"And what an artist!" said Taffy.
"Ah, yes! but all that was Svengali, you know. Svengali was the greatest artist I ever met! Monsieur, Svengali was a demon, a magician! I used to think him a god! He found me playing in the streets for copper coins, and took me by the hand, and was my only friend, and taught me all I ever knew—and yet he could not play my instrument!
"And now he is dead, I have forgotten how to play it myself! That English jail! it demoralized me, ruined me forever! ach! quel enfer, nom de Dieu (pardon, madame)! I am just good enough to play the obbligato at the Mouches d'Espagne, when the old Cantharidi sings,
"'V'là mon mari qui r'garde
Prends garde—ne m'chatouille plus!'
"It does not want much of an obbligato, hein, a song so noble and so beautiful as that!
"And that song, monsieur, all Paris is singing it now. And that is the Paris that went mad when Trilby sang the 'Nussbaum' of Schumann at the Salle des Bashibazoucks. You heard her? Well!"
And here poor Gecko tried to laugh a little sardonic laugh in falsetto, like Svengali's, full of scorn and bitterness—and very nearly succeeded.
"But what made you strike him with—with that knife, you know?"
"Ah, monsieur, it had been coming on for a long time. He used to work Trilby too hard; it was killing her—it killed her at last! And then at the end he was unkind to her and scolded her and called her names—horrid names—and then one day in London he struck her. He struck her on the fingers with his bâton, and she fell down on her knees and cried ...
"Monsieur, I would have defended Trilby against a locomotive going grande vitesse! against my own father—against the Emperor of Austria—against the Pope! and I am a good Catholic, monsieur! I would have gone to the scaffold for her, and to the devil after!"