Trilby | Page 2

at work, as we see.
He was good-looking, with straight features; but I regret to say that, besides his heavy plunger's moustache, he wore an immense pair of drooping auburn whiskers, of the kind that used to be called Piccadilly weepers,--and were afterwards affected by Mr. Sothern in Lord Dundreary. It was a fashion to do so then for such of our gilded youth as could afford the time (and the hair); the bigger and fairer the whiskers, the more beautiful was thought the youth! It seems incredible in these days, when even Her Majesty's Household Brigade go about with smooth cheeks and lips, like priests or play-actors.
'What's become of all the gold used to hang and brush their bosoms...?'
Another inmate of this blissful abode--Sandy, the Laird of Cockpen, as he was called--sat in similarly simple attire at his easel, painting at a lifelike little picture of a Spanish toreador serenading a lady of high degree (in broad daylight). He had never been to Spain, but he had a complete toreador's kit--a bargain which he had picked up for a mere song in the Boulevard du Temple--and he had hired the guitar. His pipe was in his mouth--reversed; for it had gone out, and the ashes were spilled all over his trousers where holes were often burned In this way.
Quite gratuitously, and with a pleasing Scotch accent, he began to declaim:
"A street there is in Paris famous
For which no rhyme our language yields;
Roo Nerve day Petty Shong its name is--
The New Street of the Little Fields..."
And then, in his keen appreciation of the immortal stanza, he chuckled audibly, with a face so blithe and merry and well pleased that it did one good to look at him.
He also had entered life by another door. His parents (good, pious people in Dundee) had intended that he should be a solicitor, as his father and grandfather had been before him. And here he was in Paris famous, painting toreadors, and spouting the 'Ballad of the Bouillabaisse,' as he would often do out of sheer lightness of heart-- much oftener, indeed, than he would say his prayers.
Kneeling on the divan, with his elbow on the window-sill, was a third and much younger youth. The third he was 'Little Billee.' He had pulled down the green baize blind, and was looking over the roofs and chimney-pots of Paris and all about with all his eyes, munching the while a roll and a savoury saveloy, in which there was evidence of much garlic. He ate with great relish, for he was very hungry; he had been all the morning at Carrel's studio, drawing from the life.
Little Billee was small and slender, about twenty or twenty-one, and had a straight white forehead veined with blue, large dark blue eyes, delicate, regular features, and coal-black hair. He was also very graceful and well built, with very small hands and feet, and much better dressed than his friends, who went out of their way to outdo the denizens of the Quartier Latin in careless eccentricity of garb, and succeeded. And in his winning and handsome face there was just a faint suggestion of some possible very remote Jewish ancestor--just a tinge of that strong, sturdy, irrepressible, indomitable, indelible blood which is of such priceless value in diluted homeopathic doses, like the dry white Spanish wine called montijo, which is not meant to be taken pure; but without a judicious admixture of which no sherry can go round the world and keep its flavour intact; or like the famous bulldog strain, which is not beautiful in itself, and yet just for lacking a little of the same no greyhound can ever hope to be a champion. So, at least, I have been told by wine-merchants and dog- fanciers--the most veracious persons that' can be. Fortunately for the world, and especially for ourselves, most of us have in our veins at least a minim of that precious fluid, whether we know it or show it or not. Tant pis pour les autres!
As Little Billee munched he also gazed at the busy place below--the Place St. Anatole des Arts--at the old houses opposite, some of which were being pulled down, no doubt lest they should fall of their own sweet will. In the gaps between he would see discoloured, old, cracked, dingy walls, with mysterious windows and rusty iron balconies of great antiquity--sights that set him dreaming dreams of mediaeval French love and wickedness and crime, bygone mysteries of Paris!
One gap went right through the block, and gave him a glimpse of the river, the 'Cite,' and the ominous old Morgue; a little to the right rose the gray towers of Notre Dame de Paris into the checkered April sky. Indeed, the top of nearly all Paris lay before him, with a