CHAPTER III.
THE GENESIS OF “PANTIN.”
They returned to Paris at five, leaving the luncheon basket at the Montmorency Station.
“Églantine will send for it,” said Gaillard.
At the Nord they took an open carriage driven by a cabman in a white beaver, and drawn by two white ponies. In this conveyance they tore down the Rue de Faubourg St. Denis, along the Boulevard Nouvelle, and down the Rue Richelieu. Toto sat beside Célestin; Gaillard on the front seat, his stick between his legs, chattered like a magpie, so delighted was he to find himself back in his dear Paris.
“Gaillard,” cried Toto, when Célestin had been deposited at her own door, with a whispered word in her ear and a promise on her lips for a rendezvous on the morrow, “I am in love.”
“Ma foi! I know.”
“You don’t; you know nothing of love, neither you nor any of us. I don’t know how many women have sworn that they love me; they do because I am a Prince, because I am jewelry, good dinners, and what not. (Boulevard Haussmann, you fool! I have told you twice; and make those pigs of horses travel faster—we are not a dung cart.) Yes, I am all that, and they love me. De Nani, for instance, is a pattern of truth and friendship, as we know it. I have never seen our world before; Célestin has lit it for me. My mother paints; good God! my father painted; he wore stays.”
“I, too, have worn stays,” declared Gaillard—“three years ago, when I was very young and foolish. I was then twenty-two. I discarded them because they were such a trouble to lace. I have even painted. What will you have? Youth must expend itself; but believe me, Toto, our world is not a bad world beneath the paint.”
“I tell you it is a vile world.”