Of course it was the Senator who kept the masterpiece, the buccaneer in him prizing it all the more when he learned from a grateful Gigi the origin of the raw material. He tells me he doesn’t care a whoop whether the work elevates American art or not; it elevates him. Mariellen admits it’s better so, since the lad Mario is the gainer by the one hundred dollars with which the Senator had built up the price. To clinch the matter, she wanted, for Mario’s sake, to add her own check to her uncle’s, her very first glance at that boy’s amazing sculpture in various lowly substances having convinced her of the wisdom of such a step. But I prevailed upon her to wait a year, at least; and that part does not come into this tale, at all.
“Ah, well, there are more ways than one to elevate art, or anything else. It’s up to Mario, now,” blithely remarked the young lady in blue.
“C’EST UNE TAUPE”
I feel sure that everybody, at least everybody who is anybody, really knows, in the bottom of his heart, just what a taupe is. But in case there should be any person with such weighty world affairs on his mind that he could not possibly move them around to discover hidden among them an insignificant matter like a taupe, I will say that a taupe is a small furry thing that burrows in the ground. By no means an unfashionable creature, I assure you! Its color is always modish. Its skins, when collected by hundreds and thousands, go to make up what I am informed are “among the most authoritative fur garments of the coming season.” In short, a taupe is a mole, all told.
Also, I am reasonably certain that most of us, if we should stop to consider the subject, would understand perfectly the nature of a limace. A slimy, limy limace! Its very name tells its story. It is not exactly one of the “slithy toves” of the old song, but they may all have had similar ancestors. And if you have guessed that a limace is a slug, poor thing,—a big slug, no more and no less,—you are entirely right. So there you have the two characters, the mole, the slug; the furry, fashionable taupe, the slippery yet sticky limace.
In the Bois de Meudon, on the most beautiful summer morning in the world, a limace was lying curled up like a thick brown half-moon on a bright green leaf. In its sluggish way, it was coquetting with the sunbeams. The limace was in love with life, and at peace with all the earth. So were the little Parisians who had come out from the city to make holiday. At first there were not many of them; only M. Petitpot, the kind, red-eyed mason of the rue Delambre; Mme. Petitpot with the baby, in his straw hat built like a life-preserver; the good grandmother, not ashamed of her white cap; and the boy Pierre Petitpot, in his newest black apron. There were also the two doubly-opening baskets for the luncheon. M. Petitpot himself carried the basket that had the bread and the salad, with the two bottles of red wine slanted in, one at each end. But the grandmother kept fast hold of the smaller basket, because that one contained a truly magnificent roasted chicken, wrapped in a napkin. What an aroma, my friends! A déjeuner sur l’herbe was contemplated. Messrs. Manet and Monet are not the only artists of the déjeuner sur l’herbe.
Presently other Parisians came, from various quarters of the city, and from various businesses. All were seeking a little Sunday happiness in the open. They were not really familiar with the secrets of the wood, as you shall see. But they had curiosity and discernment, and these two, keeping together, will go far toward finding knowledge. Unlike English people, these French persons chatted with each other, without mistrust. Also, they revealed the beauties of nature to each other. How dazzling and glorious were the clouds that day! The grocer’s lady pointed out to Mme. Petitpot that the good God must surely possess a giant egg-whip, to be able to produce a méringue as colossal and light as those masses of cloud over there! And Mme. Petitpot had replied that eggs were better and cheaper, now that it was June, but that her own egg-beater had a kink in it, so that she was about to buy another.
Black-aproned Pierre was a pale bright-eyed child with a bulging forehead, and hands that looked as if they wanted to play the piano or something. Easy to see that he was predestined for the paths of learning. Per aspera ad astra; the latter for Pierre, the former for his parents. Even for this one holiday, they had not been able to separate him from his new “Petit Atlas du Monde”; he hugged it so tightly that the crimson cover had already stained his hands, freshly washed that very morning. His delighted glance skipped like a bird from tree to bush. He nodded his head in smiling ecstasy when the grocer’s lady expressed that airy fantasy of hers as to the clouds.
But it was one of the later comers, a pink-sashed little girl from the Montrouge quarter, who first saw the limace, and shouted aloud in joyous fright. “What a droll of a beast! I beg of thee, Mamma, regard me that!”