“Pantin is out,” said Gaillard, collapsing into a chair and flinging all his books on the floor. He produced a heavy and respectable-looking journal from his back pocket and cast it to the painter.
Toto scarcely glanced at it.
“Where have you been all this time?”
“Ah, my God! you may well ask me that. I have been at the beck and call of Pelisson. It is cruel; I have done all the work, and De Nani is getting all the praise; everyone is talking of De Nani—his jokes, his witticisms, his women, his wealth. And the old fool has not three ideas in his head, nor three sous in his pocket; no woman would look at him twice, and he never made a bonmot in his life. My ‘Fall of the Damned’ came out the day before yesterday; no one is speaking of it, everyone is talking of De Nani. He has killed my little book, he and Pantin. It is all Pelisson’s fault. He is only using De Nani as an advertisement. Struve was right: this old man is a goat; he smells like one, faugh! and he paints his face. Struve is the only man of sense of the lot. I always said so. Give me an absinthe, Toto; my nerves are gone.”
“But how did Pelisson get his paper out so quickly?” asked Toto, helping the poet to a glass of vermouth, and feeling a dim sort of pleasure at his trouble.
“He has been working like a mole for months. You know the Trumpet; it came to grief last month; he has bought the plant and offices for a song. They are situated near the offices of the Figaro in the Rue Drouot. Oh, you should see that villain of a De Nani; he has bought a white hat, or got it on credit. He dines every day with Pelisson in a cabinet particulier at the Anglaise. No one is admitted, for fear they would find out the fraud, and the fact that he has no brains. Pelisson makes him drunk and sends him off in a cab to Auteuil, and then goes about telling people all the quaint things he has said. He is absorbing all Pelisson’s money. Pierre has never a sou now to lend to a friend, and one can’t dine with him, for he dines alone with De Nani. Conceive my feelings: this old beast has killed my book, cut off my supplies, and to crown all, wherever I go I hear nothing but De Nani, De Nani, De Nani! My God, I will go mad! Give me another vermouth.”
“What are those books?” asked Toto, handing the glass.
“Those? They are insult added to an injury—books for review, and such books! See here Fourrier’s ‘Social Economy’; I am to write a trenchant quarter-column review of it, and abuse it, for that will please the bourgeoisie. I know nothing of social economy, so how can I abuse it? I could praise it, for then Fourrier, whoever he is, would not reply; besides, one can praise a book with one’s eyes shut—bah! See here, a brochure on the American sugar trust. Mon Dieu! does Pelisson take me for a grocer? And here, again, a drama called ‘Henri Quatre,’ by some silly beast called Chauveau; all the lines limp, it is written in five-footed hexameters; and I am to praise it with discretion. With discretion, mind you! I wrote him a little poem for his abominable Pantin; it was called ‘Carmine-Rouge.’ You know I scarcely ever touch color in poetry; but I made an exception for once. He would not publish it; it was indecent, forsooth, and would bring the blush to the cheek of the bourgeoisie. Between the bourgeoisie on one hand and De Nani on the other, I feel as if I were in a terrible nightmare.”
“Have you heard anyone speak of me?”
“No one; they think you are in Corsica. But I have seen Mme. la Princesse; she sent for me to inquire after your health, and how you were progressing.”