The Rapin

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1899
This book is not for sale outside of the United States and Canada.
Copyright, 1899, BY HENRY HOLT & CO.
THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, RAHWAY, N. J.

In the rooms of my friend Otto Struve there hangs a parrot cage containing a somewhat dejected-looking lark. It was given to him by Gustave Garnier, the man who took the Prix de Rome last year—or was it the year before?—and whose picture of a girl was bought by the state for I do not know how many thousand francs before it had hung a fortnight in the Salon. A story connects the painter and the picture and the bird—a story whose name ought to have been “Célestin” but for that eternal unfitness of things which makes the comedy of real life an inverted image of the comedy of romance and demands for the story of Célestin the title of “Toto,” or, if it please you better, “The Rapin.”
H. de V. S.

THE RAPIN.
The room was filled with an odor of Nice violets, fur, and the faint scent of caravan tea. A number of candles burning under rose-colored shades lit the place subduedly, whilst through the great windows the broad white expanse of the Boulevard Haussmann reflected the cold light of the April evening with a suggestion of snow.
The Princesse de Cammora’s “Five-o’clock” was exhausting itself, Madeline Frémont of the Comédie Française having just departed, also the Duchesse M—— de M——, the wheels of whose barouche had a moment ago rumbled away round the corner of the Rue de Courcelles.