“Cours après!” laughed Suzanne.
Meanwhile the customers kept coming in, some with canvases and paint-boxes, others with only their long hair and unkempt beards.
“That one’s a painter—that one a sculptor—and that a musician,” said Poufaille. “The empty place, there in the corner, is the place of Socrate, a type épatant! Musician, sculptor, painter, and poet, and philosopher—a whole world in himself!”
“Ah!” uttered Phil, respectfully, as he looked at the empty place.
Nothing was heard for a time but the rattle of knives and forks; then there was a great deal of laughter, with cries that punctuated conversations on art. Heads were turned for a few entrances. A pretty model with a cloud of gauze for a scarf was greeted with “Kiss, kiss!” An old man with a gilt band round his cap only called forth howls.
“Eh! you old Gaul!”
“Vieux coq!”
“Your ‘kiss, kiss,’ makes me laugh,” said the old man. “Do you know to-day what ‘kiss, kiss,’ means? Oh, yes! in the old days women fell in love—under the Empire!”
“Ta bouche, bébé!”
“Ferme ça [shut up]!”