Part 3 (2/2)
To- Paris continuously unfolding, prospect after prospect, green swards, white buildings, villas engarlanded; to-day I drive to breakfast through the white torridities of Rue Blanche The back of the coach ago had it not been for the great paving stones that swing the vehicle from side to side, and we have to cli animal will never be able to draw e, half out of pity, half out of a wish to study the Rue Lepic, so typical is it of the upper lower classes In the Rue Blanche there are _portes-cocheres_, but in Rue Lepic there are narrow doors, partially grated, open on narrow passages at the end of which, squeezed between the wall and the stairs, are ses_ sit, eternally _en ca The wooden blinds are flung back on the faded yelloalls, revealing a portion of white bed-curtain and a heavybetween the cooking stove, in which a rabbit in a tin pail lies steeping, and theat their trades in the s The smell of leather follows irl sits triirl looks up, pale with the exhausting heat At the corner of the next street there is the _marchand de vins_, and opposite the dirty little _charbonnier_, and standing about a little hole which he calls his _boutique_ a group of wonoirs_ and heavy carpet slippers They have baskets on their arre and humble life, but nowhere do I see the demented wretch common in our London streets--the nawing a crust and drawing a black, tattered shi+rt about his consu, the reverberation of the stones intolerable, my feet ache and burn At the top of the street I enter a still poorer neighbourhood, a still steeper street, but so narrow that the shadow has already begun to draw out on the pavements At the top of the street is a stairway, and above the stairway a grassy knoll, and above the knoll a windmill lifts its black and n for the _Bal du Moulin de la Galette_
As I ascend the street grohiter, and at the butte it is e except the white rays of noon There are soainst the dim sky a dilapidated facade of soardens, circled by high walls cruateway I see a fountain splashi+ng, but nowhere the inhabitants that correspond to these houses--only a o in the dust The butte Montrand folk must at some time have lived there Could it be that this place was once country? To-day it is full of roateway, swinging on rusty hinges, leads on to a large terrace, at the end of which is a row of houses It is in one of these houses that my friend lives, and as I pull the bell I think that the pleasure of seeing hihts float back over the long time I have known Paul We have known each other always, since we began to write But Paul is not at home The servant comes to the door with a baby in her arone out for the day No breakfast, no s walk back--cabs are not found at these heights--a long walk back through the roasting sun And it is no consolation to be told that I should have written and warned the
But I s me in some claret and a siphon The study is better to sit in than the front rooh the shutters are closed, the white rays pierce through the chinks, and lie like sword-blades along the floor The study is pleasant and the wine refreshi+ng The house seems built on the sheer hillside Fifty feet--ardens caught somehow in the hollow of the hill, and planted with trees, tall trees, for swings hang out of them, otherwise I should not know they were tall From thisthey look like shrubs, and beyond the houses that surround these gardens Paris spreads out over the plain, an endless tide of bricks and stone, splashed hite when the sun shi+nes on soreat boulevard: a diantic brickfield, and far away a line of hills, and above the plain a sky as pale and faint as the blue ash of a cigarette
I can never look upon this city without strong emotion; it has been all my life to me I came here inonce my adventure beyond Bas Meudon, Ville d'Avray, Fontainebleau--and Paris has made me Howa fatherland antly imposed, because deliberately chosen, I have doubled my span of life Do I not exist in two countries? Have I not furnished hts and sensations? Ah! the delicate delight of owning _un pays ao when you are weary tothere all the sensations of home, plus those of irresponsible caprice The pleasure of a literature that is yours without being wholly your own, a literature that is like an exquisite mistress, in whom you find consolation for all the coh I know these French folk better than all else in the world, they must ever ree that this should be so, for in truth I know the their lives froiven occasion
There is Paul I understand nothing more completely than thatshade, and yet I may not make him the hero of a novel when I lay the scene in Month I know it so well I knohen he dresses, how long he takes to dress, and what he wears I know the breakfast he eats, and the streets dohich he passes--their shape, their colour, their smell I know exactly how life has come to him, how it has affected him The day I met him in London! Paul in London! He was there to meet _une petite fermiere_ hom he had become infatuated when he went to Normandy to finish his novel Paul is _foncierement bon; he married her_, and this is their abode There is the _salle-a-er_, furnished with a nice sideboard in oak, and six chairs to match; on the left is their bedroorand, le cher et illustre et up at twelve, and they loiter over breakfast; some friends come in and they loiter over les _petits verres_
About four Paul begins to write his article, which he finishes or nearly finishes before dinner They loiter over dinner until it is time for Paul to take his article to the newspaper He loiters in the printing office or the cafe until his proof is ready, and when that is corrected he loiters in theinter his way back to the butte between three and four in thePaul is fat and of an equable temperament He believes in naturalism all the day, particularly after a breakfast over _les petits verres_ He never said an unkind word to any one, and I arisettes, but since he ht of no one but his wife _Il ecrit des choses raides_, but no woman ever had a better husband And now you know him as well as I do Here are his own books, ”The End of Lucie Pellegrin,” the story that I have just finished writing: I think I must explain hoas that I have come to rewrite one of Paul's stories, the best he ever wrote I re him why he called her Lucie, and he was surprised to hear her name was Marie; he never knew her, he had never been to Alphonsine's, and he had told the story as he had picked it up froht for a _soupe a l'oignon_ He said it was a pity he did not knohen he riting it, for I could have told him her storyhim with otten It would have been easy for rin is enshrined in , and I see the beautifully shaped little head, the pale olive face, the dark eyes, and the blue-black hair Marie Pellegrin is really part ofit? Merely because my friend had written it from hearsay? Whereas I knew her; I saw her on her death-bed Chance made me her natural historian Now I think that every one will accept iarison-Macquart series, each volume presented to him by the author, Goncourt, Huysmans, Duranty, Ceard, Maupassant, Hennique, etc; in a word, the works of those horew up, those who tied my first literary pinafore round endaires” by Jules Laforgue, and ”Les Illuminations” by Rambaud Paul has not read these books; they were sent to him, I suppose, for review, and put away on the bookcase, all uncut; their authors do not visit here
And this sets eneration except one's own True that I know a little est of the naturalists, the eldest of the sy, the symbolists the art of music; and since the syame is played out When Huysmans and Paul and myself are dead, it will be as iatherium Where is Hennique?
When Monet is dead it will be as impossible to paint an impressionistic picture as to revive the ichthyosaurus A little world of ideas goes by every five-and-twenty years, and the next that ees will be incomprehensible to me, as incoeneration knocking at the door of the Opera Coeneration, I aone I had been to hear the music, and I left exasperated after the third act A friend ith me and he left, but for different reasons; he suffered in his ears; it was ence that suffered Why did the flute play the chrorand navire,” and ere all the cellos in irl answered, ”Cela ou bien tout autre chose?” I suffered because of the divorce of the orchestra and singers, uniting perhaps at the end of the scene It was speaking through ue, and I lost arin”
to sustain Elsa's voice, and it performs its purpose; a motive is heard to attract attention to a certain part of the story, and it fills its purpose, when Ortrud shrieks out the motive of the secret, and in its simplest form, at the church door, the method may be criticised as crude, but the crudestWhile I ponder on thethe perplexity it had causedon the other side of the terrace:
[Illustration]
Moi, je m'en fous, Je reste dans mon trou
and I say: ”I hear the truth in the rant minstrel, one who possibly has no _trou_ wherein to lay his head” _Et moi aussi, je reste dans mon trou, et mon trou est assez beau pour que j'y reste, car --the Sacrosanct Ring Again I fall to ner and Strauss was to write ht ponder on Mother Earth the ; ah! how the spring uncloses in the orchestra, and the lovers fly to the woods!
The vagrant continued his wail, and forgetful of Paul, forgetful of all things but the philosophy of the minstrel of the butte, I picked :
[Illustration]
Moi, je m'en fous, Je reste dans mon trou
CHAPTER VI