Cough lozenges and sugar candy are not perhaps the most effective remedies for acute pneumonia, especially when the patient has only one lung; but perhaps, taking that fact into consideration, they were as serviceable as any others.
At nine o’clock the concierge, a stolid woman, deaf as a stone, came up to settle the bedroom and see to the patient. She brought up with her a newspaper that had just been left in by a little boy. The wrapper was addressed in a crabbed hand to “M. Cammora, No. 10, Rue de Perpignan,” and Toto wondered whose the handwriting could be, for he had never seen the scrawl of M. le Marquis de Nani.
It was a copy of that morning’s Pantin. The first page was occupied with foreign news and a heavy leading article by Pelisson on the prospects of beet sugar turning foreign sugars out of the market, and ending with a regret that the Minister of Agriculture had let several chances slip for the betterment of the prospects of France.
Toto turned to the second page and came upon a long article marked with pencil. He thought at the first glance that it was the review of a novel, for it was headed “Painter and Prince.” Then after six lines he discovered it was an interview, after twelve lines that it was an interview with himself.
The interviewer, it seems, had discovered that a certain illustrious young Prince whom the whole world had imagined to be in Corsica stalking the nimble moufflon, was in fact in Paris, stalking art—working, in fact, like any child of the people in an attic, Rue de Perpignan, No. 10. And as Toto saw his address thus publicly proclaimed the hair of his head stood on end.
The interview was written in Wolf’s chatty manner. Wolf had three manners: the worshipful manner, which he applied to geniuses, great statesmen, and successful tradesmen, when those gentry fell into his hands; the cut-and-dried, for strike leaders, members of the chamber, people whose houses had caught fire suspiciously; and the chatty, for actresses, successful clowns, prominent divorcees, etc. The chatty interview generally began on the stairs, with a short description of first impressions.
The stairs of Toto’s house, it seems, gave one the impression of abject poverty.
“When we reached the first floor,” said this mouthpiece of De Nani, “we inquired of a charwoman for the young Prince ——. She declared her ignorance of such a person, no Prince to her knowledge having ever inhabited the house.
“The interviewer, thus left to his own resources, pursued his quest through this frightful house, which recalled nothing so much as the Maison Corbeau of Victor Hugo. On the fourth floor, a hissing sound rewarded his ear, and knocking at a door, a well-known voice desired him to enter. Here he found a picture that would have gladdened the heart of Jean Jacques Rousseau.
“By the window of a poverty-stricken room sat a girl trimming hats—a girl of the people, exquisitely pretty, and possessing that innate refinement common to all Parisiennes, no matter how humble their origin. By the little stove stood a handsome young man, preparing the modest meal they were evidently to share together.