We talked awhile. I told him a little about my background and the ground I had covered in Europe. He said that Pascin had informed him that I was a writer and he hoped I would find something good in Marseilles to write about. He was a friend of painters and writers. He left his shop in charge of a young man and went around with me, dropping into bistro cafés and mancebías and introducing a few types of both sexes. He was surprised that I was cordially greeted in a few of the places. I told him I had been in Marseilles before.
Le Corse possessed a mancebía of his own and we went there. Also he protected through his gang a number of girls who had their private holes in the walls of the alleys. After going through the Vieux Port, he invited me to his home. His home was ten paces distant from the wineshop. It was a well-furnished apartment with plenty of bric-à-brac, and very noticeable was the cheap Roman Catholic statuary. Le Corse's wife warmly wished me welcome. "Any friend of Pascin is our friend," she also said. She was rather stout, although less formidable than her husband, and all the fingers of her hands, excepting the thumbs, were full of rings of all kinds.
Le Corse entertained me with more wine, and then he proceeded to show me what Pascin meant to him. We went into his front room. On the walls there were many fine Pascin paintings: portraits, scenes and tableaux of girls of the mancebías in different attitudes. There was one very fine thing of the girls: a large canvas with a group of them deftly fixed in tired disgusted ungainly attitudes. The only other painting of that profession that ever impressed me so much was one of a café girl by Picasso which I had seen some years before.
Le Corse knew the value of the picture. He said: "That's a masterpiece."
"Yes," I agreed.
"It's worth about twenty thousand francs in New York," said Le Corse. "Pascin is in the first class. When he invited me to visit Paris, I went to a dealer there and found out what price he could command as a painter. I have collected every scrap of paper he made a drawing on, and made him sign them. Look here!" Le Corse opened a portfolio and displayed a lot of Pascin drawings. Besides Pascin, he had paintings and drawings by other artists, all inscribed to Le Corse in a fine fervor of friendship. And poets also had dedicated their verses to him.
While Le Corse was exhibiting his art treasures, his two daughters entered and he introduced them. They left the room immediately after being introduced. Le Corse said: "I don't allow my daughters to powder and paint and smoke. I am bringing them up in the right way. They go to a convent school. My son goes to a commercial college. We keep our family clear and clean of our business.
"When Pascin and his wife and their friends come to Marseilles, I look out for them," he went on. "They are artists and visit the bordels for material, so I protect them in their business as I protect my boys and the girls in their business. One time Pascin brought a Frenchman here with a Russian lady, and the lady started to dance with one of the bordel girls. I stopped it. I said, 'Pascin's friends are my friends and can't afford to lower themselves.' They are my guests and I treat them like guests, not as customers. I don't like degenerates. Of course, if rich people want to indulge a fantasy, I arrange privately for them, for rich people can afford to be fantastic. But I have no use for plain poor people being fantastic unless they are making money by it."
Le Corse and I went walking along the quay. We passed a group of Senegalese. He said: "They're no good," with a deprecating gesture.
"Why?" I asked. "I am just like them."