Near the rue Monge there is a small café and restaurant, a place celebrated for its onion soup and its chicken. From the tables outside, one can see into the small kitchen, with its polished copper sauce-pans hanging about the grill.
Lachaume, the painter, and I were chatting at one of its little tables, he over an absinthe and I over a coffee and cognac. I had dined early this fresh October evening, enjoying to the full the bracing coolness of the air, pungent with the odor of dry leaves and the faint smell of burning brush. The world was hurrying by—in twos and threes—hurrying to warm cafés, to friends, to lovers. The breeze at twilight set the dry leaves shivering. The sky was turquoise. The yellow glow from the shop windows—the blue-white sparkle of electricity like pendant diamonds—made the Quarter seem fuller of life than ever. These fall days make the little ouvrières trip along from their work with rosy cheeks, and put happiness and ambition into one’s very soul.
A GROUP OF NEW STUDIOS
Soon the winter will come, with all the boys back from their country haunts, and Céleste and Mimi from Ostende. How gay it will be—this Quartier Latin then! How gay it always is in winter—and then the rainy season. Ah! but one can not have everything. Thus it was that Lachaume and I
sat talking, when suddenly a spectre passed—a spectre of a man, his face silent, white, and pinched—drawn like a mummy’s.
A SCULPTOR’S MODEL
He stopped and supported his shrunken frame wearily on his crutches, and leaned against a neighboring wall. He made no sound—simply gazed vacantly, with the timidity of some animal, at the door of the small kitchen aglow with the light from the grill. He made no effort to approach the door; only leaned against the gray wall and peered at it patiently.