Sigismond Trottier was at least sixty years of age, tall, spare to attenuation, with a long narrow face of almost livid pallor, and long gray hair, falling over a greasy olive-green velvet collar, choice ornament of a threadbare and faded olive-green frock-coat. His jaw was narrow and projecting, his lips were thin and pinched, his nose was long and sharp, his eyebrows were gray and shaggy. The only features that gave life or colour to the face were the restless and brilliant black eyes, small, keen, observant, the eyes of a creature always on the watch. Ah, how many of the darkest mysteries of Paris had that keen glance discovered, how many a loathsome depth had that ruthless gaze explored, how many a social ulcer, how many a domestic disease, how many a wound of heart and honour, how many an atrophy of purse and reputation had those eyes pierced and scrutinised, while all the rest of the world was still blind to the coming ruin, the inevitable disgrace! Sigismond Trottier was a student of society. It was his boast that he knew this Paris of the Third Republic as well as Saint-Simon knew the Paris of the great Louis; knew it in all its strength; and in all its weakness; knew it to the core of its rotten heart.
Needless to say that such a man was invaluable as a paragraphist. He had the same keen scent for a scandal that the well-trained detective has for a crime. A whisper, a shrug was enough to put him on the right track. He was a genius at that modern style of hint and innuendo which just stops short of libel. He had killed more reputations than any man in Paris: and he had never been to prison. His safety lay in the keenness of his perception, which never allowed him to fall into such mistakes as have ruined other society gossips. Whatever Sigismond Trottier wrote was true. He had an extraordinary power of winnowing the chaff from the corn in the floating scandals of the Boulevard. He knew what to accept and what to reject. His judgment was infallible. When Parisian society saw the hint of an elopement, the suggestion of a marital wrong signed by Sigismond's hieroglyphic—an Egyptian beetle—the thing was received as a fact. The pen of the unerring recorder had proclaimed a truth. Happily he was not a physical coward, though a professional assailant of man's honour and woman's reputation. He had given good proof of his courage on several occasions, had stood up before famous swordsmen, had faced marksmen of repute. That deep dint in his lean and livid cheek was the mark of a bullet from the Duke of Midlothian's pistol—that famous viveur who expired suddenly amidst the fading flowers and flaring tapers of a Boulevard supper-room—the very spirit of profligate pleasure extinguished in a breath. That long slanting scar upon the left jaw, a shade more livid than the normal lividity of the complexion, was the result of five minutes' sword-play between the Boulevard chronicler and the Marquis du Bois-Chaufonds, the reminiscence of a duel which set all Paris talking twenty years ago, when the Walewska was in the zenith of her charms. From scalp to sole the paragraphist could have shown the scars of past battles. He had never been known to refuse a challenge.
Trottier was so absorbed in his task when Heathcote approached his table as to be quite unconscious of any one's presence. Heathcote seated himself upon the other side of the table, and took up a newspaper, to wait till the journalist came to the end of a sheet.
He had not long to wait. Before he had read more than half a dozen paragraphs in the Taon, each signed with the familiar beetle, Sigismond paused to blot a page, looked up, and recognised his English acquaintance.
"Good-evening," he said. Then, with a mighty effort, he burst into English, and exclaimed, "'Owderyoudo?" all as one word, having achieved which feat he laughed long and loud, surprised at his own talent for foreign tongues. "We begin to talk your language of horses, we others," he said triumphantly. "We have taken all your words for the sport, and now we begin to take your greetings and salutations, your shake-hand, your 'owderyoudo. And what brings you to Paris, Monsieur Effcott, at the dead season?"
"I should rather ask what you, chosen chronicler of fashionable society, can find to record in the dead season?"
"My dear friend, the most stupendous scandals are those that happen in the dead season, when Paris is a desert, and a man thinks he can murder his neighbour or run away with his neighbour's wife with equal impunity. Ah, my friend, for the development of intrigue, for the ripening of social mysteries, the working out of domestic tragedies, there can be no better time than this dull blank interval of the year, when there is no one in Paris. What stolen meetings, what little suppers in closely-sealed cabinets, when Madame is at the seaside and Monsieur is shooting wild boar in Auvergne! Heaven only forbid that Monsieur and Madame should happen to take their supper in adjacent cabinets, and that Monsieur should recognise the voice of Madame on the other side of the lath and plaster! Yes, there is no richer harvest-time for the chronicler than the season when there is not a mortal in Paris."
"Cynic!" exclaimed Heathcote. "And so you still live by exposing the faults and follies of your fellow-creatures."
"I try to reform them by proving to them that sooner or later all social secrets are known. I am about the only preacher whose sermons scare them nowadays."
"Then you consider your trade a strictly honourable one, no doubt."