The carpet was blue, the tablecloth red, the curtains maroon rep. Sundry German engravings adorned the walls. One represented an angel in a long chemise, saying, evidently, “Coosh!” to a lion in a den, whilst Daniel, with a head four sizes too large, stood by with an air of attention. Another, Tobias being haled along by an angry-looking seraph to the music of cherubs playing upon wooden harps and seated upon woolen clouds. Another, Ananias dying apparently of strychnine. There were three photographs on the mantel: one of a boy in plaid trousers clasping to his breast a wooden horse; another of a young man, wild of eye, and dressed in the uniform of the 101st of the line; a third, of a poet holding a little book in his hand. All three portraits were of Gaillard—Gaillard at ten, Gaillard at twenty-five, and Gaillard at thirty, as we know him.
In a bookshelf close to the mantel stood a volume of Schopenhauer, Baudelaire’s “Fleurs du Mal,” and ten volumes by Gaillard—that is to say, two volumes of each of his works; twinlets delicately bound, some gay as grisettes, but “Satanitie” ash-colored, with a black devil dancing on its back.
“Why,” said Toto, glancing at Daniel, “do you keep those odious prints in your room?”
“I don’t keep them,” said Gaillard, rising with a distracted air, and wiping his fingers on his coat. “My poverty keeps them; they are part of the furniture. Look at the carpet, look at the curtains—what a background! I am like a butterfly pinned to an outrageous tapestry, an indecent arras; they are my cross. I took them up with the rooms. Why do I remain in the rooms? They are haunted, Toto, by a man called Mirmillard. He was an opium-eater, and lived by writing for the Quartier Latin. You know the Quartier Latin? It is a farouche little journal of sixteen pages or so, and appears monthly, or is it quarterly? He blew his brains out just where you are sitting now; the hole was extant in the wall a month ago, but I had it stopped up with plaster. Have I seen his ghost? many times; it is one of my inspirations, and that is why I endure those terrible curtains, that terrible carpet, and, ah, mon Dieu! those terrible pictures. Toto, lend me your cigarette case; I will take three, and make you some coffee—I have all the implementa in this cupboard. Fanfoullard is not coming, it seems. No matter; I will seek him to-morrow myself. To-night perhaps, if we are lucky, we may see Mirmillard. He appeared to me only three nights ago, and the gash in his throat gaped.”
“I thought you said he blew his brains out?”
“He completed the work with a razor,” said Gaillard, putting the little kettle on to boil. “But enough of Mirmillard. These cigarettes are very good. Let us talk of flowers.”
“Oh, bother flowers!” said the Prince, lying luxuriously back on the old sofa, whose springs were bursting out below. “Tell me, Gaillard; have you ever been in love with a woman?”
Gaillard, squatting before the fire, looked at the kettle with an expression as though he were regarding the gash in Mirmillard’s throat. He had never seen that gash, simply because there was no Mirmillard, not even the ghost of one. He, like Fanfoullard, was one of Gaillard’s creatures, born to bedizen conversation.
He made no response to Toto’s question.
“For I am,” said Toto, without waiting for one. “I never thought I should be; but that girl’s eyes are quite different from other women’s. But you will see her yourself to-morrow. Deuce! what is this?”