“Comrade,” said he—“your life is a furnace, burning night and day—you, too, will go mad.”
He laughed a rough laugh, boisterously unmirthful; raised his glass; tossed it off:
“That is what they used to say to Rodolph Salis,” said he hoarsely—“that is what they used to say to Rodolph Salis.... Ah, that was a man. He knew how to live....” He got up, his hands twitching, and paced the room again: “It was Rodolph Salis that brought the wits to Montmartre. It was Rodolph Salis who saw that Genius would condescend to roar at the tavern, not to snore at the academy—it was Rodolph Salis who saw that as artist he could only be one of many, but as tavern-keeper he might be immortal—so it came that Rodolph created the most renowned tavern of France—so it came that Rodolph Salis opened the tavern of The Black Cat; and to its artistic rooms, in the atmosphere of masterpieces hung on the walls round about amongst its old dark panelling, under the dim lights of its wrought-iron lamps, the wits fore-gathered to godlike entertainment. On those walls the pencil of Steinlen had traced a masterpiece, and Willette’s dainty fingers drawn the nervous laughing line; there, seated before his glass of absinthe, I have seen Paul Verlaine write the exquisite lyrics of France; there, among the splendid riot, have sat Daudet, and Zola, and Richepin, Meissonier and Puvis de Chavannes and the rest.... Hoho! Salis put his waiters into the livery of the Forty Immortals, green coats and green leaves and breeches and silk stockings and all—put his flunkies into the habit of them that drowse at the Academy down yonder across the river, each snoring in his seat, the fortieth part of Immortality, sleeping away the honour of France, between bouts of cudgelling their dullard wits to produce the printed book. Tshah! where are the Immortals, the gods? Outside. Outside and aloof they stand—Molière and Rabelais and Balzac, Diderot and Rousseau, Victor Hugo and Georges Sand, Montaigne and De Musset, Zola and Verlaine, Daudet and Flaubert and Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier.... And whilst the Fortieth parts of Immortality each slept, smugly overfilling his breeches’ girth, loading the Academy with dull breathing, Rodolph Salis called the wits together: and at his call the immortals flung the immortal phrase round about the board, tossed to and fro the splendid jest in his tavern of The Black Cat. Day and night, spontaneous, full-blooded, polished, they lived their scintillating life.... I can see Rodolph, orange-haired, orange-bearded, pale, green-eyed, his wondrous white hands restless with the leaping pulse and quick nerve, as he was wont to sit at dinner with the wits. There was the real Academy of France. Ay, his waiters most fitly wore the leafed green coats and breeches of the Fortieth part of Immortality!... Ah, how the wine glowed!... With the dessert, Rodolph, sipping his coffee, listened with furrowed brow to the latest news, weighing it, testing it—the most brilliant journalists of France at his elbow. The quips, the jests, the biting comment! It was the centre of the world!... I can hear their literary criticism destroy a life’s work in a mot, fling immortal honour in a phrase, tossed in epigram across the table, and back again another as keen-edged—the last gossip of the stage—the loud hilarious scandal.... I can see Rodolph, the brows wrinkled in mighty furrows of keen attention as the poets read their lines—can hear his bravas that made men rich and set their blood tingling—can pluck out of the dead years the condemning thunders of his dispraise, can catch his deft wit polishing a blundering line.... But for Rodolph Salis many a poet, singer, artist had been this day in his garret, unknown—trudging, down at heels, the Undiscovered Country. But the artist in him! never forgetting his magnificence that he kept the tavern of France.... Hoho! I can hear the jovial laugh: ‘My lords,’ he’d cry, ‘the time has come for the nobility and self-respecting gentlemen to demand a fresh tankard of ale.’ Hoho! that was a king of tavern lords! Then the golden ale went round—the cloudy absinthe.... And when the room began to fill and the time for shadow-shows to begin, Salis was in full stride. Affable to his guests, always the good host, well-bred, polished, good-humoured, giving the stranger rank of nobility, he would show ‘monseigneur’ with pride of possession the cats that were limned upon the walls, the sketches, the glories of his ancient place; and lead the way to the shadow-show upstairs, sketches of France’s genius on the stair’s walls, hanging everywhere—and he so proud of it all! I can see him stride up and down the passage of the shadow theatre up there, as the witty pictures fell in black silhouette across the white sheet of the theatre’s round proscenium, his gay laugh, his running whimsical comment on affairs, his fierce biting denunciations, the flashing green eyes, the nervous white hand—God! what a fire burned there!... Ah, what songs, what poesie, what rhapsodies, what quaintly spoken words have sounded within those walls!... At midnight when the crowd was gone, as we sit here to-night, he was alone with the wits again—and the wine glowed, and the cloudy absinthe went round—and there was supper that the gods had envied to the tune of the wild badinage that was tossed about the board. And he, Rodolph Salis, the brightest star!... How the ghosts of the Great Dead have arisen at our summons, and walked there!... Tshah! there was the Academy of the world.... But—he—one day—found his nerves were gone—he took to his bed.... Even amidst the rousing chorus in the wind that passed, his quick ears had heard the Old Reaper’s whetstone upon the sickle—he heard the whisper of Doom—and the nimble wit of Rodolph Salis had never missed the intention of the most subtle hint. He tossed his jibe to Death. And who with more weighty right to the insolence? He had known life——”
André Joyeux ceased speaking; stood brooding; roused; striding to his place, he raised a glass—his hand shook——
The room was deathly still.
“Rodolph Salis knew life,” he said hoarsely.
There was silence whilst he drank; and again he got to his restless pacing:
“There was one man in all this wide world,” said he, “who was glad when the sign of The Black Cat was taken down—that man was Rodolph’s brother, Gabriel Salis. They had been estranged from the time of Gabriel’s setting up this tavern of The Scarlet Jackass, hating each other’s successes, jealous that the same mother had endowed them with equal wit, resentful of each other’s magnificence....”
He strode up and down several times in silence.
“And Rodolph being dead,” said he—“Gabriel reigned in his stead.... Here within these walls his wit flashed.”