One thing is especially noticeable in the Faubourg Montmartre. Every article one buys there is handed to him wrapped in old drawings, old manuscripts, or old copied music. On everything lies the mould and dust of defunct artist existences, and the debris of fallen air castles. The countless miserable lodgings swarm with young artists who never will accomplish anything, with old ones who never have accomplished anything. Against a background of impudent vice and grumbling poverty are drawn the relaxed figures of enthusiasts weary into death.
In his "petits poems en prose," Bandelaire described three people sinking from fatigue, yet without revolting against their burdens, carrying on their backs three enormous, grinning chimeras, whose claws are fastened in their patient shoulders. Every artist in the Faubourg Montmartre bears his chimera. His burden holds him upright; when that disappears he disappears with it. Whole troops of pretentious non-geniuses are to be met there, but also here and there among these eccentric jack fools, a really great, although long ruined artist nature making its last attempt to live and writing its name with trembling hand in the dust. There they dream, and peer across to the Boulevard, the high road of fortune, listening and waiting, with the vigor-and reason-devouring hope of the gambler.
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One morning a man climbed up to the humblest lodging of Rue de Steinkerque in the Faubourg Montmartre; Gesa von Zuylen. He had come to Paris partly to escape from the Rue Ravestein, and partly because Paris is supposed to be the California of artists.
A tenor, whom he met on the railroad gave him the address of this lodging; he said it was a place where a man could work.
And Gesa wanted to work! He had a thousand francs in his pocket, the price of an Amati, once presented him by a distinguished patron. The violin was thrown away at a thousand francs. But what of that? He needed money and would have sold the blood from his veins to compass this sojourn in Paris.
He still heard the thundering tribute of applause paid to his work, and saw de Sterny's complacent bows. His clenched nails dug into the palms, but he forced himself back to calmness. He would work, he must work, that he might tear away his stolen royal mantle from the shoulders of the traitor! Surely for every genuine talent the hour of triumph strikes at least once in a life time, and he, he was no man of talent, he was a genius! How freely he breathed after that first day after his arrival in Paris. His new acquaintance, the tenor, had asked him "if he would like to take a walk to the real Boulevard." He meant the Boulevard between the New Opera House and the Madeleine. But Gesa shrank from the bustle and confusion--and while the tenor, with the haste of a newly-arrived provincial hurried off into the heart of Paris, Gesa crept slowly up the hill of Montmartre. There was a shabby public garden on the top, with newly set forlorn vegetation, a slippery flight of wooden steps led up to it. Lean, badly nurtured children, not in the least resembling the elves in the Champs Elysées and the Park Monceau, tumbled about in the crowded walks. Behind the garden was some waste land where grass covered with chalky dust stretches up to the doors of some miserable little huts. Paris seemed far away.
He seated himself on a bench. Shrill children's voices, in whose strident tones could already be heard the curse of the factory hand, and the coarse laugh of the paissarde surrounded him. He was deadly tired. In other times he had not even noticed the little journey from Brussels to Paris. His head sank on his breast. He dreamed that he was walking under the sleepy rustling trees of the park in Brussels, Annette Delileo was on his arm. The blue sky mirrored itself in an enormous pool, whereon some red poppy leaves were floating, and he told Annette how that "he was a genius, and was going to do something great."
He felt the tender nestling of her warm young form against him. Suddenly he started up. Little cold fingers touched his, a small girl in a white cap and large blue apron stood beside him, and said--"Monsieur, they are closing the garden."
The Angelus was tinkling through the air as Gesa descended. Damp odors pervaded the slippery hill; great ragged streaks of fog settled slowly down on the wretchedness of Montmartre.