Transcriber’s Note:

Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

FATA MORGANA

“Helia at the very summit of the car”

FATA MORGANA

A ROMANCE OF ART STUDENT
LIFE IN PARIS

BY

ANDRÉ CASTAIGNE

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE AUTHOR

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1904

Copyright, 1904, by
The Century Co.

Published November, 1904

The De Vinne Press

TO HIS MANY FRIENDS IN AMERICA
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
BY THE AUTHOR

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PART I
ETHEL AND HELIA

FATA MORGANA

CHAPTER I
AFTER THE QUAT’Z-ARTS BALL

At daybreak, Phil Longwill, the young American painter, entered his studio, threw away his cigar, gulped down the contents of his water-jug—and then slipped into an arm-chair and dozed.

What a night!

In his half-sleep he thought he was still at the Quat’z-Arts Ball, from which he had just come; he still heard the murmuring noise of the multitude, like the prolonged “moo-o-o” of oxen in the stable; and there still moved before his eyes the restless throng, masked in the skins of beasts or trailing gilt-embroidered mantles.

His dreaming had the sharp relief of life; but it was the car on which Helia was drawn—Helia the circus-girl, the little friend of his boyhood, whom he had not seen for so long and whom he found here with surprise—it was this car, with the superb figure of Helia at its summit, which eclipsed all the rest.

The car itself was an attention of Phil’s friends. They had chosen for its subject the personages of the “Fata Morgana”—a great decorative picture which Phil was finishing for the Duke of Morgania.

Helia, upright at the very summit of the car, like an idol at the pinnacle of a temple, personified Morgana, the fairy, the saint, the legendary Queen of the Adriatic. Lower down, seated at the four corners, Thilda, Marka, Rhodaïs the slave, and Bertha the Amazon—the four heroines of Morgania—kept watch and ward over their queen.

The car, drawn by knights, advanced amid hushed admiration. Helia seemed to float above the sea of heads, and behind her the great hall was ablaze with lights.

Phil, dozing in his arm-chair, saw himself, clad in his magnificent Indian costume, marching at the head of the car, brandishing his tomahawk in honor of Morgana. Then, at the breaking up of the cortège when the procession was over, there were the supper-tables taken by storm amid cries and laughter.

And the feast began.

Helmets and swords ceased to shine. Hands laid down battle-axes to wield knives and forks; warriors fell upon the food as they might have done after a night of pillage. Each man kissed his fair neighbor. Poufaille, the sculptor, disguised as the prehistoric man, put his hairy muzzle against the rosy cheeks of Suzanne, his model. Close at hand, Phil, the Indian chief, seated at the table of the Duke of Morgania, talked with Helia of old times, of the strolling circus in which he had known her, of their meeting in her dressing-room below the benches; and he said to her in a low voice:

The Concierge

“Do you remember when I used to go to wait for you?”

“And you,” answered Helia, “the flowers you gave me—do you remember?”

But now it was full day and the sun was lighting up the studio. Phil’s memories faded little by little, scattered by the early morning cries of Paris. The shrill piping of the wandering plumber awakened him with a start just as he was dropping off into real sleep and seeing in his dream Helia soar through a strange world amid heavenly splendors.

“Here’s the morning paper, M. Longwill,” said the old concierge, who came up with the mail; but he stopped short with open mouth at the sight of Phil’s costume. To dress one’s self like that! Etait-il Dieu possible! They didn’t have such ideas in his time!

Certainly, Phil was an odd figure in his Indian dress. If he lowered his head he risked scratching his chin against the bear’s claws of his collar. He was clad in leather and glass beads. There were feathers down his legs and a calumet was stuck in his belt. At his feet lay the tomahawk which he had brandished a few hours before in honor of beautiful Helia. He had the look of a veritable savage. No one would have recognized in him the society painter, descendant of Philidor de Longueville, the Protestant banished from France by Louis XIV, who became a great proprietor in Virginia.

“Ah, monsieur,” the concierge began again, “in the old times when you took walks with Mlle. Helia in my garden on the roofs of the Louvre, where I was inspector, you didn’t need to dress up like that to amuse yourself. Ah, it was the good time then! I remember one day—”

“I say, concierge,” interrupted Phil, in a solemn tone; “go down quick and get me a bottle of seltzer water. I am dying of thirst!”

The concierge disappeared.

“Ouf!” Phil gave a sigh of relief. “The old man, with his good old times, was starting off on his remembrances. He is in for two hours when he begins with the Louvre garden. Bah! that’s all fol-de-rol,” he added, smoothing his hair with his hand, “not to speak of my having so many things to do this morning. Let’s see: first, Miss Rowrer; then the duke is to bring Helia. It appears that Helia has the legendary Morgana type,—so the duke told me, after seeing her last night,—and, at the duke’s request, she agrees to pose for my picture. Oh, I was forgetting! I am expecting Caracal also.”

Phil detested Caracal. This critic was his bête noire, a man sweet and bitter at the same time, who talked of him behind his back as a painter for pork-packers and a dauber without talent.

Phil had never forgotten his first impression of the critic. He met him shortly after his arrival in Paris, in the studio of the sculptor Poufaille, and later on in the Restaurant de la Mère Michel, and at the Café des Deux Magots, during his student years. Caracal was outwardly correct and an intimate friend of the duke, and he was received at the Rowrers’; and Phil had to be agreeable to him. Nevertheless, he was going to play him a trick.

As he opened the morning paper, Phil looked around to assure himself that the pictures in his studio had their faces turned to the wall, and that his painting of the Fata Morgana was covered with a veil. It was for Caracal’s benefit that he had made these arrangements the evening before; and he smiled as he gave a glance at the portière which separated his studio from a little adjoining room, where his trick was ready.

“Ah, I’m commonplace, am I—no originality? We shall see!” he said to himself, laughing.

“What’s the news?” Phil went on, as he looked absently through the paper. “‘A Description of the Bal des Quat’z-Arts.’ Pass!—‘A Case of Treason.’ Pass!—‘War Declared.’ Diable! ‘The Fleet of the Prince of Monaco Threatening English Ports.’ Pass!—Good! Here’s another extract from the ‘Tocsin’: ‘The Tomb of Richard the Lion-hearted to be Stolen from France! Interference of Yankee Gold in French Politics,’ signed ‘An Indignant Patriot.’”

The foolishness of the article did not prevent Phil’s reading it to the end.

“That’s all very amusing,” he thought; “but why these personal allusions? What have the Rowrers to do with it? And who can be writing such nonsense?”

Phil turned the page disdainfully, when a sound in the room made him lift his eyes.

Caracal stood before him.

Phil had not heard him come in. Caracal entered without knocking, as the concierge in his hurry had forgotten to close the door. The critic looked mockingly at Phil, like those devils who, in German legends, start up from a hole in the floor and offer you some crooked bargain in exchange for your soul. He greeted Phil with an affectation of politeness.

“How are you, cher ami?”

Caracal turned the glitter of his monocle on the Indian costume.

“Very, very curious—very amusing—very American! From last night’s ball, doubtless?”

For once there was nothing to say, and Caracal was right. It was really very American.

Occupied with his paper, Phil had forgotten to change his costume. He rose, excused himself briefly, and asked after Caracal’s health.

“Thanks, cher ami, I’m very well; allow me to admire you!”

“Wait a bit,” thought Phil to himself. “I’ll give you something to admire!”

But Caracal, with his squirrel-like activity, was already inspecting the studio and the pictures which were turned with their faces to the wall.

“Oh, ho!” he asked, “so you blush for your work, mon cher? Yet your talent is very interesting, very American.”

“Don’t let us talk of such trifles,” said Phil; “I show them only to the ignorant. You’re not really acquainted with my works, M. Caracal—those which I paint for myself alone, those into which I put my soul, as your friend, the painter-philosopher Socrate, used to say. Allow me to show them to you. Enter, M. Caracal!”

Lifting the portière of the little room, Phil showed the way to Caracal, who stopped on the threshold in amazement. Phil was fond of practical jokes. With imperturbable seriousness he had gathered in this room all the grotesque works which he had found among the art-junk-dealers in his chance explorations. If he found a picture cast aside,—provided it was utterly bad,—Phil bought it. There was one canvas, among the others, which represented cows—something so fearful that Phil, the first time he saw it, scarcely knew whether to groan, or shout with laughter.

It was in his concierge’s lodge that Phil one day had conceived the idea of this collection. The old man of “my time,” the former inspector of the Louvre roofs, had on his chimney under bell-glasses two little personages—Monsieur and Madame—made from lobster-shells; a claw formed the nose, and the tail was turned into coat-skirts.

“Eureka!” thought Phil, when he saw them. “But I must have something better still.” And he at once began a search through the slums of impressionism and modern style; and he had found what he wanted.

“Eh bien, M. Caracal, what do you think of that?” asked Phil.

Caracal, at first upset, pulled himself together.

“Bravo, mon cher! you’ve found your line! You are revealed to yourself! My congratulations, cher ami!”

“Does the ignoramus take it seriously?—No; that would be too funny!” Phil said to himself amazed in his turn.

Phil, with his glass beads jingling at every step, took the cow painting and set it in full light. The frightful beasts lowered their crocodile heads to graze in a fantastic meadow whose daisies resembled white plates with egg-yolks in the middle.

Phil looked at Caracal and winked his eye. Caracal answered by a prudent shrug. Phil was one of those rare Americans who can shrug and wink. The mute dialogue went on:

“That catches you, mon vieux Caracal!” said the wink.

“Idiot!” answered the shoulders; “you’ll pay me for this—to make fun of me—Caracal!”

“Each has his turn!” winked Phil.

Caracal fixed his eye-glass and stared at the picture.

“Very—very interesting—very original. That’s art—that ought to be at the Luxembourg! Oughtn’t it, cher ami?”

“The deuce!” thought Phil.

“And this, look at this!” said Caracal, taking up an abominable sketch for a pork-butcher’s sign. “Here’s the quintessence of animalism! Bravo, mon cher, you’re the man I’m looking for!”

“Indeed!” exclaimed Phil, to himself.

“Let me explain. I am looking for an artist to illustrate my new novel.”

Phil made a gesture of protest.

“No commonplace book,” Caracal went on, “but a bitter, bleeding slice of life—something which takes you by the throat, makes you weep and shriek and pant!”

The Cow Painting

Caracal explained his book. The general idea (an idea of genius, according to him) was this: A vast house rises in the midst of Paris, all of glass, transparent from top to bottom, without curtains. Therein swarm all the vices; yet there are no crimes, so soft and weak-willed are the personages, so incapable of anger or hatred. And they drag themselves from floor to floor, on all-fours like swine. Title, “The House of Glass”—and there you are!

“And you offer me collaboration in such nastiness?” said Phil.

“Do you know what you are saying?” replied Caracal.

“It’s my idea of your literature, and I say what I think.”

“Let it be so, mon cher; we’ll say no more about it. Rather let us look at your beautiful works. That cow painting is superb! It’s as fine as a Millet. If it’s for sale, I’ll buy it!”

“If you want it, take it. I won’t sell it. I’ll give it to you.”

They came back into the studio. Caracal, well pleased with the gift, swung his monocle familiarly. Then they talked of other things, of yesterday’s ball, of the “Tocsin,” whose sensational head-lines stared at them from the floor.

“What do you think of that?” Phil asked, pointing to the newspaper.

“It’s idiotic, mon cher, utterly idiotic. I don’t know where Vieillecloche picks up such asinine stuff.”

“Who does the articles for him?” demanded Phil.

“Who knows?” answered Caracal.

With a glance at the clock, Phil excused himself.

“Will you permit me? I must get ready—the concierge is going to do up the studio. Be seated, please; I’ll be with you again in a moment.”

Caracal sat down on a lounge to wait for Phil, who went to his room to change his Indian costume.

The concierge returned. He began dusting the studio, and in his zeal rubbed off half a pastel with his feather duster. He pulled the veil from sketches, and set the easels in place. The studio began to be peopled with half-finished portraits, with designs, with studies of every kind, representing an immense amount of labor. The canvas of Morgana, in particular, rid of the cover which veiled it, illuminated all with a glow of legend. The figure of the fairy queen was barely indicated; but Helia was to pose for Phil, as she had promised, and with a month’s work all would be finished.

Caracal, in spite of his jealous ignorance, could not help admiring the superb production; but he rubbed his hands as he thought of the picture of the cows which he was going to carry away with him. He glanced slyly at Phil, who came back smartly dressed and refreshed from his bath, fit and full of the joy of life, ready for work, in spite of his sleepless night.

CHAPTER II
THE FATA MORGANA

Phil prepared his colors. The ball was forgotten, and the Indian costume was laid away for another year. Outside, the cries of the plumber and old-clo’ man alternated, like a trombone after a fife; and a barrel-organ was grinding below on the sidewalk. Phil, brushes in hand, spoke now and then a word with Caracal, lying on the sofa.

“Here are my visitors,” said Phil, suddenly.

From the stairway came the sound of voices, the light tread of feet, the swish of skirts.

The bell rang.

“I was waiting for you, M. le Duc,” said Phil, as he opened the door. “Come in, I beg of you! Come in, Mlle. Helia!”

“I have brought you Mlle. Helia,” the duke said. “You know, she consents to pose for you. Look! she’s not even tired after such a night!”

“Oh, as for me, I’m used to it,” said Helia,—“a little more or a little less!”

Caracal came bustling up, shaking hands energetically, as he always did.

“Show the duke your little gallery,” he said in a low tone to Phil. “You’re too modest—you mustn’t hide your light under a bushel.”

“Pshaw! he wouldn’t appreciate it,” said Phil.

They stood before the Morgana painting. Helia, strongly impressed by the luxury of the studio, looked around with astonishment. She remembered Phil’s beginnings in his attic by the quays of the Seine.

The duke turned toward him: “Superb! It is very beautiful! Allow me to congratulate you, Monsieur Phil!”

Phil bowed.

Conrad di Tagliaferro, Duke of Morgania, was a grand seigneur, who left his duchy to take care of itself, and passed half his time in his Paris mansion. His people believed him to be quite taken up with politics, discussing mordicus with the representatives of the Great Powers, and securing support against the coming storm. For the duchy was on the banks of the Adriatic, lower than Montenegro, and backed up against Albania, where the clouds threatened. The duke, meanwhile, went about with Caracal, his professor of elegant vice, and his handsome presence was a part of Tout-Paris.

“Your picture is a masterpiece, Monsieur Phil,” the duke went on. “It would be impossible to interpret better the legend of my ancestress, Morgana. It will hang well in the great hall of the castle, above the ducal throne—I see it from here. You have quite caught what I wished, and I am grateful to you.”

The great painting took up a whole side of the studio, and its effect was superb under the light, which fell in floods. It was a decorative work, which, from the first, impressed the beholder by its look of strangeness.

Phil was familiar with the mirage which is peculiar to the Adriatic Sea, and which is known as the Fata Morgana.

In the morning oftenest, but sometimes at evening, you suddenly perceive in the sky images of various things—of ruined towers and castles, which crumble and change and take on prodigious shapes. The dwellers of the coast call the phenomenon the Fata Morgana; their superstitious ideas lead them to see in it the enchantments of a fairy (fata), whereas it is simply an effect of the mirage caused by the heating of the sea. This was the moment which Phil had chosen for his picture.

The lower part of the canvas was in shadow, but the upper part was resplendent with light; and towers seemed to rise and arches hang above the abyss, while visions appeared between the clouds. The setting sun lighted up with its dying fires the moving mists, whereon rainbow tints were playing. At the horizon the sea mingled with the clouds. Morgana rose from the waves which broke along the beach. Strange sea-flowers clung to her hair and covered her shoulders. In the background, cliffs fell straight down to the sea; and all along the shore an ecstatic people acclaimed the return of their lady, the Duchess Morgana.

Phil had put all his talent into this picture. Months of implacable labor were in it. The duke, who had not yet seen the finished canvas, seemed delighted. Phil was paid for his labors.

The Duke of Morgania had a love for art and artists. He chatted in a friendly way with Phil of the numerous studies which such a picture demands.

“I should have liked to be a painter,” he said, smilingly. “I am infatuated with the bohemian life!”

“It hasn’t been all amusement to me,” replied Phil. “Art is not easy, allez!”

“It’s about the same in everything; nothing is easy,” Helia observed.

She entered into the conversation timidly. Accustomed as she had been from childhood to brave a thousand eyes in the circus ring, Helia felt herself embarrassed in the sumptuous studio where she found Phil, friend of her childhood and youth—Phil, who had been so fond of her then, and who doubtless loved her still. She would know soon,—when they were alone,—if only by the way in which he would take her hand.

“It is the same in everything. You are right, mademoiselle,” the duke answered. “Yours is an art also.”

Helia blushed with pleasure.

“Phil will be proud of me,” she thought.

“But she’s taking it seriously, the little mountebank,” Caracal murmured to himself. “She is as big a fool as Phil, on my word!”

“Mon cher ami,” the duke said to Phil, “Mlle. Helia has a singular resemblance to Morgana. For we have documents concerning the appearance of Morgana—Sansovino’s statue at Ancona, for example, the Botticelli of the Louvre, and the stained-glass window of the throne-room in the ducal castle, as well as numberless pictures scattered through the cottages of Morgania. There is an admitted classic type. You will only have to finish the figure of my ancestress with Mlle. Helia, and your picture will be perfect.”

“And what happiness for me!” said Helia. “Phil—Monsieur Phil will do my portrait!”

The Great Canvas

But Phil interrupted Helia to keep the duke, who was on the point of departing:

“Wait a moment; Miss Ethel Rowrer is coming to see the picture. She is over there in the students’ atelier. I’ll go and tell her.”

Phil went out; doors were heard opening and closing; and then he came back with Miss Rowrer, whom he had found just quitting her work. She was fastening a bouquet of Parma violets at her waist, and was ready to come.

Miss Rowrer entered.

She was tall and pink and blonde. She had distinguished features, with a wilful forehead and solid chin. Her beauty and her practice of outdoor sports gave her a self-confidence which was superb, while the prestige of the name of her father—the famous Chicagoan—and his colossal fortune were as nothing when she looked you in the face with her clear eyes, lighted up with intelligence. As soon as she entered the studio there seemed to be no one else there.

Miss Rowrer nodded familiarly to Caracal and the duke, habitués of the Comtesse de Donjeon’s teas, where she had made their acquaintance, as well as that of Phil, some months previously. She cast a discreet glance at Helia. As for Phil, whose pupil she was and whose talent she admired, she treated him as a friend.

They began talking immediately. Miss Rowrer spoke of her brother Will, of his yacht, still in the dock at Boston, but which was soon to sail for France; of his autumn cruise in the Mediterranean; then, changing the subject, she talked of art and literature, lightly, without pose.

“How can any one find time,” thought Helia, “to learn so many pretty things!”

“Is that your Morgana picture?” Miss Rowrer asked Phil, pointing to the great canvas. “That half-painted figure will doubtless be Morgana herself—it is very beautiful. But,” she added, as she turned to the duke, “explain it to me a little, will you? I am not acquainted with the subject.”

“What, Miss Rowrer! You know everything, and you don’t know the legend of Morgana!”

“Only by name,” said Miss Rowrer. “In my picture-books there used to be Bluebeard and ogres and ugly wolves, who made me afraid—and the good fairies Mélusine and Morgana, who delighted me. They did so much good with their magic wands!”

“Morgana is my ancestress,” said the duke. “She is my good genius. There is not a cottage in Morgania where her picture does not hang, next to the icons of the Virgin. In the winter evenings, around the fire, they recount her exploits and those of Rhodaïs and Bertha. Children grow up with it in their blood; they no more think of their country without its heroines than without its woods and mountains.”

“And what particular event have you chosen for this picture?” asked Miss Rowrer. “Is it the coming of Morgana?”

“By the sea she departed,” said the duke, “and she has never come back. Yet she will come, they say.”

“You laugh at it?”

“Not at all,” answered the duke. “Such things seen in the light of Paris appear altogether ridiculous; but away in Morgania there are thousands of good people—or thousands of foolish people, if you wish—” the duke corrected himself, in terror of the mocking smile of Caracal, his professor of skepticism—“thousands of foolish people who talk of nothing else and await her return.”

“But when did she go away?” asked Miss Rowrer.

“Oh, ah!—well—a thousand years ago,” answered the duke.

“A thousand years ago!” exclaimed Miss Rowrer, amused by these stories of fairy duchesses and poor mountaineers sitting by the sea and watching from father to son for Morgana. “But who has foretold her return?” she asked.

“An old sorceress who lives like an owl in the hollow of a rock.”

“Really!”

“Truly and really! People come to consult her from every quarter. She makes her fire on three red stones, observes the sky and the stars, traces serpents on the sand—and then this old woman foretells the future. Now, according to her prediction, the cycle of time has swung round and Morgana is coming, bringing in her arms the fortune of Morgania. Events, we must acknowledge, seem to bear out the sorceress: the country is deeply troubled; I shall soon be obliged to go back myself—and you can imagine whether it is amusing for me? Oh, I wish I were a simple citizen of Paris!”

“Eh bien, monseigneur!” said Miss Rowrer, “in that case, abdicate, abdicate. But first tell me, I beg of you, the legend of Morgana.”

“It does not date from yesterday, as I have told you,” the duke went on. “The duchy was already in existence, having been given to Hugh, chief of the Franks, by the Emperor Theodosius; but it was only in Morgana’s time that it came to a consciousness of itself. Morgana was a poor sailor-girl, according to some—a king’s daughter, according to others. Did she ever really exist? or is she only an ideal figure created by a people in infancy, more inclined to poetry than to reflection, and personifying in her all its great heroines?

“However that may be, the year, as your Edgar Poe says, ‘had been a year of terrors.’ There was fighting along the frontiers. The duke, selfish-hearted and weak, had lost two of his provinces. The people were in despair. Morgana brought hope back to them. Her piety and her beauty worked miracles. A light, it is said, followed her. She took up arms for her country and worked wonders. The hordes of the enemy thought her invulnerable—they had set a price on her head. One day, in battle, she saved Duke Adhemar, when he was at the point of being massacred; she leaped forward, with the great white-cross standard in one hand and her battle-ax in the other, slashed her way through the barbarians, and, her arms red with blood, brought back the duke amid the acclamations of the people. Their enthusiasm was immense; they prayed at Morgana’s feet. ‘What passed afterward?’ Had the duke promised marriage to her, as some pretend—and, to obtain peace, did he sell Morgana to the enemy? Our chronicles are uncertain on that point. But Duke Adhemar compromised himself by some ugly deed or other—the perjury of a coward. One evening the indignant Morgana came down to the shore, followed by a whole people, who demanded her for their duchess and scattered flowers before her. But she entered her bark alone. ‘Since the duke has sworn,’ she said, ‘let me save his honor. I go. May my sacrifice redeem his race! And remember—not gold, but youth and courage are a people’s strength!’ Then Morgana sailed away from the shore and disappeared in the open sea, while the crowd still prayed for her. The next day a strange mirage lighted up the country, and the people said: ‘It is the soul of Morgana, virgin and martyr.’ Then the people, in their indignation, drove Duke Adhemar from the throne. They raised altars to her. To Morgana was given the title of duchess; she became the protectress of Morgania—and of my house, whose honor she had saved.”

“Let us hope she will come back,” said Miss Rowrer. “You are quite right to believe in her!”

“I—” began the duke.

“Why, yes, monseigneur,” continued Miss Rowrer, who had remarked the duke’s accent of conviction toward the end of his story. “Don’t deny it—it is beautiful to believe in something! M. Caracal will pardon you this time.”

“Willingly, Miss Rowrer,” said Caracal, with the pinching of the lips which was his mode of smiling. “Willingly; but on one condition. Get Monsieur Phil to show you his works.”

“Here they are, it seems to me,” Ethel said, pointing to the paintings and sketches which filled the studio.

“No doubt,” Caracal insisted; “but—all his handiwork is not here. Come, Monsieur Phil, show us the work which is really yours—what you paint with your soul! Don’t be so modest; bring the light from beneath the bushel!”

“Yes; show us, Phil,” said the duke.

“Monseigneur—” Phil began.

Caracal shot a triumphant glance at Phil.

“You will allow me, cher ami?”—and he opened the little gallery to Miss Rowrer and the duke, while Helia, seated in the shadow, waited impatiently for the visitors to leave.

Gay laughter was heard. Miss Ethel and the duke came back. “Ah, charming! Couldn’t be more amusing,” said the duke. “A regular art-trap! I must get one myself, to catch fools.”

All left the studio except Phil, and Helia, who was to pose for him. They were already on the stairs, and Caracal, exasperated, went with them, like the legendary devil who disappears into the earth, carrying with him, instead of a soul, his cow painting under his arm. Behind him, in place of the classical odor of brimstone, there was only the fragrance of the Parma violets which Miss Rowrer let fall by accident as she went away.

The noise ceased on the staircase—Phil was already seated on the sofa beside Helia.

CHAPTER III
REMEMBERING THE GOLDEN DAYS

They looked at each other as if astonished to be once again together. Helia admired Phil, whom she found handsomer and stronger—more, indeed, of a man. Phil scanned the refined features of Helia: she seemed even more beautiful than in the old days.

Seated thus, hand in hand, eyes gazing into eyes, everything came back to memory: their first meeting in the little provincial town where Phil was studying, and where the circus in which Helia appeared had been set up; their simple, childish love, the pretty romance of their youth.

In the old days Phil used to speak to her with the familiar “thou”; here, in the quiet of the studio, alone with this beautiful young girl, it seemed too familiar, almost wanting in respect for her.

“Perhaps Phil is more intimidated than myself,” Helia thought in her surprise. “He has not even kissed me. But whether he speaks to me with a ‘thou’ or a ‘you’ matters little, provided he loves me still!”

“Now, then, Phil,” she asked, between her smiles, “what hast thou—what have you been doing all this time?”

“Oh!” answered Phil, “many things! And you, Helia?”

“Oh, for me it has been always the same thing, always just as it was before—do you remember?”

Ah, the childish doings of other days! How happy Helia was to take shelter in their sweet memories!

“Do you remember,” said Phil, “the day I saw you first? You know it was at the Fête-Dieu procession. How pretty you were as the little Saint John!”

On that day houses are decorated; the walls are hung with white sheets, on which are pinned flowers and greenery, and the procession passes between these blossoming walls. But the one thing in the procession for Phil had been the little Saint John.

It was Helia who took the rôle. At first they had chosen the daughter of a rich merchant; but fear of drafts and a possible fall of rain—a cold is caught so quickly—led them to change at the last moment; and in haste they took a creature of less importance, whose colds did not count.

“I remember,” said Helia, “they came to get me at the circus. I happened to be in a pink maillot, and they put the sheepskin on my back and the wooden cross in my hand—and ten francs in papa’s hand—and so I became the little Saint John.”

“And what a delightful Saint John you were!” said Phil. “I became a lover and a poet on the spot; I wrote verses—I was wild!”

“And you got wilder still,” said Helia, “when you found out that, instead of a merchant’s daughter, I was the famous Helia—the acrobatic star whom the posters pictured on her trapeze, amid stars and suns!”

“The Little Saint John”

Helia, in her turn, had seen Phil a few days later, while she was playing Wolf and Sheep. Sinking back in the sofa-cushions of the great studio, she chatted with Phil of that momentous event.

“That was the day after they had thrown so many oranges to me—do you remember, Phil?—and I was playing Wolf in the square with the neighbors’ children. You remember the game? One of the players is the wolf, another is the shepherd, the others are the sheep. They stand behind the shepherd and walk around singing:

‘Promenons-nous dans les bois

Pendant que le loup n’y est pas!’

(‘Let’s go walking through the woods,

While the wolf’s away!’)

And then the wolf jumps out and tries to catch a sheep.”

That second meeting of Phil and Helia had passed off very prettily. Helia was a regular little tomboy at play. Of course she did not often get a chance to play, and she found it pleasant to leap and laugh with other children; and Phil was there, standing around with the boys. He would have given everything in the world to be wolf and seize Helia and devour her with kisses—if he had dared.

And perhaps he might have dared,—lured on by a smile from the little Saint John,—but some one (it was Cemetery, the clown) came out from the circus-tent, and at sight of him sheep and shepherd scattered. He called harshly to Helia, and with a gesture sent her into the tent.

The little girl obeyed without a word, raising her elbow as she passed before her master, as if to ward off a blow. The last thing seen by Phil was the appealing glance of Helia, which seemed to say to him, “You see—and yet I was doing no harm—and we’d have had such fun!”

That was their second meeting.

The next day Phil prowled around the circus-tent with the other boys and tried to catch a glimpse of Helia through the holes of the canvas, or from beneath, stretched out flat on the ground.

All the day long the little girl was kept rehearsing her exercises. Sometimes it was the trapeze, or again the carpet. Cemetery gave her his directions with a serious air.

“Allez!—firm on your feet—smile, smile—throw your head back—don’t move your feet! Bend back! bend! bend! Fall on your hands! There—there—smile! Tonnerre! Won’t you smile?”

But Phil waited in vain; he never saw her play again with the others.

Soon afterward the circus went away, and Phil, when vacation-time came, returned to America. He took with him tender remembrances, seeing often the last touching glance of Helia with her beautiful sad eyes. Pity mingled with his tenderness.

Helia and her “Professor”

Phil went on his way through Paris and London and across the ocean to New York, and then on to the sunny South and his old ancestral mansion on the Chesapeake. But nothing, neither terrapin-catching nor duck-shooting nor horseback-riding through the country, could efface his childhood’s first love, which only grew in solitude. How he regretted that he had not taken part in the game when the little Helia invited him with a smile—that he had not kissed her through her brown curls!

Phil came back to France to go on with his studies. Helia was already a grown girl when he saw her again. The circus was being advertised, and great posters with the name of Helia placarded the walls.

With what impatience Phil awaited her! He was to see her again. He passed hours in the open square where the circus was being set up in the disorder of wagons and poles and canvas, peering anxiously into the circus-wagons.

The circus was in a single tent. The artistes for changing their costumes had rude dressing-rooms amid the confusion of circus properties underneath the benches on which the public sat.

One evening Helia had finished dressing by the light of a candle when she heard a noise above her head. She saw the bunting beneath the benches lifted, and a little bunch of flowers fell on her shoulder. She nearly cried out with surprise. During her turn they often threw oranges and flowers to her—that was commonplace; but these flowers!

As soon as she came into the ring she looked at the benches above her dressing-room. She fancied she recognized there the one whom she had seen when she was playing Wolf—how long ago!

“Le Roy fait battre le tambour

Pour appeler ses dames.”

(Phil took his banjo from the wall behind the sofa. In a low voice he murmured the old song, which he had not forgotten, to the air played by the band when it announced Helia’s entrance into the ring:

“Le Roy fait battre le tambour

Pour appeler ses dames,...

Et la première qu’il a vue

Lui a ravi son âme.”

(“The King has the drum beat

To call out his ladies,...

And the first one he sees

Steals away his soul.”)

All the memories of the past rose up in Helia at the familiar air.)

At that time she was living inside a courtyard where the circus people put up their wagons. There was a stable for the horses and an inn for the men. Through the great gate of the courtyard the circus was in full sight, out in the public square.

One evening it was raining. Helia was at the gate and, caught by the rain, hesitated to go on. All at once Phil came up. She recognized him, and both were so moved that they said only the simplest things to each other.

“Thanks for your bouquet,” said Helia.

“Mademoiselle,” Phil began.

“I remember you very well,” Helia went on; “I knew you a long time ago. Why did you not play Wolf with us?”

“Because that man made you go in,” Phil answered.

“Ah, yes! true,” said Helia.

Phil feared she would hear the beating of his heart. He tried to put an end to their embarrassment, so he chattered about the rain and the bad weather.

“Mademoiselle, you must forgive me—I have no umbrella!” he said.

“That’s no matter,” said Helia. “Accompany me to the circus. Wait a bit—here’s what we want!”

On the wall beside them there hung a circus-poster. She took it, lifted it with one hand above her head, while Phil held the other end; and the two under one shelter crossed the square.

“Shall I see you again, mademoiselle?” Phil asked, when they had reached the circus.

“Surely—in the courtyard yonder by the wagons—or here in the evening.”

Phil left her without speaking further. Soon, through the canvas, he heard the air that announced her turn:

“Marquis, t’es bien plus heureux que moi

D’avoir femme si belle;

Si tu voulais me l’accorder

Je me chargerai d’elle!”

(“Marquis, you’re happier than I

Because your wife’s so pretty;

If you’ll give her up to me,

Willingly’ll take her!”)

The days that followed were for Helia the sunny corner of her sad childhood. When she saw Phil she was happy—and she saw him every day! The very difficulty of meeting added charm to the adventure.

They saw each other in the courtyard of the inn.

Helia had the care of many things. A baby—Sœurette (Little Sister), held on to her skirts, and Helia gave a mother’s care to the child. She busied herself also with the linen drying on the clothes-lines; she scattered grain before the chickens which were tied by their legs; she sewed at her bodices or at her little performance-slippers; or else she would be coming back from market with a great loaf of bread under her arm and provisions in her basket. Always she was charming. Her least movement was full of grace.

When Phil could not speak with Helia he would press her hand as he passed. Then he would watch her from afar. Unconsciously they fell greatly in love with each other—he because he found her so pathetic, she because he was so timid and so handsome. From a few words picked up here and there, and from a talk with the clown at a café, Phil had come to know something of Helia’s story—for she never spoke of it herself, through pride. Or was it a woman’s shame in her desire to show to the one she loved only what was fair? Yet she had nothing to conceal,—pretty, sweet, valiant Helia!

Her story?

Helia was her circus name. Her real name Phil did not learn. She was not the daughter of Cemetery the clown, although she called herself so; she was only his trained pupil.

Her father was a gentleman of Arles who became a widower with two daughters on his hands,—Helia and Sœurette,—one much older than the other. He fell in love with a circus-rider, and a terrible life began for him, with tours across Europe, and marriage with the woman, who ruled him with a rod of iron. The little daughters went with him, for he had no family other than relatives far removed. Then ruin came. A circus whose director and backer he had become, and into which he had put all his money, failed. He died, abandoned by every one, and leaving his two little girls to the care of Cemetery, who had been his circus-manager. Cemetery, harsh and honest, adopted the children and determined to make artistes of them. He at once began the training of the elder, and Helia grew up under him for master. “You shall do it or die!” Cemetery used to say when teaching her to perform. To those who represented to him that the profession was already encumbered, he answered: “There is always room on top! Beauty is well—talent is better. To work!”

Such was the story of Helia.

When Phil asked her about it, Helia did not answer, but only smiled faintly.

But Phil knew that she was unhappy, and his love for her went on growing. He dreamed a thousand chivalrous schemes—each madder than the one before. He felt within him the passion and daring resolution of the Longuevilles, his ancestors. He had also inherited their zeal for virtue. He would tear Helia away from her rough life. He would educate her—he would make her fit to be his companion. He explained his ideas to Helia. At first they amused her, but when she saw how sincere he was, she ended by believing them.

Helia went out rarely—scarcely more than from the inn to the circus. She would have liked to meet Phil oftener. When evening came, in her dressing-room under the benches, she donned her costume quickly and received her friend. It was easy for him to enter without being remarked. On the outside there were wagons which left only a narrow passage. It was where the canvas of the circus-tent joined; he had only to pull it aside to enter. Then he was at once in the dressing-room inclosed by boards and fragments of carpets worn out by generations of tumblers.

Phil would sit on a trunk while Helia combed her beautiful hair in front of a broken mirror. It never came to their minds that there could be anything wrong in what they were doing. They had long talks. Helia spoke of her profession and described her exercises.

“I am going to do the high leap. I spring and catch the bar—I get my balance, standing on my hands—and then I go off with a somersault! The high leap, Phil, you could learn in a month—you who are afraid of nothing!”

Phil would listen, and then interrupt her gently and speak of all sorts of things, opening new horizons before her; and Helia was happy and glad to learn.

“What beautiful arms!” said Phil one evening, as she was soaping them in a basin of cold water.

“And I take care of them!” answered Helia, “songe donc, Phil! (They were already using the familiar French “thou” to each other.) Just think; every evening I owe my life to these arms! When I do the flying trapeze they mustn’t miss their hold. I should be crushed on the benches,—think of it!—and I have to smile all the same.”

Phil courting Helia in the Yard

As she dried her arms, Phil raised his eyes and saw, near the shoulder, a brown stain on the white skin.

“That’s nothing,” said Helia; “I knocked against a post.”

Phil looked at her closely.

“You’ve been crying again to-day! But I—I’m not afraid of Cemetery,” he went on. “I’ll go for him to-morrow and punch his face. I won’t have him touching you any more. First of all, he hasn’t the right! and I’ll forbid him.”

But Helia shook her head: “No!” She added: “I’ll attend to that! I belong to you now—not to him! There he comes,” she said suddenly. “Go away—and not a word, whatever happens!”

Above the noise of the band and of the public, Helia had heard Cemetery’s voice. Phil had just time to get away.

“Are you going to come when you are called?” the man said.

At a glance, from Helia’s emotion, from certain noises he had heard, he guessed the truth. But he was far from thinking of Phil. He suspected that some circus man was paying court to her.

Phil, from the outside, heard this dialogue.

“You were not alone?”

“No!”

“There was a man here?”

Helia did not answer.

“Wait a bit,” said Cemetery. “I’ll teach you—”

“Don’t touch me—I forbid you!”

Phil looked through a rent in the canvas.

Helia stood transfigured, superb with energy. She was no longer a child driven by cuffs and blows; she was the young woman awakened by love, conscious of her rights and her duties. Phil’s soul was in her. Helia spoke in a low tone, and her attitude was so calm that the man stopped in amazement.

“Hein! what is it?” he stammered.

“Leave this room!” said Helia, “or I will have the police arrest you. You have no right over me! From to-day you shall keep your hands off me! Leave the room,” she repeated.

As if her gesture had the power of a charm, the man went out, dumb with surprise and raising his elbow as if to protect himself.

Phil was filled with enthusiasm at the sight of Helia’s self-deliverance. His counsels had fallen on good ground. He had awakened in Helia a spirit of independence, and this made him feel an increase of responsibility.

At midnight, while the artistes were supping at the inn, Phil saw Helia in the shadow of the wagons. It was there that he met her henceforth, for after this he went no more to the dressing-room. Their conversations took place in the peace of night; they said a thousand things to each other, talking, like children, of whatever passed through their heads, drifting with the current which bore both onward.

“I don’t like the career they have chosen for me,” said Phil! “they want me to be a diplomat. Later on I wish to be an artist—a painter or sculptor; a painter, I think. My guardian will never be willing. But never mind! I will go to Paris—I will make my way by myself!”

“Who knows if I shall ever see you again!” said Helia. “What will become of me?”

“Helia, you shall come to me as soon as I have earned money.”

“Paris,” said Helia, dreamily. “You will be all alone there when you arrive. Ah! if I only knew some one! At any rate, I will give you the address of a hotel for artistes where I have been myself with Cemetery, and a letter for Suzanne, whom I knew at school. Suzanne is an actress. We write to each other sometimes.”

Ah, what adieus were theirs the evening before the separation! How Helia trembled when Phil kissed her—and what promises he made her!

Sinking back in the sofa-cushions, Helia and Phil stared vaguely before them at the Morgana picture. The perfume of Miss Rowrer’s violets reached them, light and subtle; and the minutes passed in silence. Then Phil sang in an undertone:

“Adieu, ma mie, adieu, mon cœur,

Adieu, mon espérance!...

Puisque il me faut servir le roi,

Séparons-nous d’ensemble.”

(“Farewell, my love, farewell, my heart,

Farewell, all my hope!...

And since I must serve my king,

We must separate from each other!”)

He put aside the banjo and began talking with Helia, asking questions about her present life.

“How long have you been in Paris, Helia? A short time only?”

Helia, who was astonished, was on the point of replying: “Why, I wrote you.” She remained silent, however. The sumptuous studio—the visits of monseigneurs and beautiful young ladies—how different it was from the Phil of other days, the Phil of the circus, the student who had been devoted to her later on in Paris! Why not a word of their life then, of their idyl of the Louvre roof-garden? etc.... He did not even speak of all that; his remembrance seemed to be at an end. This, then, was all he found to say to her after more than a year of separation—he who could not live without her, who had said it a hundred times.

“Where are you living?” asked Phil. “At the Hôtel des Artistes, where I went when I came to Paris? I left it on the advice of Suzanne, your great actress,” Phil went on, smilingly.

“Ah, Phil! I thought her a great actress,” said Helia. “She was the only person I knew in Paris. Oh, if I could have been more useful to you, I would have been! No,” she began again, quickly, “I am not living there; but I keep Cemetery there.”

“Cemetery!” replied Phil.

“The poor fellow has grown old—he is out of work; I pay for his room until he can find an engagement.”

“What, Cemetery, that brute?”

“He made me an artiste!” Helia replied, bravely.

“And your little sister?” continued Phil,—“Sœurette, you called her—what has become of her? Do you keep her with you?”

“Yes,” said Helia. “My father’s family claimed her, but it was a little late, was it not? I have kept her, thanks to several friends—M. Socrate, the poet, among the rest.”

“Socrate!” said Phil. “I know a person of that name. It can’t be the same—mine is a painter.”

“So is mine.”

“He is a sculptor also,” added Phil.

“It must be the same man,” said Helia.

“Impossible!” thought Phil. “Socrate a friend of Helia! How can they have met?”

Phil thought of the life of Helia in circuses and music-halls—the coarse environment where art touches elbows with shamelessness. “What influences have been around her,” he thought in sadness, “during all this time in which I have not seen her?”

“Socrate does many kind little things for me,” Helia went on. “He posts my letters and makes himself useful. He’s a man who will be celebrated some day; oh, you will see!”

So spoke Helia, in the spirit of loyalty. In reality she cared little enough for Socrate; but it pleased her to let Phil think that she cared for him. So much the worse if Phil should be vexed! Had he been afraid to give pain? Since she has been in the studio he has not once kissed her!

Helia rose to go away.

“Then it’s for to-morrow, Phil?”

Phil begged her to stay.

“No; I will come back,” said Helia, “and we’ll pose to-morrow. I have so many things to do to-day—my costumer, my director, a new apparatus to try—I must hurry.”

“Phil has forgotten me,” said Helia to herself. “It had to come—I am nothing to him now!”

As she passed out of the door she was aware of the perfume of the violets which Miss Rowrer had let fall.

CHAPTER IV
WHEN PHIL CAME TO PARIS

As Helia felt, Phil was, indeed, no longer the same. This was no more the Phil who had loved her in the old days.

When the Phil who did not go into “society,” and knew neither duke nor Miss Rowrer,—when that Phil came to Paris, after parting from Helia in the courtyard near the circus, he hastened to the Hôtel des Artistes, of which Helia had told him, treasuring in his pocket her letter that recommended him to Suzanne. Evening was falling, the street was dark, the house somber. Maillots were drying at windows. An invisible musical clown was picking out on his bottles lugubrious tunes. But Phil thought of Helia, and was gay.

That night he slept little. He was in a hurry for the morning, in order that he might carry Helia’s letter to Mlle. Suzanne. He flung his window wide, and heard Paris murmuring in the dark.

“Your name and profession,” said the landlady next morning, as he came down. Phil signed the register, writing underneath:

“Artist-painter.”

“Artist-painter,” said the landlady. “I should have liked that trade.”

“It’s not a bad one,” Phil said.

“But very difficult,” replied the landlady. “We lately had a painter here—a very famous one; he painted with his feet. He used to tell me the hardest thing about it is to balance yourself on your hands while you are painting! Ah, monsieur, the public no longer appreciates the fine arts. If I were you, at your age, I’d learn to walk on a ball.”

“I’ll tell that to Mlle. Suzanne,” Phil said to himself. “She must be a real artiste—Mlle. Suzanne. And then we’ll talk about Helia!”

He thought he should never get to Mlle. Suzanne, the city was so enormous. He was meditating what he should say to her, when, all of a sudden, the cab began jolting over an atrocious stretch of pavement. Phil stuck his head through the window just as the cab drew up at the end of a blind alley.

“Say, cocher,” said Phil, “I think you’ve made a mistake.”

“Penses-tu, bébé!” murmured the cabman.

“What do you say?”

“I say it’s all right.”

Phil got out. There were heads at all the windows; the cab had made a stir in the little street.

“Perhaps she saw me come,” thought Phil, as he went into the house.

It was the right address, but Mlle. Suzanne was not at home.

Phil arrives at the Hotel

“You’ll find Mlle. Suzanne in the Boulevard de Vaugirard, Number 13 bis. You go this way, turn to the right, then to the left; there’s a door with plaster in front of it. Then ask for Mlle. Suzanne.”

Phil paid the cabman and set off on foot. He walked to the right, then to the left, and found himself in the Boulevard de Vaugirard, at that time of day deserted. Turning again to the left, he saw a heap of plaster with a door behind it. Phil knocked timidly.

“Entrez!” cried a voice of thunder.

Phil had just time to pull down his cuffs. There was no time to push up his cravat. “Come in!”—said in such a tone allowed of no delay.

He entered. It was an astonishing place, heaped up with mud, a chaos of clay and plaster. There were buckets filled with dirty water, sprinklers, hammers, pieces of old iron.

“Where am I?” thought Phil. “This must be a school for sculpture done with the feet! Have I made a mistake?”

“Why don’t you come in?” roared the voice. “This side! Don’t upset my statue! Look out for my ‘Fraternity’! Troun de Diou! don’t tread on my potatoes!”

Phil passed over all obstacles and came into the presence of the giant of the place. He was a short, thick-set creature, whose gaping shirt showed a breast as hairy as a monkey’s back. With his fingers he was kneading clay, and he raised furious eyes to Phil. Behind him a little monsieur lay stretched on a lounge, playing with his monocle; but where was Suzanne?

“Monsieur—excuse me! I have made a mistake!” Phil stammered.

“No harm done!” said the hairy one, mollified by Phil’s correct dress and high standing collar; and he added: “At your service, monsieur!”

Phil showed his letter. “I thought I should find here Mlle. Suzanne, an actress,” he said.

“Suzanne! It’s me!” cried a gay voice from the ceiling.

Phil looked up in the air. A charming blonde with bare arms and feet, in a white waist and black petticoat, was seated on top of a scaffolding, looking at Phil with laughing eyes.

“Mlle. Suzanne, my model!” said the man.

“Let’s have the letter!” Suzanne cried.

“Catch!” said the sculptor, tossing up to her the envelop weighted with a piece of clay.

“Well, I’m going!” said the little monsieur with the monocle.

“Wait! don’t go!” Suzanne cried, with her letter in her hand. “Let’s be correct. Messieurs, I present to you Monsieur Phil, a young Englishman—”

“American,” rectified Phil.

“A friend of one of my friends—the famous Helia—it’s too long to explain. M. Caracal, who writes in the—the—what-do-you-call-it—well, no matter—And Poufaille, sculptor, pupil of Boudin. There, the introductions are made!”

“Monsieur—”

“Monsieur—”

“Monsieur—”

There were three bows.

“Ah! so you are an American and a painter,” Caracal said to Phil. “Tiens! tiens! tiens! I thought there were only pork-packers in that country. Salut, messieurs!”

Before Phil could answer a word, Caracal had straddled over the rough model of “Fraternity,” jumped across the potatoes, and gone out, slamming the door behind him.

“He’s not polite—M. Caracal,” Suzanne remarked; “but you English don’t care!”

“I am an American!”

“Well, then, M. l’Américain, what are you waiting for? Give me your hand and help me down!”

But she was on the ground before Phil could assist her.

“Oh, my good Helia!” said Suzanne. “How glad I am she is so happy!”

“The friends of our friends are our friends,” bawled Poufaille, as he patted Phil on the shoulder with his great hairy hand. “Sit down, Monsieur Phil.”

Phil sat down, much encouraged by their welcome.

Suzanne went and came lightly, moving things about. She took a cigarette, lighted it, and threw it away. He saw her approach the stove and raise the cover of the pot. A bubbling noise came from it.

“Make yourself at home,” said Poufaille. Phil profited by the permission to look around him. A hunk of bread was lying on the model’s table. In an empty plate a fork fraternized with a pipe. The shelves on the wall were encumbered with rude canvases and rough models. The sculptor was smoothing down his clay. The scene did not attract the young American.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, preparing to retire, “I will pay you a visit at the Impasse de Vaugirard.”

“So as not to find me? You’ll be taking something for your cold, sure!”

“But, mademoiselle, I—I haven’t a cold!”

There was an explosion of laughter. Suzanne choked and Poufaille bellowed with joy.

“Ah ça,” Suzanne cackled. “Hou! hou! but—hou, hou! Helia taught you nothing, then?”

Phil stood amazed, with his hat in his hand.

“He’s nice, all the same, l’Angliche—we can’t let him go away alone—something would happen to him!” said Suzanne. “Put down your hat,” she added, “and lunch with us!”

“Of course, of course!” shouted Poufaille.

“Now be polite, Monsieur Phil,” Suzanne went on: “sit there and act as if you were in society. Help me peel my potatoes!”

“Certainly!” Phil answered.-

And so it was that Phil, seated on a block of plaster, was initiated by Suzanne into the belles manières Parisiennes.

“You must take off only the skins of the potatoes, like this!” she said, while posting him in the picturesque slang of the quarter.

“And to take something for your cold when you haven’t a cold?” Phil asked.

“That means to be caught,” Suzanne answered. “Dame! in Paris wit runs the streets!”

“Then this morning,” said Phil, “this morning when a lady advised me to give up art and learn to walk on a ball—it was to take something for my cold, was it?”

“Hammering the clay with a terrific blow of his fist”

“For sure!” replied Suzanne.

A noise started them. It was Poufaille working himself up to a fit of anger. “Troun de Diou! She was right, that lady of yours!” he cried, hammering the clay with a terrific blow of his fist.

“Hello!” Phil said in a fright; “is he going crazy?”

The sculptor’s eyes were out of his head. With formidable blows he was flattening the bust, shouting rinforzando: “Right a hundred times over—a thousand times, a million times!”

“What’s the matter, M. Poufaille?” asked Phil, rising.

“What’s the matter? To think that those pigs of the jury refused my statue of ‘Fraternity’ for the Salon! You understand my indignation,” said Poufaille, taking Phil by the lapel of his coat. “Do you understand? Hein! do you understand?”

“I—I—I—understand your indignation—I—I share it,” Phil answered between the shakes.

“It’s enough to set one crazy!” shouted Poufaille; “but—sacré mille tonnerres!—Phil, take off your collar; the sight of you with that instrument of torture chokes me!”

“Well, if that’s all that’s needed to calm you!” Phil answered, and with a turn of the hand he pulled off cravat and collar.

“À la bonne heure! I breathe!” said Poufaille.

“Mon petit Poufaille, where’s the salt?” Suzanne asked, without paying the slightest heed to the sculptor’s rage.

“There,” answered Poufaille, “in the tobacco-jar.”

“And now, to dinner!” Suzanne called. “Here’s pig’s rump ragout!”

“To dinner!” shouted Poufaille.

“To dinner!” repeated Phil.

During the meal Phil, who had had a French lesson from Suzanne, tried to give her a lesson in geography. He spoke of America. But Suzanne declared that all those names hurt her head. And besides, she didn’t believe a word of it.

“Let’s talk of love instead,” she said. “Are you greatly in love with my friend Helia?”

Phil blushed.

“She is so pretty,” Suzanne continued; “and she’s not been spoiled, I can tell you! All the more merit in her to be good—she’s worth more than all of us together!—not to speak of her being pretty—pretty! That doesn’t hurt anything, does it, Monsieur Phil?”

Phil smiled.

“Oh, if I were a man!” Suzanne declared, enthusiastically, “I’d make a fool of myself for Helia! Tell me all about her,” she went on. “Love-stories are so amusing!”

Phil told about the little Saint John, the lamb, the game of Wolf, the poster-umbrella, the dressing-room under the benches, and his last interview with Helia, when she had given him the address of the Hôtel des Artistes and his letter of introduction.

Suzanne drank in his words, turn by turn moved to tenderness or laughter.

“Oh, it does me good to hear it! There’s love for you!” she cried, putting her hand to her heart with a gesture of the stage.

“I see that you are an actress,” Phil observed.

“An actress? I? Penses-tu, bébé? I appeared once in a cabaret artistique—it disgusted me with the theater for the rest of my life!”

“You forget that you play the Muse at our reunion,” Poufaille interrupted.

“Oh, yes! the Muse,” Suzanne replied. “You see, Phil, since they bore themselves to death in Paris, those from each province meet together and give balls and receptions and lectures and what not; and they give dinners, too—and sing to the sound of the hurdy-gurdy.”

“I’m the hurdy-gurdy!” cried Poufaille.

“And I’m the one that sings,” added Suzanne. “I eat garlic that day and improvise in patois—and every one thinks I belong to his province. Et aïe donc, et vive la joie!”

“Et vive la joie!” took up Phil.

They were now a trio of friends.

“By the way, mon cher, where do you live?” asked Poufaille, who was already saying “thou” to him and calling him mon cher and mon vieux without knowing either his name or address. Phil told the hotel he was at.

“Allons donc! but that’s a quarter of the arrivés!” Poufaille said scornfully; “you have only bourgeois in that quarter, medal-men, members of the jury—the pigs! You’re done for if you stay there!”

“You mustn’t stay there a day longer!” declared Suzanne. “Come over here; we’ll present you to the copains [comrades].”

Hesitation was impossible.

“All right,” Phil said, as he put on his collar and cravat. “I will leave to-day.”

“Will you come to my house?” Suzanne asked. “No ceremony, you know! I’ll bring you a mattress.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Phil.

“Or else here,” said Poufaille. “You can sleep in the corner beside the potatoes, hein? Will that do?”

“No, thanks,” said Phil; “I’ll see you again to-morrow! Au revoir!”

The same evening, having found a room, Phil left his hotel.

CHAPTER V
AN INITIATION INTO ART

The next day Phil returned his new friends’ hospitality by taking them to lunch.

“Where are we going?” Suzanne asked.

“Where you wish,” answered Phil.

“To Mère Michel’s, then.”

Suzanne delighted in this restaurant. The food was bad, but there was laughter. Sometimes messieurs with high hats invited her to chic places. Suzanne would refuse the chic restaurants and take them to Mère Michel’s, where their hats brought out thunders of applause.

Phil had a Derby hat and so received a more modest welcome. For that matter, few people were there when they arrived. Poufaille did the honors of the place.

“Do you see those two photos on the wall, Phil? That—hum!—that’s mine, my two statues—‘Liberty,’ ‘Fraternity.’ Do you see this photo in the frame? Salut! That means a year’s credit—it’s from Lionsot, a Prix-de-Rome man; he paid Mère Michel with an autograph dedication at the base of his ‘Light-Footed Achilles.’”

“Cours après!” laughed Suzanne.

Meanwhile the customers kept coming in, some with canvases and paint-boxes, others with only their long hair and unkempt beards.

“That one’s a painter—that one a sculptor—and that a musician,” said Poufaille. “The empty place, there in the corner, is the place of Socrate, a type épatant! Musician, sculptor, painter, and poet, and philosopher—a whole world in himself!”

“Ah!” uttered Phil, respectfully, as he looked at the empty place.

Nothing was heard for a time but the rattle of knives and forks; then there was a great deal of laughter, with cries that punctuated conversations on art. Heads were turned for a few entrances. A pretty model with a cloud of gauze for a scarf was greeted with “Kiss, kiss!” An old man with a gilt band round his cap only called forth howls.

“Eh! you old Gaul!”

“Vieux coq!”

“Your ‘kiss, kiss,’ makes me laugh,” said the old man. “Do you know to-day what ‘kiss, kiss,’ means? Oh, yes! in the old days women fell in love—under the Empire!”

“Ta bouche, bébé!”

“Ferme ça [shut up]!”

“He is the inspector of the Louvre roofs,” Poufaille said to Phil. “I am well acquainted with him. I see him every day.”

Phil opened his eyes wide; everything was new to him. From his seat he had also a view of the bar alongside. While Mère Michel served in the room of the artistes, Père Michel stretched out his immense bulk behind the counter.

“That man he’s serving is the lackey of the Duke of Morgania,” observed Suzanne.

“Does the Duke of Morgania live near here?” Phil interrupted. He had read the name in the newspapers.

“Almost opposite,” Suzanne answered.

“Ah!” Phil said, with the same shade of respect which he had shown before the empty seat of Socrate, never dreaming that he would one day be the friend of both the grand seigneur and the poet-philosopher.

Just then Socrate entered. Poufaille nudged Phil with his elbow. Phil looked. He saw Socrate seat himself in his corner, call the garçon, order three or four dishes and a liter of wine, hurriedly, at haphazard, like a man overwhelmed with thought and with no time to lose.

“He’s begun a work on the Louvre—something tremendous!” Poufaille informed Phil.

“What is it like?” Phil asked.

“No one knows!”

Phil examined the man who seemed to be carrying the weight of a world.

His skull was nearly bald, his forehead bulging out, his hair about his ears, while his beard half hid a grimace; his eye was alert and sagacious.

“He does resemble him, though,” Phil observed.

“Resembles whom?” said Poufaille.

“Socrates the ancient.”

“So there was another?” Poufaille asked.

When his meal was over, Socrate arose, sad-mannered and dignified.

“He’s going over to the Café des Deux Magots,” said Poufaille. “Let’s go too—you’ll see him nearer.”

The Deux Magots was the rendezvous of different bands—the Band of Cherche-Midi (look out for twelve o’clock!), made up of rich Americans playing Bohemia and frequenting the Deux Magots in appropriate costume; the band of the Red-headed Goat, artists who despised art and occupied themselves with socialism; and there were others besides.

No one went to the Deux Magots for its coffee—they went there for Socrate and Caracal. There could be heard Socrate, musician, painter, and poet, speaking of high art; the new men drank in his words.

One day, in his enthusiasm, Charley, the millionaire Bohemian, proposed to take him to America to give lectures on “The Artistic Atmosphere”—by Jove!

“Are there any cafés in America?” Socrate asked.

“Hélas, non!”

“Then I stay where I am,” replied Socrate, the man of manly decisions; “when America has cafés I’ll go over—not before. Arrangez-vous!”

“You’re great, by Jove!” cried Charley.

Socrate dazzled the young. He talked of everything, social questions included.

“The distribution of wealth is badly made,” he said. “You have genius and no money—and you’ll be obliged to work, to produce and to sell! To sell, do you understand? To cheapen yourself, to prostitute your genius! In society as I dream of it, the artist, freed from material bonds, would soar in serene heights.”

Socrate at Deux Magots

Socrate cited the example of Lionsot, the Prix-de-Rome man, the sculptor of “Light-footed Achilles.” “He had the Prix de Rome—he has turned out badly! Yet there was good in him: to pay a wretched debt for food with an artistic autograph—that was noble!”

Most of them, in fact, acted like the famous Lionsot—for example, whenever Mère Michel demanded her money.

Caracal, who was not so deep but more brilliant, enjoyed a different prestige.

First of all, he lived in the Grands Quartiers, in a house with an elevator! so it was said. And while the others ate at Mère Michel’s, Caracal would be supping at Montmartre—suprême élégance!

Besides, he wrote in the newspapers. For a little article, for one’s name cited in the “Tocsin”—how low would not one stoop to obtain such a favor!

“‘Oysters and Melons,’ still life by X——,” or else “‘Old Tree-trunk,’ landscape by Z——”; and Z—— and X—— would march off together into immortality.

Caracal, behind his monocle, observed the different bands, in his heart deriding every one. He cross-questioned the comrades, and composed his newspaper chroniques on the café table.

“Eh bien! anything for my paper? A nice little scandal? Something strong?”

“I’ve got something new,” the good-natured Poufaille would say; “at my house, in the courtyard, a woman has been found dead.”

“Bravo! Young? pretty?”

“No, old.”

“And dead—how?” Caracal asked. “From drink?”

“No, of starvation. She was keeping alive the four children of a neighbor who was palsied; and she killed herself working.”

“Old and poor! but that’s not interesting; it’s only tiresome!”

And he went on with the conversation, in which music, poetry, love, sculpture, and crime made a horrible mixture.

Phil, coming up from the province, was made gloomy by all this noise. These never-ending dissertations made his head turn. It was the invasion of his brain by a world whose existence he had never suspected, of whose virtues and vices he had no idea.

When his work was over, the copains took walks with him through Paris and showed him such “Parisian” places as the Rue Mouffetard and the Rue Saint-Médard.

Paris proper did not count; you had to cross its whole width and go as far as Montmartre to become really Parisian. All had a single ambition—to be the painter of the wretchedly poor, and of street-women, an easy art brought into fashion by a few noisy successes. They initiated Phil to their Paris, to the Paris of the fosses aux lions, of leprous quays, of rag-pickers’ alleys, where children played hide-and-seek behind heaps of refuse. When Phil wished to go and dream by the banks of the Seine, they led him to the banks of the Bièvre, stinking like a charnel-house.

“Hein! Don’t you see it’s beautiful in color?” they said to him. Phil acknowledged, as he sniffed, that the Bièvre diffused an “artistic atmosphere.”

The truth is, Phil soon had enough of such loafing. Of course, he wasn’t a genius like the others—nothing came to him easily. An organism like Socrate, painter-poet-philosopher, was incomprehensible to him. Such a man, doing a colossal work on the Louvre and studying the social question in cafés, seemed great to him. As for himself, he was conscious that he had not such gifts. For him work was necessary, a great deal of work, and he set himself to it resolutely: studies at the life-class, sketches in the street, libraries, museums—he went everywhere and did a little of everything. He prepared ardently for his admission to the studio; he frequented the schools and appeared but seldom at the Deux Magots.

Socrate, isolated in pipe-smoke like a god in a cloud, condescended to take an interest in him.

“You work too much, young man! Look out! Think less of the material side and trust to inspiration. Work is good. Glory is better. Think of glory, young man!”

“Hélas!” Phil thought; “how can you have glory without work?”

He had it a few days later—the glory which was dear to the heart of Socrate.

It was the day of his reception to the studio. He had only to give his family name, first name, and particulars to be asked to get up on a table—“Step lively et plus vite que ça!”—and to see around him a howling crowd, armed with brushes and palettes, shouting: “Philidor!”

“An American speaking French—where did you come from? En voilà un drôle de type!”

“My—my ancestors were French,” said Phil.

“An American who has ancestors!”

“Philidor de Longueville—” stammered Phil.

“Philidor! Philidor!”

“Sing us something!”

“Take off your clothes!”

Phil began undressing.

“Step lively et plus vite que ça!”

Fifty savages were howling, yelling, laughing, and hissing around him.

“Enough! enough!”

“Encore! encore!”

“Paint him blue!”

“No, no!”

“Yes, yes!”

Phil was already stripped to the waist, facing the great window in full light. At his feet the confused mass of students was hushed—they stood in a circle around him. He heard their approving murmurs as they admired his thoroughbred muscles, his broad shoulders, the nervous slenderness of his waist.

“Bravo, l’Américain! There’s a man who’s built! You’d say he was an antique—c’est un costeau—he’ll be a great boy! I wouldn’t want him to punch me—he’s a good fellow, too! Enough! enough! Dress yourself, Philidor! A Ban for Philidor!”

“Pan! pan! pan! pan! pan!

Pan! pan!”

Thus Phil made acquaintance with the intoxication of glory.

Profiting by the moment of silence, a grave voice arose.

“The welcome!”

Phil, over the heads, saw amid the smoke a bearded face under a great bald forehead.

“Socrate has just come in,” a pupil said to Phil. “Socrate, an astonishing man—painter-poet!”

“Stripped to the waist”

“I know Socrate,” Phil said with pride.

“The welcome!” Socrate repeated.

“C’est ça! That’s it, the welcome!” the whole hall cried.

“That means you must pay the drinks for the studio,” the pupil explained. “It’s the custom here.”

“Messieurs, whenever you wish,” said Phil.

“At the Deux Magots and at once,” Socrate insisted, like a man accustomed to prompt decisions.

Phil dressed himself, and all went out into the streets, en route for the Deux Magots. Socrate, the glory of the studio, leader of men, and genius—Socrate himself gave his arm to Phil.

“Say, young man,” whispered Socrate, who was master of himself in any crowd, “you couldn’t lend me twenty francs?”

After this glorious day Phil’s existence seemed flat. From his childhood he had been accustomed to free air, to liberty in great spaces; and now he had to live a cloistered life, shut up in himself, but with work, it is true, for distraction. He worked sadly and alone.

In front of his window, on the other side of the Seine, stretched the Louvre. Beyond, far away, above the smoke of Paris, the church of the Sacré-Cœur lifted its Oriental dome. To the right was the Pont Neuf with the point of the island of the Cité and Notre Dame; to the left was the greenery of the Tuileries, the Grand Palais, the Arc de Triomphe.

Now and then Suzanne came. But Suzanne was far from being Helia. Her frivolity made Phil shy, though her babbling talk amused him. She kept Phil posted, telling him all the important news.

Poufaille, for example, was surely going to give up sculpture and become a painter—l’Institut would have to look out for itself! They had rejected his statue. “Eh bien, they’ll see! And then, paintings sell better!” added Suzanne.

“Does he sell his paintings?” Phil asked with astonishment. “What does he do for a living?”

“He has something to do at the Louvre, I believe,” Suzanne said. But she immediately became silent and bit her lip.

“A copy, of course—ornaments for a plafond?” Phil asked.

“I believe so,” Suzanne answered, fearing to say too much.

“There is some secret,” Phil thought.

But the very day she told him all this his door opened suddenly and Poufaille entered with a furious air.

“Ah, the pigs!” he cried, shaking his fist toward the Louvre; and he threw into a corner a tool which Phil took at first for a sculptor’s instrument. It was a spade.

“What’s that?” asked Phil. “What’s the matter?”

“That’s my spade; and the matter is they are pigs!”

“Have they taken your plafond away from you?” Phil asked on a chance.

“What plafond?” Poufaille cried. “They’re trying to keep me from cultivating my potatoes!”

“Potatoes?” exclaimed Phil.

“Phil doesn’t know about it,” Suzanne said to Poufaille.

“‘They are pigs!’”

“Eh bien—tant pis—it’s a secret,” Poufaille cried; “but I’m going to tell it. And, besides, a secret chokes me, like your collars!”

“If it’s a secret, I don’t want to know it,” Phil answered.

“Si, si! You must. I’ll tell it to you—under seal of secrecy! See here,” Poufaille went on; “I’m gardener at the Louvre!”

“Nothing wonderful in that,” Phil said, as he looked across the Seine at the flower-beds and green turf at the foot of the Louvre façade.

“Not there,” Poufaille explained. “Not down there—but up yonder! I’m gardener of the Louvre roofs!”

Looking where Poufaille pointed, Phil perceived, high, high up against the blue sky, tufts of greenery actually growing above that part of the Louvre Palace. He knew there were a few roof-gardens in Paris; but he had never noticed this one.

“Now you understand!” Poufaille said, with gesticulation. “There’s no means of keeping up an understanding with them! It has ended by wearing me out. Always roses, iris, and gillyflowers, and gillyflowers, iris, and roses. That sort of stuff won’t fill my stomach! I wanted to plant potatoes. I could live on them! But they’ve refused permission—and I tell you, they’re pigs!”

“But they—who are they?”

“Eh! They—when I say ‘they’ I mean him!”

“Well, who is he?”

“The old guardian of the Louvre roofs.”

“Ah, yes,” said Phil; “I saw him at Mère Michel’s. And so you’re his gardener?”

“I am—that is, I was!”

An idea came to Phil. He was stifled in his room; he might have—up there, close by—a garden to himself.

“Dis donc, old Poufaille, what if they gave me the gardener’s place?”

“That could be done easily; but I warn you—you’ll have no right to cultivate potatoes!”

“I’ll be content with flowers.”

“What eccentricity!” Poufaille exclaimed, in the height of astonishment. “Ah, you’re very American!”

CHAPTER VI
THE HANGING GARDENS OF PARIS

Henceforth Phil had glorious days. Poufaille, whom he made his assistant gardener, dug and watered and trimmed the alleys. It increased Phil’s expenses, but what a pleasure for him, after work, to pursue his dreams as he walked amid the flowers!

Long months had gone by since Phil’s reception into the studio. He had passed through many trials since then, and known discouragements and dogged labor and the joy of progress. Should he walk on a ball to earn his bread or hold the globe in his hand like a Cæsar? An effort, and then another, and an effort once more! The periods of want did not discourage him. Still he had a sad existence, and his only amusement was to come up here and breathe the pure air.

The garden of the Louvre, on top of Perrault’s colonnade, was a resting-place for the pigeons in their flight over Paris. They lighted there in bands, heedless of Phil and Poufaille. But one day the birds were all a-flutter. The hanging garden had its Semiramis—Helia!

Phil, while they held their dismayed flight above him, sat at the feet of Helia, who looked down and smiled at him. To the young girl it was a strange place. For thirty years the inspector of the Louvre roofs—the same man whom Phil had already seen at Mère Michel’s—had been making this garden, bringing up little by little the earth in which the plants grew, and the pebbles which covered the alleys. Boxes hidden among the foliage held great shrubs; the perfume of iris and gillyflower, of mignonette and roses, breathed from the flower-beds. Hanging over the borders were ripening currants and peaches and apples; and laurels gave their purple flowers. A whole row of statues and busts outlined the plots. Helia pointed to the busts.

“The one who looks like a circus-rider with his big mustaches—who is he?”

“Napoleon III,” Phil answered.

“And that other with his hair brushed up to a point like a clown?”

“That is Louis-Philippe.”

“And this one? and that one?”

Phil went on explaining his aërial paradise.

“This is Grévy, that is Carnot; here is M. Thiers—these are all official busts. When the government changes they pack them off to the attic, and the inspector has put them here to ornament his garden.”

“And this arm-chair on which I am sitting, with all its gilding rubbed off? Is that official also?” Helia asked, examining the wood, carved with palms, and the red velvet embroidered with the attributes of Law and Justice.

“It’s a relic of the Revolution of ’48,” answered Phil; “we found it only lately in the attic—it was King Louis-Philippe’s throne.”

“A king’s throne!” Helia said, jumping up. “How can you think of it for a poor girl like me? You would be better in it, Phil. Seat yourself; I wish you to—I command you!” she said, imitating what she considered the royal tone.

“Well, since you wish it—”

“Yes; it’s your place—and here is mine,” she added, as she seated herself at Phil’s feet. “Stay there, Phil—leave me at your feet. I am so happy!”

Happy! She could not have found words to express it all! For months and months and months she had thought of Phil every day and every hour—Phil, friend of her childhood and youth, who had loved her well, who would have protected her against Cemetery—Phil, her hero! And now she saw him again; he was there before her, her head was resting on his knees, in the calm of the beautiful day. How could she have told her happiness?

Phil, on his arrival in Paris, had thought less about Helia at first, overburdened as he was with all his new impressions; but the environment in which he lived was not pleasant to him. His illusions had been cast to earth; he was in an abyss of temptations from which he could not, like Suzanne, free himself by a smile or a shrug. But he soon regained possession of himself; he made of Helia an ideal. He knew no young girl of his own sphere, and he took refuge in the thought of Helia as in a place of safety. She personified his innocent youth. Phil still had in him the old Puritan austerity—he whose family Bible showed on its margin this proud device written in faded ink by some persecuted ancestor: “No judge but God, no woman but the wife!” He was grateful to Helia because her remembrance protected him; because she seemed to him always so pure.

Accordingly, when Helia came back, with the superb confidence of youth which believes in the everlastingness of things, Phil looked on her again with joy. In spite of the rude life she was leading, she was more modest and charming than ever; and she was so beautiful! Helia came into Phil’s life at a dangerous moment—an accomplice of the sun and the fragrance of roses.

“How beautiful she is!” Phil thought, as he looked at her faultless features and her eyes, in which a flame seemed burning.

“How handsome you are!” Helia said to him, scanning his firm expression and look of frankness.

They talked of one thing and another, thinking of each other all the while; or else they remained without speaking, he on his throne, she at his feet, their gaze lost in the tumultuous, motionless ocean of houses.

Paris was around them with its muffled murmur. At the height where they were, a pigeon’s cooing subdued the noise of three million human beings; at their feet carriages filled the streets, moving on ceaselessly, like a silent river. Helia looked to the horizon before her. First of all she descried, among the trees of the Quai de Conti, on the other side of the Seine, Phil’s little window. That was her first halting-place. La Monnaie (the Mint), with all its millions on one side, and the Institut (the palace of the Academy), with its Immortals, on the other, interested her less. For her they were simply side-pieces, setting Phil’s attic in relief. Just behind, over an immensity of roofs, the Palais du Luxembourg served as a background. Farther still, to right and left and everywhere, even in the distant blue, could be seen cupolas and spires, towers and domes. The church of the Sacré-Cœur rose above this ocean like a cliff at whose foot the smoke beat up like waves.

“How beautiful it is! Oh, Phil, is it not beautiful? And how happy I am!” said Helia.

In those first days the strangeness of the place intimidated her; even the busts took from the privacy of the spot. But she soon came to look on them as old friends, treating them as equals, as sovereign to sovereign. When Phil was painting and herself posing for him, she would tranquilly disembarrass herself of her collar and place it on the shoulders of Napoleon III and crown the blessed head of Louis-Philippe with her flowery hat. She sat on the old throne, and presided without ceremony over the assembled monarchs.

The little garden seemed immense to her, for it held their happiness. In reality, it occupied only one angle of the middle pediment above the colonnade which looks toward Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois.

From that corner, flat as a Russian steppe, stretched the immense oblong of the zinc roofs which surround the court of the Louvre, forming a desert six hundred yards long by thirty wide. Farther on, pointed roofs and pavillons and deep gutters invited to adventure, and they amused themselves in exploring their domain.

Especially the side toward the river attracted them. They went along the balustrade above the Place Saint-Germain, and turned to the right above the Quai du Louvre. An enormous piece of decoration, composed of bucklers and lances and fasces of piled arms sculptured in the stone, terminated the flat roof, like an army watching over the frontier of their empire. They went down a little iron ladder across the Galerie des Bijoux and turned to the left above the Galerie d’Apollon. Helia followed hesitatingly; it seemed to her that the whole city was looking at them.

In reality, no one could see her. They were shut off from the Seine by the leafy tree-tops; only the cries of children playing on the lawns came up to them, mingled with the twittering of sparrows. The next moment they found themselves in gutters deep as the beds of rivers. They discovered peaceable corners which the old kings of France seemed to have built expressly for themselves. At times they might have thought themselves in gardens of stone.

There were lofty chimneys profusely carved with garlands; the leaves of acanthus and laurel and oak were interlaced with strange flowers, among which laughed the loves and satyrs of the Renaissance. Cornucopias poured at their feet their marble fruits; and goddesses, standing against the blue sky, trumpeted through their shells the happiness of their loves.

In the distance their own garden seemed like an oasis of greenery. After long reveries it was sweet to them to come back and breathe the air of its roses and to hear the birds twitter in the shrubbery of their paradise.

Helia, since she had made Phil’s acquaintance, blushed for her ignorance. She had given to reading all the time left her by her exercises; there was in her something else than superb physical beauty. Sometimes, with the blood in her face and glad to be alive, after scaling with an acrobat’s agility the obstacles of the roof, she would stop and ask Phil questions which showed a thoughtful mind. She listened to his replies with attention, little by little ridding herself of the common speech and narrow views of her trade.

“Say, Phil,” she remarked to him one day as they were looking out over the great courtyard of the Louvre beneath them, “Blondin would have crossed that, dancing on a tight-rope! I believe I could do it, too,” she added, so light and strong did she feel. But she soon saw that such ideas were not pleasing to Phil: he loved her in spite of her being a circus-girl and not because she was one.

At once she spoke of other things.

“No one ever taught me anything, Phil; teach me, you who speak so well.”

Phil was radiant. Encouraged by her desire to know, he willingly became her educator and poured out his knowledge for her. He modeled Helia’s mind on his own. She belonged to him more and more. She thought like him, through him, for him. Her maiden intelligence gave itself up to him. Phil was grateful to her for the progress she was making. A look from her limpid eyes, a grasp of her hand, were his sweet reward. They moved him more deeply than words of love could have done; and more and more Helia grew to be a part of him. Phil talked to her of Paris and of the persons he knew there. Helia answered with her clear good sense.

“The dirty banks of the Bièvre—what an idea—when the Seine is so pretty at Saint-Cloud! But perhaps ugliness is easier to paint?”

“Perhaps,” said Phil. “That must be the reason.” “As for me,” Helia said, “I’m only an ignorant girl—I love beautiful things!”

“Look, Phil, what is that we see down there?” she said one day, as she was leaning over a skylight.

Phil looked; they were just above one of the halls of the Egyptian Museum, and they saw strange objects beneath them—statues of gods, mummies of kings, a pell-mell of fallen grandeur. A squatting Sphinx lifted its head and stared at them. Through the dusty glass they might have thought they were looking into an entire past, engulfed in the depths of the sea. A broken column spoke of the crumbling of temples, a mutilated god of the overthrow of altars, a dun-colored sarcophagus of the heaping up of the sand beneath desert winds. Phil explained these dead things to Helia and gave them life.

“Ah,” Helia said, “what happiness it is to know!”

They were alone, half kneeling on the roof, their heads bent toward the skylight; around them Paris murmured like an ocean. They could have imagined themselves the survivors of a world destroyed—the only woman and the only man escaped from the cataclysm, while the mysterious Sphinx raised its head as if to say: “Love! for life passes as a dream!”

Phil and Helia arose in silence and came back to their oasis, while above them, in the blue sky, the doves pursued one another.

On the Roofs of the Louvre

“Look at the birds,” said Helia. “Come quick and give them their grain.”

The doves, as free as those of St. Mark’s or of the Guildhall, had quickly accustomed themselves to her, and the presence of Helia did not trouble them.

It was a pleasure to Phil to see Helia in the midst of their cooings and the beating of their wings. They came to eat from her hand. As one of them lighted on her shoulder, Helia had an inspiration. She took the dove and gave a long kiss to its wings.

“Here, Phil! Do like me!” she said, presenting the other wing to him. “And now, fly away!” she added, letting loose the bird, who in its flight seemed to sow Paris with kisses.

And so the days passed. It was usually in the afternoons that they met. In the mornings Phil worked and Helia studied at home or else rehearsed at the circus. Poufaille took care of the garden. The inspector made his rounds, and sometimes, in the afternoon, watched Helia and Phil from his hiding-place behind a bush.

The old man “of my time” confessed that lovers still existed, and that these were real and kissed each other as they did in “his time” under the Third Empire. But usually they were alone. Suzanne came only now and then to pick a rose.

“What bears you are!” she said as she looked at Phil and Helia. “How can you stay in this desert, with nothing but flowers and flowers, and pigeons and pigeons? You’ll not come to the Bon Marché? Good-by, then!” And she would go tumbling down the stairs.

Phil painted a few studies from Helia. She posed for her portrait amid the flowers. Sometimes, in hours of discouragement, when his work went badly and his future seemed doubtful and the struggle became too painful, Phil would dream as he looked at Helia.

“I will take her out of the life she is leading,” he said to himself. “I’ve promised her! I will tear her from her surroundings; I will make a cultivated woman of her yet. It is God who has led her to cross my path. I—I—”

And for a long time he would remain lost in thought.

In truth, it was a serious moment for him. Phil was too young, too much left to himself, to be content for any length of time with this simple rôle of friendship. He was caught at his own game; and, seeing her day by day more beautiful and good, it seemed to him that he could no longer live without her.

What, then? Should he play with love, taking it for a toy? Should he fashion her heart only to break it? No! The blood which his veins inherited forbade him such meanness. He would have despised himself as if he had been the dust of Sodom.

Should he marry her, then?

“Helia is devotedness itself, tenderness, grace,” he thought; “her poverty is the sister of my own: we are equal. And yet, no! it is impossible, really! I cannot marry Helia—a circus-girl!”

But this objection disappeared before the lofty, frank, luminous look of Helia and the candor of her smile.

And still the days passed on. It was splendid weather. Never had they so appreciated their little oasis, where there was always some breeze while at their feet the city was stifling in the dull heat; though even they themselves were sometimes almost overcome by it.

One afternoon Phil stuck up his canvas in the tool-shed and stretched himself in the shade near Helia. They talked of a thousand things or were silent for a time, clasping each other’s hands. Suddenly Phil jumped up.

“Let us go!” he said. “It is time. We never stayed so late.”

But they found the door closed.

The guardian, no doubt, had glanced around the oasis, and, seeing no one, had closed the door and gone down.

“He must have thought we had gone away,” said Phil. “We are prisoners till to-morrow!”

“What an adventure!” said Helia. Both laughed heartily.

Their supper was delightful. Poufaille would have regretted there was no garlic or potatoes; but there were strawberries, and two cakes which Phil had brought for lunch, and good fresh water instead of wine. They had never eaten better; it was as charming as child’s play. Helia cut the fruits, dividing the oranges and arranging the parts on leaves from the bushes. To drink, she dipped the glass in a bucket of water at her side.

“Here, Phil, drink!” she said, as she offered him the glass.

“You first!” answered Phil.

Helia touched her lips to the water, and Phil drank off the glass.

“It’s better than champagne,” he said.

“Here, Phil, here’s a beautiful strawberry!”

“Taste it first!” said Phil.

Helia put the berry between her lips, and Phil took it from her with a kiss. The child’s play was growing dangerous.

“Marchons! Now let’s take a walk!” said Phil.

“C’est ça! Let’s climb our Himalaya!” cried Helia.

This was the name they had given to the Pavilion Sully, which lifts its enormous bulk between the Louvre courtyard and the Cour du Carrousel. It was the culminating-point of the roof. But the excursion was impossible in full daylight; they would have been seen from below; by night no one could see them.

They passed through their wilderness and, following the roof on the other side, came to the foot of the pavillon. There, in the shadow of a chimney as big as a tower, iron steps had been placed along the dome from bottom to top, and an iron rod at the side served as a hand-rail.

“En route!” said Phil.

The ascent, which was at first straight up, curved little by little over the round dome; then there was again a straight-up ascent along the crown of the dome; and when this was passed they were at the top. Helia followed without difficulty—it was nothing for her.

They were on their Himalaya. To right and left opened the abysses of the courtyards below, and on every side the immense roofs with their humps and turrets and projections stood out black as ebony against the glow of Paris. Lights sparkled above and below—in the heavens and from the city, which seemed another heaven at their feet.

La Villette, the Trocadéro, Montrouge, and the Bastille lighted up their constellations. The Champs-Élysées stretched out like a comet. Montmartre shone palely along the horizon like a far-off nebula; the great circle of the boulevards belted the city with a Milky Way. High up among the stars the Eiffel Tower lifted its torch, like the pole-star.

“How grand it all is!” said Helia. She was on the wide parapet, and her hair, loosened as she climbed up, floated in the wind; her breast rose and fell as she caught her breath again. A thousand broken lights came to them where they stood amid the stars. You might have said they were Youth and Love in the center of the universe.

“How beautiful you are!” said Phil.

“Let us go down,” said Helia.

But as they climbed down there was a sudden cry. A rusty step yielded under Phil’s weight, and, letting go the hand-rail, he glided toward the abyss.

Without losing her head, with the rapidity and cool decision of a trained acrobat, stretching out one arm and holding hard with the other, and with her breast flat against the wounding rungs, Helia by a mighty effort grasped Phil’s wrist as he slid past her. The hand-rail held firm, and Phil was saved. Then they came back again to their oasis.

“Without you I should have been lost,” said Phil.

“Oh, no!” Helia answered, laughing bravely. “We were almost down, close to the roof; you would have had a slide, that’s all!”

Phil was moved to tears.

“Come, pull yourself together,” Helia said, “and then to supper!”

She reached out her hand and took an apple gracefully and offered it to Phil.

“Here, eat!”

Her simple gesture in offering him the apple had, to Phil’s mind, something grandly Biblical in it, and the idea overpowered him. As she held out her hand Phil saw that it was bleeding, and exclaimed with anxiety.

“It is nothing,” she answered; “it was just now—perhaps while I was holding on to the railing.”

With infinite respect he put his lips to the wound—and suddenly he seemed to be drinking love at its source; the fire ran through his veins; he seized Helia with both arms and kissed her full on the mouth, crushing his lips against hers!

“Helia, I love you! I love you, and you shall be my wife!”

“Your wife! Alas, a poor girl like me! How can you think of it, Phil?”

“And I will serve you on my knees!” said Phil.

He pressed Helia to his heart, and the girl wept for joy. Phil drank the tears on her cheeks, and murmured words of love—with Heaven as witness.

CHAPTER VII
A RUDE AWAKENING

Now followed a time of struggle and want; but Phil supported his trials gaily, and gave the same enthusiasm to his work which he had given to his love.

At the school Phil was successful. The walls of his room became covered with sketches,—life studies, landscapes, compositions,—and more and more studies of Helia, studies without end, all adorably graceful, and showing at once the artist and the lover. All the phases of their existence were there, from the little Saint John, and the girl mending her maillot on the steps of the circus-wagon, to the present Helia, the beautiful young woman whom he had decided to make his companion for life.

It was without fear that Phil felt this increase of responsibility. It was even necessary that Helia should use all her authority over him to persuade him to let her go where her engagements called her. He was too poor to pay her forfeits, and he consented. Soon Helia was to go abroad. This would be the last time they should separate; Phil swore it. When Helia should come back, it would be for always. And what a woman he would make of her! Helia should be his masterpiece.

The portrait he had painted from her would be worth a Salon medal,—his master assured him so,—and that would bring him out of his difficulties. Orders would doubtless follow; but, while waiting, he would have to live. Phil here and there sold a few little paintings. Sometimes he had to run all over Paris to accomplish this; but he told Helia where he was going, and they would come back arm in arm like brother and sister, while her smile scattered all his cares to the winds.

His troubles had their reward in great happiness. There were vases full of flowers upon his table and pretty curtains at his window; and, on his birthday, Helia, with a bouquet, gave him a kiss into which she put all the friendship and gratitude with which her heart was filled.

There were also more substantial joys. They had even as a supreme hope a chicken tied by the leg in a corner of the room. They had intended fattening it. Helia dreamed of a banquet to which she would invite Poufaille and Suzanne; but the chicken was not ready. The banquet was put off, and the day now came when Helia was to go away.

Phil experienced the sadness of farewells at a railway station on the crowded platform; there was the grasping of hands, the promises to write, and the anguish of seeing the train disappear in the night.

He came back overcome with grief. For the first time the poverty of his room overwhelmed him; the paper falling from the walls, his sketches fading upon them, all was somber and desolate in spite of the flowers on the table and the curtains at the window.

He had never noticed it before, for Helia’s presence had absorbed him wholly. Now he realized that he was living in an attic and he blushed at his poverty.

Was he to fritter away his life in this way? How could he—man that he was—endure this? With all his desire he had not been able to keep in Paris the young girl he loved—to tear her from her wandering life and marry her. He, so free and strong, could not rid himself of these bonds of poverty? He swore that he would be free even though he should kill himself with work.

CHAPTER VIII
THE END OF THE GUITAR

One effort and then another, and little by little Phil freed himself. So far his health could stand it. He had glimpses of better days. Along with his will his talent also grew strong. His progress was rapid; step by step he mounted upward; and the horizon grew wider before him.

The day when it was certain that Phil would have his Salon medal, Socrate drank off his absinthe savagely and declared:

“That fellow is lost!”

In a few words he put the case before the comrades.

Phil, the Phil they had known as such a “seeker,” with so much personality, was knuckling down! He was turning bourgeois—he was going to have his medal! In other words, he was down on his knees to tickle the soles of the feet of the old bonzes of the Academy!

“That’s no artist! not what I call an artist!” Socrate went on. And it was plain from the fashion in which Socrate ordered another absinthe that he, at least, would never come to terms! Good old Poufaille was dumb with admiration.

“What a pity Phil’s not here!” he thought.

“‘Only put your soul into it!’”

A few days later he ran across Phil, who looked tired.

“You’re lost, you know; you’re in a bad way!” Poufaille said to him as soon as he saw him; and he added mysteriously: “You ought to go to see Socrate—such a wonderful man, mon cher!”

“Come on,” answered Phil, who wanted a walk.

They found Socrate at the café, smoking his pipe and talking art. Half hidden in a cloud of smoke, he raised his head and looked at Phil.

“You’re doing things that please. Look out—take care! You ought to do powerful things! Take any subject at all—a bottle, a pumpkin, if you wish! it doesn’t matter—only put your soul into it!”

“Put my soul into a bottle!” said Phil, amused.

Socrate did not admit any discussion of his pronouncements, and struck Phil dumb with a glance.

“I tell you, you must paint with your soul!”

“But I always do my best!” Phil said.

“Peuh! your best!” Socrate had an expression of unspeakable pity for Phil’s best.

Caracal now and then put in a brief appearance at the Deux Magots, looking from Phil to Socrate and laughing to himself.

“Socrate is right; you ought to do high art! It would be very funny—you who are lucky enough to be the lover—”

“What?” cried Phil.

“—of an acrobat! There’s inspiration for you! The trapeze is high art; it soars—very high!”

“Another word and I’ll knock you down!” was Phil’s answer.

“Calm yourself, mon cher! calm yourself!”

But Phil meanwhile was changing visibly. The life he had been leading for some time had worn him out. He now worked less and less, and came more and more under the influence of Socrate. He expended his energy at the café, and in his turn traced out masterpieces on the table. He explained his ideas to Socrate, and discussed them until the landlord turned out the gas and wiped off the masterpieces with his napkin.

“Phil will go far!” Socrate said as he clapped him on the shoulder, adding like a truly superior man:

“You haven’t twenty francs about you?”

One day Socrate brought with him, wrapped up in a newspaper, an object which he laid on the bench.

“My guitar,” he said.

Socrate’s guitar! Every one was acquainted with it. Socrate, painter-poet-philosopher, was a musician as well. He “heard colors” and “saw sounds.” He had undertaken a gigantic work—to set the Louvre to music and make colors perceptible to the ear.

He took notes on the spot, colored photographs, and then came home and played them on his guitar with the hand of a genius. Violet was si; he made sol out of blue; green was a fa—and so on up to red, which was do.

Phil looked at the guitar with respect; and Socrate had an idea.

“Tiens!” he said with a noble air; “take my guitar. It has sounded the ‘Mona Lisa’—it has played Rubens and Raphael! It has thrilled with beauty; it contains the Louvre! My soul has vibrated within it! Do a masterpiece with it! Show on your canvas all that it holds! Take it! Carry it away with you!”

And Phil had taken away the guitar.

“All right,” he said the next day, “I will do a masterpiece. They shall see if I am an artist or a pork-packer.”

He resolved to “hatch a masterpiece” from this guitar which had thrilled with the soul of Socrate. From that time he went out no longer. He passed whole days in his room, distracted only by the cackling of the chicken in its corner, that brought him back to the realities of life.

“Ah, ha! You’re hungry, are you?” he said, as he threw the chicken some crumbs. Then he looked at the guitar as if he would say: “We’ll have it out together!”

Phil struggled. He dreamed and pondered, and hunted all sorts of material for his sketches. He went to the Louvre to study pictures that had guitars in them.

“The old masters knew nothing about guitars,” Phil said one evening at the café. Even the comrades laughed at this.

“How’s the guitar? Does it go?” they asked him.

They spoke only of guitars—guitar this and guitar that—as if all the estudiantinas of all the Spains had met together at the Deux Magots.

“It will drive me crazy!” said Phil.

“You will produce a masterpiece,” replied Socrate.

One evening Phil came in radiant. “I have it!” he cried.

He explained his idea. Women had been painted in the moonlight, in the sunlight, and in the light of flames. Eh bien! he, Phil, would light his woman with reflections from a guitar!

“You see, I have a woman’s head in shadow,” Phil explained to Socrate, as he made lines with his pencil on the table; “and the guitar itself is lighted up by a ray from heaven—do you understand? Music, an echo of heaven, enlightens our sad humanity!”

“Bravo!” exclaimed Socrate.

Poufaille, in his emotion, pressed Phil’s hand.

“I’ll give you a write-up!” said Caracal; “something really good.” But he added to himself: “So you’re painting echoes from heaven, pork-packer that you are!”

Phil, under the guidance of Socrate, began his picture. It was hard to set himself again to real work after so many months of doing nothing. He exhausted his strength and spirits over his canvas. He ate next to nothing and grew thin visibly; he lived merely a life of the brain.

“Oh, if I could only have a great success and get rich,” he said to himself, “I would have Helia come back!”

He wrote long letters to her. Helia’s replies breathed love and the lofty confidence she had in him. At the bottom of the page there was always a circle traced with a pen, and to this he touched his lips.

It was Helia whom he was painting in the background of his picture—a Helia illuminated by a strange light like a vision.

But Phil, worn out and bloodless, no longer had the strength to fix her features on canvas. He was all the time beginning over again, floundering in his powerlessness.

Every now and then Socrate came to see him and borrowed his last piece of money: “You haven’t five francs about you?—and this old overcoat, lend it to me till to-morrow!

“Tiens! a chicken!” Socrate went on, continuing his inspection; and he winked at Phil and made a gesture of wringing the fowl’s neck—“like that! couïc!” Then he looked at the picture.

“It doesn’t go,” Socrate said, rubbing his hands.

At other times the picture seemed to go better.

“Look out! You’re going too fast!” Socrate said, in a fright at the idea that his guitar might be brought back to him and that he might no longer have a pretext to come and borrow five francs or an overcoat. Suzanne also paid Phil visits. He often spoke to her of Helia.

“You’re always thinking about her!” Suzanne said, as she lighted a cigarette, taking two or three puffs and throwing it away with a pouah!

“Well, you must be in love with Helia!” she continued. “I had no idea of it! It won’t last, mon cher!”

She looked at him with mocking eyes.

“What do you mean by that?” Phil asked.

“Oh, I don’t mean to offend you, Monsieur Phil. I believe you’re sincere!”

“You think I’m sincere!”

“My dear Phil, I’ve seen men dragging themselves at my knees,—do you hear? dragging themselves at my knees with tears in their eyes,—men who wouldn’t look at me now!”

“I’m not that kind,” said Phil.

“So much the better!” said Suzanne, becoming suddenly grave. “I’m happy for Helia’s sake—very happy, because she thinks so, too!”

Phil took up his palette; but Suzanne could not stay quiet.

“Say, Monsieur Phil, how good you are, all the same!”

“I? Why?”

“You don’t see they’re making fun of you?”

“Who?”

“Why, Caracal’s set—Socrate among the rest,” Suzanne answered.

“I don’t believe it,” Phil said. “Socrate is an enthusiast, but he’s a real artist!”

“Penses-tu, bébé!” Suzanne murmured to herself. Then, passing before the glass, with a twist of her finger she put a lock of hair in place and went out.

Phil seldom had such visits. For the most part of the time he was alone in front of his picture which did not go. There was no end to his fumbling efforts. There were always parts to be done over—and he never succeeded in doing them right.

Socrate arrived one fine evening with his hands in his pockets.

“I’m coming to live with you!” he said. “Landlords are idiots, on my word! Talent and thought never count with them. It’s dough they want. If it weren’t for you I’d have to sleep out of doors!”

He sat down on a chair and added: “You’re willing?”

“Certainly,” Phil said, as he drew a mattress near the stove. “You can sleep there for the present. We’ll see later on.”

From that day an infernal life began for Phil. Socrate, stretched out by the stove, worried him with advice and made him begin the same thing twenty times over; he encumbered the room, smoking like a locomotive or sleeping until noon. When the thinker’s ferocious snoring quite deafened Phil, he would whistle gently to stop it. But a steamer’s siren would not have awakened Socrate. Then Phil, in his exasperation, would shake him by the shoulder.

“Let me be! I am thinking of something—hum—something,” Socrate would stammer; and the sleeper would begin “thinking” again. It was a continual torture. Phil, moreover, was so weak that he could not even get angry.

One morning Suzanne came in with her arms loaded down with mistletoe and packages. “My friends, to-morrow is Christmas day,” she said, as she entered.

“Ah!” Phil answered.

“What—ah?” Suzanne took him up. “Didn’t you know it, then?”

“No,” said Phil, who was now only a shadow of himself, living on mechanically from day to day.

“But didn’t you see,” asked Suzanne, “this pretty Christmas card that Helia sent you from London?”

“Ah, yes!” said Phil; “true!”

“Phil is sick,” thought Suzanne, “and very sick! He’s losing his memory. It’s high time that Helia came back!”

“Let me prepare the feast,” she said next day. “You’ll see what it will be! Men don’t understand such things! Phil, let me do it, will you? I’ve invited Poufaille. We shall be four at table. There is a fork for each of us!”

“I don’t eat much,” Phil answered.

“Socrate will eat for you, Monsieur Phil,” said Suzanne. She added: “I have a favor to ask you first: I don’t want you to kill the chicken!”

“But we shall have nothing else for the meal,” said Phil.

“Oh, Monsieur Phil, let her live! She’s so amusing! She would follow me in the street, and people would take her for a dog. But wouldn’t they laugh!”

“What a child you are!” Phil said.

“And then I’ll like you so much for it, and I’ll make you a nice salad,” Suzanne went on, “and I’ll get four sous’ worth of fried potatoes.”

“Granted!”

Just then they heard a couïc, and Socrate threw the chicken with its neck wrung at the feet of Suzanne.

“Enough sentimentality,” he said.

Seeing the turn things were taking, Socrate, who was not willing to miss his meal, had slyly stretched out his hand, seized the chicken, and put an end to it.

“Oh, you wretch!” cried Suzanne.

“Bah! the chicken had to end by being eaten,” Phil said; “let’s not quarrel for that!”

Suzanne made everything ready. She cleared the table of paints and palette, spread the cloth and dishes deftly, and sang as she did the cooking. Poufaille came in, bringing a cheese made of goat’s milk and garlic which he had received that morning from his village.

“He encumbered the room”

“What smells like that? Pouah!” Suzanne cried.

“Do you mean my cheese?” said Poufaille, in a pet.

The time had come. With emotion Suzanne placed the chicken on the table.

“Your chicken isn’t cooked; you’re not much on cooking!” cried Poufaille, who had not forgiven the insult to his cheese.

“I don’t know how to cook, don’t I?” Suzanne exclaimed; “and I don’t understand salads, either? No, perhaps, hein!”

Socrate, with his nose in his plate, ate like an ogre, disdainful of idle quarrels.

“The salad?” Phil said, to keep up the gaiety. “Your salad has a little too much vinegar.”

“My salad spoiled—oh, insolents! It’s worth while taking trouble to please you!” And Suzanne began weeping, or a pretense of weeping. But, suddenly losing her temper, she seized the frying-pan with a “Tiens! tiens, donc! et aïe donc! This will teach you!” and while chicken and salad flew across the floor, bang! she threw the pan full tilt into the painted guitar. Phil’s picture was rent in twain.

“Oh, forgive me!” Suzanne cried.

All had passed as quick as lightning. Suzanne was at Phil’s knees, weeping, begging pardon—oh! how could she have done it, she who knew all the trouble he had taken? And she kept on repeating in her despair: “Oh, Phil, forgive me!”

Phil said not a word; he was pale as death. Poufaille had fallen backward, and, sitting on his cheese, which had fallen under him, looked in turn at Phil and Suzanne. Socrate was thunderstruck.

“Oh, forgive me, Phil, forgive me!” Suzanne went on repeating.

But she did not finish. To her terror, she saw Phil arise, turn, and fall headlong.

CHAPTER IX
ALAS! POOR HELIA!

Phil had been struck down by a rush of blood to the brain. For a long time he had been living as in a dream. His fits of absent-mindedness had already amazed Suzanne. Too artificial a life, constant exasperation, his fierce persistence at work which was beyond his present strength, and the ravages of a fixed idea had prepared him for brain-fever. The ruin of his guitar picture was the last blow.

Suzanne quickly drove Socrate out of the room, and took the mattress which was lying on the floor and put it back in its place. She hastily made the bed, and then, with the help of Poufaille, placed Phil on it. He was still without motion, pale and bloodless, like a dead man.

Suzanne ran to the Charité Hôpital. She was acquainted with some of the young hospital doctors, and she explained the case as well as she could. One of them followed her to Phil’s studio and made a long examination of him. As soon as he entered the disordered room with its tale of want, the young doctor understood all; he had already cared for victims like this of the ideal.

Phil came back to life and moaned feebly.

“He is not dead!” Suzanne said.

“People don’t die like that!” the doctor replied, continuing his examination. “Tell me how it happened.”

Suzanne told the doctor everything.

“It is as I thought,” he said. “We’ll pull him out of it. But, first of all, take away all those canvases—put the room in order; and those portraits of a young girl, always the same one, there along the wall—take them all away! You must deliver him from that vision when he comes back to himself!”

“But he can’t live without her,” Suzanne said.

The doctor smiled sadly.

“If he only remembers her!” he murmured. “No lesion; long overdoing followed by anemia, too strong emotion, and doubtless some fixed idea,” the young doctor rambled on as he looked at the portraits of Helia which Poufaille was taking down. “It’s a kind of intoxication of the nervous system—a railway brain, as it were; we’ll give him things to build him up, and rest and silence in the meantime.”

“Doc—doctor!” Poufaille stammered, livid with fear, “is the disease catching?”

“No fear!” the doctor answered, as he glanced at the hairy face of Poufaille, with its crimson health. “It only comes from exaggerated intellectual functions.”

“Oh, I’m better already!” said Poufaille, reassured.

Phil was delirious for a week.

His mind, sunk in abysses of sleep, made obscure efforts to come back to the light of day. Sometimes an ocean of forgetfulness rolled him in its waves. Sometimes great flashes of light illuminated his consciousness in its least details and gave to his dreams the hard relief of marble.

Oftenest he simply wandered, mingling Helia and Suzanne, seeing in his nightmare guitars, yellow on one side and blue on the other, like worlds lighted up at once by sun and moon—a whole skyful of guitars, amid which, motionless, the skull of the poet-painter-sculptor-musician thought constantly, never sleeping—until the thought burned like a red-hot iron, and then Phil put his hand to his own burning forehead and asked for something to drink.

But there was some one to anticipate his wish. A gentle hand raised his head on the pillow and an anxious face bent over him, seeking to read his eyes, now dulled, and now brilliant with the light of fever.

“Is it Helia?” Phil asked.

“It is I!” Helia answered. “Don’t speak—rest! You must rest!”

Yes, Helia had come back. Suzanne, in her belief that Phil was on the point of dying, had not been able to resist the impulse to write to her. It did not occur to Helia to ask if the disease was catching. She gave up everything. She paid her forfeit, took her leave of absence, her own good money going to pay another attraction as a substitute. Nearly all her savings went in this way—but she heeded it not. Nothing in the world would have held her back. She had to be with Phil. She alone had the right to tend him. Another with her own betrothed in time of danger? No!

Helia nursed him night and day. Suzanne helped her, and Poufaille did the errands, going for food to Mère Michel’s and for scuttles of coal to the charbonnier. From morning to night his heavy shoes shook the staircase.

“Why don’t you give him wine?” he said, as he looked at the sick man.

“Why not goat’s-milk cheese?” retorted Suzanne. “Will you keep silence, grand nigaud? Go and get some wood!”

“And the money to buy it with?”

“Here!” Helia said.

With what joy Helia watched Phil’s progress toward health!

“Dear, dear friend, my little Saint John,” Phil said to her. “How can I ever thank you for all you are doing for me!”

He kissed her hand or put it to his burning forehead. Once he rose up and looked around the room saying: “Who is there?”

“It is I—Helia!”

“Who is Helia?”

“Helia, your friend—your Helia; I am here with Suzanne!”

“Out, wretches!” And he fell back exhausted.

“Leave him alone,” said the young doctor. “In a fortnight he will be on his feet and I’ll send him to the country.”

Helia, who was forced to depart, went away. Her leave was over. Besides, she had no more money. Phil grew better and better. At first he was surprised to find his room so changed.

“Where are my pictures?” he asked. “What have you done with them?”

“We’ve put them one side—you can see them later,” answered Suzanne.

“What were they about?” inquired Phil. “Anyway, it’s all the same to me!”

The young doctor, with the good-fellowship that binds students together, accompanied him to a public sanatorium not far from Paris. From that moment Phil changed visibly. He who had been so anemic in the vitiated atmosphere of his studio, with his nose always over his oils and colors, and his eyes fixed on the canvas, in Socrate’s company, had now abundance of pure air and walks through the open fields. He felt himself reborn, although his head was a little empty and his body stiff and sore like one just taken from the torture-rack. But good food and quiet did wonders for him. He had an excellent constitution, made for work and struggle, and it came up again.

With a beefsteak an idea would arrive; and with a glass of wine joy entered his heart. His blood, renewed, gave him new feelings. He had again become a man, after the illness in which his youth had been shipwrecked.

Helia, anxious to see him, came back one day. How difficult it had been for her—slave to her profession as she was, and still bound to it for many months! Never mind—she came! Phil was better, Phil was cured. She would have his first smile; he would be her Phil in health as in sickness. But at the gate of the sanatorium a magnificent guardian, adorned with brass buttons and a gilt-banded cap, stopped her. It was society closing its doors to the intrusion of vagabonds. This man of law and order asked Helia why, how, in whose name, by what right, she wished to see Phil, and he refused the favor to her, the mountebank who—had one ever seen the like?—pretended to be his betrothed!

Phil came back to Paris cured. Strength and the daring of courage returned with him. His long rest seemed to have increased his energy tenfold. He went forth from his past as one escapes from a prison, without even looking backward. The young doctor had guessed only too truly: Phil had forgotten many things!

Phil, who had received some unexpected money from his uncle in Virginia, now changed his quartier, and set himself up in better style; and the Salon medal gave him his start. His professor made him acquainted with the Duke of Morgania, who ordered from him the great decorative picture of Morgana. The Comtesse de Donjeon asked his aid for her charity sale.

One effort and then another, and this time Phil would reach the goal. He had one of those happy dispositions which attract luck as the magnet attracts iron filings. He was ready; life was open before him like slack water at sea; there was only wanting to him a good breeze to swell his sail.

From what side was it to blow?

“A magnificent guardian stopped her”

CHAPTER X
MISS ETHEL ROWRER OF CHICAGO

The breeze blew from the West.

Miss Ethel Rowrer, daughter of the great Redmount Rowrer, had just arrived in Paris. She was preceded by the fame of her father, the famous Chicagoan, a business Napoleon. From his office, the center of a network of telegraph and telephone lines, he communicated with the financial universe; and his tremendous toil was building up a world-wide fortune. He thought himself poor, for he had not yet reached the billion mark; but his fame grew. Ethel adored this father. She was proud that men spoke of him. She felt herself a part in his glory; but, really, she could have wished people should pay less attention to herself. Every day the society papers devoted space to her.

“Yesterday evening, Miss Ethel Rowrer, daughter of the famous milliardaire, was present at the opera”—and so forth; and there followed a description of her dress.

“To-morrow, Miss Ethel Rowrer, daughter of the famous milliardaire, accompanied by her grandmother, will be present at the horse show.”

They told how she passed her day; people learned that she had tried on gowns at Paquin’s, chosen a hat at Stagg’s, eaten chocolates at Marquis’s—while in reality she had stayed at home with “grandma.”

All this gossip annoyed her. One day, however, she laughed heartily. She learned from a paper her intention of buying the tomb of Richard the Lion-hearted to make a bench of it in her hall at Chicago. This earned for Ethel a newspaper article, grave and patriotic.

“Foreigners, touch not our illustrious dead!” was the journalist’s conclusion in the evening “Tocsin.”

Richard the Lion-hearted went the rounds of the head-lines of the Paris yellow press. Then, one fine day, the papers spoke of an interview of the ex-Empress Eugénie with Miss Ethel Rowrer, daughter of the famous milliardaire, R. K. Rowrer. Vieillecloche, in his “Tocsin,” had seen and heard everything. He accused America of mixing itself up with French politics. Miss Ethel did not read the article, otherwise she might have gathered that the “Tocsin” was very ill-informed. That she had seen the empress was true, but there had been no word of politics.

The empress was making a short stay in Paris, as she did every year. Her sorrows had given the former sovereign the love of retirement. She passed her days by her window at the hotel, sometimes looking sadly toward the empty place where the Tuileries had been.

“I see by the paper that Miss Ethel Rowrer is in Paris,” the empress said one day to her dame de compagnie. “Is it the granddaughter of the Rowrer I knew? The emperor had great esteem for him; I remember him well. Mr. Rowrer was charged by the government at Washington with a report on the Exposition of 1867. My husband loved to look into everything himself. Social questions were near to his heart, and it happened that in the evenings he would receive Mr. Rowrer in his private cabinet. The extreme simplicity and moral robustness of the man struck the emperor. He found him full of new ideas which he would have wished to apply in France. I was present at one of their conversations. My little son was playing around them. Ma chère ami,” Eugénie continued, “I remember it as if it were yesterday. I beg of you to find out if Miss Rowrer is the granddaughter of that man.” The next day she learned that this was the fact.

“I should have been astonished if it were not so,” said Eugénie. “The emperor foresaw the success of Mr. Rowrer; he knew men.” She at once made known to Miss Rowrer that she would be happy to receive her; and Ethel came. Entering, she saw but one thing: in an arm-chair by the window a lady, with her head covered by a black mantilla, sat in the clear sunlight like a dark figure of sorrow.

“Madame,” said the lady in waiting, “I present to you Miss Ethel Rowrer.”

Ethel saw the dark figure rise from the chair.

“Thank you for coming!” Eugénie said. “I am glad when people come to see me,” and she held out her hand.

Ethel bore the hand to her lips and bowed with a grace which charmed Eugénie.

“Be seated, Miss Rowrer,” said the empress; “here, beside me,” and she pointed with the slender hand of an aged woman to a seat.

Ethel sat down. She was in the presence of Eugénie de Guzman and Porto-Carrero, Countess of Teba, Marquise of Mopa and Kirkpatrick, Empress of the French—Eugénie the beautiful, the beloved; and it was an old lady warming herself in the sun and looking around timidly.

“How happy I am, madame,” said Ethel, “to thank you for the kindnesses shown long ago to my grandfather! His Majesty the Emperor loaded him with favors.”

The empress was greatly touched by the sincere accents of Ethel and her faithful remembrance. No one thanked her, now that she was nothing; and this daughter of a milliardaire had not forgotten slight kindnesses done long ago to her grandfather.

“I thank you,” she said. “The emperor had great esteem for your grandfather; he liked to talk with him. Mr. Rowrer was a remarkable man—rather, he was a man!” added the empress, who had seen so many who were not men.

Ethel blushed with pleasure. Newspaper head-lines constantly made sport of her family, and here was the one-time arbitress of Europe glorifying her grandfather and saying to her “I thank you!”

Then they chatted for a while. Eugénie admired this young girl in her simple elegance and superb health. At the court itself she had never seen a figure more princess-like and radiant.

“When I was a little girl,” Ethel said, “my grandfather often spoke to us of those days of glory.”

At the word “glory” Eugénie interrupted her.

Miss Ethel and Empress Eugénie

“Miss Rowrer,” she said, pointing with her hand toward the Tuileries, “see what remains of it. There is nothing left. All has passed, all has changed around me. This was once my Paris. It is now yours. I say yours, for, don’t you see, mademoiselle, the true sovereigns are young girls like you with their grace and health? To you the world belongs. Ah, what happiness it is to be young!”

There was a moment of silence. The dame de compagnie was arranging flowers in a vase. The empress sat dreaming. Did she see again the eighteen years of power wherein she held in her hand the scepter of France? Or the palace which had been destroyed, crumbled into dust, leaving not a wrack behind? Did she think of Miss Rowrer, to-day’s young queen, who came to pay her tribute of respect to the royalty of other days? of the conquering force which this young girl represented, the supreme outcome of an ambitious race? of the temptations without number which would assail a creature so spoiled by fate?

Ethel made a motion to take her leave. The empress rose painfully.

“Madame,” Ethel began.

“Allow me; I wish to accompany you,” Eugénie insisted. “Your visit has done me good.”

She leaned lightly on Miss Rowrer’s shoulder as she crossed the room.

“Miss Rowrer, I am going to tell you a great secret,” said the empress, as she was taking leave; “but one must have been an empress to appreciate it rightly. It is this: remain always simple and artless as you were at fifteen. That is the secret of happiness; there is no other, believe me! Adieu, mademoiselle. I wish you all happiness in life.”

Ethel retained through life the vision of this woman in her mourning garments, with the white hair crowning her forehead. She recalled her gentle voice, her refined features—still resembling the portraits of other days, but without the adorable smile.

“Our people,” Ethel said to her grandmother, “interest themselves only in Marie Antoinette and the Princesse de Lamballe. I wish to make a collection concerning the Empress Eugénie—photographs, statuettes. And I will take back to Chicago her portrait in oils. I’ll have it done here in Paris under my direction. Who is this Phil who, they say, has so much talent, and has painted so fine a portrait for the Salon—a young girl seated among flowers with doves around her? Cecilia Beaux admires it immensely. He has had a second medal, I believe—he has everything he needs to succeed; and he is an American, they say, and poor and ambitious.”

“He is poor and ambitious? Give him a chance,” replied grandma.

CHAPTER XI
AN APARTMENT IN THE LATIN QUARTER

Nothing remained for Ethel but to meet her artist. An opportunity soon offered itself at the Comtesse de Donjeon’s five-o’clock tea, at which she was often present.

Ethel, first of all, had looked for an apartment for her own convenience; the hotel, thanks to Vieillecloche, was becoming intolerable.

“Foreigners, stay at home!” the “Tocsin” printed. “Remember the night of the 13th March, 1871, of the day of November 22, 1876. Respect the verdict of the 363. Tremble! The people is bristling its mane of the 16th May, and bares its claws of the 14th July!”

“We’d have done better to stay in Chicago,” said grandma.

At first the torrent of carriages and automobiles and bicycles flowing day and night before her window had amused Ethel. But soon she tired of it. There were, indeed, theaters and parks, and visits to dressmakers and society calls. But the theaters were impossible, the parks were only parks after all, the visits to dressmakers were anything but amusing—it’s so easy to buy! and as to society, Ethel wished to rest a little—for a change!

“To speak four languages, including my own, to play three instruments, including the harp, which only needs passable arms—all that doesn’t count. I must go to painting again. Oh, I wish I could have a picture on the line and a Salon medal! I wish I could do a work on La Salle’s explorations, at the Bibliothèque Nationale! What would I not give to write like Princess Troubetzkoi or paint like Cecilia Beaux! I am tired of all this idleness. I wish to work; I wish to be something by myself, and not merely the daughter of papa. I wish that—Grandma! let’s go to the Latin Quarter! I will be just a student girl living with her good grandmother while she studies art!”

“Let’s go, then, to the Latin Quarter, Ethel,” said grandma, who would have followed Ethel to the end of the world. “We shall be as well off there as here—or let’s go back to America if you wish; for my part I prefer new countries!”

“But the Latin Quarter shall be new for you! You shall see how we’ll amuse ourselves,” said Ethel, kissing her grandmother.

So they looked for a place in the Latin Quarter. They set off early, and, walking under the great trees of the Luxembourg, or leaning on the balustrades, looked at the palace and the flower-beds of the gardens.

There were bare-legged babies; nurses beribboned from neck to heel; soldiers in red trousers; a priest in a black gown; gardeners in wooden shoes; young girls without hats; students with hats flat-brimmed; everything gave them the feeling that they were abroad, far, far away. Such specimens of the pigmy races which vegetate in old countries amused grandma, and the garden pleased her greatly.

“This is like Douglas Park—except that it hasn’t any ornamental mound. Do you remember, Ethel, that globe of earth with continents and seas colored on it in different flowers, and our glorious flag made of white and red pinks and blue corn-flowers?”

“Oh, grandma, for heaven’s sake!” said Ethel.

“And yet it’s not bad here,” continued grandma. “The people are so gay! the soldiers’ trousers are too short, and the gardener has wooden shoes; but they look gay; why, I wonder?”

At the beginning they did not venture into the Latin Quarter without some emotion. On the strength of what they had read and seen at the theater they expected moss-grown houses with flowers in the windows, and streets resounding with song, where students and grisettes danced the cancan. Grandma soon got over her mistake, after a narrow escape from being crushed by a tram-car in a thoroughfare which was for all the world like State Street.

“It’s not so bad as I thought,” she said enthusiastically. “It reminds me of Chicago.”

In their visits they went up and down an endless number of stairways. Often grandma stayed below, leaving Ethel to visit the apartments.

“Houses without elevators!” said grandma; “Ethel must be crazy!”

She waited for Ethel in deep courtyards or sat in concierges’ lodges, near stoves where cabbage-soup was bubbling. More than once, while she was alone in the lodge, some one would come and ask information from her, taking her for the concierge. Once a butcher’s boy, with his basket of meat on his arm, opened the door.

“B’jour, m’am; what will M’am Gibbon have to-day—culotte de veau?”

But he ran away in a fright at the sight of Mrs. Rowrer staring at him without answering. Such incidents helped grandma to pass the time.

It was while crossing the Rue Servandoni that they at last found their apartment. An atmosphere of peace seemed to issue forth from the old façade with its immense windows. By the open door they could see a wide stone staircase with a railing of wrought iron. A great tree shaded the silent courtyard. The placard was out: “Apartment to Let.” So they entered. The apartment was at once magnificent and simple, all in white, with lines of gold, and carved doors surmounted by painted panels.

The street itself had a certain air of tranquil distinction. One of its extremities seemed barred by the austere walls of the old Luxembourg Palace, and the other by the enormous apse of St. Sulpice, with its statue of St. Paul upright on a pedestal between two columns.

“My favorite saint!” said Ethel, who did not believe in cold and passionless perfection, but in struggles for the best, with tears undoing faults. “St. Paul himself keeps guard over the end of the street! How happy we shall be here, grandma! And we’ll heat ourselves with wood fires and be lighted with candles,” she added with the joy of a child.

“We’ve found a real gem of an apartment,” Ethel said to the Comtesse de Donjeon, that very evening at her “five”-o’clock, which was at four. “Imagine, madame, a door covered with carving, through which you go underneath Medusa heads and cornucopias. We shall burn oil-lamps and candles; that will make us wish to wear flounces and dress our hair à la belle poule—”

“And to play ‘Il pleut, bergère’ on a spinet!” the countess interrupted. “Where did you discover such a gem of an apartment!”

“In the Rue Servandoni,” said Ethel.

“I know,” said the countess; “it’s near St. Sulpice. And, by the way, dear Miss Rowrer, if you wish any bric-à-brac to furnish your shelves, I can recommend you a precious man, a great connoisseur and a distinguished critic, a journalist of the good cause—M. Caracal.”

“Thank you so much, madame! M. Caracal would be very useful to me,” Miss Rowrer had answered.

“He’s a friend of the Duke of Morgania and of your fellow-countryman, Mr. Phil Longwill, whom you are acquainted with, perhaps.”

“Only by name,” Ethel said.

“The duke and Mr. Longwill are coming here to-day, I believe. I will present them to you if you wish.”

They were in the great salon in the half-darkness of the silken curtains. Although it was broad daylight outside, lighted lamps shed a yellow glow and sparkled amid the glass of the chandeliers and the gold frames of paintings. A valet announced two ladies—“Mme. and Mlle. de Grojean!” The countess hastened toward them.

Ethel was looking vaguely into the depths of the room. Two other visitors came in, talking together like friends.

“His Highness the Duke of Morgania.

“Monsieur Phil Longwill!”

CHAPTER XII
ETHEL’S IDEA OF A MAN

As a consequence of their meeting, Ethel became Phil’s pupil. Having made his acquaintance at the Comtesse de Donjeon’s, she gave him a “chance,” as grandma had told her to do. She ordered from him two pictures according to ideas of her own: first, Eugénie young and beautiful, present in the emperor’s cabinet at the reception of Rowrer, the grandfather; then Miss Rowrer had him paint Eugénie aged and broken, seated by the window and looking far away on the empty Place of the Tuileries. Better and better satisfied, she ordered from him grandma’s and her own portrait. These orders were enough to “launch” Phil, as they say, and brought him other orders from the society frequented by Miss Rowrer.

Ethel, before she came to Phil, had been working in the École des Beaux-Arts; but there the studio seemed gloomy to her and she stifled in it. Moreover, she was already rather tired of the Latin Quarter on account of her fellow-countrymen whom she met there.

She had a grudge against some of them for imitating and even exaggerating the most foolish faults of a certain class of students. She did not approve their wearing their hair like a horse’s mane, their velvet trousers and knit-woolen jackets, and their way of carrying around with them boxes and brushes and canvases as if they were sign-painters. And when she saw them seated on the curbstone terrasses before cafés, drinking in public and spitting everywhere and puffing the smoke of their cigarettes into the faces of the passers-by, it exasperated her. She had a desire to call out to them: “Up! and go to work!”

As she did not like the art academies of the Quarter, she decided for Phil’s studio. She had another reason for doing this. The École des Beaux-Arts was too near, and Ethel needed exercise. In spite of the enormous distance to Phil’s studio, she always went to it on foot—“to keep myself in training,” she said. She came back the same way—to give herself an appetite. Thus every morning she had four hours’ work and two hours’ walk—just to keep “in shape.”

Ethel, one morning, was at the studio with Mlle. Yvonne de Grojean. The model’s rest was over and they were beginning work again. The concierge—the old man “of my time” and former inspector of the Louvre roofs—mounted the table and posed before the girls dressed as a Louis Quinze marquis. There was a pushing about of easels and chairs, palettes were taken up, and at once the model was beset with remarks:

“Model—the head!”

“Model—the foot!”

“Model—smile!”

At this formal injunction the concierge bridled up, distorted his eyes, twisted his lips, and swelled out his neck like a goiter.

Ethel and Mlle. Yvonne were not working from the Louis Quinze model. Helia posed for them in a corner of the studio—the corner of “still life.” She happened to be free that morning, as the figure of Morgana which Phil was painting from her was nearly finished. Helia had come down to the pupils’ studio to please Ethel, who greatly desired to do a head of the Madonna from her.

Ethel and Mlle. Yvonne chatted together as they added touches to their water-colors. Ethel was relating to her friend, Yvonne de Grojean, the visit she had paid some time before to Phil’s private studio, where she had seen the Duke of Morgania. She had also described the magnificent decorative painting which Phil was finishing for the duke.

Their conversation was punctuated here and there by the remarks cried out around them to the Louis Quinze marquis:

“Model—the eye!”

“Model—the mouth!”

“Really,” said Ethel, “that concierge is incorrigible. Why does he persist in not looking like the students’ drawings?”

Mlle. de Grojean at Ethel’s side laughed heartily.

“How droll you are!”

Helia smiled in spite of herself.

“The papers keep me in good humor,” Ethel answered. “I venture there’s something in them again about Richard the Lion-hearted,” she continued, pointing to a paper on the chair. “All sorts of bargains are offered to me ever since that story—usually old mummies. No; there is nothing about Richard to-day,” Ethel remarked, as she ran through the head-lines. But she received her “pin-prick” all the same. In an open letter some one attacked American society and the lack of solidity in its family ties—signed, “H. Ochsenmaulsalatsfabrikant.” This annoyed Miss Rowrer more than personal attack. She was amazed that people could have such thoughts about her country.

“In your country,” was the conclusion of the Salatsfabrikant, “the young men run after money and the young women after titles.”

“Personally I had the idea that titles were running after me,” thought Ethel, who had had reasons for believing so during the three months in which the duke had been paying her court.

She had already forgotten the open letter, but she kept on thinking of the subject it had started up in her mind.

Ah, certainly not! Titles were not to be her aim in life. Most of all, since her visit to the empress, she had promised herself to give worldly grandeurs only the esteem they deserve. A title! A title no more takes from a man’s qualities than it adds to them. The main thing for a man is, not to be a duke or prince; it is, first and foremost—to be a man!

Mlle. Yvonne was also painting a Madonna’s head from Helia. She wished to make a medallion of it as a present for her mother. Helia took pleasure in posing for these girls who were so kind to her.

Ethel, after seeing Helia at Phil’s the day after the Quat’z-Arts Ball, had met her several times, and felt a very sincere sympathy for her. She seemed to her to be “the right sort of girl.”