The Interment will take place at the
Café of the Broken Heart
on December 31st.
Valedictory N.B.—A sympathetic costume
Victuals will be appreciated.
7 p.m.
"I would call your attention to the border of cypress, and to the tomb in the corner," said the young man, with melancholy pride. "You may also look favourably on the figure with the shovel, which, of course, depicts me in the act of burying my hopes. It is a symbolic touch that no hope is visible."
"It is a very artistic production altogether," said the widow, dissembling her astonishment. "So you are a painter, monsieur Flamant?"
"Again speaking by the clock, I am a painter," he concurred; "but at midnight I shall no longer be in a position to say so—in the morning I am pledged to the life commercial. You will not marvel at my misery when I inform you that the existence of Achille Flamant, the artist, will terminate in five hours and twenty odd minutes!"
"Well, I am commercial myself," she said. "I am madame Aurore, the Beauty Specialist, of the rue Baba. Do not think me wanting in the finer emotions, but I assure you that a lucrative establishment is not a calamity."
"Madame Aurore," demurred the painter, with a bow, "your own business is but a sister art. In your atelier, the saffron of a bad complexion blooms to the fairness of a rose, and the bunch of a lumpy figure is modelled to the grace of Galatea. With me it will be a different pair of shoes; I shall be condemned to perch on a stool in the office of a wine-merchant, and invoice vintages which my thirty francs a week will not allow me to drink. No comparison can be drawn between your lot and my little."
"Certainly I should not like to perch," she confessed.
"Would you rejoice at the thirty francs a week?"
"Well, and the thirty francs a week are also poignant. But you may rise, monsieur; who shall foretell the future? Once I had to make both ends meet with less to coax them than the salary you mention. Even when my poor husband was taken from me—heigho!" she raised a miniature handkerchief delicately to her eyes—"when I was left alone in the world, monsieur, my affairs were greatly involved—I had practically nothing but my resolve to succeed."