"I am not jesting. She is a dancer in a travelling circus. The flare and the drum wooed me one night, and I went in. As a circus, well, you may imagine—a tent in a fair. My fauteuil was a plank, and the orchestra surpassed the worst tortures of the Inquisition. And then, after the decrepit horses, and a mangy lion, a girl came into the ring, with the most marvellous eyes I have ever seen in a human face. They are green eyes, with golden lights in them."
"Really?" murmured the poet. "I have never been loved by a girl who had green eyes with golden lights in them."
"I am glad you have never been loved by this one," returned the composer gravely; "she has a curious history. All her lovers, without exception, have committed suicide."
"What?" said de Fronsac, staring.
"It is very queer. One of them had just inherited a hundred thousand francs—he hanged himself. Another, an author from Italy, took poison, while all Rome was reading his novel. To be infatuated by her is harmless enough, but to win her is invariably fatal within a few weeks. Some time ago she attached herself to one of the troupe, and soon afterwards he discovered she was deceiving him. He resolved to shoot her. He pointed a pistol at her breast. She simply laughed—and looked at him. He turned the pistol on himself, and blew his brains out!"
De Fronsac had already written: "Here is the extraordinary history of a girl whom I discovered in a fair." The next moment:
"But you repeat a rumour," he objected. "La Voix Parisienne has a reputation; odd as the fact may appear to you, people read it. If this is published in La Voix it will attract attention. Soon she will be promoted from a tent in a fair to a stage in Paris. Well, what happens? You tell me she is beautiful, so she will have hundreds of admirers. Among the hundreds there will be one she favours. And then? Unless he committed suicide in a few weeks, the paper would be proved a liar. I should not be able to sleep of nights for fear he would not kill himself."
"My dear," exclaimed Pitou with emotion, "would I add to your anxieties? Rather than you should be disturbed by anybody's living, let us dismiss the subject, and the dinner, and talk of my new Symphony. On the other hand, I fail to see that the paper's reputation is your affair—it is not your wife; and I am more than usually empty to-day."
"Your argument is sound," said de Fronsac. "Besides, the Editor refuses my poetry." And he wrote without cessation for ten minutes.
The two-franc table-d'hôte excelled itself that evening, and Pitou did ample justice to the menu.