on the stairs and threw water over her; she is a sale bête, that grosse femme! She shall see what it will cost her, the old miser; and you know I have always been most amiable with her. She is jealous of me—that is it—oh! I am certain of it. Because I am young and happy. Jealous of me! that’s funny, is it not? The old pig! Poor ‘Loisette’—she shivered all night with fright and from being wet. Edmond and I are going to find another place. Yes, she shall see what it will be there without us—with no one to depend upon for her snuff and her wine. If she were concierge at Edmond’s old atelier she would be treated like that horrid old Madame Fouquet.”
The boys in the atelier over her window hated this old Madame Fouquet, I remember. She was always prying about and complaining, so they fished up her pet gold-fish out of the aquarium on her window-sill, and fried them on the atelier stove, and put them back in the window on a little plate all garnished with carrots. She swore vengeance and called in the police, but to no avail. One day they fished up the parrot in its cage, and the green bird that screamed and squawked continually met a speedy and painless death and went off to the taxidermist. Then the cage was lowered in its place with the door left ajar, and the old woman felt sure that her pet had escaped and would some day find his way back to her—a thing this garrulous bird would never have thought of doing had he had any say in the matter.
So the old lady left the door of the cage open for days in the event of his return, and strange to tell, one morning Madame Fouquet got up to quarrel with her next-door neighbor, and, to her amazement, there was her green pet on his perch in his cage. She called to him, but he did not answer; he simply stood on his wired legs and fixed his glassy eyes on her, and said not a word—while the gang of Indians in the windows above yelled themselves hoarse.
It was just such a crowd as this that initiated a “nouveau” once in one of the ateliers. They stripped the new-comer, and, as is often the custom on similar festive occasions, painted him all over with sketches, done in the powdered water-colors that come in glass jars. They are cheap and cover a lot of surface, so that the gentleman in question looked like a human picture-gallery. After the ceremony, he was put in a hamper and deposited, in the morning, in the middle of the Pont des Arts, where he was subsequently found by the police, who carted him off in a cab.
THE FONTAINE DE MEDICIS
But you must see more of this vast garden of the Luxembourg to appreciate truly its beauty and its charm. Filled with beautiful sculpture in bronze and marble, with its musée of famous modern pictures bought by the Government, with flower-beds brilliant in geraniums and fragrant in roses, with the big basin spouting a jet of water in its center, where the children sail their boats, and with that superb “Fontaine de Medicis” at the end of a long, rectangular basin of water—dark as some pool in a forest brook, the green vines trailing about its sides, shaded by the rich foliage of the trees overhead.
On the other side of the Luxembourg you will find a garden of roses, with a
rich bronze group of Greek runners in the center, and near it, back of the long marble balustrade, a croquet ground—a favorite spot for several veteran enthusiasts who play here regularly, surrounded for hours by an interested crowd who applaud and cheer the participants in this passé sport.
This is another way of spending an afternoon at the sole cost of one’s leisure. It takes but little to amuse these people!