CHAPTER IV.

THE POETRY OF HATS.

Toto saw that the man was begging from the girl, and the girl was walking quickly. The man was a horrible-looking scoundrel.

“And here,” said Toto, “is something to do.”

He advanced rapidly and obliquely upon the pursued and pursuer, who, when he saw that the game was up, called out a vile word and turned to run. But he had reckoned without Toto.

It was all over in a minute, and from a distance it looked like a sparrow-fight, Toto in his brown tweeds, and the Barrier bully in his antique, rusty, long-tailed coat. The next our bully was running for his life towards the Pont de la Concorde, bawling and holding his nose, and the Prince, with his hat on the back of his head, was talking to the girl.

“Look!” cried Toto, screaming with laughter. “Three gendarmes are after him.”

“Oh, monsieur!” murmured the girl,—she had blue eyes and the air of a fluttered dove,—“how can I thank you for having saved me?”

“Let us hurry away,” said the Prince. “I see a gendarme shading his eyes at us over there. Let’s dodge away down the arcade. Look! he’s coming towards us. Run!”

They ran down the arcade hand in hand, to the wonder of the boys who were taking down the shop shutters. There was no earthly occasion for this flight. But Toto always embroidered upon a position; he could not behold a cat-fight without mentally suggesting betterments; besides, it was _outré_.

“Now we are safe,” said he, as they turned up a by-street. “Oh, what fun! Tell me, mademoiselle, may I not carry your little parcel? No? May I not accompany you, then, to your journey’s end?”

“Oh, yes!” said the girl. “My parcel is but a hat I am taking to M. Verral in the Rue St. Honoré. I do not live there, monsieur; I work for him at home. I live all alone in a little room near the Rue de Babylone—I and Dodor;” and she cast up her April-blue eyes as if through the rim of her hat she saw Dodor in the blue April skies, together with a vision of angels.

“Who is Dodor?” inquired Toto in a gruff and almost jealous voice.

“He is my lark,” said the girl; and Toto brightened.

“You have a lark?”

“Oh, yes, monsieur; and if you could hear him sing! He brings the green fields to Paris in his voice.”

“You keep him in a cage?” asked Toto, searching for conversation to fit a lark of this description, and not finding much.

“I keep him in a very big cage, monsieur. Ah! his cage ought to be the blue heavens; but, then, how could I hear him sing? I bought him in a little cage—not so big; but the parrot of Mme. Liard, our concierge, dying, I bought its cage—one, oh, so big;” and she measured the width of a wine-tun with hands that fluttered out like white butterflies, for Toto had wrested from her the parcel; also, she wore no gloves.

“Dear me! how funny! And you call him Dodor. This is Verral’s, is it not? Now, may I—please don’t think me rude—may I wait for you? I have nothing to do—I mean, I want to hear more about Dodor. I cannot say ‘mademoiselle’; it sounds so stiff. _My_ name is To—Désiré Cammora.”

“And mine, monsieur, is Célestin Sabatier. I will run in with the hat. If I can see the forewoman, Mme. Hümmel, I will not detain you long.”

“Don’t call me ‘monsieur,’” said Toto; but she had vanished.

It was an extraordinary find, this—a real live Henri Murger grisette. She might have stepped out of “The Mysteries of Paris,” without her cap, of course, but even more charming in a hat. She was “all there,” even to the lark in the parrot cage. The parrot cage made him certain that the lark was no trumped-up tale; she would never have thought of inventing a parrot cage. He remembered with a sort of satisfaction the poverty and neatness of her dress.

Ten minutes passed, and then she came out again, like April after a cloud has passed, smiling, and with an air of triumph.

“Mme. Hümmel is so pleased, and I am so happy!” cried Célestin, as they walked away down the Rue St. Honoré, all beautiful with the morning. “She has given me an extra franc. Just think!” And she held out three in the pink shell of her palm.

“How much do you get for making a hat?” asked Toto.

“Two francs, and I find my own thread; but for this hat I have received three. It was an inspiration. Do you know, monsieur, that hats come to one? Sometimes I am perplexed. There lie all the materials,—the tulle, ribbons, flowers, what-not,—and there sit I, so like a stupid girl it seems impossible that I should make the hat—impossible as building the Eiffel Tower. And then, suddenly, something comes to me. I see the hat, and it is made. That is when I am stupid. At other times they come to me in hundreds—hats more beautiful than a dream; and, oh! if I had a hundred hands I could find work for them all. Yesterday it was a gloomy morning. Dodor drooped in his cage, and I felt very dull. Then the sun broke out—you remember how beautifully—and Dodor sang, and the blue sky looked in through the window and brought me this hat like a gift from the good God. Mme. Hümmel said it was April itself. And is it not strange, monsieur, that the seasons should help one so? For Spring helps me in her way, and Summer and Autumn in their way, even Winter a little,—and he helps few,—but of all of them I like Spring the best,” sighed Célestin, casting her eyes up once more at the sky of her imagination and the angels she seemed always to see there.

“I suppose people wear more hats in the spring,” was the reply of Toto to this revelation of an artist’s work, and for that reply he deserved damning as an artist.

“Oh, yes,” said Célestin. “The spring is the time of all others; one makes more money in the spring.”

Toto had steered the way into the Rue du Mont Thabor, a little street that lies parallel to the Rue St. Honoré, and just behind the Hôtel Lille et Albion.

Here there was a _crémerie_, into which he invited her to enter. They took their seats at a little marble-topped table, which was soon spread with coffee, white bread, and butter.

Célestin quite cast away her reserve; she never had much, and what she had was that of a timid child. This creature, gentle as a bird, and thriving by her own quaint and lovely art in the midst of the great, white, cruel, beautiful city, was in herself a revelation—God, one might almost fancy, supporting her with his fingers as he supports the snowdrops above the snow; Art, one might almost fancy, turning from the Louvre and all its treasures, and smiling towards the Rue de Babylone and this humble slave interpreting her dreams by ribbon and tulle.

“I?” said Toto with his mouth full of bread and butter, and speaking in answer to a question of his companion. “I am an artist—a painter, you know.”

Célestin lowered the cup she was raising to her lips. He had won her admiration forever by beating the bully, and now he was an artist.

“I have never met one before,” murmured Célestin. “How great that must be, to be an artist! I have seen them at the Louvre. I sometimes go to the Louvre; the rooms are so beautiful, and the ceilings,”—the child evidently had her limitations,—“and one sees such strange people—English women in such strange hats. And do you paint in the Louvre?”

“No, Célestin; I work in an atelier of my own.”

Never before in the course of his brief artistic career had praise thrilled him like this, the frank and artless homage of a girl of eighteen who found herself for the first time in her life in the presence of a real artist; there were no ateliers in the street off the Rue de Babylone, only workshops.

“At the Porte St. Martin,” said Célestin, “where sometimes Mme. Liard takes me,—she is a friend of the doorkeeper, and sometimes he gives her permits,—I have seen a very sad play. It was about an artist: he was very poor—that is to say, not so very poor at first, but he got poorer as the play went on, and thinner, till at last his cheeks were like this.” She sucked her cheeks in. “Then in the last act he tied a rope to a beam in the ceiling, and made a noose in the rope and put his head through it; I clung to Mme. Liard, I was so frightened. You cannot think how terrible it was till the door broke open and his father rushed in,—he was the son of a duke in disguise,—and the concierge came after, and a lot of people, and they cut him down. Everyone wept. There was a villain in the piece, and, oh! such a pretty girl,” finished Célestin. “But I liked the artist best. Are all artists very poor, M. Désiré?”

“Oh, we manage to scrape along,” said Toto, “when we can sell our pictures; we can’t always do that—we can’t always get them exhibited, even. I sent one last year to the Salon.”

“The Salon—where is that?” asked Célestin.

“It’s a picture show; they give prizes for the best pictures.”

“And did your picture get a prize?”

“No,” said Toto mournfully. “They would not even hang it on the walls—it was too classical, some people said; and one man, a man who ought to know, told me it was jealousy.”

“Ah, _mon Dieu!_ how terrible! It was so with the artist in the play: he was betrayed by a man who was jealous of him—oh, poor M. Désiré!”

“Célestin,” said Toto, “do not call me monsieur; call me Désiré.”

“Désiré,” said Célestin, like an obedient child.

“That’s right; and now tell me, Célestin, how comes it that you live all alone with this lark of yours.”

“My mother died when I was so high,” said Célestin, holding one hand three feet from the floor. “And I bought Dodor at the Halles Centrales; he cost three francs.”

This was the history of her life as given by Célestin, with a mournful little gesture of the hands, as if to say “That’s all.”

“But,” said Toto, “you must have found it very dull—I mean, you must have had to work for yourself; you have no brothers or sisters, have you? or cousins, or people of that sort?”

“Oh, no! I have always been alone; but people are very good to me; I love the world—it is very good, and it is so beautiful. On Sundays, sometimes, I go with Mme. Liard to the Buttes Chaumont; I think heaven must be like that.”

“Is that as far as you have been?”

“I have been to Champrosay once when I was very little. I can remember it still, but it is like a dream.”

Toto was producing his coppers to pay the bill, and thinking how fortunate it was that the _auvergnat_ had given him change in coppers, also how fortunate it was that he had bought the asses’ milk, for these coppers were eminently in keeping with the struggling artist. He also kept his coat buttoned to hide his watch-chain, for Toto was now being driven by an idea half formed, yet fully potent, just as the asses had been driven up the Rue de la Paix by the man in sabots, armed with a stick.

Célestin drew out her little purse as if to help in the settlement of the account, and then put it back with a sigh of contentment at Toto’s gesture. One could see her satisfaction at not having to part with her centimes, for she did not in the least try to hide it. She crossed herself and moved her lips as if giving thanks to the good God for the breakfast he had sent her, and then she cried, “Oh, how wicked I have been!”

“Why?” cried Toto, turning from a dispute about fifty centimes with the waiter.

“I have forgotten Dodor, and he has been waiting for his breakfast, and I—I have been thinking of other things.”

She rose with the rapidity and grace only given to us when the knees are young. She seemed as if she must spread out a pair of wings and fly at once to Dodor. So Toto relinquished his fifty centimes and accompanied her. He proposed that they should take a cab.

“Oh, no!” cried Célestin, “that would be far too extravagant. I think you are very extravagant, mons—Désiré; as for me, I have never been in a cab.”

“Never what?” said Toto.

“Never been in a cab. I always walk—sometimes I take the omnibus; but that is when it is wet, omnibuses are so expensive; but they are delightful. It is such fun seeing the people, and they are so friendly; I would like to spend all my life driving in omnibuses. Old gentlemen have often helped me out and walked home with me to see me safe.”

“Good gracious! what do they say to you?”

“Three old gentlemen have seen me home,” said Célestin. “And——”

“Three all together?”

“Oh, no! at different times; and one had a red rosette in his buttonhole.”

“And what did they say to you?”

“That’s the funny thing: they all wanted me to go to the theater, and of course I was delighted,—just imagine!—and we were to meet at different places; and then we talked of other things, and they all took such an interest in Dodor and asked so many questions all about how I lived; and one, the one with the red rosette, gave me a great five-franc piece—he said it was a present for Dodor. But the funny thing was, when we reached home they had forgotten about the theater, and said they had other engagements, and that they would come some other evening. The old gentleman with the rosette gave me another five-franc piece for myself, only this one was in gold, a very small one, and he told me to remember and always be a good girl, for the angels were watching me; and I said I would, and he kissed my hand and went away. But I never saw them again, for one never meets the same person twice in an omnibus, you know.”

Toto assented. He was thinking of this lark that flew so mysteriously between Célestin and sin, and lived in a parrot cage.

They had crossed the Place de la Concorde by this, crossed the Pont de la Concorde, and were heading for the Eiffel Tower. They were walking quickly, too, for was it not to the relief of Dodor, pining for his groundsel, or whatever larks are fed upon?

The exercise began to tell upon Célestin. She coughed a little, and put her hand to her chest high up near the collar-bone.

“You are not strong?”

“Oh, yes, I am very strong, only my chest pains me at times, and I cough at nights sometimes—a little, not much.”

“Célestin,” said Toto, in a very serious voice, “I want you to meet me again. Will you?”

“Oh, dear!” sighed Célestin; “I forgot that we had to part.”

“But we shall meet again.”

“When?”

“Could you meet me to-morrow morning?”

“Yes.”

“At eight?”

“Yes.”

“At the corner just where the Champs Élysées joins the Place de la Concorde?”

“Yes—oh, yes! And you will be there?”

“I will. And, Célestin, look here: we are not rich, you know, and we ought to help each other. Look here.” He took out a handful of coppers and some silver pieces, all that he had remaining from the five-franc piece. “We will divide, and take half each.”

“No—oh, no!”

“Yes,” said Toto, “you must.”

“But you will want it.”

“No, I shan’t. You want it more than I do. Besides,” continued the Prince, “I have not a lark to keep up.”

They divided, squabbling over an odd sou, and when the accounts were settled they walked on.

“How good you are!” said Célestin, almost in tears at the manifold bounties God was heaping upon her this fine April morning. “I will put it in the money-box for Dodor. Oh, dear! why did I think of dying just then? It must have been the thought of Dodor. I often lie awake and think what would become of him if I died. I have a money-box for him to give to someone to be kind to him in case I got ill and died. The five-franc piece is in it, and other money as well. I will put yours, too. See, this is where I live.”

They had reached a gloomy street sprinkled with a few shops, and filled with the boom of an adjacent factory. A gloomy house of four stories was the house where Célestin lived.

“Now I shall know where to find you in case you fail to meet me to-morrow,” said Toto, as they shook hands.

“I will not fail,” she replied. “I have never broken a promise in my life—only once.”

“When was that?”

“This morning, when I promised Dodor to be back in half an hour.”

Then he kissed her hand just as the old gentleman with the red rosette had done, and wandered away, his head filled with thoughts of her. For it was a peculiarity of Célestin’s that, whilst she must have appealed to the angels in heaven, she also appealed strongly to Porte St. Martin minds.