair and table are the ones that Voltaire used to occupy. The table is on one side of the small room. On the walls are many interesting sketches in oil by well-known French artists, and there are fine ceiling decorations; but all these are seen with difficulty, so dim is the light in the room. Since Voltaire's time this table has become an object of curiosity and veneration. When celebrated habitués of the _café_ died this table was used as an altar, upon which for a time reposed the bust of the decedent before crêpe-covered lanterns.

During the Revolution Hébert jumped upon this table, which had been placed before the door of the _café_, and harangued the crowd gathered there, exciting them to such a pitch that they snatched the newspapers from the hands of the news-venders. In a moment of passionate appeal he brought down his heavy boot-heel upon the marble with such force as to split it.

In the _café_ are three doors that are decorated in a very interesting fashion. On the panels of one, well preserved in spite of the numerous transformations through which the establishment has gone, M. Théo conceived the happy idea of inscribing in gold letters the names of the illustrious who have visited the _café_ since its founding. Many of the panels of the Avails are taken with full-length portraits by Thomas, representing, among others, Voltaire, Rousseau, Robespierre, Diderot, Danton and Marat playing chess, Mirabeau, and Gambetta. There are smaller sketches by Corot, d'Aubigny, Vallon, Courbet, Willette, and Roedel. Some of them are not fine specimens of art.

M. Théo is a devoted collector of rare books and engravings. His library, which contains many very rare engravings of the eighteenth century and more than one book of priceless value, is open to his intimate friends only, with whom he loves to ramble through his treasures and find interesting data of his _café_.

LE MOULIN DE LA GALETTE

BISHOP had been industriously at work upon a large black-and-white drawing. The subject was a ball-room scene,--of evident low degree, judging from the abandon of the whirling figures and the queer types that were depicted. White lace skirts were sweeping high in air, revealing black-stockinged ankles and gauzy lingerie in a way unknown to the monde propre.

In contrast to the grace and abandon of the female figures were the coarseness and clumsiness of their male partners.

The work was nearly finished, but Bishop professed to be dissatisfied with the foreground architecture and with the drawing of a hand belonging to one of the male dancers. After boring me at length with a speech on the necessity of having a model for that hand, he sheepishly asked me if I would pose for the elusive member. It was then that curiosity prompted me to inquire where he had found the original of this remarkable scene.

"_Mon enfant sculpteur_," he replied, with the patronizing air of a man of the world, "this is the Moulin de la Galette."

"And where is that?" I asked.

"I will show you to-morrow night, if you agree."