“Yes; but I am too busy to be bothered by Pantins.”
“You are right. Pelisson makes a rotten editor; he gives out books for review as if they were clothes for wash. And De Nani——”
“I know; he is an old fool. But do leave me now, like a good fellow,” lisped Struve. “My head is so full of saints, it has no room for De Nanis.”
Gaillard went off in a huff, but at the entresol returned to borrow a few cigarettes, for Struve’s cigarettes were a dream.
“I forgot to tell you,” said Gaillard as he lighted one, “not to say a word to anyone about Toto and his attic; he made me swear to tell no one.”
“Then why did you tell me, you infernal idiot!” cried Struve, half laughing, yet nearly weeping at all these interruptions to his work.
“I quite forgot,” said Gaillard, running off to confide his troubles to someone else, whilst the critic locked his door and bolted it.
The poet turned into the offices of Pantin in the Rue Drouot.
Since the birth of the new journal Pelisson had been pestered with a rain of old friends whom he had not seen for years, and some of whom he had never seen before. They all wanted employment, or, failing that, a loan. Gaillard’s long-suffering creditors, hearing that he was on the staff, all appeared seeking for their money—a procession as infinite as the Leonids, and on a business as apparently futile. The unfortunate Pelisson had also to supervise his leader writers, write leaders himself, and, worst of all, select the subjects. For this purpose he had to keep one eye fixed steadily upon the whole world—that is to say, Paris. The other eye was fully occupied by De Nani, who had caught on most amazingly. Everyone was craving to see De Nani. They saw glimpses only of him, and that made them crave to see more. De Nani’s white hat loomed mysteriously above Pantin; his caustic and cutting witticisms circulated in salon and club. Quite a number of old gentlemen took to wearing white hats and making cutting remarks about their wives, and in the Rue St. Honoré one might see De Nani waistcoats by the score. Kuhn’s window in the Rue de Rivoli exposed his portrait, the white hat tilted to one side above the fiendish old face. It was bought by the hundred, and Gaillard, like a periodic comet, turned up at this window daily to grit his teeth with anguish and envy and walk on with rage in his heart.
Pelisson was right. He had caught an old wether and belled it, and the crowd followed like the proverbial sheep. But the bell-wether required incessant watching; besides, De Nani during the last forty years had improved borrowing into one of the fine arts, and he was taking a thousand francs a day out of Pantin in various legitimate and illegitimate ways. He tapped Pelisson, he tapped the staff, he had established a credit at three cafés, he tapped the proprietors. He came east every morning from Auteuil as an American farmer comes to his maple trees, or a physician to a hospital for dropsy. He patronized three tailors, and bundles of clothes were constantly being left at the offices of Pantin; in fact, he seemed to be laying in a store of clothes, not only for this life, but for the next.