His garden was the leafless tops of three plane-trees which could not be seen unless one stood upon the solitary chair in the room.
“And my little museum?”
His museum he called a few ticketed knick-knacks upon a board, a brick, a short pipe in brierwood, a rusty knife-blade and an ostrich egg—but the brick came from the Alhambra, the sword had been used in the vendettas of a famous Corsican bandit, the short pipe bore an inscription, “Pipe of a Morocco criminal,” and finally the ostrich egg represented the vanishing of a beautiful dream, all that remained—along with a few laths and bits of plaster heaped in a corner—of the famous Bompard Incubator and the scheme for artificial hatching. But now, my dear boy, there is something much better on hand—a marvellous scheme—millions in it—which he was not at liberty to explain at present.
“What is it you are looking at? That?—That is my brevet of membership—bé, yes, membership in the Aïoli.”
This club of the Aïoli had for its purpose the bringing together once a month of all the Southerners living in Paris, in order to eat a dinner cooked with garlic, a way of never losing either the fragrance or the accent of home. It was a tremendous organization—a President of Honor, Presidents, Vice-Presidents, Seniors, Questors, Treasurers, all furnished with their diplomas as members brave with silver streamers, and the flower of the leek as decoration upon rose-colored paper. This precious document was displayed on the wall alongside of advertisements of every sort of color, sales of houses, railway placards and so forth, which Bompard liked to have always under his nose, in order, as he ingenuously remarked, “to do his liver good.” There might one read: “Château to sell, one hundred and fifty hectares, meadows, hunting, river, pond full of fish.... Lovely little property in Touraine, vineyards, luzernes, mill-on-the-Cize.... Round trip through Switzerland, through Italy, to Lago Maggiore, to the Borromean Islands....” These things excited him just as much as if he had had fine landscapes in oil hanging on the wall. He believed he was in these places—and he was there!
“By Jove!” said Roumestan with a shade of envy of this wretched believer in chimeras, so happy in his rags—“You have a tremendous imagination. Come, are you ready? Let’s get down. It is frightfully cold up here.”
After a few turns through the brilliant streets across the jolly mob of the boulevards the two friends settled themselves down in the heady, radiating warmth of a little room in a big restaurant, in front of oysters and a bottle of Château-Yquem very carefully uncorked.
“To your health, my comrade—I pray that it may be good and happy forever.”
“Té! why it’s a fact,” said Bompard; “we haven’t kissed each other yet.”
Across the table they gave each other a hug with moistened eyes and Roumestan felt himself quite gay again, despite the wrinkled and swarthy hide of the Circassian. Ever since morning he had wanted to kiss somebody. Besides, think of all the years they had known each other—thirty years of their life in front of them on that tablecloth—and through the vapor rising from delicate dishes and over the straw wrappers of delicious wines they recalled their days of youth, their fraternal recollections, races and picnics, saw once more their own boyish faces and interlarded their effusions with words in dialect which brought them still closer together.