"Figure yourself," continued Tricotrin, "that at nine o'clock I was wandering on the Grand Boulevard with a thirst that could have consumed a brewery. I might mention that I had also empty pockets, but—"
"It would be to pad the powerful Serial shamelessly," said Pitou: "there are things that one takes for granted."
"At the corner of the place de l'Opera a fellow passed me whom I knew and yet did not know; I could not recall where it was we had met. I turned and followed him, racking my brains the while. Suddenly I remembered—"
"Pardon me," interrupted the composer, "but I have read Bel-Ami myself. Oh, it is quite evident that you are a celebrity—you have already forgotten how to be original!"
"There is a resemblance, it is true," admitted Tricotrin. "However, Maupassant had no copyright in the place de l'Opera. I say that I remembered the man; I had known him when he was in the advertisement business in Lyons. Well, we have supped together; he is in a position to do me a service—he will ask an editor to publish an Interview with me!"
"An Interview?" exclaimed Pitou. "You are to be Interviewed? Ah, no, my poor friend, too much meat has unhinged your reason! Go to sleep—you will be hungry and sane again to-morrow."
"It will startle some of them, hein? 'Gustave Tricotrin at Home'—in the illustrated edition of Le Demi-Mot?"
"Illustrated?" gasped Pitou. He looked round the attic. "Did I understand you to say 'illustrated'?"
"Well, well," said Tricotrin, "we shall move the beds! And, when the concierge nods, perhaps we can borrow the palm from the portals. With a palm and an amiable photographer, an air of splendour is easily arrived at. I should like a screen—we will raise one from a studio in the rue Ravignan. Mon Dieu! with a palm and a screen I foresee the most opulent effects. 'A Corner of the Study'—we can put the screen in front of the washhand-stand, and litter the table with manuscripts—you will admit that we have a sufficiency of manuscripts?—no one will know that they have all been rejected. Also, a painter in the rue Ravignan might lend us a few of his failures—'Before you go, let me show you my pictures,' said monsieur Tricotrin: 'I am an ardent collector'!"
In Montmartre the sight of two "types" shifting household gods makes no sensation—the sails of the remaining windmills still revolve. On the day that it had its likeness taken, the attic was temporarily transformed. At least a score of unappreciated masterpieces concealed the dilapidation of the walls; the broken window was decorated with an Eastern fabric that had been a cherished "property" of half the ateliers in Paris; the poet himself—with the palm drooping gracefully above his head—mused in a massive chair, in which Solomon had been pronouncing judgment until 12:15, when the poet had called for it. The appearance of exhaustion observed by admirers of the poet's portrait was due to the chair's appalling weight. As he staggered under it up the steps of the passage des Abbesses, the young man had feared he would expire on the threshold of his fame.