Three men only—Pelisson, of the Journal des Débats; Gaillard, a mystical poet, pantheistic, melancholic, with no very fixed belief in anything, save, perhaps, the works of Gaillard; and Otto Struve, the art critic.
Pelisson, a powerfully built fellow, singularly like De Blowitz, even to the pointed whiskers, was of the type of man who pushes the world aside with his shoulders, whilst he pushes it forward with his head. Gaillard, who was remarkable for his high collars, pointed beard, and the childish interest he took in little things unconnected with his profound art, sat astride a chair watching Pierre Pelisson juggling with a wine-glass, a fish-knife, and a serviette. By the fireplace stood Otto Struve, a man with a hatchet-shaped face, who seemed in the last stages of consumption, and weighed down by the cares of the whole world, which he bore with suppressed irritation.
Toto’s entrance was the entrance of money. Everyone forgot everyone else for a moment; the electric lamps seemed to blaze more brightly; waiters suddenly appeared, mutes shod with velvet and bearing the hors d’œuvre.
“M. le Marquis de Nani,” said Toto, introducing his friend; and they took their seats.
Old De Nani ate his oysters, glancing sideways, this way and that way, at the triumvirate of talent, as if to say, “Who the devil are you?” and “Who the devil are you?” Pelisson groaned and grunted; he was writing the beginning of a leading article in that wonderful head of his, where a clerk always sat taking notes in indelible ink, an artist beside him taking sketch-portraits of everyone and pictures of everything. Toto looked bored and the dinner unpromising, till suddenly Struve broke the ice by choking over his soup. With the laughter, conversation broke out and babbled. The fish was served, and one might have fancied twenty people were talking, Toto’s voice raised shrill against Gaillard’s periods, and the trumpet tones of Pelisson dominating all like the notes of a sax-horn.
“I don’t believe in God, you say?” said Gaillard, savagely attacking a fillet of sole. “Well, perhaps not, according to your ideas; according to mine, I have the pleasure of worshiping a god. He has fifty-three names. The Chinese call him Fot; benighted Asiatic tribes, Buddha; Kempfer, by the way, wrote it——”
“No, no, no!” cried Toto. “No theology, or I’ll turn M. le Marquis de Nani upon you, and he’ll eat you up, for he’s an atheist.”
“An atheist!” cried Pelisson, turning his broad face on De Nani. “I thought they were all dead. M. de Nani, beware! They’ll kill you and stuff you for the Musée Carnavalet.”
“I’ll stuff him,” shouted Toto, imagining himself a wit. “What shall it be, Marquis—bran, sawdust?”