“One day,” says little Marguerite (she who lives in the rue Monge), “one eats and the next day one doesn’t. It is always like that, is it not, monsieur?—and it costs so much to live, and so you see, monsieur, life is always a fight.”
And Marguerite’s brown eyes swim a little and her pretty mouth closes firmly.
“But where is Paul?” I ask.
“I do not know, monsieur,” she replies quietly; “I have not seen him in ten days—the atelier is closed—I have been there every day, expecting to find him—he left no word with his concierge. I have been to his café too, but no one has seen him—you see, monsieur, Paul does not love me!”
I recall an incident that I chanced to see in passing the little shop where Marguerite works, that only confirms the truth of her realization. Paul had taken Marguerite back to the little shop, after their déjeuner together, and, as I passed, he stopped at the door with her, kissed her on both cheeks, and left her; but before they had gone a dozen paces, they ran back to embrace again. This occurred four times, until Paul and Marguerite finally parted. And, as he watched her little heels disappear up the wooden stairs to her work-room above, Paul blew a kiss to the pretty milliner at the window next door, and, taking a long whiff of his cigarette, sauntered off in the direction of his atelier whistling.
A MORNING’S WORK
It is ideal, this student life with its student loves of four years, but is it right to many an honest little comrade, who seldom knows an hour when she is away from her ami? who has suffered and starved and slaved with him through years of days of good and bad luck—who has encouraged him in his work, nursed him when ill, and made a thousand golden hours in this poet’s or painter’s life so completely happy, that he looks back on them in later life as never-to-be-forgotten? He remembers the good dinners at the little restaurant near his studio, where they dined among the old crowd. There were Lavaud the sculptor and Francine, with the figure of a goddess; Moreau, who played the cello at the opera; little Louise Dumont, who posed at Julian’s, and old Jacquemart, the very soul of good fellowship, who would set them roaring with his inimitable humor.
What good dinners they were!—and how long they sat over their coffee and cigarettes under the trees in front of this little restaurant—often ten and twelve at a time, until more tables had to be pushed together for others of their good friends, who in passing would be hailed to join them. And how Marguerite used to sing all through dinner and how they would all sing, until it grew so late and so dark that they had to puff their cigarettes aglow over their plates, and yell to Madame Giraud for a light! And how the old lady would bustle out with the little oil lamp, placing it in the center of the long table amid the forest of vin ordinaires, with a “Voilà, mes enfants!” and a cheery word for all these good boys and girls, whom she regarded quite as her own children.
It seemed to them then that there would never be anything else but dinners at Madame Giraud’s for as many years as they pleased, for no one ever thought of living out one’s days, except in this good Bohemia of Paris. They could not imagine that old Jacquemart would ever die, or that La Belle Louise would grow old, and go back to Marseilles, to live with her dried-up old aunt, who sold garlic and bad cheese in a little box of a shop, up a crooked street! Or that Francine would marry Martin, the painter, and that the two would bury themselves in an adorable little spot in Brittany, where they now live in a thatched farm-house, full of Martin’s pictures, and have a vegetable garden of their own—and a cow—and some children! But they DID!