“There is nothing done in a public way without coöperation. You must found a society; you may use my name. I will even let you put it on the committee list. I will also subscribe.”
Now Pugin was on the committee lists of half a dozen charitable and humanitarian concerns. His secretary had them all down in a book; but Pugin himself, lost in his art and the work of his life, had forgotten their very names. So would it be with this.
“Thanks,” said the visitor.
Pugin would lend his purse to the cause, and his name, but he would not lend his pen—simply because he could not. To every literary man there are dead subjects; this question was dead to the author of “Absolution”—as uninspiring as cold mutton.
“Thanks,” said Adams, and rose to take his leave. His rough-hewn mind understood with marvellous perspicuity Pugin’s position.
“And one moment,” cried the little man, after he had bidden his visitor good-bye and the latter was leaving the room. “One moment; why did I not think of it before? You might go and see Ferminard.”
He ran to a desk in the corner of the room, took a visiting card and scribbled Ferminard’s address upon it, explaining as he wrote that Ferminard was the deputy for —— in Provence; a Socialist it is true, but a terrible man when roused; that the very name of injustice was sufficient to bring this lion from his den.
“Tell him Pugin said so,” cried he, following his visitor this time out on the landing and patting him on the shoulder in a fatherly manner, “and you will find him in the Rue Auber, No. 14; it is all on the card; and convey my kind regards to Mademoiselle ——, that charming lady to whose appreciation of my poor work I owe the pleasure of your visit.”
“Nice little man,” said Adams to himself as he walked down the Boulevard Haussmann.
He found Ferminard at home, in an apartment smelling of garlic and the south. Ferminard, a tall, black-bearded creature, with a glittering eye; a brigand from the Rhone Valley who had flung himself into the politics of his country as a torpedo flings itself into the sea, greeted Adams with effusion, when he read Pugin’s card; gave him cigarettes, and shut the open window in honour of his guest.