He swept his arm proudly round the room and strode off again:
“And—because his hand shook—and—his tongue wagged feverishly, speaking the fantastic thinkings of that teeming imagination, they cried out that he, too, would go mad; and he, raising his glass as Rodolph had done in trembling fingers, would laugh boisterously.... But—Gabriel, too, heard the whisper—he feared to die the death that Rodolph died—and the tavern of The Scarlet Jackass passed to André Joyeux.”
He laughed, wheeled round, and swept his hand towards the flaring poster at the end of the room:
“There have I drawn Gabriel on his scarlet jackass, bags of gold about him, trotting away to the fresh air of the fields to the country house he had bought——”
He moved down the room again, moodily:
“But he, too, took to his bed—he had lived his life—he missed his glass, his fellows, the rousing chorus, the jovial good fellowship. He was bored. He took to his bed——”
André Joyeux paced in moody silence a couple of turns up and down the room, went to his place, raised a glass and drained it to the dregs:
“And now the wits feast with me.... Steinlen, and thou, Toulouse Lautrec! ye drink in Joyeux’s tavern. And thou, Willette! though thou didst draw that red ass there in likeness of Rodolph Salis, because thou hadst thy quarrel with him—thou at least quarrelled with a man.... God! I have drunk wine here with Paul Verlaine, first lyric poet of France. Ay,” said he—“why poor Rodolph? why poor Gabriel? why poor St. Pierre?”
And he added hoarsely:
“I tell you these men were not afraid to live. They were men. They were not—afraid—to—live....”