CHAPTER VI.

THE DEPARTURE.

Gaillard, who was somewhat of a philosopher, had once divided sorrow under two heads—the sorrows of life and the sorrows of art. He reckoned the necessity of getting up early chief amidst the mundane sorrows, and accepted it in a grumbling spirit; but this morning he did not grumble. He dressed rapidly and sadly, and departed for the Boulevard Haussmann, refusing the coffee and roll and butter offered to him by Mme. Plon.

“I cannot eat,” said Gaillard. “I am deeply disturbed.”

He found Toto dressed and in his atelier. He was looking at Sisera and Jael. Jael had the air and aspect of a stout housemaid nailing carpets down with energy.

“How could I have painted that beast?” asked Toto. “She is all flesh, she is an animal, she is like a bull-fighter in a skirt. Imagine a woman like that, and then imagine Célestin.”

“Are you going to remove these canvases to your new atelier?”

“_Mon Dieu_, no! I will remove nothing that reminds me of this place. I tell you what: I will make you a present of this picture. You can have the water-nymph too.”

“Thanks,” said Gaillard in an unenthusiastic voice. “I will not remove them at present; they would remind me too much of all the pleasant times that are gone. I feel very depressed this morning, Toto—I mean Désiré; one cannot get out of old habits in a hurry without shivering.”

He looked out of a side window and away over the roofs of Paris. The morning was sitting on the roofs pelting the city with roses; the city grumbled, Gaillard sighed.

“Oh, the good times, how they pass! Do you remember, Désiré, the night you won a thousand napoleons at the Grand Club? It is only a month ago, yet it seems a year.”

“The night we tied the two cats by the tail and hung them from a lamp-post? Where did De Mirecourt get those cats? He suddenly appeared with them. Do you remember the _sergent-de-ville_ who tried to get them down?”

“I had forgotten the incident of the cats. I remember it dimly now—one was a tortoise-shell. Yes, those were pleasant times. Désiré, it is not too late to go back to them; consider your position well before you take this step.”

“Come,” said Toto, “I am going.”

“But have you said good-by to Mme. la Princesse?”

“She would never forgive me for waking her at this hour.”

“_Mon Dieu!_ but you have no luggage.”

“I have a bag in the hall below.”

“Ah, _mon Dieu!_ I hope this is all for the best. So you are going with only a bag? Désiré, have you forgotten Angélique?”

“I have three thousand francs in an envelope—it will keep you going. Do try and make it do for six months. Look at me; I have only three thousand for a year.”

“I will try. Ah, _mon Dieu!_ I wish I had never seen this day; my heart is heavy. Thanks, I will not open the envelope till I meet Angélique; we will open it together. We are like two children sitting at a feast and pulling crackers; each day is like a cracker tied with dawn-colored ribbon. Sometimes Angélique weeps at the contents of these crackers, sometimes she laughs and claps her hands; she will clap her hands to-day. Come, let us go and follow our fates.”

“This is my luggage,” said Toto, picking up a huge Gladstone bag in the hall.

Gaillard opened the hall door, and they passed out into the bright morning. The clock of St. Augustin was striking eight; the sparrows were fighting in the sunshine; the earth seemed teeming with life and light and happiness.

“How good it all is!” said Toto, as they drove over the Seine. He was echoing Célestin’s eternal sentiment without knowing it. “What a lovely world it is, and how little we see of it! We snore in our beds during the best part of the day, and live the rest of our time by lamplight.”

“The world,” said Gaillard, “always reminds me of a poem written by a shopkeeper to advertise his stale wares, unpunctuated and filled with printer’s errors; that is why we read it by a dim light. It ought to have been burnt; it was unfortunately published and given to us to read. No one can make out what it is driving at; we have been spelling at it now a million years; we began when we were apes, and we will end, perhaps, when we are donkeys. I am sick of it; I would jump into the Seine, only that such an act would delight De Brie.”

The cab stopped at the doorway of Célestin’s house, and the concierge, Mme. Liard, greeted Toto effusively. Her heart was touched by the youth of the lovers and the fact of Toto being an artist; that he should take Célestin under his protection seemed to her as natural as the mating of sparrows, and a piece of very good fortune for Célestin.

Her trunk stood in the passage, and on the trunk the parrot cage, covered with green baize. From the cage came the occasional flirting sound of wings, the occasional tinkle of the swinging ring—sounds that bespoke uneasiness in the mind of Dodor.

Then Célestin came down the steep stairs, blushing, and Gaillard had to admit that, even if the world were an ill-written poem, it had at least some very beautiful passages; for Célestin had made for herself a hat which was an amorous dream, and a girl friend, some lower Célestin of the Rue St. Honoré, had, in a fit of sentiment, confected for her a gown such as an angel in half-mourning need not have been ashamed of. Toto had bought her a new pair of shoes, and she wore openwork stockings. Toto kissed her before everyone; this was their only marriage service.

“It makes me feel young again!” cried Mme. Liard as she carried the parrot cage out, whilst the driver carried the trunk. “And I will come and see you in your new home; and oh, monsieur,”—to Gaillard,—“she ought to be careful, for her chest is not what it should be; it was what killed her mother.”

“I will see that she wears a muffler,” replied Gaillard, whilst Célestin got into the carriage, weeping from grief and happiness, and kissing her hand to Mme. Liard.

Then the vehicle drove away, Gaillard on the front seat, the lovers facing him, and Dodor’s cage beside the coachman.