A Chair on the Boulevard | Page 8

know; I could not recall where it was we had met. I
turned and followed him, racking my brains the while. Suddenly I
remembered--"
"Pardon me," interrupted the composer, "but I have read Bel-Ami
myself. Oh, it is quite evident that you are a celebrity--you have already
forgotten how to be original!"
"There is a resemblance, it is true," admitted Tricotrin. "However,
Maupassant had no copyright in the place de l'Opera. I say that I
remembered the man; I had known him when he was in the
advertisement business in Lyons. Well, we have supped together; he is
in a position to do me a service--he will ask an editor to publish an
Interview with me!"
"An Interview?" exclaimed Pitou. "You are to be Interviewed? Ah, no,
my poor friend, too much meat has unhinged your reason! Go to
sleep--you will be hungry and sane again to-morrow."
"It will startle some of them, hein? 'Gustave Tricotrin at Home'--in the
illustrated edition of Le Demi-Mot?"
"Illustrated?" gasped Pitou. He looked round the attic. "Did I
understand you to say 'illustrated'?"
"Well, well," said Tricotrin, "we shall move the beds! And, when the
concierge nods, perhaps we can borrow the palm from the portals. With
a palm and an amiable photographer, an air of splendour is easily
arrived at. I should like a screen--we will raise one from a studio in the
rue Ravignan. Mon Dieu! with a palm and a screen I foresee the most

opulent effects. 'A Corner of the Study'--we can put the screen in front
of the washhand-stand, and litter the table with manuscripts--you will
admit that we have a sufficiency of manuscripts?--no one will know
that they have all been rejected. Also, a painter in the rue Ravignan
might lend us a few of his failures--'Before you go, let me show you
my pictures,' said monsieur Tricotrin: 'I am an ardent collector'!"
In Montmartre the sight of two "types" shifting household gods makes
no sensation--the sails of the remaining windmills still revolve. On the
day that it had its likeness taken, the attic was temporarily transformed.
At least a score of unappreciated masterpieces concealed the
dilapidation of the walls; the broken window was decorated with an
Eastern fabric that had been a cherished "property" of half the ateliers
in Paris; the poet himself--with the palm drooping gracefully above his
head--mused in a massive chair, in which Solomon had been
pronouncing judgment until 12:15, when the poet had called for it. The
appearance of exhaustion observed by admirers of the poet's portrait
was due to the chair's appalling weight. As he staggered under it up the
steps of the passage des Abbesses, the young man had feared he would
expire on the threshold of his fame.
However, the photographer proved as resourceful as could be desired,
and perhaps the most striking feature of the illustration was the
spaciousness of the apartment in which monsieur Tricotrin was
presented to readers of Le Demi-Mot. The name of the thoroughfare
was not obtruded.
With what pride was that issue of the journal regarded in the rue des
Trois Frères!
"Aha!" cried Tricotrin, who in moments persuaded himself that he
really occupied such noble quarters, "those who repudiated me in the
days of my struggles will be a little repentant now, hein? Stone Heart
will discover that I was not wrong in relying on my genius!"
"I assume," said Pitou, "that 'Stone Heart' is your newest pet-name for
the silk-manufacturing uncle?"

"You catch my meaning precisely. I propose to send a copy of the
paper to Lyons, with the Interview artistically bordered by laurels; I
cannot draw laurels myself, but there are plenty of persons who can.
We will find someone to do it when we palter with starvation at the
Café du Bel Avenir this evening--or perhaps we had better fast at the
Lucullus Junior, instead; there is occasionally some ink in the bottle
there. I shall put the address in the margin--my uncle will not know
where it is, and on the grounds of euphony I have no fault to find with
it. It would not surprise me if I received an affectionate letter and a
bank-note in reply--the perversity of human nature delights in
generosities to the prosperous."
"It is a fact," said Pitou. "That human nature!"
"Who knows?--he may even renew the allowance that he used to make
me!"
"Upon my word, more unlikely things have happened," Pitou conceded.
"Mon Dieu, Nicolas, we shall again have enough to eat!"
"Ah, visionary!" exclaimed Pitou; "are there no bounds to your
imagination?"
Now, the perversity to which the poet referred did inspire monsieur
Rigaud, of Lyons, to loosen his purse-strings. He wrote that he rejoiced
to learn that Gustave was beginning to make his way, and enclosed a
present of two hundred