Paul Astier was to bring her in a few days, as soon as it had been rubbed down and smoothed and was ready to go to the foundry; and the sculptor looked forward to the visit with some uncertainty, knowing the taste of great ladies, as it is displayed in the stereotyped chatter, which at the Salon on five-shilling days runs up and down the picture-rooms, and breaks out round the sculpture. Oh, what hypocrisy it is! The only genuine thing about them is the spring costume, which they have provided to figure on this particular occasion.
‘And altogether, old fellow,’ continued Védrine, as he drew his friend out of the studio, ‘of all the affectations of Paris, of all the hypocrisies of society, the most shameless, the most amusing, is the pretended taste for art. It’s enough to make you die of laughing; everyone performing a mummery, which imposes on nobody. And music, the same! You should just see them at the Pop!’
They went down a long arcaded passage, full of the same odd vegetation, sown there by all the winds of heaven, breaking out in green from the hard-beaten ground, and peeping among the paintings on the shrivelled and smoke-blackened walls, Presently they came to the principal court, formerly gravelled, but now a field, in which were mingled wild grasses, plantain, pimpernel, groundsel, and myriads of tiny stems and heads. In the middle, fenced off with boards, was a bed of artichokes, strawberries, and pumpkins, looking like the garden of some squatter at the edge of a virgin forest; and, to complete the illusion, beside it was a little building of brick.
‘It’s the bookbinder’s garden, and that is his shop,’ said Védrine, pointing to a board over the half-open door, displaying in letters a foot long the inscription,
ALBIN FAGE,
Bookbinding in all its branches.
Fage had been bookbinder to the Cour des Comptes and the Conseil d’Etat, and having obtained leave to keep his lodge, which had escaped the fire, was now, with the exception of the caretaker, the sole tenant of the building. ‘Let us go in for a minute,’ said Védrine; ‘you will find him a remarkable specimen.’ He went nearer and called, ‘Fage! Fage!’ but the humble workshop was empty. In front of the window was the binder’s table, on which, among a heap of parings, lay his shears. Under a press were some green ledgers capped with copper. Strange to remark, everything in the room—the sewing-press, the tressel-table, the empty chair in front of it, the shelves piled with books, and even the shaving-mirror hung upon the latch—was on a diminutive scale, adapted to the height and reach of a child of twelve years old. It might have been taken for the house of a dwarf, or of a bookbinder of Lilliput.
‘He is a humpback,’ whispered Védrine to Frey-det, ‘and a lady’s man into the bargain, all scent and pomade.’ A horrible smell like a hairdresser’s shop, otto of roses and macassar, mingled with the stifling fumes, of glue. Védrine called once more in the direction of the back of the shop where the bedroom was; then they left, Freydet chuckling at the idea of a humpbacked Lovelace.
‘Perhaps he’s at a tryst,’ he said.
‘You are pleased to laugh; but, my dear fellow, the humpback is on the best of terms with all the beauties of Paris, if one may believe the testimony of his bedroom walls, which are covered with photographs bearing the owners’ names, and headed “To Albin,” “To my dear little Fage.” There is never any lady to be seen here, but he sometimes comes and tells me about his fine octavo, or his pretty little duodecimo, as he calls his conquests, according to their height and size.’
‘And he is ugly, you say?’