Part IV.
CHAPTER I.
ADAM FROISSART.
Nothing in particular had happened to Gaillard, yet the poet was in tribulation. To begin with, all his friends were too busy to attend to or amuse themselves with him. Struve was writing his book, or, rather, correcting the proof sheets, an employment that kept him short of temper and time; Pelisson had only one idea—Pantin; Toto was crabbedly finding out his own stupidity in the Rue de Perpignan; whilst De Brie had turned very acid over his connection with the new journal, and flung him commissions for little articles or volumes for review as if they were bones to a dog.
Then his publisher had informed him, with a very long face, that only three hundred copies of “The Fall of the Damned” had sold in three weeks, whereas three thousand of “Satanitie” had gone off in the same time.
To make matters worse, Papillard had stopped working; De Nani had frozen him. De Nani he felt to be the cause of all his misfortunes, and he only continued to exist—so he told himself—that he might witness De Nani’s downfall.
You may imagine, then, how pleased he felt when, on the morning after the same showery day that drenched Célestin, Pelisson appeared in his rooms before eight o’clock, and pulled up his blinds.
“Wake up! I want Adam Froissart’s address,” cried Pelisson, standing over the poet, and poking him with his stick to rouse him.
“Froissart!” cried Gaillard, rubbing his eyes. “He is not in Paris.”
“Where is he, then?”
“He is in—Amiens,” said Gaillard.