He wheeled round, and flung a phrase at the room; and a loud burst of laughter greeted the sally.
At the tables, smoking, chatting, their glasses of milky absinthe and tankards of ale before them, sat journalists, artists, poets, poetesses, students, bohemians, women, musicians, and a soldier or so.
At one table was a group of students from Gérôme’s atelier, with Horace Malahide, Gaston Latour, Noll.
Early in the evening, as they dined, André Joyeux became possessed of all the latest news of the town—political moves, social happenings, scandals, theatrical gossip, literary events, before these things were yet in print, often before they were written; and as he now walked up and down, haranguing, he made his satiric comments upon it all.
He smiled at the roar of laughter and applause. As he turned on his heel at the end of the room, his glance fell on a wizened little old man in gold-rimmed spectacles, who sat bent, and huddled, and drowsing, his arms folded on the table before a glass of absinthe, a wreath of white roses with which he had been crowned earlier in the evening pulled slanting over one sleepy eye.
André Joyeux stopped in his stride:
“What, poet!” cried he, with a laugh, “thy wreath is awry.” He clapped it on the back of the old man’s head. “What, thou sleepest on the very steps of the altar of Fame! Thy brains are drowsy with the fumes of the incense in the very temple of Wit; so Genius, hiccupping with wine, misses his footing at the very threshold of Immortality!... Tsha!” He turned on his heels and continued his walk, striding down the room again. “Sleep if thou must—thou canst read during to-morrow, twenty-four hours late, and at thy leisure on the boulevards with the pot-bellied trader, the world’s news that will be stale here with the snuffing of to-night’s candles; and thou wilt get thy news, too, devoid of wit, without colour, stale and dull and flat as long-drawn small-beer, and twisted and distorted and debauched to the uses of each journal.”
But the vague eyes of the little old mad poet had closed, and he was nodding over his glass. André Joyeux laughed:
“Our old singer of tuneless songs comes from the Latin Quarter, across the river, comrades,” said he—“he has the drowsy habits of the academies—it is always so over there—on the flats across the river, with their vaunted universities and isms and ologies. The professors with dandruff on collar, and the students with talk of new ideas and of the new generation, what do they know of life?”
He flung out his arm as he strode to and fro: