"To me they will make it taste much better," said Tricotrin, "for I shall have somebody to borrow money from, and I shall get enough blankets. Brrr! how cold I am! Besides, you need not lose touch with Montmartre because you are celebrated—you can invite us all to your magnificent abode. Also, you can dine at the Bel Avenir still, if sentiment pulls you that way."
"I shall certainly dine there," averred Pitou. "And I shall buy a house for my parents, with a peacock and some deer on the lawn. At the same time, a triumph is not without its pathos. I see my return to the Bel Avenir, the old affections in my heart, the old greetings on my lips— and I see the fellows constrained and formal in my presence. I see madame apologising for the cuisine, instead of reminding me that my credit is exhausted, and the waiter polishing my glass, instead of indicating the cheapest item on the menu. Such changes hurt!" He was much moved. "A fortune is not everything," he sighed, forgetting that his pockets were as empty as his stomach. "Poverty yielded joys which I no longer know."
The poet embraced him with emotion. "I rejoice to find that Fame has not spoilt your nature," he cried; and he, too, forgot the empty pockets, and that the contract from La Coupole had yet to come. "Yes, we had hard times together, you and I, and I am still a nobody, but we shall be chums as long as we live. I feel that you can unbosom yourself to me, the poor bohemian, more freely than to any Immortal with whom you hobnob in scenes of splendour."
"Oh indeed, indeed!" assented Pitou, weeping. "You are as dear to me now as in the days of our struggles; I should curse my affluence if it made you doubt that! Good-night, my brother; God bless you."
He lay between the ragged sheets; and half an hour crept by.
"Gustave!"
"Well?" said Tricotrin, looking towards the other bed. "Not asleep yet?"
"I cannot sleep—hunger is gnawing at me."
"Ah, what a relentless realist is this hunger," complained the poet, "how it destroys one's illusions!"
"Is there nothing to eat in the cupboard?"