“Columbine fluttered like a butterfly out to the glitter of the world. Thorns scratched her in the garden as she hurried on, and beyond the wall of their paradise she found the world, but it was not at all like the world of her dreams. The rain faded her pretty dress, and hunger shriveled her delicate body; meanwhile the multitude rushed by her unheeding.
“Poor Pierrot! How she craved the sound of his voice now, his trustful eyes, the cool touch of his white cheeks! How merry were the tunes he strummed for her!
“She crawled back as best she could to what was once their paradise; she found herself at last at the gate, and, swallowing her pride, pulled the latch and entered the garden.
“The place was silent. The flowers drooped their heads; not even her old friends the roses nodded to her as she flew on up the path to the house. Here she paused to listen again. A bat squeaked in the eaves over her head, and in terror she pushed open the door and climbed the rickety stairs.
“‘Pierrot! Pierrot!’ she cried, and in the garret she found her Pierrot huddled upon a bed of straw, his poor white face turned towards the wall. Columbine called to him, feebly first, then in a frenzy, but he did not speak. A string of the lute snapped in the silence and Columbine sank down in a little heap, and cried, and cried, and cried. And they say that days afterwards the birds found them and covered them with leaves.”
The song was ended and Marcelle, amid a thunderous applause, joined a group of singers awaiting their turn.
As nightly my pipe added to the hazy atmosphere of the cabaret, I came to know Marcelle better. She was a woman of thirty, beautiful when she sang, fascinating when she smiled, but in repose her clean-cut features were saddened with the hardships of a bohemian life which had been not only a wearing struggle for recognition, but even one for existence. She often spoke of her present country home, of her garden, and how busy she was with it all in the hours in which she was free from the cafés-concerts and the cabarets. I thought I could discover upon a closer glance a tinge of sunburn in her complexion, and her hands looked like those of a woman who spent much of her life digging in her garden.
“You must come and see my garden,” she said one night, “it is on the summit of Montmartre, on the very top of the Butte. Ah! you should see the view from there! All Paris lies below. It is not like a city up there at all as you shall see; it is quite like a little country village. Come! I will show you how to find it,” and, taking a scrap of paper from her music roll, she drew me a plan, a zig-zag route up the Butte which, she assured me if I carefully followed it, would lead me in due time to her tiny villa.
GEORGES WAGUE, A CELEBRATED PIERROT