A Chair on the Boulevard Part 3

"Pardon me," interrupted the composer, "but I have read _Bel-Ami_ myself. Oh, it is quite evident that you are a celebrity--you have already forgotten how to be original!"

"There is a resemblance, it is true," admitted Tricotrin. "However, Maupa.s.sant had no copyright in the place de l'Opera. I say that I remembered the man; I had known him when he was in the advertis.e.m.e.nt business in Lyons. Well, we have supped together; he is in a position to do me a service--he will ask an editor to publish an Interview with me!"

"An Interview?" exclaimed Pitou. "You are to be Interviewed? Ah, no, my poor friend, too much meat has unhinged your reason! Go to sleep--you will be hungry and sane again to-morrow."

"It will startle some of them, hein? 'Gustave Tricotrin at Home'--in the ill.u.s.trated edition of _Le Demi-Mot?_"

"Ill.u.s.trated?" gasped Pitou. He looked round the attic. "Did I understand you to say 'ill.u.s.trated'?"

"Well, well," said Tricotrin, "we shall move the beds! And, when the concierge nods, perhaps we can borrow the palm from the portals. With a palm and an amiable photographer, an air of splendour is easily arrived at. I should like a screen--we will raise one from a studio in the rue Ravignan. Mon Dieu! with a palm and a screen I foresee the most opulent effects. 'A Corner of the Study'--we can put the screen in front of the washhand-stand, and litter the table with ma.n.u.scripts--you will admit that we have a sufficiency of ma.n.u.scripts?--no one will know that they have all been rejected. Also, a painter in the rue Ravignan might lend us a few of his failures--'Before you go, let me show you my pictures,'

said monsieur Tricotrin: 'I am an ardent collector'!"

In Montmartre the sight of two "types" s.h.i.+fting household G.o.ds makes no sensation--the sails of the remaining windmills still revolve. On the day that it had its likeness taken, the attic was temporarily transformed. At least a score of unappreciated masterpieces concealed the dilapidation of the walls; the broken window was decorated with an Eastern fabric that had been a cherished "property" of half the ateliers in Paris; the poet himself--with the palm drooping gracefully above his head--mused in a ma.s.sive chair, in which Solomon had been p.r.o.nouncing judgment until 12:15, when the poet had called for it. The appearance of exhaustion observed by admirers of the poet's portrait was due to the chair's appalling weight. As he staggered under it up the steps of the pa.s.sage des Abbesses, the young man had feared he would expire on the threshold of his fame.

However, the photographer proved as resourceful as could be desired, and perhaps the most striking feature of the ill.u.s.tration was the s.p.a.ciousness of the apartment in which monsieur Tricotrin was presented to readers of _Le Demi-Mot._ The name of the thoroughfare was not obtruded.

With what pride was that issue of the journal regarded in the rue des Trois Freres!

"Aha!" cried Tricotrin, who in moments persuaded himself that he really occupied such n.o.ble quarters, "those who repudiated me in the days of my struggles will be a little repentant now, hein? Stone Heart will discover that I was not wrong in relying on my genius!"

"I a.s.sume," said Pitou, "that 'Stone Heart' is your newest pet-name for the silk-manufacturing uncle?"

"You catch my meaning precisely. I propose to send a copy of the paper to Lyons, with the Interview artistically bordered by laurels; I cannot draw laurels myself, but there are plenty of persons who can. We will find someone to do it when we palter with starvation at the Cafe du Bel Avenir this evening--or perhaps we had better fast at the Lucullus Junior, instead; there is occasionally some ink in the bottle there. I shall put the address in the margin--my uncle will not know where it is, and on the grounds of euphony I have no fault to find with it. It would not surprise me if I received an affectionate letter and a bank-note in reply--the perversity of human nature delights in generosities to the prosperous."

"It is a fact," said Pitou. "That human nature!"

"Who knows?--he may even renew the allowance that he used to make me!"

"Upon my word, more unlikely things have happened," Pitou conceded.

"Mon Dieu, Nicolas, we shall again have enough to eat!"

"Ah, visionary!" exclaimed Pitou; "are there no bounds to your imagination?"

Now, the perversity to which the poet referred did inspire monsieur Rigaud, of Lyons, to loosen his purse-strings. He wrote that he rejoiced to learn that Gustave was beginning to make his way, and enclosed a present of two hundred and fifty francs. More, after an avuncular preamble which the poet skipped--having a literary hatred of digression in the works of others--he even hinted that the allowance might be resumed.

What a banquet there was in bohemia! How the gla.s.ses jingled afterwards in La Lune Rousse, and oh, the beautiful hats that Germaine and Marcelle displayed on the next fine Sunday! Even when the last ripples of the splash were stilled, the comrades swaggered gallantly on the boulevard Rochechouart, for by any post might not the first instalment of that allowance arrive?

Weeks pa.s.sed; and Tricotrin began to say, "It looks to me as if we needed another Interview!"

And then came a letter which was no less cordial than its predecessor, but which stunned the unfortunate recipient like a warrant for his execution. Monsieur Rigaud stated that business would bring him to Paris on the following evening and that he antic.i.p.ated the pleasure of visiting his nephew; he trusted that his dear Gustave would meet him at the station. The poet and composer stared at each other with bloodless faces.

"You must call at his hotel instead," faltered Pitou at last.

"But you may be sure he will wish to see my elegant abode."

"'It is in the hands of the decorators. How unfortunate!'"

"He would propose to offer them suggestions; he is a born suggester."

"'Fever is raging in the house--a most infectious fever'; we will ask a medical student to give us one."

"It would not explain my lodging in a slum meanwhile."

"Well, let us admit that there is nothing to be done; you will have to own up!"

"Are you insane? It is improvident youths like you, who come to lament their wasted lives. If I could receive him this once as he expects to be received, we cannot doubt that it would mean an income of two thousand francs to me. Prosperity dangles before us--shall I fail to clutch it? Mon Dieu, what a catastrophe, his coming to Paris! Why cannot he conduct his business in Lyons? Is there not enough money in the city of Lyons to satisfy him? O grasper! what greed! Nicolas, my more than brother, if it were night when I took him to a sumptuous apartment, he might not notice the name of the street--I could talk brilliantly as we turned the corner. Also I could scintillate as I led him away. He would never know that it was not the rue des Trois Freres."

"You are right," agreed Pitou; "but which is the pauper in our social circle whose sumptuous apartment you propose to acquire?"

"One must consider," said Tricotrin. "Obviously, I am compelled to entertain in somebody's; fortunately, I have two days to find it in. I shall now go forth!"

It was a genial morning, and the first person he accosted in the rue Ravignan was Goujaud, painting in the patch of garden before the studios. "Tell me, Goujaud," exclaimed the poet, "have you any gilded acquaintance who would permit me the use of his apartment for two hours to-morrow evening?"

Goujaud reflected for some seconds, with his head to one side. "I have never done anything so fine as this before," he observed; "regard the atmosphere of it!"

"It is execrable!" replied Tricotrin, and went next door to Flamant.

"My old one," he explained, "I have urgent need of a regal apartment for two hours to-morrow--have you a wealthy friend who would accommodate me?"

"You may beautify your bedroom with all my possessions," returned Flamant heartily. "I have a stuffed parrot that is most decorative, but I have not a friend that is wealthy."

"You express yourself like a First Course for the Foreigner," said Tricotrin, much annoyed. "Devil take your stuffed parrot!"

The heat of the sun increased towards midday, and drops began to trickle under the young man's hat. By four o'clock he had called upon sixty-two persons, exclusive of Sanquereau, whom he had been unable to wake. He bethought himself of Lajeunie, the novelist; but Lajeunie could offer him nothing more serviceable than a pa.s.s for the Elysee- Montmartre. "Now how is it possible that I spend my life among such imbeciles?" groaned the unhappy poet; "one offers me a parrot, and another a pa.s.s for a dancing-hall! Can I a.s.sure my uncle, who is a married man, and produces silk in vast quant.i.ties, that I reside in a dancing-hall? Besides, we know those pa.s.ses--they are available only for ladies."

"It is true that you could not get in by it," a.s.sented Lajeunie, "but I give it to you freely. Take it, my poor fellow! Though it may appear inadequate to the occasion, who knows but what it will prove to be the basis of a fortune?"

"You are as crazy as the stories you write," said Tricotrin, "Still, it can go in my pocket." And he made, exhausted, for a bench in the place Dancourt, where he apostrophised his fate.

Thus occupied, he fell asleep; and presently a young woman sauntered from the sidewalk across the square. In the shady little place Dancourt is the little white Theatre Montmartre, and she first perused the play-bill, and then contemplated the sleeping poet. It may have been that she found something attractive in his bearing, or it may have been that ragam.u.f.fins sprawled elsewhere; but, having determined to wait awhile, she selected the bench on which he reposed, and forthwith woke him.

"Now this is nice!" he exclaimed, realising his lapse with a start.

"Oh, monsieur!" said she, blus.h.i.+ng.

"Pardon; I referred to my having dozed when every moment is of consequence," he explained. "And yet," he went on ruefully, "upon my soul, I cannot conjecture where I shall go next!"

Her response was so sympathetic that it tempted him to remain a little longer, and in five minutes she was recounting her own perplexities. It transpired that she was a lady's-maid with a holiday, and the problem before her was whether to spend her money on a theatre, or on a ball.

"Now that is a question which is disposed of instantly," said Tricotrin, "You shall spend your money on a theatre, and go to a ball as well." And out fluttered the pink pa.s.s presented to him by Lajeunie.

The girl's tongue was as lively as her grat.i.tude. She was, she told him, maid to the famous Colette Aubray, who had gone unattended that afternoon to visit the owner of a villa in the country, where she would stay until the next day but one. "So you see, monsieur, we poor servants are left alone in the flat to amuse ourselves as best we can!"

"Mon Dieu!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Tricotrin, and added mentally, "It was decidedly the good kind fairies that pointed to this bench!"

He proceeded to pay the young woman such ardent attentions that she a.s.sumed he meant to accompany her to the ball, and her disappointment was extreme when he had to own that the state of his finances forbade it. "All I can suggest, my dear Leonie," he concluded, "is that I shall be your escort when you leave. It is abominable that you must have other partners in the meantime, but I feel that you will be constant to me in your thoughts. I shall have much to tell you--I shall whisper a secret in your ear; for, incredible as it may sound, my sweet child, you alone in Paris have the power to save me!"

"Oh, monsieur!" faltered the admiring lady's-maid, "it has always been my great ambition to save a young man, especially a young man who used such lovely language. I am sure, by the way you talk, that you must be a poet!"