Part 4 (1/2)
When he paused, Madame said:
”Sixty francs, twenty-five.”
”But surely, Madame----” Seraphin Dieudonne was politely amazed; he did not desire to credit her with an impoliteness, and yet she seemed to imply that, unless he paid this absurdly little sum, there might be some delay in serving him in this so excellent establishment.
”_C'est ca_,” said Madame. ”The delay will be entire.”
”Incomprehensible!” Seraphin put a bony hand to his heart. ”Do you not know--all the world of the _Quartier_ knows--that I have, Madame, but three days' work more upon my _magnum opus_--a week at the utmost--and that then it can sell for not a sou less than fifteen thousand francs?”
Madame's face never changed expression when she talked; it always seemed set at the only angle that would balance her monument of hair.
She now said:
”What all the world of the _Quartier_ knows is that your last _magnum opus_ you sold to that simpleton Fourget in the rue St. Andre des Arts; that even from him you could squeeze but a hundred francs for it; and that he has not yet been able to find a customer.”
At first Seraphin seemed slow to credit the scorn that Madame was at such pains to reveal. He made one valiant effort to overlook it, and failed; then he made an effort no less valiant to meet her with the ridiculous majesty in which he habitually draped himself. It was as if, unable to make her believe in him, he at least wanted her to believe that his long struggle with poverty and an indifferent public had served only to increase his confidence in his own genius and to rear between him and the world a wall through which the arrows of the scornful could hardly pa.s.s. But this attempt succeeded no more than its predecessor: as he half stood, half bent before this landlady of a fifth-rate cafe, a tardy pink crept up his white face and painted the skin over his cheek-bones; his eyelids fluttered, and his mouth worked. The man was hungry.
”Madeleine!” whispered Pasbeaucoup, compa.s.sion for the debtor almost overcoming fear of the wife.
Seraphin wet his lips.
”Madame----” he began.
”Sixty francs, twenty-five,” said Madame. ”_Ca y est!_”
As she said it, the door of the Deux Colombes opened and another patron, at once evidently a more welcome patron, presented himself. He was a plump little man with hands that were thinly at contrast with the rest of him. He was fairly well dressed, but far better fed, and so contented with his lot as to have no eye for the evident lot of Seraphin. He was Maurice Houdon, who had decided some day to be a great composer and who meanwhile overcharged a few English and American pupils for lessons on the piano and borrowed money from any that would trust him. He stormed Dieudonne, leaned over the intervening table and embraced him.
”My dear friend!” he cried, his arms outflung, his fingers rattling rapid arpeggios upon invisible pianos. ”You are indeed well found. I have news--such news!” He thrust back his head and warbled a laugh worthy of the mad-scene in _Lucia_. ”Listen well.” Again he embraced the unresisting Seraphin. ”This night we dine here; we make a collation--a symposium: we feed both our bodies and our souls. I shall sit at the head of the table in the little room on the first floor, and you will sit at the foot. Armand Garnier will read his new poem; Devignes will sing my latest song; Philippe Varachon and you will discourse on your arts; and I--perhaps I shall let you persuade me to play the fugue that I go to write for the death of the President: it is all but ready against the day that a president chooses to die.”
But Seraphin's thoughts were fixed on the food for the body.
”You make no jest with me, Maurice?”
”Jest with you? I jest with you? No, my friend. I do not jest when I invite a guest to dine with me.”
”I comprehend,” said Dieudonne; ”but who is to be the host?”
At that question, Pasbeaucoup rose from his chair, and Madame, his wife, tried to thrust her nose, which was too short to reach, through the bars of her cage. The composer struck a chord on his breast and bowed.
”True: the host,” said he. ”I had forgotten. I have found a veritable patron of my art. He has had the room above mine for two years, and I did not once before suspect him. He is an American of the United States.”
Madame's contralto shook her prison bars:
”There is no American that can appreciate art.”
”True, Madame,” admitted Houdon, bowing profoundly; ”there is no American that can appreciate art, and there is no American millionaire that can help patronizing it.”
”Eh, he is a millionaire, then, this American?” demanded Madame, audibly mollified.