“Indeed,” murmured Struve, who had placed the rose flung at him by Toto with its stalk in his glass of champagne, and was staring at it with the rapt air of a poet.
“Indeed yes, monsieur, I was born on the edge of the First Empire. I saw the new Napoleon rise—you, sir, have only seen him vanish.”
“I have seen many a napoleon vanish,” mourned Struve; “but go on—your tale charms me. Pelisson, listen.”
“Go to the devil!” said Pelisson, who was now writing with the speed of fire and a stylographic pen on a long strip of paper, using the table for a desk.
“I have seen the art galleries of Europe,” continued De Nani, now three parts drunk, and unconscious that he was making a fool of himself before the first art critic in Europe, “and I unhesitatingly proclaim M. le Prince’s work to be on a level—allowing of course for youth—on a level with the best I have seen.”
“Oh, rot! oh, rubbish!” cried Toto, blushing furiously and flinging flowers at the great bent head of Pelisson, whilst that journalist, wallowing in his journalese, only grunted and growled in a far-away manner and wrote the more quickly. “I can’t paint, I can’t draw—might if I took to it really. Pelisson, you pig! wake up and eat your pudding.”
“I have said what I have said,” concluded De Nani, attacking his ice-pudding with all the youthful nonchalance of your man who wears false teeth.
“And my rose is drunk,” said Struve, as the rose tumbled out of the glass.
“I can’t paint,” murmured Toto again with the air of a spoilt child.
“Toto!” demanded Struve, placing the rose languidly in his coat, “how much wine have you drunk?”