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.”