“She is the only woman I love.”
“I have heard you say that a dozen times about a dozen women.”
“I was only pretending; in this world one hides one’s pearls and wears one’s glass beads. Angélique is very poor; she is a pompon maker.”
“What’s a pompon?”
“A pompon is a thing women wear in their hats—a little fluffy feather, an absurdity, but it supports Angélique. In this world, Toto, some fate ordains that men live on each other’s absurdities. Absurdity is to men as grass to cattle, air to life. Could you place a great cupping-glass over Paris, and, with an air-pump, remove all its absurdity, the place would fall to pieces; ten thousand men would starve; the journals would wither like autumn leaves; Struve, Pelisson, De Brie, and a thousand others would vanish; women would no longer wear pompons in their hats, and poor little Angélique would die from want of folly in others. Angélique has a lame brother who lives at Villers Cotterets; he is a great trial to us—an incessant drain. You often laugh at me for my expenses; the fact is, Toto, I am always being tapped, like a person with the dropsy. The affection between this brother and sister is a poem; I weep my money away over it. Now you are casting in your lot with art, Angélique rises up in my mind, and I hear her say “What will become of me?” I will not hide it from you that you have, through me, been the mainstay of an unfortunate man. Angélique knows it. Well, I want you to leave in my hands a certain provision for these people before you cut yourself off from your resources.”
“I’ll give you some money to-morrow; I want you to come and see me started.”
“Where shall I call for you?”
“At the Boulevard Haussmann.”
“In the morning?”
“Yes, and be sure that you say nothing of all this; I want no one to know what I am doing.”