“How much do you get for making a hat?” asked Toto.
“Two francs, and I find my own thread; but for this hat I have received three. It was an inspiration. Do you know, monsieur, that hats come to one? Sometimes I am perplexed. There lie all the materials,—the tulle, ribbons, flowers, what-not,—and there sit I, so like a stupid girl it seems impossible that I should make the hat—impossible as building the Eiffel Tower. And then, suddenly, something comes to me. I see the hat, and it is made. That is when I am stupid. At other times they come to me in hundreds—hats more beautiful than a dream; and, oh! if I had a hundred hands I could find work for them all. Yesterday it was a gloomy morning. Dodor drooped in his cage, and I felt very dull. Then the sun broke out—you remember how beautifully—and Dodor sang, and the blue sky looked in through the window and brought me this hat like a gift from the good God. Mme. Hümmel said it was April itself. And is it not strange, monsieur, that the seasons should help one so? For Spring helps me in her way, and Summer and Autumn in their way, even Winter a little,—and he helps few,—but of all of them I like Spring the best,” sighed Célestin, casting her eyes up once more at the sky of her imagination and the angels she seemed always to see there.
“I suppose people wear more hats in the spring,” was the reply of Toto to this revelation of an artist’s work, and for that reply he deserved damning as an artist.
“Oh, yes,” said Célestin. “The spring is the time of all others; one makes more money in the spring.”
Toto had steered the way into the Rue du Mont Thabor, a little street that lies parallel to the Rue St. Honoré, and just behind the Hôtel Lille et Albion.
Here there was a crémerie, into which he invited her to enter. They took their seats at a little marble-topped table, which was soon spread with coffee, white bread, and butter.
Célestin quite cast away her reserve; she never had much, and what she had was that of a timid child. This creature, gentle as a bird, and thriving by her own quaint and lovely art in the midst of the great, white, cruel, beautiful city, was in herself a revelation—God, one might almost fancy, supporting her with his fingers as he supports the snowdrops above the snow; Art, one might almost fancy, turning from the Louvre and all its treasures, and smiling towards the Rue de Babylone and this humble slave interpreting her dreams by ribbon and tulle.
“I?” said Toto with his mouth full of bread and butter, and speaking in answer to a question of his companion. “I am an artist—a painter, you know.”
Célestin lowered the cup she was raising to her lips. He had won her admiration forever by beating the bully, and now he was an artist.
“I have never met one before,” murmured Célestin. “How great that must be, to be an artist! I have seen them at the Louvre. I sometimes go to the Louvre; the rooms are so beautiful, and the ceilings,”—the child evidently had her limitations,—“and one sees such strange people—English women in such strange hats. And do you paint in the Louvre?”