“Oh, ciel!” cried Célestin far away near the Rue de Babylone, as she stood by her open window and clasped her hands before all this beauty, whilst Dodor gave praise from the parrot cage till the brown sparrows, grubbing in the street below, cocked their impudent heads on one side, as if to say “What’s that? Who is making that noise?”
Célestin had been dreaming of Toto, and praying before she slept that the morrow might be fine and that he would not forget. What a day had come in answer to her prayers! She fully believed that her prayers had brought this angelic morning, tripping with blue parasol outspread across the fields of light, across the hills of dreams and the country of impossible primroses. Then the artist turned from the window and from heaven, and flung herself into a hat.
It had got the better of her yesterday. She had stared vainly at the foundation. Nothing came, only the vision of Toto beating the beggar man, Toto drinking his coffee, Toto declaring himself an artist, Toto’s eyes, Toto’s nose, the coat he had worn, his beautiful hands, his hair so well groomed, his white teeth, and his angelic smile. You cannot put these things into a hat—that is to say, immediately; but now, after twenty-four hours nearly had elapsed, the miracle was accomplished.
The result was a confection that made Princesse Klein look ten years younger at the Countess Prim’s garden party. She did not know that she was wearing Toto upon her head, Toto idealized and converted into a hat by the joint endeavors of love and April, assisted by the fingers of Célestin Sabatier.
The doing of it took but an hour, and then she held it out on the point of her finger and smiled; Dodor broke into a song of triumph, and the little American clock on the shelf struck seven.
So she breakfasted—a cup of milk and a Vienna roll eaten in haste—and gave Dodor his morning fly round the room. Then she started, closing the door carefully for fear of Mme. Liard’s cat, and all the way down the steep and dusty stairs Dodor’s voice pursued her, seeming to cry “Come back! come back!”
Toto had dressed himself in his oldest suit of tweed; he wore also a revolutionary-looking felt hat. A Prince cannot break into a blouse in one morning any more than a tree can cast its leaves in one night, but he was advancing. He had also been waiting since ten minutes to eight—that is to say, exactly five minutes—for at five minutes to eight Célestin appeared beneath the trees of the Avenue Champs Élysées, and Toto, who had been standing close to one of the little kiosks, came to meet her.
She wore a bunch of blue violets in her bosom, an artless adornment bought for a sou at the corner of the Rue de Varennes. She was in exactly the same dress as that she had worn on the previous morning, but her hands were gloved in honor of Toto.
They shook hands and laughed a little, and inquired after each other’s health. Then Toto led her to some chairs placed close to one of the little kiosks.
“Don’t let us sit on those,” said Célestin; “they charge for them. I once sat on a little chair just here, and a man came out and asked me for a sou; there was nothing to be done but pay him.”