CHAPTER IV.

BOURGEOIS—BANKER—PRINCE.

It was now June, and lately Toto had become subject to moods, or, to speak more correctly, fits of moodiness. He had now for a month or more been living face to face with Art, and the prolonged interview with that lady was bearing fruit in his manners and customs.

Three weeks ago he would not have cared very much had Paris known of his mode of life and ridiculed him for it. Cocksure, and blinded by the _fata Morgana_ of success, he would have shaken his palette in the face of Paris; but Art had changed all that.

“Art is not a wanton, to be hired for a night,” said Garnier one day in answer to a remark of Toto’s. “_Mon Dieu!_ no; she is like that woman in the Bible whose courting took seven years, and then again seven years, and seven years again. Work, and don’t think, work and don’t think.”

Easy advice to give. Toto was now continually thinking. He was in a worse Bastille than that from which Latude made his escape, for he had devised his own bondhouse, and the prison a man makes for himself is of all prisons, perhaps, the most difficult to leave.

He dreaded now meeting anyone that he knew, and in the street going to and from the studio glanced about him with the eyes of a frightened hare. As yet no one knew of his folly but Gaillard, Helen Powers, and his mother, but, indeed, that audience, together with his self-respect, were quite enough to keep him performing a little while longer.

Then there was Célestin. The unutterable contentment and bliss of Célestin with her new life filled the heart of Toto sometimes now with a vague sort of terror. She seemed to think that this sort of thing was to go on forever. Her love for him, expressed in a thousand different ways, seemed to spring from infinity itself, and love like this is to the beloved either a blessing beyond all blessings or a curse. To Toto just now it was not a blessing.

Of course, by a cab to the Nord, or the L’Ouest, or the Orleans railway, and a ticket to anywhere, and a few months’ absence, he could have put everything to rights. Paris, like a cold gray sea, would have washed over Célestin and Dodor, washed away the furniture of the atelier, washed away his memory from the _rapins_ at Melmenotte’s, and obliterated all traces. Paris, whose motto is “I have forgotten,” would not trouble even to repeat those funereal and final words over this small escapade.

But Toto was not the person to leave Célestin and Dodor to the mercies of Paris. In some unaccountable way Célestin had drawn the better parts of his nature to herself; to wound her would be to wound himself. If he thought Célestin were weeping alone in some attic, it would have taken the pleasure from life, and spoiled his digestion, and filled his nights with nightmares, for his better parts would have been weeping with her. In short, though capable of a foolish action, he was as yet incapable of a ruffianly, and as a result he was unhappy. A perfectly happy fool must always, I think, be a ruffian.

One day Garnier, who called frequently now as a friend of the family, found Célestin on the verge of tears. The tulip in the red-tile pot had died, and she was inconsolable. She declared that she would never keep another when Garnier offered to replace it.

“Never mind,” said the painter; “I will procure you a flower that will not die.”

A juggler who had lodged once in the same house had instructed him in the manufacture of roses that never die, immortal tulips, and decay-defying camellias. They were made from turnips cunningly carved and dyed in cochineal. Camellias were the easiest to make, roses more difficult, whilst tulips, strange to say, were the most difficult of all. The tulip had first to be blocked out roughly from the succulent root; then the exterior had to be carved, and lastly, the whole thing hollowed neatly.

So Garnier took a day off, and procured a turnip and a knife, some cochineal, and all the other necessary paraphernalia, and, with his work cut out before him, locked his door. This room of Garnier’s was close to the roof, and from its window one could see the spires of Notre Dame by standing on a chair. A desperate-looking cat lived here, whose life had been saved by the artist one morning as he was starting to work. It had repaid him lately by kittening under his bed. In one corner of the room lay a pile of newspapers, on the chimney-piece some books—Rousseau’s “Nouvelle Héloïse” in paper covers; a little book of German fairy tales, which he could not read, but which he treasured because of the delightful pictures; “The Mysteries of Paris,” which he had read four times; and a few others.

On this floor also there was a large atelier kept up by three young men from the South, who did their own cooking, so that the place was always filled with the sound of frying and the smell of garlic. They did their own washing, too, and so defied the laundress; they also at times defied the landlord when he threatened to turn them out. They had got an old banjo from somewhere, and, needless to say, they played on it. Garnier worked in this atelier when he was not working elsewhere. He loved its discords, and never painted better than when Castanet was playing the banjo, Lorillard accompanying him on a comb, and Floquet frying things over the stove, for then he imagined himself back in Provence, and the atelier became flooded with the light that never was in Paris except on the canvas of a Diaz or a Garnier.

Floquet had a sweetheart, who sat to him for love, and of course also to his friends. She darned Castanet’s stockings, for he wore them out in some miraculous way quicker than anyone else. As for Lorillard, he never wore stockings—at least, in summer—and laughed at people who did.

Altogether they were as disreputable a colony as one could find in the whole quarter, but as good-hearted as they were jolly. Castanet, be it observed, was a law student; he lived with the others just as the owl lives with the prairie-dogs, because he liked them.

All these people noticed a change that had come over Garnier during the last fortnight. He was abstracted, he sighed, he laughed at nothing, burst out laughing sometimes as he painted, in a happy manner, as if a child had performed some antic for his amusement, and then a few minutes later he would give a little groan. He no longer cast his brushes joyously aside when Floquet turned the shrieking and fizzing pan of fish stewed in garlic onto a dish; his appetite had diminished.

The fact was, the great Garnier was miraculously in love. When an elephant falls into a pit he does it in a whole-hearted manner; so fell Garnier into this passion. Célestin had been for him that dangerous thing—a revelation. She had eclipsed the _Intransigèant_, and robbed Henri Rochefort of his power; she had touched Prince Rudolph, and he had slunk back into his impossible mysteries; she had taken the charm from garlic, and even the wizard café lost its fascination.

Yet for all this he was not in love with Célestin in the ordinary acceptation of the term. He never dreamt of marriage with her, simply because during the last twelve days he had become miraculously married to her. She dwelt with him always now in that atelier he called his head. There she made her hats, trimming them with sunbeams, and turning to him for admiration with her celestial smile.

She was the wife of his soul. Never was there a purer passion begotten of man and woman; yet, strangely enough, it did not purify him. He talked of women in the same old free-and-easy way, and the jokes of Castanet, Lorillard, Floquet & Co. did not shock him.

Had Célestin lived in a romance, she would doubtless have cast her light on womanhood. She would have elevated Garnier, and he certainly would have been none the worse for that. In reality, however, her effulgence showed him nothing but herself.

She had such pretty ways. Her slightest movement had a deeply artistic meaning. She interpreted unspoken sentences with a motion of her hands. A poppy swaying in the wind had not the grace of Célestin crossing the floor to put the little kettle on the stove. Her talk seemed a strange sister of Dodor’s song. And then the way she had of casting her eyes up to heaven! Her gaze always seemed to return bluer from that journey, and filled with light gathered from the ghostly distance.

She was all those twelve children he had longed for rolled into one, and much more besides. She was one of those delightful little cherubs over the fonts in the Church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois; she was the wind that waved the trees at Barbizon, the flowers that blew to the wind, and the sparrows that flew in the street; she was Mistigris, the cat who lived under his bed, and each of Mistigris’s six kittens. For all of these things that he loved when he thought of, beheld, or felt them, reminded him of Célestin.

He labored away over his tulip, carving at it with infinite care. Castanet came and kicked at his door, and asked him what he was doing, and then he felt the eye of Castanet peering through the key-hole, and heard his voice informing Floquet that Garnier was writing a letter to his sweetheart. Then the banjo struck up, and the doleful sound of the comb laboring out “Partant pour la Syrie” mixed with the sound of Lorillard washing his shirt and beating it between his hands as a sort of accompaniment to the music.

Then the flower was at last accomplished—a bit too thick in the petal, perhaps, but still a fairly accurate representation. He dyed it with the cochineal, and mounted it on a little green stick he had prepared to do duty for a stalk. It was a poor child for so great an artist to produce, yet he smiled at it in a satisfied manner, for it reminded him of Célestin.

He then went to the atelier of Castanet & Co. to see if he could get a piece of fish for Mistigris, who had come out from under the bed with a kitten in her mouth, as if to remind him that she was the mother of a family and required sustaining. And when he had fed her, he darted off with the tulip in his hand, making for the Rue de Perpignan, regardless of the ribaldry of his compatriots, who were watching him from their window away up near the roof. He hurried along like a man pursuing fortune, or as if fearful that the tulip would wither. Toto was out, but Célestin was at home mending a glove.

“Ah, _ciel_!” cried Célestin, as she held the tulip out between finger and thumb. “What a marvelous thing! You made it, and from a turnip! It is a miracle!”

“We will plant it!” cried Garnier, running about with the red-tile pot in his hand, and looking for some place in which to throw the dead flower. There was a sink outside the door; he cast it there.

Then they planted the new tulip, pressing the mold tightly around the base of the stick, and hardly was the thing accomplished when Toto entered, looking worried, and as if he had been walking in a hurry.

“Yes, it is very nice,” said Toto in the manner of an absent-minded parent as they called upon him to admire their handiwork.

He kissed Célestin without fervor, and then, pulling Garnier aside by the arm, invited him to come outside for a moment and have a glass of beer, and give his advice about a picture.

“I have had a row at the studio,” said Toto, when they were in the street.

“Eh! what? with Melmenotte?”

“No, that fool Jolly. I knocked him down.”

“What! you did that? _Boufre!_ but it will do him a lot of good, that same Jolly. I have often wished to do so myself, but I am too big, and he is too small. You are more of his size. And why did you knock him down?”

“He told me I wasn’t able to paint, that any _demi-mondaine_ had more art in painting her face than I had in painting a picture.”

“But that is nothing; we all tell each other things like that.”

“Yes, but he meant it; and, he said it in such an insulting manner, and, besides, he only said it because I had refused to lend him more money.”

“So you knocked him down!” cried Garnier, breaking into a roar of laughter. “_Mon Dieu!_ and I missed it! I would have given five francs to have been there.”

They entered a little café, and Toto called for two bocks.

“I am very unhappy,” said Toto as he sipped his beer.

“What! about that rascal Jolly?”

“Oh, no; it is not that. I am unhappy about a lot of things. I wish I had never come to the Rue de Perpignan.”

“Oh!”

“Yes, tell me something seriously. How long do you think it will be before I am able to exhibit?”

Garnier shifted about in his seat. He did not know exactly what to say; he had never considered Toto’s art seriously. His father had a shop, and the son, after dabbling a while with art, would doubtless end happily behind the counter. He was having his _Wanderjahr_ now. Even at the worst he might become a great artist. Who could tell? And who was Garnier that he should throw water on another man’s aspirations?

“Five years,” said Garnier. “You see, you are only beginning. The great thing in art is time; nothing is done without time and patience. Another thing: one must not think. Work away and don’t think. Don’t ask ‘How am I getting on?’ or, at least, only on New Year’s Day. Then, enjoy yourself, and keep your eyes open. Paris is a big atelier. An artist wants to study movement as well as the nude. I never walk down the street but I pick up something; it all comes in handy. If you want to paint life, you must dip your brush in everything, even mud. Those old men who spent their lives painting pots and pans and saints leave me cold. I would like to clap the Rue St. Honoré into a canvas—will, too, some day. I don’t think there is anything more fine in nature than a fire-engine going full speed to a fire, except, maybe, a dragon-fly.”

Garnier buried his nose in his glass, and Toto put his chin on his palm, his elbow on the table, and stared before him, as if gazing at a cheerless view.

“Or a girl flinging up her arms to yawn,” continued Garnier. “Girls are all art—that is why they make such rotten artists; but they are natural when they are flinging up their arms to yawn, or stooping to tie their garters, because then they think no one is looking at them, or they don’t care.”

He held out a handful of cigarettes, and Toto took one.

“I have never seen Célestin yawn,” said Toto in a meditative voice, as he lit the cigarette.

“Heavens! no,” said Garnier.

“Why not?”

“The gift of weariness is not given to her. Have you ever seen a butterfly yawn, or a happy child?”

“She _is_ happy!” said Toto in a half-regretful voice.

“She is happiness, you mean. _Mon Dieu!_ yes, she is happiness; as for me, when I see her I always feel ten years younger, twenty years younger when she speaks, thirty years younger when she smiles.”

“You are only twenty-five.”

“Oh, yes; so you see, Mlle. Célestin’s smile puts me back to five years before my birth. I was then an angel, a fat little angel in the cherub cage; there I would have been still had not the Father Eternal put in his hand and taken me out, and flung me to the blue, crying ‘Try your wings.’ That is how the business is managed: the world is pursued by a flock of cherubs in search of a roost; when they overtake the world, they take it by storm, people want to marry, and that makes spring; when the world outstrips them that makes winter. I have never begotten a child, so I have never given a perch to one of those sparrow angels, worse luck!” and Garnier sighed and called for more beer.

“Shall I tell you something?” asked Toto, who had been slowly making up his mind as the painter prattled.

“Why, yes!”

“Well, you remember, when I met you first, you asked me what my father was. I said he had a shop. Well, I told you a lie.”

“_Ma foi!_ why not? What do I care what your father is?—you are a good fellow. That is enough for me. We all boast a bit, we artists.”

“I was not exactly boasting,” said Toto, knocking the ash off his cigarette in a nervous manner. “My father made all his money out of a bank.”

“You don’t mean to say he is a banker!” said Garnier, opening his eyes in astonishment, for a banker to Garnier was a much more extraordinary person than even one of those cherubs he talked about.

“No; not exactly a banker: he was a partner in a great bank. He was always awfully ashamed of the bank. He is dead, you know.”

“Ashamed of being a banker!” gasped Garnier. “What sort of man was he?”

“He was an awfully funny old fellow. I can just remember him. He scarcely ever spoke to me; he was very stiff and straight, and he used to paint his face and wear stays.”

“He was mad, then?” said Garnier.

“Not he; he was as sane as I am—saner; for I believe I am cracked. No matter, it’s not my fault; I did not make myself.”

“Paint his face and wear stays and ashamed of being a banker,” murmured Garnier. “You are not making an April fish of me? No, you can’t be, for it is the second of June.”

“No, I wish I was; but I have a lot more to tell. You know I came down here to paint and live in the Rue de Perpignan a little more than a month ago. Well, I thought I was going to be a great artist. No, worse than that: I thought I was a great artist.”

“So do we all, till we find out the right side of our palettes,” said Garnier.

“Well, I am only a dauber; don’t say no—I have been finding it out in the last week. I didn’t want that fellow Jolly to tell me; that’s what made me so angry, I suppose, for I knew he was telling me the truth. Well, I am sick of it all; the pleasure is all gone from my life. I have a lot of anxieties; it is like being in prison. When I go out on the street, even here in this quarter, where I am not likely to come across anyone, I have to be always on the watch for fear of meeting anyone I know; I always look down a street before I walk down it.”

“Ah, yes! I know that feeling. There are three streets forbidden to me just at present; they are barricaded by creditors.”

“Oh, it is not creditors I fear.”

“What then?”

“Friends.”

“_Mon Dieu!_ what a funny man you are! What is there pleasanter to meet than a friend?”

“Yes; but don’t you understand? I don’t want my friends to know that I am an artist.”

“And, for Heaven’s sake, why not?”

“Well, for one thing, they would laugh at me.”

“Laugh at you for being an artist! Sacred Heaven! what a funny man you are, and what funny friends you must have! And why should they laugh at you for being an artist?”

“Well, you see, they don’t know anything about art, for one thing.”

“Ah, I can see those friends of yours!” said Garnier, with an inspired air. “Old religious ladies, aunts, and what not,—they drive in carriages with pug dogs,—and old gentlemen with the Legion of Honor.”

“Not at all; my friends are quite young.”

“Who are they, then?”

“Well, there is Eugène Valfray, son of the railway man.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Then there is the Prince de Harnac—Gustave.”

“What, you know a Prince!”

“Why, man, I am a Prince.”

“You are a what?”

“I am a Prince,” said Toto shamefacedly.

“Ah, _mon Dieu!_ what a droll you are!” cried Garnier, breaking into a laugh. “First you are a bourgeois, then you are a banker, then you are a Prince.”

“I am not joking; I am what I say.”

“But,” cried Garnier, sobered by the serious face of Toto, “you a Prince, sitting here at the Trois Frères with me! Come now! a joke is all very well up to a certain point; beyond that it makes one feel giddy. Besides, you are not like a Prince.”

“For Heaven’s sake, what _is_ a Prince like?” asked Toto, half laughing, half vexed. “I have never seen a Prince that was different from anyone else; they are generally more stupid, perhaps, but that is all.”

“But what are you Prince of?” cried the painter, belief and disbelief battling in his mind.

“My father was a prince of the Roman Empire. I am the same, of course, now that he is dead.”

“But, my dear child!” cried the Provençal, to whom a Prince was a Prince, no matter what empire he belonged to, “what made you come amongst us at Melmenotte’s? it is like what one reads in a romance, all this. I could not have believed it. And what made you come to live in the Rue de Perpignan? And Célestin! Ah, _ciel!_ I see it all now: she is a Princess; that is what makes her different from other people. A Princess! she has made me coffee, whilst I have talked to her as to a child. I have carved for her a tulip out of a turnip, and I never guessed who she was, when it was plain before me written all over her——”

“You are wrong,” said Toto in a troubled voice. “She is not a Princess; I wish she were. Listen, my friend, and I will tell you all. I want your advice.”

He told the little story of his meeting with Célestin, everything; he sketched rapidly a portrait of his mother; then he paused to let the tale sink in, and Garnier rubbed his chin.

“But what made you do all this?” asked the painter at last. “You could have painted at home.”

“I don’t know; I was so sick of it all. I wanted a change, I wanted to do for myself; it seemed so jolly to have an atelier, and live in a blouse and work; then, besides—I can’t explain exactly, but I felt as if I wanted to grow: a lot of people had deceived me. They did not mean it, I suppose, but they praised my work; besides, I felt that they were laughing at me behind my back.”

He told the story of De Nani, and the truth that had escaped from him in drink; he felt no shame in confiding his troubles to Garnier. All great-minded people have this in common. They resemble priests; we confess to them openly what we would not whisper to little minds.

“Ah, well,” said Garnier, “there are rogues in every trade, and that old man is a rogue. _Mon Dieu!_ I am not straitlaced; but there are two things I cannot stand by and see: an old man drunk, and an old man following a woman. Do not think of him, but tell me now, what does it feel like to be a Prince? Oh, I should like to be a Prince just for an hour! I would dress myself in ermine and walk down the Rue de Rivoli. Ah! you are laughing, but I would. I would call my servants and give them orders, just to hear them call me M. le Prince. I would call at Melmenotte’s, and walk about the atelier trailing my skirts. _Mon Dieu!_ yes, I should like to be a Prince just for an hour.”

“And then?”

“Oh, I would kick off my togs and come back and be an artist. Just as you will kick off your togs and go back to be a Prince; one always returns to one’s trade.”

“You think I will go back to be a Prince?”

“Why, of course.”

“Would you advise me to?”

“Why, of course, when you are tired of your atelier you will put on your crown.”

“I have no crown,” said Toto; “but I will no doubt return and put on a tall hat. What troubles me is Célestin.”

“Ah! Célestin!”

“She does not know who I am.”

Garnier frowned slightly.

“She would not have loved me, I think, if I had told her, poor child! She has a great awe of titled people; she makes hats for them. She will never do that again, anyhow.”

“Still,” said Garnier, “you ought to have told her.”

“Why? I don’t see why.”

“You have told me, yet you would hide what I know from that angel of light. That is not as it should be. Take it as a man. How would you like Mlle. Célestin to deceive you? The thing is impossible, but, still——”

“Perhaps you are right; and I wish I had never met her.”

Garnier frowned again.

“You do not love her, then?”

“Oh, yes; I do. It is not that, but my mother, and all the people I know. Not that I care a button—not a button; let them all go to the devil.”

“Ah, now you speak like a man! And will you tell Célestin all that you have told to me?”

“I will. I will tell her this evening.”

But when evening came, and he sat alone with Célestin on the couch in the lamplight, and when he took her hand saying “I want to tell you something; I ought to have told it to you before,” the words dried up; he could not tell her of his position in the world; besides, he knew her inevitable answer, “What matter, so long as we love each other?” It always came when difficulties arose—if the beef was understewed or the wine sour, if the cats kept them awake or if the door of Dodor’s cage got jammed.

“Célestin, I ought to have told you before; but do you know that, though we live here in this atelier and are happy enough, God knows—do you know that I am—awfully poor?”

“What matter? What does anything matter, so long as we love each other?” sighed Célestin.

“I will tell you all about myself some day,” said Toto. “I have not told you I have a mother.”

“Ah, how I would love to see her! How happy, that is, to have a mother! As for me, I never had a mother.”

“Perhaps it is just as well you had not.”

“I will tell you,” said Célestin: “we will share your mother. I will take one-half of her heart, and you will have the other, like those ogres in that fairy tale of dear M. Gaillard’s.”

“Thanks,” said Toto; “you may have it all.”