CHAPTER V

AN INITIATION INTO ART

The next day Phil returned his new friends’ hospitality by taking them to lunch.

“Where are we going?” Suzanne asked.

“Where you wish,” answered Phil.

“To Mère Michel’s, then.”

Suzanne delighted in this restaurant. The food was bad, but there was laughter. Sometimes messieurs with high hats invited her to chic places. Suzanne would refuse the chic restaurants and take them to Mère Michel’s, where their hats brought out thunders of applause.

Phil had a Derby hat and so received a more modest welcome. For that matter, few people were there when they arrived. Poufaille did the honors of the place.

“Do you see those two photos on the wall, Phil? That—hum!—that’s mine, my two statues—‘Liberty,’ ‘Fraternity.’ Do you see this photo in the frame? _Salut!_ That means a year’s credit—it’s from Lionsot, a Prix-de-Rome man; he paid Mère Michel with an autograph dedication at the base of his ‘Light-Footed Achilles.’”

“_Cours après!_” laughed Suzanne.

Meanwhile the customers kept coming in, some with canvases and paint-boxes, others with only their long hair and unkempt beards.

“That one’s a painter—that one a sculptor—and that a musician,” said Poufaille. “The empty place, there in the corner, is the place of Socrate, a _type épatant_! Musician, sculptor, painter, and poet, and philosopher—a whole world in himself!”

“Ah!” uttered Phil, respectfully, as he looked at the empty place.

Nothing was heard for a time but the rattle of knives and forks; then there was a great deal of laughter, with cries that punctuated conversations on art. Heads were turned for a few entrances. A pretty model with a cloud of gauze for a scarf was greeted with “Kiss, kiss!” An old man with a gilt band round his cap only called forth howls.

“Eh! you old Gaul!”

“_Vieux coq!_”

“Your ‘kiss, kiss,’ makes me laugh,” said the old man. “Do you know to-day what ‘kiss, kiss,’ means? Oh, yes! in the old days women fell in love—under the Empire!”

“_Ta bouche, bébé!_”

“_Ferme ça_ [shut up]!”

“He is the inspector of the Louvre roofs,” Poufaille said to Phil. “I am well acquainted with him. I see him every day.”

Phil opened his eyes wide; everything was new to him. From his seat he had also a view of the bar alongside. While Mère Michel served in the room of the artistes, Père Michel stretched out his immense bulk behind the counter.

“That man he’s serving is the lackey of the Duke of Morgania,” observed Suzanne.

“Does the Duke of Morgania live near here?” Phil interrupted. He had read the name in the newspapers.

“Almost opposite,” Suzanne answered.

“Ah!” Phil said, with the same shade of respect which he had shown before the empty seat of Socrate, never dreaming that he would one day be the friend of both the _grand seigneur_ and the poet-philosopher.

Just then Socrate entered. Poufaille nudged Phil with his elbow. Phil looked. He saw Socrate seat himself in his corner, call the _garçon_, order three or four dishes and a liter of wine, hurriedly, at haphazard, like a man overwhelmed with thought and with no time to lose.

“He’s begun a work on the Louvre—something tremendous!” Poufaille informed Phil.

“What is it like?” Phil asked.

“No one knows!”

Phil examined the man who seemed to be carrying the weight of a world.

His skull was nearly bald, his forehead bulging out, his hair about his ears, while his beard half hid a grimace; his eye was alert and sagacious.

“He does resemble him, though,” Phil observed.

“Resembles whom?” said Poufaille.

“Socrates the ancient.”

“So there was another?” Poufaille asked.

When his meal was over, Socrate arose, sad-mannered and dignified.

“He’s going over to the Café des Deux Magots,” said Poufaille. “Let’s go too—you’ll see him nearer.”

The Deux Magots was the rendezvous of different bands—the Band of Cherche-Midi (look out for twelve o’clock!), made up of rich Americans playing Bohemia and frequenting the Deux Magots in appropriate costume; the band of the Red-headed Goat, artists who despised art and occupied themselves with socialism; and there were others besides.

No one went to the Deux Magots for its coffee—they went there for Socrate and Caracal. There could be heard Socrate, musician, painter, and poet, speaking of high art; the new men drank in his words.

One day, in his enthusiasm, Charley, the millionaire Bohemian, proposed to take him to America to give lectures on “The Artistic Atmosphere”—by Jove!

“Are there any cafés in America?” Socrate asked.

“_Hélas, non!_”

“Then I stay where I am,” replied Socrate, the man of manly decisions; “when America has cafés I’ll go over—not before. _Arrangez-vous!_”

“You’re great, by Jove!” cried Charley.

Socrate dazzled the young. He talked of everything, social questions included.

“The distribution of wealth is badly made,” he said. “You have genius and no money—and you’ll be obliged to work, to produce and to sell! To sell, do you understand? To cheapen yourself, to prostitute your genius! In society as I dream of it, the artist, freed from material bonds, would soar in serene heights.”

Socrate cited the example of Lionsot, the Prix-de-Rome man, the sculptor of “Light-footed Achilles.” “He had the Prix de Rome—he has turned out badly! Yet there was good in him: to pay a wretched debt for food with an artistic autograph—that was noble!”

Most of them, in fact, acted like the famous Lionsot—for example, whenever Mère Michel demanded her money.

Caracal, who was not so deep but more brilliant, enjoyed a different prestige.

First of all, he lived in the Grands Quartiers, in a house with an elevator! so it was said. And while the others ate at Mère Michel’s, Caracal would be supping at Montmartre—_suprême élégance_!

Besides, he wrote in the newspapers. For a little article, for one’s name cited in the “Tocsin”—how low would not one stoop to obtain such a favor!

“‘Oysters and Melons,’ still life by X——,” or else “‘Old Tree-trunk,’ landscape by Z——”; and Z—— and X—— would march off together into immortality.

Caracal, behind his monocle, observed the different bands, in his heart deriding every one. He cross-questioned the comrades, and composed his newspaper _chroniques_ on the café table.

“_Eh bien!_ anything for my paper? A nice little scandal? Something strong?”

“I’ve got something new,” the good-natured Poufaille would say; “at my house, in the courtyard, a woman has been found dead.”

“Bravo! Young? pretty?”

“No, old.”

“And dead—how?” Caracal asked. “From drink?”

“No, of starvation. She was keeping alive the four children of a neighbor who was palsied; and she killed herself working.”

“Old and poor! but that’s not interesting; it’s only tiresome!”

And he went on with the conversation, in which music, poetry, love, sculpture, and crime made a horrible mixture.

Phil, coming up from the province, was made gloomy by all this noise. These never-ending dissertations made his head turn. It was the invasion of his brain by a world whose existence he had never suspected, of whose virtues and vices he had no idea.

When his work was over, the _copains_ took walks with him through Paris and showed him such “Parisian” places as the Rue Mouffetard and the Rue Saint-Médard.

Paris proper did not count; you had to cross its whole width and go as far as Montmartre to become really Parisian. All had a single ambition—to be the painter of the wretchedly poor, and of street-women, an easy art brought into fashion by a few noisy successes. They initiated Phil to _their_ Paris, to the Paris of the _fosses aux lions_, of leprous quays, of rag-pickers’ alleys, where children played hide-and-seek behind heaps of refuse. When Phil wished to go and dream by the banks of the Seine, they led him to the banks of the Bièvre, stinking like a charnel-house.

“_Hein!_ Don’t you see it’s beautiful in color?” they said to him. Phil acknowledged, as he sniffed, that the Bièvre diffused an “artistic atmosphere.”

The truth is, Phil soon had enough of such loafing. Of course, he wasn’t a genius like the others—nothing came to him easily. An organism like Socrate, painter-poet-philosopher, was incomprehensible to him. Such a man, doing a colossal work on the Louvre and studying the social question in cafés, seemed great to him. As for himself, he was conscious that he had not such gifts. For him work was necessary, a great deal of work, and he set himself to it resolutely: studies at the life-class, sketches in the street, libraries, museums—he went everywhere and did a little of everything. He prepared ardently for his admission to the studio; he frequented the schools and appeared but seldom at the Deux Magots.

Socrate, isolated in pipe-smoke like a god in a cloud, condescended to take an interest in him.

“You work too much, young man! Look out! Think less of the material side and trust to inspiration. Work is good. Glory is better. Think of glory, young man!”

“_Hélas!_” Phil thought; “how can you have glory without work?”

He had it a few days later—the glory which was dear to the heart of Socrate.

It was the day of his reception to the studio. He had only to give his family name, first name, and particulars to be asked to get up on a table—“Step lively _et plus vite que ça_!”—and to see around him a howling crowd, armed with brushes and palettes, shouting: “Philidor!”

“An American speaking French—where did you come from? _En voilà un drôle de type!_”

“My—my ancestors were French,” said Phil.

“An American who has ancestors!”

“Philidor de Longueville—” stammered Phil.

“Philidor! Philidor!”

“Sing us something!”

“Take off your clothes!”

Phil began undressing.

“Step lively _et plus vite que ça_!”

Fifty savages were howling, yelling, laughing, and hissing around him.

“Enough! enough!”

“Encore! encore!”

“Paint him blue!”

“No, no!”

“Yes, yes!”

Phil was already stripped to the waist, facing the great window in full light. At his feet the confused mass of students was hushed—they stood in a circle around him. He heard their approving murmurs as they admired his thoroughbred muscles, his broad shoulders, the nervous slenderness of his waist.

“Bravo, l’Américain! There’s a man who’s built! You’d say he was an antique—_c’est un costeau_—he’ll be a great boy! I wouldn’t want him to punch me—he’s a good fellow, too! Enough! enough! Dress yourself, Philidor! A _Ban_ for Philidor!”

“Pan! pan! pan! pan! pan! Pan! pan!”

Thus Phil made acquaintance with the intoxication of glory.

Profiting by the moment of silence, a grave voice arose.

“The welcome!”

Phil, over the heads, saw amid the smoke a bearded face under a great bald forehead.

“Socrate has just come in,” a pupil said to Phil. “Socrate, an astonishing man—painter-poet!”

“I know Socrate,” Phil said with pride.

“The welcome!” Socrate repeated.

“_C’est ça!_ That’s it, the welcome!” the whole hall cried.

“That means you must pay the drinks for the studio,” the pupil explained. “It’s the custom here.”

“Messieurs, whenever you wish,” said Phil.

“At the Deux Magots and at once,” Socrate insisted, like a man accustomed to prompt decisions.

Phil dressed himself, and all went out into the streets, _en route_ for the Deux Magots. Socrate, the glory of the studio, leader of men, and genius—Socrate himself gave his arm to Phil.

“Say, young man,” whispered Socrate, who was master of himself in any crowd, “you couldn’t lend me twenty francs?”

After this glorious day Phil’s existence seemed flat. From his childhood he had been accustomed to free air, to liberty in great spaces; and now he had to live a cloistered life, shut up in himself, but with work, it is true, for distraction. He worked sadly and alone.

In front of his window, on the other side of the Seine, stretched the Louvre. Beyond, far away, above the smoke of Paris, the church of the Sacré-Cœur lifted its Oriental dome. To the right was the Pont Neuf with the point of the island of the Cité and Notre Dame; to the left was the greenery of the Tuileries, the Grand Palais, the Arc de Triomphe.

Now and then Suzanne came. But Suzanne was far from being Helia. Her frivolity made Phil shy, though her babbling talk amused him. She kept Phil posted, telling him all the important news.

Poufaille, for example, was surely going to give up sculpture and become a painter—l’Institut would have to look out for itself! They had rejected his statue. “_Eh bien_, they’ll see! And then, paintings sell better!” added Suzanne.

“Does he sell his paintings?” Phil asked with astonishment. “What does he do for a living?”

“He has something to do at the Louvre, I believe,” Suzanne said. But she immediately became silent and bit her lip.

“A copy, of course—ornaments for a _plafond_?” Phil asked.

“I believe so,” Suzanne answered, fearing to say too much.

“There is some secret,” Phil thought.

But the very day she told him all this his door opened suddenly and Poufaille entered with a furious air.

“Ah, the pigs!” he cried, shaking his fist toward the Louvre; and he threw into a corner a tool which Phil took at first for a sculptor’s instrument. It was a spade.

“What’s that?” asked Phil. “What’s the matter?”

“That’s my spade; and the matter is they are pigs!”

“Have they taken your _plafond_ away from you?” Phil asked on a chance.

“What _plafond_?” Poufaille cried. “They’re trying to keep me from cultivating my potatoes!”

“Potatoes?” exclaimed Phil.

“Phil doesn’t know about it,” Suzanne said to Poufaille.

“_Eh bien—tant pis_—it’s a secret,” Poufaille cried; “but I’m going to tell it. And, besides, a secret chokes me, like your collars!”

“If it’s a secret, I don’t want to know it,” Phil answered.

“_Si, si!_ You must. I’ll tell it to you—under seal of secrecy! See here,” Poufaille went on; “I’m gardener at the Louvre!”

“Nothing wonderful in that,” Phil said, as he looked across the Seine at the flower-beds and green turf at the foot of the Louvre façade.

“Not there,” Poufaille explained. “Not down there—but up yonder! I’m gardener of the Louvre roofs!”

Looking where Poufaille pointed, Phil perceived, high, high up against the blue sky, tufts of greenery actually growing above that part of the Louvre Palace. He knew there were a few roof-gardens in Paris; but he had never noticed this one.

“Now you understand!” Poufaille said, with gesticulation. “There’s no means of keeping up an understanding with them! It has ended by wearing me out. Always roses, iris, and gillyflowers, and gillyflowers, iris, and roses. That sort of stuff won’t fill my stomach! I wanted to plant potatoes. I could live on them! But they’ve refused permission—and I tell you, they’re pigs!”

“But they—who are they?”

“Eh! They—when I say ‘they’ I mean _him_!”

“Well, who is he?”

“The old guardian of the Louvre roofs.”

“Ah, yes,” said Phil; “I saw him at Mère Michel’s. And so you’re his gardener?”

“I am—that is, I was!”

An idea came to Phil. He was stifled in his room; he might have—up there, close by—a garden to himself.

“_Dis donc_, old Poufaille, what if they gave me the gardener’s place?”

“That could be done easily; but I warn you—you’ll have no right to cultivate potatoes!”

“I’ll be content with flowers.”

“What eccentricity!” Poufaille exclaimed, in the height of astonishment. “Ah, you’re very American!”