Part 17

At the top of the marble steps is a long terrace, with seats and people sitting, from which tall glazed doors, elaborately carved and gilded, give access to luxurious drawing-rooms, dining-rooms, reading-rooms, lavatories, postal and telegraph offices; and all round and about are huge square green boxes, out of which grow tropical and exotic evergreens all the year round--with beautiful names that I have forgotten. And leaning against these boxes are placards announcing what theatrical or musical entertainments will take place in Paris that day or night; and the biggest of these placards (and the most fantastically decorated) informs the cosmopolite world that Madame Svengali intends to make her first appearance in Paris that very evening, at nine punctually, in the Cirque des Bashibazoucks, Rue St. Honoré!

[Illustration: "AN ATMOSPHERE OF BANK-NOTES AND GOLD"]

Our friends had only arrived the previous night, but they had managed to secure stalls a week beforehand. No places were any longer to be got for love or money. Many people had come to Paris on purpose to hear la Svengali--many famous musicians from England and everywhere else--but they would have to wait many days.

The fame of her was like a rolling snowball that had been rolling all over Europe for the last two years--wherever there was snow to be picked up in the shape of golden ducats.

Their breakfast over, Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee, cigar in mouth, arm in arm, the huge Taffy in the middle (_comme autrefois_), crossed the sunshiny boulevard into the shade, and went down the Rue de la Paix, through the Place Vendôme and the Rue Castiglione to the Rue de Rivoli--quite leisurely, and with a tender midriff-warming sensation of freedom and delight at almost every step.

Arrived at the corner pastry-cook's, they finished the stumps of their cigars as they looked at the well-remembered show in the window; then they went in and had, Taffy a Madeleine, the Laird a baba, and Little Billee a Savarin--and each, I regret to say, a liqueur-glass of _rhum de la Jamaïque_.

After this they sauntered through the Tuileries Gardens, and by the quay to their favorite Pont des Arts, and looked up and down the river--_comme autrefois_!

It is an enchanting prospect at any time and under any circumstances; but on a beautiful morning in mid-October, when you haven't seen it for five years, and are still young! and almost every stock and stone that meets your eye, every sound, every scent, has some sweet and subtle reminder for you--

Let the reader have no fear. I will not attempt to describe it. I shouldn't know where to begin (nor when to leave off!).

Not but what many changes had been wrought; many old landmarks were missing. And among them, as they found out a few minutes later, and much to their chagrin, the good old Morgue!

They inquired of a _gardien de la paix_, who told them that a new Morgue--"une bien jolie Morgue, ma foi!"--and much more commodious and comfortable than the old one, had been built beyond Notre Dame, a little to the right.

"Messieurs devraient voir ça--on y est très bien!"

But Notre Dame herself was still there, and la Sainte Chapelle, and Le Pont Neuf, and the equestrian statue of Henri IV. _C'est toujours ça!_

And as they gazed and gazed, each framed unto himself, mentally, a little picture of the Thames they had just left--and thought of Waterloo Bridge, and St. Paul's, and London--but felt no homesickness whatever, no desire to go back!

And looking down the river westward there was but little change.

On the left-hand side the terraces and garden of the Hôtel de la Rochemartel (the sculptured entrance of which was in the Rue de Lille) still overtopped the neighboring houses and shaded the quay with tall trees, whose lightly falling leaves yellowed the pavement for at least a hundred yards of frontage--or backage, rather; for this was but the rear of that stately palace.

[Illustration: "A LITTLE PICTURE OF THE THAMES"]

"I wonder if l'Zouzou has come into his dukedom yet?" said Taffy.

And Taffy the realist, Taffy the modern of moderns, also said many beautiful things about old historical French dukedoms; which, in spite of their plentifulness, were so much more picturesque than English ones, and constituted a far more poetical and romantic link with the past; partly on account of their beautiful, high-sounding names!

"Amaury de Brissac de Roncesvaulx de la Rochemartel-Boisségur was a generous mouthful! Why, the very sound of it is redolent of the twelfth century! Not even Howard of Norfolk can beat that!"

For Taffy was getting sick of "this ghastly thin-faced time of ours," as he sadly called it (quoting from a strange and very beautiful poem called "Faustine," which had just appeared in the _Spectator_--and which our three enthusiasts already knew by heart), and beginning to love all things that were old and regal and rotten and forgotten and of bad repute, and to long to paint them just as they really were.

"Ah! they managed these things better in France, especially in the twelfth century, and even the thirteenth!" said the Laird. "Still, Howard of Norfolk isn't bad at a pinch--_fote de myoo_!" he continued, winking at Little Billee. And they promised themselves that they would leave cards on Zouzou, and, if he wasn't a duke, invite him to dinner; and also Dodor, if they could manage to find him.

Then along the quay and up the Rue de Seine, and by well-remembered little mystic ways to the old studio in the Place St. Anatole des Arts.

Here they found many changes: A row of new houses on the north side, by Baron Haussmann--the well-named; a boulevard was being constructed right through the place; but the old house had been respected, and, looking up, they saw the big north window of their good old abode blindless and blank and black but for a white placard in the middle of it with the words: "À louer. Un atelier, et une chambre à coucher."

They entered the court-yard through the little door in the porte cochère, and beheld Madame Vinard standing on the step of her loge, her arms akimbo, giving orders to her husband--who was sawing logs for firewood, as usual at that time of the year--and telling him he was the most helpless log of the lot.

She gave them one look, threw up her arms, and rushed at them, saying, "Ah, mon Dieu! les trois Angliches!"

And they could not have complained of any lack of warmth in her greeting, or in Monsieur Vinard's.

"Ah! mais quel bonheur de vous revoir! Et comme vous avez bonne mine, tous! Et Monsieur Litrebili, donc! il a grandi!" etc., etc. "Mais vous allez boire la goutte avant tout--vite, Vinard! Le ratafia de cassis que Monsieur Durien nous a envoyé la semaine dernière!"

And they were taken into the loge and made free of it--welcomed like prodigal sons; a fresh bottle of black-currant brandy was tapped, and did duty for the fatted calf. It was an ovation, and made quite a stir in the quartier.

_Le Retour des trois Angliches--cinq ans après!_

She told them all the news: about Bouchardy; Papelard; Jules Guinot, who was now in the Ministère de la Guerre; Barizel, who had given up the arts and gone into his father's business (umbrellas); Durien, who had married six months ago, and had a superb atelier in the Rue Taitbout, and was coining money; about her own family--Aglaë, who was going to be married to the son of the charbonnier at the corner of the Rue de la Canicule--"un bon mariage; bien solide!" Niniche, who was studying the piano at the Conservatoire, and had won the silver medal; Isidore, who, alas! had gone to the bad--"perdu par les femmes! un si joli garçon, vous concevez! ça ne lui a pas porté bonheur, par exemple!" And yet she was proud! and said his father would never have had the pluck!

"À dix-huit ans, pensez donc!

"And that good Monsieur Carrel; he is dead, you know! Ah, messieurs savaient ça? Yes, he died at Dieppe, his natal town, during the winter, from the consequences of an indigestion--que voulez-vous! He always had the stomach so feeble!... Ah! the beautiful interment, messieurs! Five thousand people, in spite of the rain! Car il pleuvait averse! And M. le Maire and his adjunct walking behind the hearse, and the gendarmerie and the douaniers, and a bataillon of the douzième chasseurs-à-pied, with their music, and all the sapper-pumpers, en grande tenue with their beautiful brass helmets! All the town was there, following: so there was nobody left to see the procession go by! q'c'était beau! Mon Dieu, q'c'était beau! c'que j'ai pleuré, d'voir ça! n'est-ce-pas, Vinard?"

"Dame, oui, ma biche! j'crois ben! It might have been Monsieur le Maire himself that one was interring in person!"

"Ah, ça! voyons, Vinard; thou'rt not going to compare the Maire of Dieppe to a painter like Monsieur Carrel?"

"Certainly not, ma biche! But still, M. Carrel was a great man all the same, in his way. Besides, I wasn't there--nor thou either, as to that!"

"Mon Dieu! comme il est idiot, ce Vinard--of a stupidity to cut with a knife! Why, thou might'st almost be a Mayor thyself, sacred imbecile that thou art!"

And an animated discussion arose between husband and wife as to the respective merits of a country mayor on one side and a famous painter and member of the Institute on the other, during which _les trois Angliches_ were left out in the cold. When Madame Vinard had sufficiently routed her husband, which did not take very long, she turned to them again, and told them that she had started a _magasin de bric-à-brac_, "vous verres ça!"

Yes, the studio had been to let for three months. Would they like to see it? Here were the keys. They would, of course, prefer to see it by themselves, alone; "je comprends ça! et vous verrez ce que vous verrez!" Then they must come and drink once more again the drop, and inspect her _magasin de bric-à-brac_.

So they went up, all three, and let themselves into the old place where they had been so happy--and one of them for a while so miserable!

It was changed indeed.

Bare of all furniture, for one thing; shabby and unswept, with a pathetic air of dilapidation, spoliation, desecration, and a musty, shut-up smell; the window so dirty you could hardly see the new houses opposite; the floor a disgrace!

All over the walls were caricatures in charcoal and white chalk, with more or less incomprehensible legends; very vulgar and trivial and coarse, some of them, and pointless for _trois Angliches_.

[Illustration: "'AH! THE BEAUTIFUL INTERMENT, MESSIEURS!'"]

But among these (touching to relate) they found, under a square of plate-glass that had been fixed on the wall by means of an oak frame, Little Billee's old black-and-white-and-red chalk sketch of Trilby's left foot, as fresh as if it had been done only yesterday! Over it was written: "Souvenir de la Grande Trilby, par W. B. (Litrebili)." And beneath, carefully engrossed on imperishable parchment, and pasted on the glass, the following stanzas:

"Pauvre Trilby--la belle et bonne et chère! Je suis son pied. Devine qui voudra Quel tendre ami, la chérissant naguère, Encadra d'elle (et d'un amour sincère) Ce souvenir charmant qu'un caprice inspira-- Qu'un souffle emportera!

"J'étais jumeau: qu'est devenu mon frère? Hélas! Hélas! L'Amour nous égara. L'Éternité nous unira, j'espère; Et nous ferons comme autrefois la paire Au fond d'un lit bien chaste où nul ne troublera Trilby--qui dormira.

"Ô tendre ami, sans nous qu'allez-vous faire? La porte est close où Trilby demeura. Le Paradis est loin ... et sur la terre (Qui nous fut douce et lui sera légère) Pour trouver nos pareils, si bien qu'on cherchera-- Beau chercher l'on aura!"

Taffy drew a long breath into his manly bosom, and kept it there as he read this characteristic French doggerel (for so he chose to call this touching little symphony in _ère_ and _ra_). His huge frame thrilled with tenderness and pity and fond remembrance, and he said to himself (letting out his breath): "Dear, dear Trilby! Ah! if you had only cared for _me_, _I_ wouldn't have let you give me up--not for any one on earth. _You_ were the mate for _me_!"

[Illustration: "PAUVRE TRILBY"]

And that, as the reader has guessed long ago, was big Taffy's "history."

The Laird was also deeply touched, and could not speak. Had he been in love with Trilby, too? Had he ever been in love with any one?

He couldn't say. But he thought of Trilby's sweetness and unselfishness, her gayety, her innocent kissings and caressings, her drollery and frolicsome grace, her way of filling whatever place she was in with her presence, the charming sight and the genial sound of her; and felt that no girl, no woman, no lady he had ever seen yet was a match for this poor waif and stray, this long-legged, cancan-dancing, quartier-latin grisette, blanchisseuse de fin, "and Heaven knows what besides!"

"Hang it all!" he mentally ejaculated, "I wish to goodness I'd married her _myself_!"

Little Billee said nothing either. He felt unhappier than he had ever once felt for five long years--to think that he could gaze on such a memento as this, a thing so strongly personal to himself, with dry eyes and a quiet pulse! and he unemotionally, dispassionately, wished himself dead and buried for at least the thousand and first time!

All three possessed casts of Trilby's hands and feet and photographs of herself. But nothing so charmingly suggestive of Trilby as this little masterpiece of a true artist, this happy fluke of a happy moment. It was Trilbyness itself, as the Laird thought, and should not be suffered to perish.

They took the keys back to Madame Vinard in silence.

She said: "Vous avez vu--n'est-ce pas, messieurs?--le pied de Trilby! c'est bien gentil! C'est Monsieur Durien qui a fait mettre le verre, quand vous êtes partis; et Monsieur Guinot qui a composé _l'épitaphe_. Pauvre Trilby! qu'est-ce qu'elle est devenue! comme elle était bonne fille, hein? et si belle! et comme elle était vive elle était vive elle était vive! Et comme elle vous aimait tous bien--et surtout Monsieur Litrebili--n'est-ce pas?"

Then she insisted on giving them each another liqueur-glass of Durien's ratafia de cassis, and took them to see her collection of bric-à-brac across the yard, a gorgeous show, and explained everything about it--how she had begun in quite a small way, but was making it a big business.

"Voyez cette pendule! It is of the time of Louis Onze, who gave it with his own hands to Madame de Pompadour(!). I bought it at a sale in--"

"Combiang?" said the Laird.

"C'est cent-cinquante francs, monsieur--c'est bien bon marché--une véritable occasion, et--"

"Je prong!" said the Laird, meaning "I take it!"

Then she showed them a beautiful brocade gown "which she had picked up at a bargain at--"

"Combiang?" said the Laird.

"Ah, ça, c'est trois cents francs, monsieur. Mais--"

"Je prong!" said the Laird.

"Et voici les souliers qui vont avec, et que--"

"Je pr--"

But here Taffy took the Laird by the arm and dragged him by force out of this too seductive siren's cave.

The Laird told her where to send his purchases; and with many expressions of love and good-will on both sides, they tore themselves away from Monsieur et Madame Vinard.

The Laird, however, rushed back for a minute, and hurriedly whispered to Madame Vinard: "Oh--er--le piay de Trilby--sur le mure, vous savvy--avec le verre et toot le reste--coopy le mure--comprenny?... Combiang?"

"Ah, monsieur!" said Madame Vinard--"c'est un peu difficile, vous savez--couper un mur comme ça! On parlera au propriétaire si vous voulez, et ça pourrait peut-être s'arranger, si c'est en bois! seulement il fau--"

"Je prong!" said the Laird, and waved his hand in farewell.

[Illustration: "'JE PRONG!'"]

They went up the Rue Vieille des Mauvais Ladres, and found that about twenty yards of a high wall had been pulled down--just at the bend where the Laird had seen the last of Trilby, as she turned round and kissed her hand to him--and they beheld, within, a quaint and ancient long-neglected garden; a gray old garden, with tall, warty, black-boled trees, and damp, green, mossy paths that lost themselves under the brown and yellow leaves and mould and muck which had drifted into heaps here and there, the accumulation of years--a queer old faded pleasance, with wasted bowers and dilapidated carved stone benches and weather-beaten discolored marble statues--noseless, armless, earless fauns and hamadryads! And at the end of it, in a tumble-down state of utter ruin, a still inhabited little house, with shabby blinds and window-curtains, and broken window-panes mended with brown paper--a Pavillon de Flore, that must have been quite beautiful a hundred years ago--the once mysterious love-resort of long-buried abbés with light hearts, and well-forgotten lords and ladies gay--red-heeled, patched, powdered, frivolous, and shameless, but oh! how charming to the imagination of the nineteenth century! And right through the ragged lawn, (where lay, upset in the long dewy grass, a broken doll's perambulator by a tattered Punchinello) went a desecrating track made by cart-wheels and horses' hoofs; and this, no doubt, was to be a new street--perhaps, as Taffy suggested, "La Rue _Neuve_ des Mauvais Ladres!" (The _New_ Street of the Bad Lepers!).

"Ah, Taffy!" sententiously opined the Laird, with his usual wink at Little Billee, "I've no doubt the _old_ lepers were the best, bad as they were!"

"I'm quite _sure_ of it!" said Taffy, with sad and sober conviction and a long-drawn sigh. "I only wish I had a chance of painting one--just as he really was!"

How often they had speculated on what lay hidden behind that lofty old brick wall! and now this melancholy little peep into the once festive past, the touching sight of this odd old poverty-stricken abode of Heaven knows what present grief and desolation, which a few strokes of the pickaxe had laid bare, seemed to chime in with their own gray mood that had been so bright and sunny an hour ago; and they went on their way quite dejectedly, for a stroll through the Luxembourg Gallery and Gardens.

The same people seemed to be still copying the same pictures in the long, quiet, genial room, so pleasantly smelling of oil-paint--Rosa Bonheur's "Labourage Nivernais"--Hébert's "Malaria"--Couture's "Decadent Romans."

And in the formal dusty gardens were the same pioupious and zouzous still walking with the same nounous, or sitting by their sides on benches by formal ponds with gold and silver fish in them--and just the same old couples petting the same toutous and loulous![A]

[A] _Glossary._--Pioupiou (_alias_ pousse-caillou, _alias_ tourlourou)--a private soldier of the line. Zouzou--a Zouave. Nounou--a wet-nurse with a pretty ribboned cap and long streamers. Toutou--a nondescript French lapdog, of no breed known to Englishmen (a regular little beast!) Loulou--a Pomeranian dog--not much better.

Then they thought they would go and lunch at le père Trin's--the Restaurant de la Couronne, in the Rue du Luxembourg--for the sake of auld lang syne! But when they got there the well-remembered fumes of that humble refectory, which had once seemed not unappetizing, turned their stomachs. So they contented themselves with warmly greeting le père Trin, who was quite overjoyed to see them again, and anxious to turn the whole establishment topsy-turvy that he might entertain such guests as they deserved.

Then the Laird suggested an omelet at the Café de l'Odéon. But Taffy said, in his masterful way, "Damn the Café de l'Odéon!"

And hailing a little open fly, they drove to Ledoyen's, or some such place, in the Champs Élysées, where they feasted as became three prosperous Britons out for a holiday in Paris--three irresponsible musketeers, lords of themselves and Lutetia, _beati possidentes!_--and afterwards had themselves driven in an open carriage and pair through the Bois de Boulogne to the fête de St. Cloud (or what still remained of it, for it lasts six weeks), the scene of so many of Dodor's and Zouzou's exploits in past years, and found it more amusing than the Luxembourg Gardens; the lively and irrepressible spirit of Dodor seemed to pervade it still.

But it doesn't want the presence of a Dodor to make the blue-bloused sons of the Gallic people (and its neatly shod, white-capped daughters) delightful to watch as they take their pleasure. And the Laird (thinking perhaps of Hampstead Heath on an Easter Monday) must not be blamed for once more quoting his favorite phrase--the pretty little phrase with which the most humorous and least exemplary of British parsons began his famous journey to France.

When they came back to the hotel to dress and dine, the Laird found he wanted a pair of white gloves for the concert--"Oon pair de gong blong," as he called it--and they walked along the boulevards till they came to a haberdasher's shop of very good and prosperous appearance, and, going in, were received graciously by the "patron," a portly little bourgeois, who waved them to a tall and aristocratic and very well dressed young commis behind the counter, saying, "Une paire de gants blancs pour monsieur."

And what was the surprise of our three friends in recognizing Dodor!

The gay Dodor, Dodor l'irrésistible, quite unembarrassed by his position, was exuberant in his delight at seeing them again, and introduced them to the patron and his wife and daughter, Monsieur, Madame, and Mademoiselle Passefil. And it soon became pretty evident that, in spite of his humble employment in that house, he was a great favorite in that family, and especially with mademoiselle.

[Illustration: "'OON PAIR DE GONG BLONG'"]

Indeed, Monsieur Passefil invited our three heroes to stay and dine then and there; but they compromised matters by asking Dodor to come and dine with _them_ at the hotel, and he accepted with alacrity.

Thanks to Dodor, the dinner was a very lively one, and they soon forgot the regretful impressions of the day.

They learned that he hadn't got a penny in the world, and had left the army, and had for two years kept the books at le père Passefil's and served his customers, and won his good opinion and his wife's, and especially his daughter's; and that soon he was to be not only his employer's partner, but his son-in-law; and that, in spite of his impecuniosity, he had managed to impress them with the fact that in marrying a Rigolot de Lafarce she was making a very splendid match indeed!

His brother-in-law, the Honorable Jack Reeve, had long cut him for a bad lot. But his sister, after a while, had made up her mind that to marry Mlle. Passefil wasn't the worst he could do; at all events, it would keep him out of England, and _that_ was a comfort! And passing through Paris, she had actually called on the Passefil family, and they had fallen prostrate before such splendor; and no wonder, for Mrs. Jack Reeve was one of the most beautiful, elegant, and fashionable women in London, the smartest of the smart.

"And how about l'Zouzou?" asked Little Billee.

"Ah, old Gontran! I don't see much of him. We no longer quite move in the same circles, you know; not that he's proud, or me either! but he's a sub-lieutenant in the Guides--an officer! Besides, his brother's dead, and he's the Duc de la Rochemartel, and a special pet of the Empress; he makes her laugh more than anybody! He's looking out for the biggest heiress he can find, and he's pretty safe to catch her, with such a name as that! In fact, they say he's caught her already--Miss Lavinia Hunks, of Chicago. Twenty million dollars!--at least, so the _Figaro_ says!"