Chapter III: Part 3

MY DEAR FRIEND,--This is to be at once a confession and a prayer.
What would you say if I were to tell you that Pazzini--the flawless
Pazzini, as men are pleased to call me!--murdered, yes, murdered
last night's sonata by flatting that wonderful final note? Oh, it
was a very little thing, and passed unnoticed, for they are stupid,
these wise people who listen to me, and they did not hear. Even you,
my poor friend, even you could not detect that tiny flaw that was a
monstrous crime. No, of all who listened, there were but two that
understood what I had done. I was one of these, and the other was
your son--Pépin.

Do you know what that means, Monsieur le Comte de Villersexel? Do
you understand that it is but one ear in millions that is so finely
keyed that this minutest deviation could wound it like the most
utter discord? And I wounded him, your Pépin. I saw it in his eyes.
Therefore I tell you--I, who know--that he is a genius, a genius
greater than his mother, and that, like her, he must be my pupil. I
have none other now. It shall be the work of my old age to make him
the greatest violinist of his day. Give him to me, my friend, if not
for his own sake, then for hers!

PAZZINI.

Prime feature of all the year to the little Hamiltons, on the entresol, was their Christmas tree. It arrived in some unknowable way in the corner of the grand salon on the morning after Christmas, and, from the moment of its advent, the doors were sealed, and only the privileged world of grown-ups went in and out, and could see the splendors within. Inch by inch the hands of the tall clock in the antichambre dragged themselves around successive circles toward the hour of revelation, and, keyed to the snapping point of frenzy, the slender figure of George and the round, squat form of John stood motionless before the inexorable timepiece, awaiting the stroke of four. This suspense was harrowing enough in itself, and only made bearable by recourse to occasional mad caperings up and down the hall, and whoops of mingled ecstasy and exasperation. What was worse was the delay in the arrival of their guests. Later, the latter would be an indispensable part of the festivities: just now they were mere impediments in the path of bliss. Even the grown-ups were more considerate, and came on time. Well they might, since they were granted immediate admission to the enchanted room, and came out with maddening accounts of what was to be seen therein. They sat about the small salon, and talked the stupid things of which they were so fond of talking,--Hamilton, tall, straight, and with an amused twinkle in his eyes, while he watched his wife vainly endeavoring to calm her sons as they foamed and pranced at the sealed doors; Miss Kedgwick, who wrote books, and invited boys to tea; Monsieur de Bercy, who was odd because he spoke no English, but who cut heads out of nuts and apples, and drew droll pictures on scraps of paper; Miss Lys, who played the piano for "Going to Jerusalem;" and Mr. Sedgely, who talked very low in her ear, and said the great trouble with "Going to Jerusalem" was that the players couldn't go there in good earnest--whatever that might mean.

But would the doors _never_ open?

The children arrived by twos and threes, shook hands limply with their elders, greeted their small hosts with embarrassed ceremony, and then, as if suddenly inoculated with the latter's madness, commenced to foam and prance in their turn before the unyielding portals. Last of all came Pépin, all brown, who bowed at the door, and then in turn to each of those who spoke to him.

Suddenly, with a shout, the children burst through the opened doorway, and gathered in voluble groups about the glistening miracle which shone like a hundred stars in the gathering twilight. For a half hour all was chaos, and Pépin, standing a little apart, marveled and was still. Dancing figures whirled about him, bearing boxes of soldiers, toy villages, dolls, trumpets, drums. The air was full of the wailing of whistles, the cries of mechanical animals, and the clamor of childish comment.

But to Pépin even the dazzling novelty of his surroundings was as nothing, compared to one object which drew and fixed his attention from the first instant, as the needle is held rigid by the magnetic pole. High up upon the tree, clearly outlined against its background of deep green, and gleaming gorgeously with fresh varnish in the light of the surrounding candles, hung a violin--not one like Monsieur Pazzini's, large and of a dull brown, but small--a violin for Pépin himself to hold, and new, and bright, and beyond all things beautiful and to be desired!

Then his attention was distracted for a moment. From the time of his entrance the eyes of Miss Lys had followed the dignified and silent little Frenchman, and where Miss Lys went Mr. Sedgely followed, so that now the two were so close that they brushed his elbow, and Pépin, turning with an instinctive "Pardon," saw that they were watching him curiously. When, with a feeling of restlessness under their scrutiny, he looked once more towards the tree, the violin was gone! An instant later, he saw it in the madly sawing hands of George Hamilton, dancing like a faun down the room, and he was conscious of a great faintness, such as he had known but once before,--when he had cut his hand, and the doctor had sewed it, as Elizabeth sewed rips in cloth.

"He is adorable," said Ethel Lys, "but I have never seen a sadder face. What eyes!--two brown poems."

"He makes my heart ache," answered Sedgely, slowly, "and yet I could hardly say why. Ask him what he wants off the tree."

The girl was on her knees by Pépin before the phrase was fairly finished.

"What didst thou have for Christmas?" she asked, falling unconsciously into that tender second singular which slips so naturally from the lips at sight of a French child.

"I?--but nothing," replied the little Vicomte, pleased out of his anguish by the sound of his own tongue amid the babel of English phrases.

The girl at his side looked at him with so frank an astonishment that he felt it necessary to explain.

"I have my gifts on the day of the year. Christmas is an English fête, and I am French. So I have nothing."

"Nothing!" replied Miss Lys blankly, and then, of a sudden, slipped her arm around him, and drew his head close to her own.

"What dost thou see on the tree that thou wouldst like to have?" she asked, eagerly. "What is there, dearest?"

And, at the unwonted tenderness of her question, the floodgates of Pépin's reserve suddenly gave way. Placing his hands upon the girl's shoulders, he searched her face with his eyes.

"If there were another violin"--he began, and, faltering, stopped, and turned away to hide the tears that would come, strive as he might to hold them back.

"Did you _hear_ him--and _see_ him?" queried Miss Lys, a minute after, furiously backing Sedgely into a corner by the lapels of his frock coat. "You _did_--you _know_ you did! And you are still here? Lord! _What_ a man!"

Sedgely shrugged his shoulders with a pretense of utter bewilderment.

"What must I do?" he inquired, blankly.

"_Do?_" stormed Miss Lys. "_Do?_ Why, scour Paris till you find a violin precisely like that one George is doing his best to saw in half. Here! Clément is at the door with the trois-quarts. Tell him to drive you like mad to the Printemps--to the big place opposite the Grand Hotel--to the Louvre--to the Bon Marché--anywhere--everywhere! But inside of one hour I must have that violin!"

When Sedgely returned, thirty minutes later, violin in hand, Ethel met him at the door.

"They are all at tea," she said. "We'll call Pépin out."

She placed the violin in the hands of the Vicomte without a word, and without a word Pépin took it from her. The instrument slid to his cheek as if impelled by its own desire.

"Canst thou play?" she asked him.

"No," said Pépin, "and, besides, it is but a toy. I do not want to hear it. But I like to feel it--here." And he moved his cheek caressingly against the cheap varnish.

"Don't you think you might"--began Sedgely, and then found himself on the other side of the door, and Miss Lys facing him with an air of hopeless resignation.

"I--act-u-ally--be-lieve," she said, with an effort at calm, "that you were going to ask him to thank me for it!"

"Why not?" said Sedgely.

"_Lord!_ What a man!" said Miss Lys.

* * * * *

In the dining-room of the de Villersexel apartment the Comte paced slowly to and fro, with bent head, and fingers that locked and unlocked behind his back. In the heavy chair before the fire, Pazzini seemed shrunk to but half his normal size, a mere rack of clothes, two lean white hands, that gripped the dragons' heads upon the arms of the fauteuil, and a pale stern face that looked into the smouldering embers, and beyond--immeasurably beyond.

"How did it happen?" he asked, after a time.

"Shall I ever know?" broke out de Villersexel irritably. "Pépin had been to a children's party below there on the entresol, at the English lawyer's. He and his imbecile of a bonne were entering the ascenseur. She goes from spasm to spasm, so there is no telling. But it seems they had given Pépin a toy--the English--and she wished to carry it and he refused. So between them--God knows how!--it slipped from their hands as the ascenseur cleared the gate--and Pépin stooped to catch it--and fell. He died at midnight."

There was a long silence, broken only by the snapping of the logs in the fireplace and the almost inaudible footfalls of the Comte on the thick carpet. Then--

"He was his mother's son," said Pazzini.

"And mine," replied the other. "The last of the de Villersexel."

He paused abruptly by a little table, and took up a handful of splintered wood and tangled catgut.

"The toy that killed him," he added in a low voice, and hurled the fragments over Pazzini's shoulder into the embers. A thin tongue of flame caught at them as they fell, and broke into a brilliant blaze. Pazzini leaned forward suddenly and peered at the little conflagration.

"A violin," he said.

"A violin," echoed the Comte. "Think of dying for a violin!"

Pazzini made no reply. His eyes had met those of the portrait over the chimney--and he was smiling.

The Tuition of Dodo Chapuis

THE situation was best summed up in the epigram of little Sacha Vitzoff, the second secretary at the Russian Embassy, who said that there was room enough in Paris for two and a half millions of people _and_ Gabrielle de Poirier, or for two and a half millions of people _and_ Thaïs de Trémonceau, but that even the place de la Concorde was not sufficiently wide for Gabrielle and Thaïs to pass without treading on each others' toes.

It was a rivalry of long standing, nourished by innumerable petty jealousies and carefully treasured affronts. Gabrielle was tall and very slender, with a clear, pale complexion, and hair of a curious dark bronze that in certain lights showed a hint of olive green. So Thaïs called her the Asparagus Woman--la Femme Asperge. Thaïs was short and anything but slim, and brown of hair, eyes, and skin. So Gabrielle called her the Mud-Ball--la Boule de Boue. And neither appellation was pleasing to the object thereof.

These two great luminaries of the Parisian demi-monde, blazing crimson with mutual jealousy, followed, for six months of the year, a kind of right-triangular orbit, comprising the restaurant of Armenonville, the race-course of Auteuil, and the Café de Paris, and embracing divers other points of common interest,--the Palais de Glace, of a Sunday afternoon, the tea-room of the Elysée Palace Hotel, the Folies-Marigny, the Salon, and the Horse-Show; and, individually, Gabrielle's apartment on the avenue Kléber, and Thaïs's little hôtel on the rue de la Faisanderie. Between the last two, as regards situation, cost, and general equipment, there was not a straw's weight of difference, save in the estimation of their respective occupants. The apartment had been rented for a term of years, and furnished and decorated, and supplied with four servants, by a Russian millionaire, and the same was true of the hotel in every, save one, detail,--the de Trémonceau's millionaire was a Brazilian. For the rest, Gabrielle was of a literary bent, and wrote occasional feuilletons for the Journal, and short stories, staggering with emotion, for the Gil Blas Illustré: something which, in the opinion of Thaïs, was stupid and all there was of the most ignoble. Thaïs herself was a sporadic feature at the Folies-Bergère, where she sang songs of a melody and a propriety equally doubtful, bunching up her silk skirts at the end of the refrain, with her side toward the audience, and winking, with brazen effrontery, at a spot midway between the heads of the bald gentleman in the third row and the wide-eyed little St. Cyrien across the aisle. The which Gabrielle found to be the trade of a camel.

Each had her horses, and her carriage, in which she was whirled three times up and three times down the allée des Acacias each noon of the season, and again at five o'clock, and each spent hours daily in the rue de la Paix, trailing long skirts of tulle and satin before the mirrors of the men-milliners, and pricing strings of pearls in the private offices of servile jewelers. Each was deftly veneered, as it were, with the bearing of the grande dame, except at the moment when she chanced to pass the other, or refer to her in the course of conversation. Then the irrepressible past came suddenly to the fore in a word or a gesture, which babbled of Gabrielle's early experience in the workroom of the very Paquin she was now patronizing, and of Thaïs's salad days as assistant to a florist on the grand boulevards.

Honors were even between the two when Dodo Chapuis first came up to pay homage to the queen capital, of which he had been dreaming for four years. He was only nineteen, the son of a great manufacturer of Arles, who had lived severely and frugally, and, dying a widower, left a cool half million of francs to be divided between Dodo and his sister Louise. There seems to have been no trace of doubt in the mind of either as to the respective uses to which their dazzling inheritances should be applied. Louise promptly accepted a young playwright with a record of fourteen rejected revues, to whose suit her father had been most violently opposed; and Dodo, as promptly, took out a letter of credit for fifty thousand francs and departed for Paris on the morning following the funeral.

The story of Dodo's first six weeks in the capital is the story of full a million of his kind. A pocket filled with gold and a mind emptied of responsibility; youth, health, and craving for the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge,--these foundations given, the aspect of the structure erected thereupon is inevitable.

Dodo made his début at the Moulin Rouge at eight o'clock on the evening of his first day in Paris. Despite appearances, this did not mean that he was wholly a fool. One must remember that it was the evening of the first day. He walked leagues, it seemed to him, around the crowded promenade, half stifled by an atmosphere composed of equal parts of stale beer, cigarette smoke, and cheap perfumery. He watched a quadrille made up of shrill shrieks, rouge, and an abundance of white lace. He tossed balls into numbered holes in a long board, and won a variety of prizes of pseudo-Japanese make, which he immediately presented to the exponents of the aforesaid quadrille. He squandered a louis in firing a rifle at paper rabbits passing in monotonous succession over three feet of sickly green hillside. He bought a citronade for a girl with blue eyes, and a menthe glaciale for another with brown; and, at the end, rebuffing the proffered services of a guide, who, by reason of his new tan overcoat, and to his intense disgust, addressed him in English, he returned to the Hôtel du Rhin in a state of profound despondency.

But that, as we have said, was on his first evening. On the third, he had engaged a table in advance at Maxim's, and supped in state on caviar, langouste à l'Américaine, and Ruinart. _And_ with Antoinette Féria. It was not much of an achievement, but it showed progress.

On the following day Dodo went to Auteuil, won twelve francs fifty on a ten-franc bet, and dined at Armenonville. It was here that Suzanne Derval looked cross-eyed at him, fingered her pearls, and remarked that he had beaux yeux. Dodo might be said to be fairly launched.

It would be superfluous to note the further stages of his initiation. They were strictly conventional, and, under the circumstances, it was remarkable that, at the end of six weeks, he had drawn but seven thousand francs on his letter of credit, and still retained his enthusiasms. It is not every one from the provinces for whom Paris reserves her supreme surprise for the forty-third day.

It chanced to be the first evening of the de Trémonceau's annual engagement at the Folies-Bergère, and for three days the eloquent legend "La Belle Thaïs" had been glaring at the boulevard throngs in huge block letters from the posters on the colonnes Morris. Dodo, meanwhile, had made many friends among men of tastes similar to his own--a feat which is curiously easy of accomplishment in Paris, when one has forty-odd thousand francs and a desire for company. Of these was Sacha Vitzoff, who, on occasion, had five louis, and invariably spent them at once upon his friends, before he should be tempted to put them to a worse use.

So Sacha bought the box, and they sat, five of them, through two hours of biograph, and trained dogs, and Neapolitan ballet, until the liveried attendants thrust cards bearing the number 19 into rococo frames at the side of the proscenium, and the orchestra plunged into Sarasate's "Zapateado," and various stout gentlemen wrestled with mechanical devices for supplying opera-glasses, and, conquering, sat back in their seats and grunted. Then the drop rose upon a pale pink and gray libel on Versailles, and La Belle Thaïs flashed out from the wing, with a red silk scarf bound about her head and a toreador's hat perched on one side.

There was no denying it. Despite her rouge, despite her four decades (an eternity in Paris), La Thaïs was very beautiful. Dodo forgot his cigarette, his champagne, and his companions. He followed every swish of her spangled skirts, every click of her castanets, every tap of her pointed shoes, every movement of her gleaming shoulders and her lithe, white arms. This, then, was the reality of his dream, the soul and substance of his vision, the essence of the great city that had drawn him like a magnet from his humdrum bourgeois life in the suburbs of Arles,--the ineffable, eternal Woman, poured like oil upon the smouldering fire of boyish imagination! His slender hands gripped the plush of the box-rail feverishly, his eyes widened and brightened, his lips parted, and his breath came short. Then, suddenly, there was a final clash of tambourines and castanets which brought La Belle Thaïs to a standstill, her head flung back, and one arm high in air!

"She has charm--even now!" said Sacha, emptying his glass.

Three days later, it was known to all the world that concerns itself with such things that Dodo Chapuis was latest in the train of victims to the fascinations of Thaïs de Trémonceau. One cannot pretend to say what she saw in him to divert her attention from richer and maturer men. He was handsome--yes--but the Comte d'Ys was handsomer. He was rich, as such things go, and for the moment. But he had no wit, poor Dodo--and as for money, which, after all, is the only other thing which counts in the demi-monde, what were forty thousand francs to one authorized to draw, _ad libitum_, upon a Brazilian multi-millionaire? No, evidently, it was one of those strange whims to which the slaves of self-interest are sometimes subject. The de Trémonceau had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, for, certainly, her Brazilian miché would have been ill pleased to know that Dodo Chapuis was riding daily six times up and six times down the allée des Acacias in the victoria of La Belle Thaïs. As it chanced, he was in Buenos Ayres. Still, he might return without warning. He had an ignoble habit of doing that. But when those sufficiently intimate suggested this to Thaïs she only laughed, and sang a snatch from La Belle Hélène:--

"_Si par mégarde il se hasarde
De rentrer chez lui tout à coup,
Il est le maître, mais c'est, peut-être,
Imprudent et de mauvais goût!_"

As for Dodo, he was in Elysium. He was singularly innocent, Dodo, with his smooth russet hair, and his steady gray eyes, and his straight, fine nose, and his sensitive, patrician mouth; and, believe it or not as you will, he cherished the project of marrying Thaïs de Trémonceau! He had fed himself on the poetry of Alfred de Musset, giving doubtful words and phrases his own interpretation, from lack of experience, and, despite the lesson of "Don Paez" and "La Nuit d'Octobre," he believed in the power of trust to hold another true. Alas, he was hopelessly conventional! There is no one of us poor moths who is content with seeing his fellow singe his wings. No, each must plunge into the radius of consuming heat and learn its peril for himself. All of which is, no doubt, a wise ruling. For if experience could be handed down from father to son, and accepted on its face value, then the child of the third or fourth generation would be a demi-god, or even a full one, and there would be no further attraction in heaven, and no further menace in hell. The which morsel of morality may be allowed to pass, if only for contrast's sake. We were speaking of Thaïs de Trémonceau.

Dodo's Elysium lasted longer than such mirages are wont to do. For a full month he basked in the sultry sunshine of the de Trémonceau's smiles, dined almost nightly in the rue de la Faisanderie, occupied a fauteuil at the Folies while she whisked her spangled skirts and sang "Holà! Holà!" to Sarasate's music, supped with her afterwards at the Café de Paris or Paillard's, and paid the addition, and tipped the garçon, and the maître d'hôtel and the chef d'orchestre, as liberally as if he had had a million francs instead of a dwindling twenty thousand. And the delirium might have lasted even longer had it not been for Louise Chapuis.

No one ever knew who told. There is a wireless telegraphy in such cases which defies detection. Suffice it to say that, one morning, the Hôtel de Choiseuil numbered Mademoiselle Chapuis among its guests, and that, as this name was inscribed upon the register, the Fates rang up the curtain on the final act of the brief comedy of the tuition of Dodo Chapuis.

Where, when, and how Louise contrived, in three days of Paris, to strike, full and firm-fingered, the keynote of the situation remained a mystery which none of those concerned was capable of solving. In all the capital there was but one person competent to deal conclusively with the situation. That person was Gabrielle de Poirier, and to Gabrielle de Poirier Louise Chapuis applied.

There could have been no stranger meeting than this between the young Arlésienne, with her blue eyes, and her embarrassed hands, and her gown that all the plage turned to look at, because it was in the fashion of more than yester-year, and the cold, stately leader of the demi-monde, with her air of languid ease, her shimmer of diamonds, and her slow, tired voice, roused to interest for the moment by this singularly sudden and imperative demand upon her good-will and ingenuity.

Louise found Gabrielle half buried among the cushions of a great divan, with a yellow-backed novel perched, tent-like, upon her knee. For once, the demi-mondaine was alone, bored to extinction by the blatant ribaldry of Octave Mirbeau. She had fingered the simply-lettered card of her unknown visitor for a full minute, before bidding her valet-de-pied admit her. A whim, a craving for novelty--who knows what? The Open Sesame had been spoken, and now, in the half-light of late afternoon, her caller stood before her.

"Be seated," said Gabrielle courteously. "Be seated, Ma--?"

"--Demoiselle," replied Louise, complying with the invitation.

There was a brief pause. Each woman studied the other curiously. Then Louise began to speak, at first timidly.

"You think it strange, no doubt, madame, this visit of mine. Let me be quite candid. I come to ask a favor of you--I, who have no right, save the right of one woman to crave assistance from another. I have a brother"--

"Faith of God!" said Gabrielle, lightly, "so have I. A poor sample, if you will!"

Her flippancy seemed suddenly to lend the other fresh courage. She leaned forward eagerly, clasping her gray-gloved hands upon her knee.

"But mine," she said, "is but a boy. He has come to Paris, seeking to know the world, and, lately, he has become the friend of Mademoiselle Thaïs de Trémonceau."

"Zut!" put in Gabrielle. "You say well that it is but a boy!"

"Is there need to tell you," continued Louise, without heeding the sneer, "what this means to me? Is there need to tell you what it means to _him_?"

"My faith, no!" said Mademoiselle de Poirier. "It is acquainted with me, that story. The end is not beautiful!"

"Tout simplement," said her visitor, "I have come to Paris to bring him back, to show him the folly of his way. But I alone am powerless. You--you who are more admired, more beautiful, more clever than this Mademoiselle de Trémonceau"--(Oh, Louise!)--"you alone can aid me to rescue him."

Gabrielle raised her eyebrows slightly, and let her lids droop with an air of unutterable boredom.

"Truly, mademoiselle," she drawled, "I neither see in what fashion I can assist you, nor why, in any event, I should concern myself with this affair. If your brother has such taste"--

"Oh, madame, I know I have no right," broke in Louise. "But you, of all women in Paris, alone have the power to win him from her."

"And when I have won him," demanded Gabrielle, "what then? Do you think your precious brother will fare better with me than with the de Trémonceau?"

Her calm was broken for a moment by a flash of anger.

"The world is full of fools," she added. "One more or less is no great matter. I am not a Rescue Society, mademoiselle. Let your brother go his way. His best cure will be effected by the woman herself. When his money is gone, there will be no need to win him from her."

The sneer sent the blood racing to the other's cheeks. She had been counting, as she realized with a pang of mortification, upon some Quixotic quality which her reading had taught lay always dormant, even in such a woman as Gabrielle de Poirier,--some innate nobility, ready to spring into activity at the bidding of such an appeal as she had just made. And, too, beneath all her anxiety, she had believed that Thaïs loved her brother, that his peril lay not so much in her making use of him and then flinging him aside, as in the existence of actual affection between him and a woman whom, even as his wife, society would not recognize. This brutal intrusion of money into the discussion, this flippant classification of Dodo with a world full of fools who flung away honor and reputation for a passing fancy, only to be flung away themselves in turn, suddenly seemed to lay clear the whole situation, in all its sordid vulgarity, and with the revelation came a white rage against this woman who was only another of the same kind. She despised herself for having stooped to ask her aid, and a fury of wounded pride blazed in her reply.

"You know yourself well, madame!" she said. "No, surely my brother would fare no better with you, though that was not what I meant to ask. I thought, in my folly, that, perhaps, in the life of such a one as you, there might come moments when you longed to be other than you are, moments when you would like to think that among all the men you have played with, ruined, and spurned, there were one or two who could speak and think of you as men speak and think of honest women, who could say that you had been an ennobling influence in their lives, and whose word would count upon the side of good when you come to answer for the evil you have done. I thought that, not for money's sake or vanity's, you might wish to win my brother from this woman, and, when you had won him, teach him how sordid, how wicked, how futile such a life is, and send him back to decency--a better man! I see how mistaken I was in judging you. There is no compassion in you, no nobler instinct than self-interest. Your motives are the same as hers, love of admiration and love of gold,--and, perhaps, less worthy. I cannot say. Hers, at least, I can only suspect: yours I have had from your own lips. Had my brother been more than the poor weak boy he is, had he been brilliant, powerful, or a millionaire, it would never have been necessary for me to ask you to win him from her. No, madame, for you would have done so of your own accord!"

Now, there is such a thing as diplomacy, and there is such a thing as luck, and of the former Louise Chapuis had not an atom. An impulse, made apparently reasonable by pure imagination, led her to seek out Gabrielle, and had she found her, as her fancy had painted her, readily moved by the appeal of honest affection and confidence, she was competent to have won her end. Louise was one of the people who, in foreseeing a dispute, invent the replies to their own questions, and who, if the actual answers accord with those preconceived, will emerge from the ordeal triumphant, but who lack the diplomat's gift of adapting the line of argument to that of unexpected retort. Confronted with a state of affairs wholly different from that which she had supposed existent, her sole resource was in this outburst of disappointment and reproach, honest, but inutile as the clamor of a baffled baby. So much for diplomacy.

But, as we have said, there is also such a thing as luck. Gabrielle de Poirier was insufferably bored. Her Russian was in Moscow, her recent tips at Auteuil had proved disastrous, her latest feuilleton had been rejected. For six hours she had been buried among the cushions of the divan, clad materially in light pink but mentally in deepest blue, skipping from page to page of a novel that was not amusing, and confronted every ten minutes by the recurrent realization that the next event on her calendar was a dinner at the Café de Paris, which would not come for the eternity of twenty-seven hours! Despite her ungracious reception of Louise, she had been grateful for the diversion, and hardly had she sneered at Dodo's position before she lit a cigarette, and fell to studying the situation seriously. Louise, pausing, breathless, after her tirade, was surprised to find that she made no reply, looking straight before her with her great eyes half closed, and put down her silence as equivalent to admission of the charges hurled against her. The truth of the matter was, however, that Gabrielle had not heard one word of her visitor's impassioned denunciation!

There was a long silence, and then the demi-mondaine looked up.

"Where does your brother live?" she asked, touching an electric button at her side, "and what is his first name?"

"At the Hôtel du Rhin," stammered Louise, "and his name is Do--I should say Charles,--Charles Chapuis. I am at the Hôtel de Choiseuil."

"Bon!" said the other. "If you will go home, mademoiselle, and keep your own counsel, I think I can promise you that you will shortly have your brother back."

Louise stepped forward impulsively.

"Oh, madame!"--she began.

But just then the valet-de-pied appeared at the door, and Gabrielle, taking up her novel, flounced back among the cushions.

"Bon jour, mademoiselle," she said, without looking at Louise. "Achille, la porte! And send Mathilde to me."

The conference between mistress and maid was brief but eloquent.

"Who," demanded Gabrielle, "is Dodo Chapuis?"

"The young monsieur of Boule-de-Boue," responded Mathilde promptly.

"Parfaitement. I needed to refresh my memory. And how long is it since we cabled the last tuyau?"

"Eight weeks, at least, madame--before the coming of Monsieur Chapuis."

"Bon!" said Gabrielle. "We cable another tip at once."

(For it may be noted, in passing, that she had one source of income which La Belle Thaïs little suspected!)

"What does Boule-de-Boue do to-night?" she demanded again.

"Dines at home with Monsieur Chapuis," replied the omniscient Mathilde, "dances at the Fol' Berg' at eleven, sups at Paillard's with Monsieur Chapuis."

(For it may also be noted, in passing, that the maid of La Belle Thaïs had one source of income which her mistress totally ignored!)

"Très bien!" said Gabrielle. "Now a pen and paper, the inkstand, envelopes, sealing wax, and a telegraph form, and write as I tell thee."

For ten minutes Mathilde wrote rapidly, and then spread the results of her exertions out before her, in the shape of two notes and a cablegram, and read them aloud triumphantly. The first note was directed to Monsieur Charles Chapuis, at the Hôtel du Rhin, place Vendôme:--

"If Monsieur Chapuis is a man of honor," it ran briefly, "he will break all engagements, however important, for this evening, and present himself chez Mademoiselle Gabrielle de Poirier at seven o'clock, on a matter intimately touching the good fame of his family. The sister of Monsieur, Mademoiselle Louise Chapuis, is chez Mademoiselle de Poirier."

The second note was addressed to Mademoiselle Thaïs de Trémonceau, at 27 bis, rue de la Faisanderie.

"A friend advises Mademoiselle Thaïs de Trémonceau that Monsieur Charles Chapuis dines with Mademoiselle Gabrielle de Poirier this evening at half past seven."

And the cablegram was to Señor Miguel Cevasco, Reconquista 21, Buenos-Ayres, République Argentine.

"19 rides in the carriage of 52. 26."

The point of which observation lay in the fact that Dodo confessed to nineteen, and Señor Miguel to fifty-two, and Gabrielle to twenty-six.

It was a bold play, and one foredoomed to failure unless each link in the chain held true. But Mademoiselle de Poirier was no novice, and experience had long since taught her that success is the child of audacity; so, ten minutes later, Achille was speeding, in one cab, toward the place Vendôme, pausing only at the bureau de télégraphe on the corner of the rue Pierre Charron and the avenue Marceau, and Mathilde was speeding in another toward the rue de la Faisanderie: and Gabrielle herself was making life not worth living for Louis, her long-suffering maître-d'hôtel.

The upshot of this triple commotion was that, as the clock on her mantel struck seven, Mademoiselle Gabrielle de Poirier was posing on a chaise-longue in correct imitation of David's "Madame Récamier," except for a wonderful black gown, when Achille announced Monsieur Charles Chapuis.

Dodo entered the room in immaculate evening dress, but with a touch of embarrassment in his manner which betrayed his years. He was good to look upon, was Dodo, tall, straight, and slight, with the ruddy olive skin, the firm, square fling of chest and shoulder, the narrowness of waist, and the confident swing of long, slender, but sinewy legs with which one is blessed at nineteen in Bouches-du-Rhône. Gabrielle, taking note of him from under her covert, languid lids, was compelled, for once, to mental candor.

"I comprehend Thaïs," she said to herself, but to Dodo, "Monsieur, I felicitate you. You have the true spirit of chivalry."

"My sister"--began Dodo.

"Is, no doubt, at the Hôtel de Choiseuil," answered Gabrielle, coolly, fanning herself. "In any event she is not here. Oh, she _was_ here--yes; but she had gone--gone _before_ I sent you the note. Be seated, monsieur."

Dodo selected a chair, dropped into it, and awaited developments in silence. Six weeks before, he would have demanded in a passion the meaning of this subterfuge. But whatever might be said of La Belle Thaïs, one learned diplomacy in her company.

"You are surprised, monsieur!"

"I am infinitely surprised, madame," he agreed, with charming candor.

"Shall we be frank with each other?" asked Gabrielle, pleasantly.

"I think it is the only way," said Dodo. "Eh bien, I am infinitely surprised, madame; first, to see my sister's name in connection with yours at all, and, second, to find that you have been lying to me."

"She came to ask me to rescue you from the toils of Thaïs de Trémonceau."

Despite his elaborate self-control, Dodo flushed crimson.

"I think we had best drop the discussion here," he said, rising. "There can be no possible profit in continuing it. If my sister was here at all"--

"Her card is there on the table," put in Gabrielle, pointing with her fan.

"Pardon. I should not have permitted myself the insinuation. I accept your statement, and simply say that it was an unwarrantable intrusion on her part. For you, madame, I have only admiration. Your compliance"--

"It was not that," said Gabrielle, shortly. "I can conceive of nothing less important to me than your sister's wishes. But I dislike Mademoiselle de Trémonceau."

"That," said Dodo, with exaggerated courtesy, "can only be a matter of opinion. _I_ admire Mademoiselle de Trémonceau enormously."

"The force of admiration is undoubtedly strong," snapped Gabrielle, "to reconcile you to riding in another man's carriage, drinking another man's wine, dawdling with another man's"--

"Assez!" said Dodo.

Gabrielle shrugged her shoulders.

"Quite right," she said. "You are old enough to see for yourself. I presume you will not return to her."

"On the contrary, I shall be with her in fifteen minutes."

In the distance an electric bell whirred.

"Sooner than that, I think," smiled Gabrielle, and then La Belle Thaïs was standing at the salon door. She was gowned in scarlet, with a poppy flaring in her hair, and, if she had but lent to her dance at the Folies but half the fury of that entrance, the manager would, no doubt, have tripled her already ample salary. And, at the instant of her appearance, as if by signal,--which indeed it was,--Louis flung wide the opposite door, with a stately "Monsieur et madame sont servis," and there, gleaming with spotless napery, silver shaded candlesticks, and shimmering cut glass, was the daintiest of tables, set for two!

What Thaïs did and what she said, this is not the time or place to detail. She was not wanting in vocabulary, the de Trémonceau, nor sparing thereof in an emergency. A decade of careful training fell from her like a discarded mantle, and she became in an instant the vulgar-tongued fleuriste of the boulevards. From her chaise-longue Gabrielle smiled calmly, the picture of a new Circe, rejoicing in the success of her spells. And, between the two, Dodo, his hands clenched until the knuckles shone white, turned sick with contempt and loathing. At the end Thaïs flung him an unspeakable taunt, and there was a pause. Then,--

"Do you play the black or the red, monsieur?" asked Gabrielle, sweetly, with a glance at her own gown and another at the de Trémonceau's.

Dodo let his eyes run slowly, contemptuously, from the topmost ripple of her bronze hair to the point of her satin slipper, with the felicitous inspiration of seeming to take stock of her charms and to be not over-pleased therewith. Then,--

"I continue my game, madame!" he said. "I play the red."

It was the last, faint cry of youthful chivalry, disillusioned, blotted out, and it was wasted on Thaïs de Trémonceau.

"Tu penses, salaud!" she broke in, with a laugh. "Well, then, thou art well mistaken. Rien ne va plus!"

"He will come back to me!" she cried to her rival, as the door closed behind him.

"Perhaps," agreed Gabrielle, "but only to leave you again, in a fashion more mortifying for him and more calamitous for you. I sent a cable to Buenos Ayres this afternoon."

She was deliberately flinging away the aforementioned source of income, for the sake of seeing a certain expression on the face of La Belle Thaïs. But when she saw it, she was well content. For the honors were no longer even.

On the avenue Kléber, Dodo hailed the first cab that passed, and flinging a curt "Hôtel de Choiseuil--au galop!" to the cocher, blotted himself into one corner, and covered his face with his hands.

"It was my first, but it shall be my last confidence in woman," he said. It was neither strictly original nor strictly true, this, but it showed progress.

For there is such a thing as diplomacy and there is such a thing as luck, and the fact that his sister had not an atom of the former made no difference whatever in the tuition of Dodo Chapuis.

Le Pochard

HIS applicability was evident to the mind of Jean Fraissigne from the moment when the camelot placed Le Pochard on a table in front of the Taverne, and he proceeded to go through his ridiculous pretense of drinking from the cup in his left hand which he filled from the bottle in his right. Jean, who was dawdling over a demi, and watching the familiar ebb and flow of life on the Boul' Miche', was at first passively pleased at the distraction provided by the appearance of the toy, and then, of a sudden, consumedly absorbed in the progress of his operations. For what was plain to any but a blind man was the fact that Le Pochard was the precise counterfeit of Jean's friend and comrade, Grégoire--Grégoire, with his flat-brimmed hat, and his loose working blouse, and his loud checked trousers--Grégoire, hélas! with his flushed face, and his tremulous hands, and his unsteady walk, as Jean had seen him a hundred times!

Le Pochard staggered to and fro upon the marble-topped table, nodding maudlinly, and alternately filling his cup and raising it uncertainly to his expressionless face. At last, weakened by his exertions, he passed one arm through the handle of Jean's demi, hesitated, and then leaned heavily against the glass and stood motionless, with his topheavy head bent forward, and his eyes fixed on the price-mark upon the saucer below. This eloquent manoeuvre, so unspeakably appealing, determined the future ownership of Le Pochard. Jean purchased him upon the spot, and bore him off in triumph to the rue de Seine, as an object lesson for Grégoire Caubert.

The two students shared a little sous-toit within a stone's throw of the Beaux-Arts, neither luxuriously nor yet insufficiently furnished. It was Jean's good fortune to have a father who believed in him--not a usual condition of mind in a provincial merchant whose son displays an unaccountable partiality for architecture--and, what was more to the point, who could afford to demonstrate his confidence by remittances, which were inspiring, if not on the score of magnitude, at least on that of regularity. And, since freedom from pecuniary solicitude is the surest guarantee of a cheerful spirit, there was no more diligent pupil at the Boîte, no blither comrade in idle hours,--above all, no more loyal friend, in sun or shadow, throughout the length and breadth of the Quartier, than little Jean le Gai, as he was called by those who loved him, and whom he loved.

That was why the comrades were at a loss to understand his friendship for Grégoire Caubert. Had the latter been one of themselves, a type of the schools, in that fact alone, whatever his peculiarities, would have lain a reason for the association. But, to all intents and purposes, he was of another world. His similarity to Jean and to themselves began and ended with his costume. For the rest he was silent and reserved, courting no confidence and giving none, unknowing and unknown to the haunts they frequented,--the Deux Magots, the Escholiers, the Taverne, the Bullier, and Madame Roupiquet's in the rue de Beaune, and the Rouge on Thursday nights. Jean le Gai, when questioned as to the doings of Grégoire, seemed to reflect something of his friend's reserve. He admitted that the other wrote: he even went so far as to prophesy that some day Grégoire would be famous. Further, he made no admissions.

"Diable!" he said. "What does it matter? He goes his way--I go mine. And if we choose to live together, whose concern is it then, I ask you? Fichez-moi la paix, vous autres!"

So popular curiosity went unsatisfied, so far as Grégoire was concerned, and the apparently uncongenial ménage came, in time, to be looked upon as one of the unexplained mysteries of the Quartier,--one, for the rest, which made no particular difference to any one save the two immediately concerned.

But if Jean made no admissions as to Grégoire, it was not for lack of sufficient knowledge. They had met, as men meet in the Quartier,--as bubbles meet in a stream, and, for reasons not apparent, are drawn together by an irresistible attraction, and fuse into one larger, brighter bubble than either has been before. For little Jean Fraissigne, whose exquisses were the wonder of the School, and whose projets had already come to be photographed and sold in the shops of the rue Bonaparte and the quai Conti, believed in his heart that architecture was as nothing compared to literature, and Grégoire, whose long, uphill struggle had been unaccompanied by comradely admiration or even encouragement, found indescribable comfort, in the hour of his success, in the faith and approbation of the friend who alone, of all men, knew his secret,--knew that the Réné de Lys of the "Chansons de Danaé" and the "Voyage de Tristan" of which all Paris was talking, was none other than himself--Grégoire Caubert, on whose wrist the siren of absinthe had laid a hand that was not to be shaken off, and whom she was leading, if by the paths of subtlest fancy and almost miraculous creative faculty, yet toward an end inevitable on which he did not dare to dwell.

To Jean, healthy, rational, and cheerful as a young terrier, much that Grégoire said and did was totally incomprehensible, but what he did not understand he set down, with conviction, to the eccentricity of genius. The long nights which he spent alone, sleeping sanely in their bedroom in the rue de Seine, while Grégoire's cot stood empty beside him, and Grégoire himself was tramping the streets of Paris; the return of his friend in the first faint light of dawn, pale-faced and swaying; the succeeding hours which, despite his exhaustion, he spent at his desk, feverishly writing, and tossing the pages from him, one by one, until the floor was strewn with them on all sides; finally, his heavy slumber far into the afternoon,--all this, to Jean, was but part and parcel of that marvelous thing called literature. He returned at seven to find that Grégoire had prepared a wonderful little meal, and was walking up and down the floor, unevenly, absinthe in hand, awaiting his arrival.

In the two hours which followed lay the keynote of their sympathy. It was then that Grégoire would read his work of the early morning hour, to Jean, curled up on the divan, with his hands clasped behind his head and his eyes round and wide with delight and admiration. What things they were, those fancies that Grégoire had pursued and caught, like night-moths, in the streets of Paris, while stupid folk were sleeping! And how he read them, Grégoire, with his flushed face lit with inspiration, and his eyes flaming with enthusiasm! If only he would not drink absinthe, thought little Jean, and said so, timidly at first, and then more earnestly, as, little by little, the marks of excess grew more plain in his friend. But Grégoire made a joke of this--he who always joked--and in time, Jean came to acquiesce. For he never wholly understood--until afterwards.

So, when nine struck, it was understood that they parted company till the following evening. Jean brought out his drawing board, his T square, and all their attendant paraphernalia, and toiled at his calques with infinite patience and unerring accuracy, until midnight; and Grégoire, having corrected his manuscript here and there, gnawing savagely at his pencil the while, inclosed it in one of his long envelopes, scrawled "Rédaction du Journal" upon it, stamped it, and went out into the night to mail the old, and seek new moths. And this was all there was to the comradeship which mystified the Quartier, save that the love of Jean for Grégoire and of Grégoire for Jean was as deep and unfaltering as the current of the eternal Seine--and, if anything, more silent!

Jean wound up Le Pochard stealthily, on the landing outside the apartment door, and, entering, placed it suddenly upon the table under the very nose of Grégoire, who stood, sipping his absinthe, in the centre of the room. Le Pochard rocked and swayed, ticking like a little clock, and drinking cup after cup of his imaginary beverage, as if his life depended upon the quantity consumed. Convulsed with merriment at the performance of the preposterous creature, Jean le Gai lay prone upon the divan, kneading the cushions with his fists and kicking his heels against the floor, and Grégoire, a slow smile curling his thin, sensitive lips, seemed to forget even his absinthe until the toy's energy slackened and he paused, with the bottle shaking in his hand, and his eyes, as usual, bent upon the ground. Then--"Eh b'en--quoi?" said Grégoire, looking up at his friend.

"Mais c'est toi!" burst out the little architect in an ecstasy. "It is thou to the life, my Grégoire! Remark the blouse--what?--and the hat, sale pompier!--and the checked grimpant, name of a pipe! But it is thy brother, Le Pochard!--thy twin--thou, thyself!"

And seizing the glass from Grégoire's hand, he carefully filled Le Pochard's cup with absinthe, and set him reeling and swaggering again, so that the immoral little animal spilled the liquid on his blouse, and presently fell headlong, totally overcome, with his nose pressed flat against the table.

Thereafter, it was a comradeship of three instead of two. It was quite in accord with the whimsically fanciful nature of Grégoire that he should take Le Pochard into his affections, and even call him "brother" and "cher confrère." He treated him, did Grégoire, with marked deference and studied non-observance of his besetting weakness, and he expected and received from Le Pochard a like respect and indulgence in return. That, at least, was how he described their relations to Jean, and Jean, curled up upon the divan, was never tired of the droll pretense, but would laugh night after night till the tears came, at the common tact and the mutual courtesy of Grégoire and Le Pochard.