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!