There were also draughts not specified in the lease, and the sink had a habit of getting stopped up at least once a day; then there was sometimes a smell of cooking from the rooms below.
Toto grumbled a little sometimes, but not much at first. The new life was so entirely different from the life he had led heretofore, so free, and withal so joyous, that for a little while he did not trouble himself as to the morrow. The only rose leaf that disturbed his rest during the first fortnight was the atelier of Melmenotte—art, in short.
Melmenotte had the air and aspect of a vieux sabreur. He inspected a picture as an infantry colonel inspects a regiment of the line, generally with a frown, sometimes with a few cutting words, sometimes with dead silence. He had inspected Toto’s attempts with a damnatory sniff and passed on.
For this reason Toto avoided the atelier on the days when Melmenotte went round; for this reason, though he had dwelt now with art only a fortnight, he had, when Gaillard made his proposition of return, almost nibbled at it. Melmenotte and his crew had somewhat disillusioned him. They were such a coarse lot. Their conversation was generally silly, sometimes absolutely vile; they pelted him with bits of bread when Garnier was not looking, and even the little loans he made to them did not buy him much esteem. It leaked out that his father had a shop; not that that fact would have influenced the students much one way or the other had he possessed talent, but, lacking talent, they saw in him an inevitable counter-jumper, and as a result would have made his life a misery to him but for Garnier, whose word was law, both on questions of art and conduct.
But Célestin knew nothing of these worries. She knew nothing and cared nothing about anything except Toto; she did not even know his surname, for, though he had told it to her once, she had forgotten it.
Neither did she inquire about his past. She knew in a vague sort of way that he had always lived in Paris, studying art, and being without guile, as a flower, she never made that hackneyed old inquiry, “Tell me, have you ever loved a woman before?”—to be answered by that hackneyed old lie, “Never.” Then, with that instinct which orders what we might call the good manners of love, she never loved him to weariness; she knew the psychological moment for a kiss, the right time for silence, and when to get upon his knee and cheer him up, and talk to him in the language she used to Dodor. Always pretty, she had almost in a night become beautiful. Toto had presented her with this added charm, but he did not perceive it; this extra beauty made up for the amount she had lost by surrendering herself to him.
One day Mme. Liard called to see how they were getting on, and brought a box of Choiseul’s cough lozenges for Célestin as a sort of wedding gift. The good woman was greatly taken with the atelier, the couch which she sat on to sample and declared to be a marvel, and the great empty canvas on one of the easels.
“That is for his great picture,” said Célestin proudly. “Isn’t it beautiful? and will it not be large? And see our tulip”—pointing to the flower in the pot, which had burst into bloom. “Is it not beautiful? But Dodor is so jealous of it.”
“Tulips die so soon,” said Mme. Liard, who was a bit of a pessimist. “Give me a double geranium. But flowers—bless you! I cannot keep them, for no sooner do I get a flower than Mimi scratches it up.”