CHAPTER VI.

FANFOULLARD, MIRMILLARD, AND PAPILLARD.

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

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

“But how about this Fanfoullard?”

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

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

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

“What room?”

“The room you spoke of.”

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

“You will not find Fanfoullard interesting.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Célestin.”

“Ah, _mon Dieu!_ Célestin! What a name!—full of light.”

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

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

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

Gaillard sighed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He made no response to Toto’s question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It is indispensable to me,” said Gaillard.

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

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

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

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