“Why?”
“Because a lot of truth is escaping from you.”
Toto laughed; he always believed Struve to be jesting when in earnest, and in earnest when jesting. Then he sat watching De Nani, and wondering at his capacity for champagne.
“Cigars, cigars!” cried Pelisson, finishing his article with a dash, flinging down his pen and bursting out like a sun. “What’s this? pudding!” He devoured it like a pig, and then roared again for cigars. Three boxes were swiftly passed in from the outside.
He placed one before him, sent his article off to the Journal des Débats office, which lies near by, and, leaning back in his chair with thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, blew clouds of smoke at the gilded ceiling, and cried: “Let’s make a noise.”
“What’s up now?” inquired Toto.
“The Ministry will be down to-morrow!” cried Pelisson, flapping the sides of his chest with his turtle-fin hands. “You’ll hear the tumble of portfolios—flip, flap, flop; and I’ve helped to pull them, ehu! Let us make a noise; it’s the only thing worth living for. I’d die in a world where I couldn’t make a noise; you couldn’t make me a worse hell than a padded room. You, Toto—how do you live without making a noise? Gaillard squeaks in the Revue des Deux Mondes, Struve grumbles in the Temps, I roar in the Débats; you, wretched child! are silent: take up a pen or a paint-brush and make a noise.”
“I would if I could,” mourned Toto.
“You mean you could if you would!” retorted Pelisson. “Write a little book of poems, and I’ll abuse them; I’ll make your name rattle like a pea in a bottle. Write an ode to the Pope or paint a modest picture—there’s two ideas for you gratis, each a fortune. Give me some coffee.”
“I wouldn’t give a pin for fame unless I earned it,” said Toto, handing the coffee. “I’d just as soon swing a rattle as have a work of art of mine”—Struve groaned—“made famous by my friends or my position.”