“It will have to last me a year.”
“Toto, are you serious?”
“What the deuce!” blazed out Toto. “Everyone asks me that when I want to do anything that is not foolish. When I took to painting first, that fool De Harnac raised his stupid eyebrows and said: ‘Toto, are you serious?’ When I told Helen Powers yesterday, the first thing she said was, ‘Toto, are you serious?’ And now you. Am I a buffoon? And stop calling me by that odious name: I am Toto no longer—I am Désiré. Are you dressed? Let us go, then.”
“But I do not know what will become of me,” said Gaillard, as they descended the stairs. “What will become of me, all alone in Paris, without you? I shall be bored; I shall die of yawning.”
“You can come over every day and see us.”
“It is so far.”
“You can take an omnibus.”
“A what? An omnibus! I!”
“They are good enough for Célestin; they are good enough for me; but see here, Gaillard: above all things, you must not tell anyone what I am going to do or where I am going. I am going to amuse myself. Well, what does it matter to people whether I am amusing myself by shooting in Corsica or by painting in the Rue de Perpignan?”
“I will be mute as a fish.”