"Madame Aurore and her gift of the New Year!" shrieked the nine young men, springing to their feet.

"In a year much may happen," said the lady tremulously.

And when they had all sat down again, Flamant was thrilled to find her hand in his beneath the table.

THE DRESS CLOTHES OF MONSIEUR POMPONNET

It was thanks to Touquet that she was able to look so chic--the little baggage!--yet of all her suitors Touquet was the one she favoured least. He was the costumier at the corner of the rue des Martyrs, and made a very fair thing of the second-hand clothes. It was to Touquet's that the tradesmen of the quarter turned as a matter of course to hire dress-suits for their nuptials; it was in the well-cleaned satins of Touquet that the brides' mothers and the lady guests cut such imposing figures when they were photographed after the wedding breakfasts; it was even Touquet who sometimes supplied a gown to one or another of the humble actresses at the Theatre Montmartre, and received a couple of free tickets in addition to his fee. I tell you that Touquet was not a person to be sneezed at, though he had pa.s.sed the first flush of youth, and was never an Adonis.

Besides, who was she, this little Lisette, who had the impudence to flout him? A girl in a florist's, if you can believe me, with no particular beauty herself, and not a son by way of dot! And yet--one must confess it--she turned a head as swiftly as she made a "b.u.t.tonhole"; and Pomponnet, the pastrycook, was paying court to her, too--to say nothing of the homage of messieurs Tricotrin, the poet, and Goujaud, the painter, and Lajeunie, the novelist. You would never have guessed that her wages were only twenty francs a week, as you watched her waltz with Tricotrin at the ball on Sat.u.r.day evening, or as you saw her enter Pomponnet's shop, when the shutters were drawn, to feast on his strawberry tarts. Her costumes were the cynosure of the boulevard Rochechouart!

And they were all due to Touquet, Touquet the infatuated, who lent the fine feathers to her for the sake of a glance, or a pressure of the hand--and wept on his counter afterwards while he wondered whose arms might be embracing her in the costumes that he had cleaned and pressed with so much care. Often he swore that his folly should end--that she should be affianced to him, or go shabby; but, lo! in a day or two she would make her appearance again, to coax for the loan of a smart blouse, or "that hat with the giant rose and the ostrich plume"--and Touquet would be as weak as ever.

Judge, then, of his despair when he heard that she had agreed to marry Pomponnet! She told him the news with the air of an amiable gossip when she came to return a ball-dress that she had borrowed.

"Enfin," she said--perched on the counter, and swinging her remorseless feet--"it is arranged; I desert the flowers for the pastry, and become the mistress of a shop. I shall have to beg from my good friend monsieur Touquet no more--not at all! I shall be his client, like the rest. It will be better, hein?"

Touquet groaned. "You know well, Lisette," he answered, "that it has been a joy to me to place the stock at your disposal, even though it was to make you more attractive in the eyes of other men. Everything here that you have worn possesses a charm to me. I fondle the garments when you bring them back; I take them down from the pegs and dream over them. Truly! There is no limit to my weakness, for often when a client proposes to hire a frock that you have had, I cannot bear that she should profane it, and I say that it is engaged."

"You dear, kind monsieur Touquet," murmured the coquette; "how agreeable you are!"

"I have always hoped for the day when the stock would be all your own, Lisette. And by-and-by we might have removed to a better position-- even down the hill. Who knows? We might have opened a business in the Madeleine quarter. That would suit you better than a little cake-shop up a side street? And I would have risked it for you--I know how you incline to fashion. When I have taken you to a theatre, did you choose the Montmartre--where we might have gone for nothing--or the Moncey?

Not you!--that might do for other girls. _You_ have always demanded the theatres of the Grand Boulevard; a cup of coffee at the Cafe de la Paix is more to your taste than a bottle of beer and hard-boiled eggs at The Nimble Rabbit. Heaven knows I trust you will be happy, but I cannot persuade myself that this Pomponnet shares your ambitions; with his slum and his stale pastry he is quite content."

"It is not stale," she said.

"Well, we will pa.s.s his pastry--though, word of honour, I bought some there last week that might have been baked before the Commune; but to recur to his soul, is it an affinity?"

"Affinities are always hard up," she pouted.

"Zut!" exclaimed Touquet; "now your mind is running on that monsieur Tricotrin--by 'affinities' I do not mean hungry poets. Why not have entrusted your happiness to _me_? I adore you, I have told you a thousand times that I adore you. Lisette, consider before it is too late! You cannot love this--this obscure baker?"

She gave a shrug. "It is a fact that devotion has not robbed me of my appet.i.te," she confessed. "But what would you have? His business goes far better than you imagine--I have seen his books; and anyhow, my sentiment for you is friendship, and no more."

"To the devil with friendship!" cried the unhappy wardrobe-dealer; "did I dress you like the Empress Josephine for friendship?"

"Do not mock yourself of it," she said reprovingly; "remember that 'Friendship is a beautiful flower, of which esteem is the stem.'" And, having thrown the adage to him, coupled with a glance that drove him to distraction, the little flirt jumped off the counter and was gone.

Much more reluctantly she contemplated parting with him whom the costumier had described as a "hungry poet"; but matrimony did not enter the poet's scheme of things, nor for that matter had she ever regarded him as a possible parti. Yet a woman may give her fancy where her reason refuses to follow, and when she imparted her news to Tricotrin there was no smile on her lips.

"We shall not go to b.a.l.l.s any more, old dear," she said. "Monsieur Pomponnet has proposed marriage to me--and I settle down."

"Heartless girl," exclaimed the young man, with tears in his eyes. "So much for woman's constancy!"

"Mon Dieu," she faltered, "did you then love me, Gustave--really?"

"I do not know," said Tricotrin, "but since I am to lose you, I prefer to think so. Ah, do not grieve for me--fortunately, there is always the Seine! And first I shall pour my misery into song; and in years to come, fair daughters at your side will read the deathless poem, little dreaming that the Lisette I sang to is their mother. Some time--long after I am in my grave, when France has honoured me at last--you may stand before a statue that bears my name, and think, 'He loved me, and I broke his heart!'"

"Oh," she whimpered, "rather than break your heart I--I might break the engagement! I might consider again, Gustave."

"No, no," returned Tricotrin, "I will not reproach myself with the thought that I have marred your life; I will leave you free. Besides, as I say, I am not certain that I should want you so much but for the fact that I have lost you. After all, you will not appreciate the poem that immortalises you, and if I lived, many of your remarks about it would doubtless infuriate me."

"Why shall I not appreciate it? Am I so stupid?"

"It is not that you are stupid, my Soul," he explained; "it is that I am transcendentally clever. To understand the virtues of my work one must have sipped from all the flowers of Literature. 'There is to be found in it Racine, Voltaire, Flaubert, Renan--and always Gustave Tricotrin,' as Lemaitre has written. He wrote, '--and always Anatole France,' but I paraphrase him slightly. So you are going to marry Pomponnet? Mon Dieu, when I have any sous in my pocket, I will ruin myself, for the rapture of regretting you among the pastry!"

"I thought," she said, a little mortified, "that you were going to drown yourself?"

"Am I not to write my Lament to you? I must eat while I write it--why not pastry? Also, when I am penniless and starving, you may sometimes, in your prosperity--And yet, perhaps, it is too much to ask?"

"Give you tick, do you mean, dear? But yes, Gustave; how can you doubt that I will do that? In memory of--"

"In memory of the love that has been, you will permit me to run up a small score for cakes, will you not, Lisette?"

"I will, indeed!" she promised. "But, but--Oh, it's quite true, I should never understand you! A minute ago you made me think of you in the Morgue, and now you make me think of you in the cake-shop. What are you laughing at?"

"I laugh, like Figaro," said Tricotrin, "that I may not be obliged to weep. When are you going to throw yourself away, my little Lisette? Has my accursed rival induced you to fix a date?'

"We are to be married in a fortnight's time," she said. "And if you could undertake to be sensible, I would ask Alphonse to invite you to the breakfast."

"In a fortnight's time hunger and a hopeless pa.s.sion will probably have made an end of me," replied the poet; "however, if I survive, the breakfast will certainly be welcome. Where is it to be held? I can recommend a restaurant that is especially fine at such affairs, and most moderate. 'Photographs of the party are taken gratuitously in the Jardin d'Acclimatation, and pianos are at the disposal of the ladies'; I quote from the menu--I study it in the window every time I pa.s.s.

There are wedding breakfasts from six to twelve francs per head. At six francs, the party have their choice of two soups and three hors d'oeuvres. Then comes 'poisson'--I fear it may be whiting--filet de boeuf with tomates farcies, bouchees a la Reine, chicken, pigeons, salad, two vegetables, an ice, a.s.sorted fruits, and biscuits. The wines are madeira, a bottle of macon to each person, a bottle of bordeaux among four persons, and a bottle of champagne among ten persons. Also coffee and liqueurs. At six francs a head! It is good, hein? At seven francs there is a bottle of champagne among every eight persons-- Pomponnet will, of course, do as he thinks best. At eight francs, a bottle is provided for every six persons. I have too much delicacy to make suggestions, but should he be willing to soar to twelve francs a head, I might eat enough to last a week--and of such quality! The soups would then be bisque d'ecrevisse and consomme Rachel. Rissoles de foies gras would appear. Asparagus 'in branches,' and compote of peaches flavoured with maraschino would be included. Also, in the twelve-franc breakfast, the champagne begins to have a human name on the label!"

Now, it is not certain how much of this information Lisette repeated to Pomponnet, but Pomponnet, having a will of his own, refused to entertain monsieur Tricotrin at any price at all. More-over, he found it unconventional that she should desire the poet's company, considering the attentions that he had paid her; and she was forced to listen, with an air of humility which she was far from feeling, to a lecture on the responsibilities of her new position.

"I am not a jealous man," said the pastrycook, who was as jealous a man as ever baked a pie; "but it would be discreet that you dropped this acquaintance now that we are engaged. I know well that you have never taken the addresses of such a fellow seriously, and that it is only in the goodness of your heart you wish to present him with a blow-out.

Nevertheless, the betrothal of a man in my circ.u.mstances is much remarked; all the daughters of the hairdresser next door have had their hopes of me--indeed, there is scarcely a neighbour who is not chagrined at the turn events have taken--and the world would be only too glad of an excuse to call me 'fool.' Pomponnet's wife must be above suspicion.

You will remember that a little lightness of conduct which might be forgiven in the employee of the florist would be unseemly in my fiancee. No more conversation with monsieur Tricotrin, Lisette! Some dignity--some coldness in the bow when you pa.s.s him. The boulevard will observe it, it will be approved."

"You, of course, know best, my dear Alphonse," she returned meekly; "I am only an inexperienced girl, and I am thankful to have your advice to guide me. But let me say that never, never has there been any 'lightness of conduct,' to distress you. Monsieur Tricotrin and I have been merely friends. If I have gone to a ball with him sometimes--and I acknowledge that has happened--it has been because n.o.body more to my taste has offered to take me." She had ground her little teeth under the infliction of his homily, and it was only by dint of thinking hard of his profits that she abstained from retorting that he might marry all the daughters of the hairdresser and go to Uganda.

However, during the next week or so, she did not chance to meet the poet on the boulevard; and since she wished to conquer her tenderness for him, one cannot doubt that all would have been well but for the Editor of _L'Echo de la b.u.t.te._ By a freak of fate, the Editor of _L'Echo de la b.u.t.te_ was moved to invite monsieur Tricotrin to an affair of ceremony two days previous to the wedding. What followed?

Naturally Tricotrin must present himself in evening dress. Naturally, also, he must go to Touquet's to hire the suit.

"Regard," said the costumier, "here is a suit that I have just acquired. Monsieur will observe that it is of the most distinguished cut--quite in the latest fashion. I will whisper to monsieur that it comes to me through the valet of the Comte de St.-Nom-la-Breteche- Foret-de-Marly."

"Mon Dieu!" said Tricotrin, "let me try it on!" And he was so gratified by his appearance in it that he barely winced at the thought of the expense. "I am improving my position," he soliloquised; "if I have not precisely inherited the mantle of Victor Hugo, I have, at any rate, hired the dress-suit of the Comte de St.-Nom-la-Breteche-Foret-de- Marly!"

Never had a more impressive spectacle been witnessed in Montmartre than Tricotrin's departure from his latest lodging shortly after six o'clock. Wearing a shirt of Pitou's, Flamant's patent-leather boots, and a white tie contributed by Goujaud, the young man sallied forth with the deportment of the Count himself. Only one thing more did he desire, a flower for his b.u.t.tonhole--and Lisette remained in her situation until the morrow! What more natural, finally, than that he should hie him to the florist's?

It was the first time that she had seen her lover in evening dress, and sentiment overpowered her as he entered.

"Thou!" she murmured, paling.

On the poet, too, the influence of the clothes was very strong; attired like a jeune premier, he craved with all the dramatic instinct of his nature for a love scene; and, instead of fulfilling his intention to beg for a rosebud at cost price, he gazed at her soulfully and breathed "Lisette!"

"So we have met again!" she said.