The Real Latin Quarter Part 6

Therese taps her polished nails against the edge of the wicker cage and hums a little chansonette.

"Je t'aime"--she murmurs.

I did not see this myself, and I do not know the fair Therese or the gentleman who b.u.t.tons his coat under his whiskers; but you should have heard one of these ballooning enthusiasts tell it to me in the Taverne du Pantheon the other night. His only regret seemed to be that he, too, could not have a dirigible balloon and a countess--on ten francs a week!

[Ill.u.s.tration: (woman)]

CHAPTER VII

"POCHARD"

Drunkards are not frequent sights in the Quarter; and yet when these people do get drunk, they become as irresponsible as maniacs. Excitable to a degree even when sober, these most wretched among the poor when drunk often appear in front of a cafe--gaunt, wild-eyed, haggard, and filthy--singing in boisterous tones or reciting to you with tense voices a jumble of meaningless thoughts.

The man with the matted hair, and toes out of his boots, will fold his arms melodramatically, and regard you for some moments as you sit in front of him on the terrace. Then he will vent upon you a torrent of abuse, ending in some jumble of socialistic ideas of his own concoction. When he has finished, he will fold his arms again and move on to the next table. He is crazy with absinthe, and no one pays any attention to him. On he strides up the "Boul' Miche," past the cafes, continuing his ravings. As long as he is moderately peaceful and confines his wandering brain to gesticulations and speech, he is let alone by the police.

[Ill.u.s.tration: (portrait of woman)]

You will see sometimes a man and a woman--a teamster out of work or with his wages for the day, and with him a creature--a blear-eyed, slatternly looking woman, in a filthy calico gown. The man clutches her arm, as they sing and stagger up past the cafes. The woman holds in her claw-like hand a half-empty bottle of cheap red wine. Now and then they stop and share it; the man staggers on; the woman leers and dances and sings; a crowd forms about them. Some years ago this poor girl sat on Friday afternoons in the Luxembourg Gardens--her white parasol on her knees, her dainty, white kid-slippered feet resting on the little stool which the old lady, who rents the chairs, used to bring her. She was regarded as a bonne camarade in those days among the students--one of the idols of the Quarter! But she became impossible, and then an outcast! That women should become outcasts through the hopelessness of their position or the breaking down of their brains can be understood, but that men of ability should sink into the dregs and stay there seems incredible. But it is often so.

[Ill.u.s.tration: (portrait of woman)]

Near the rue Monge there is a small cafe and restaurant, a place celebrated for its onion soup and its chicken. From the tables outside, one can see into the small kitchen, with its polished copper sauce-pans hanging about the grill.

Lachaume, the painter, and I were chatting at one of its little tables, he over an absinthe and I over a coffee and cognac. I had dined early this fresh October evening, enjoying to the full the bracing coolness of the air, pungent with the odor of dry leaves and the faint smell of burning brush. The world was hurrying by--in twos and threes--hurrying to warm cafes, to friends, to lovers. The breeze at twilight set the dry leaves s.h.i.+vering. The sky was turquoise. The yellow glow from the shop windows--the blue-white sparkle of electricity like pendant diamonds--made the Quarter seem fuller of life than ever. These fall days make the little ouvrieres trip along from their work with rosy cheeks, and put happiness and ambition into one's very soul.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GROUP OF NEW STUDIOS]

Soon the winter will come, with all the boys back from their country haunts, and Celeste and Mimi from Ostende. How gay it will be--this Quartier Latin then! How gay it always is in winter--and then the rainy season. Ah! but one can not have everything. Thus it was that Lachaume and I sat talking, when suddenly a spectre pa.s.sed--a spectre of a man, his face silent, white, and pinched--drawn like a mummy's.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SCULPTOR'S MODEL]

He stopped and supported his shrunken frame wearily on his crutches, and leaned against a neighboring wall. He made no sound--simply gazed vacantly, with the timidity of some animal, at the door of the small kitchen aglow with the light from the grill. He made no effort to approach the door; only leaned against the gray wall and peered at it patiently.

"A beggar," I said to Lachaume; "poor devil!"

"Ah! old Pochard--yes, poor devil, and once one of the handsomest men in Paris."

"What wrecked him?" I asked.

"What I'm drinking now, mon ami."

"Absinthe?"

"Yes--absinthe! He looks older than I do, does he not?" continued Lachaume, lighting a fresh cigarette, "and yet I'm twenty years his senior. You see, I sip mine--he drank his by the goblet," and my friend leaned forward and poured the contents of the carafe in a tiny trickling stream over the sugar lying in its perforated spoon.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOY MODEL]

"Ah! those were great days when Pochard was the life of the Bullier," he went on; "I remember the night he won ten thousand francs from the Russian. It didn't last long; Camille Leroux had her share of it--nothing ever lasted long with Camille. He was once courrier to an Austrian Baron, I remember. The old fellow used to frequent the Quarter in summer, years ago--it was his hobby. Pochard was a great favorite in those days, and the Baron liked to go about in the Quarter with him, and of course Pochard was in his glory. He would persuade the old n.o.bleman to prolong his vacation here. Once the Baron stayed through the winter and fell ill, and a little couturiere in the rue de Rennes, whom the old fellow fell in love with, nursed him. He died the summer following, at Vienna, and left her quite a little property near Amiens. He was a good old Baron, a charitable old fellow among the needy, and a good bohemian besides; and he did much for Pochard, but he could not keep him sober!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOUGUEREAU AT WORK]

"After the old man's death," my friend continued, "Pochard drifted from bad to worse, and finally out of the Quarter, somewhere into misery on the other side of the Seine. No one heard of him for a few years, until he was again recognized as being the same Pochard returned again to the Quarter. He was hobbling about on crutches just as you see him there.

And now, do you know what he does? Get up from where you are sitting,"

said Lachaume, "and look into the back kitchen. Is he not standing there by the door--they are handing him a small bundle?"

"Yes," said I, "something wrapped in newspaper."

"Do you know what is in it?--the carca.s.s of the chicken you have just finished, and which the garcon carried away. Pochard saw you eating it half an hour ago as he pa.s.sed. It was for that he was waiting."

"To eat?" I asked.

"No, to sell," Lachaume replied, "together with the other bones he is able to collect--for soup in some poorest resort down by the river, where the boatmen and the gamins go. The few sous he gets will buy Pochard a big gla.s.s, a lump of sugar, and a spoon; into the goblet, in some equally dirty 'boite,' they will pour him out his green treasure of absinthe. Then Pochard will forget the day--perhaps he will dream of the Austrian Baron--and try and forget Camille Leroux. Poor devil!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: GEROME]

Marguerite Girardet, the model, also told me between poses in the studio the other day of just such a "pauvre homme" she once knew. "When he was young," she said, "he won a second prize at the Conservatoire, and afterward played first violin at the Comique. Now he plays in front of the cafes, like the rest, and sometimes poses for the head of an old man!

[Ill.u.s.tration: A. MICHELENA]

"Many grow old so young," she continued; "I knew a little model once with a beautiful figure, absolutely comme un bijou--pretty, too, and had she been a sensible girl, as I often told her, she could still have earned her ten francs a day posing; but she wanted to dine all the time with this and that one, and pose too, and in three months all her fine 'svelte' lines that made her a valuable model among the sculptors were gone. You see, I have posed all my life in the studios, and I am over thirty now, and you know I work hard, but I have kept my fine lines--because I go to bed early and eat and drink little. Then I have much to do at home; my husband and I for years have had a comfortable home; we take a great deal of pride in it, and it keeps me very busy to keep everything in order, for I pose very early some mornings and then go back and get dejeuner, and then back to pose again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SCULPTOR'S STUDIO]

"In the summer," she went on, "we take a little place outside of Paris for a month, down the Seine, where my husband brings his work with him; he is a repairer of fans and objets d'art. You should come in and see us some time; it is quite near where you painted last summer. Ah yes," she exclaimed, as she drew her pink toes under her, "I love the country!

Last year I posed nearly two months for Monsieur Z., the painter--en plein air; my skin was not as white as it is now, I can tell you--I was absolutely like an Indian!

[Ill.u.s.tration: FReMIET]

"Once"--and Marguerite smiled at the memory of it--"I went to England to pose for a painter well known there. It was an important tableau, and I stayed there six months. It was a horrible place to me--I was always cold--the fog was so thick one could hardly see in winter mornings going to the studio. Besides, I could get nothing good to eat! He was a celebrated painter, a 'Sir,' and lived with his family in a big stone house with a garden. We had tea and cakes at five in the studio--always tea, tea, tea!--I can tell you I used to long for a good bottle of Madame Giraud's vin ordinaire, and a poulet. So I left and came back to Paris. Ah! quelle place! that Angleterre! J'etais toujours, toujours triste la! In Paris I make a good living; ten francs a day--that's not bad, is it? and my time is taken often a year ahead. I like to pose for the painters--the studios are cleaner than those of the sculptor's. Some of the sculptors' studios are so dirty--clay and dust over everything!

Did you see Fabien's studio the other day when I posed for him? You thought it dirty? Tiens!--you should have seen it last year when he was working on the big group for the Exposition! It is clean now compared with what it was. You see, I go to my work in the plainest of clothes--a cheap print dress and everything of the simplest I can make, for in half an hour, left in those studios, they would be fit only for the blanchisseuse--the wax and dust are in and over everything! There is no time to change when one has not the time to go home at mid-day."

[Ill.u.s.tration: JEAN PAUL LAURENS]

And so I learned much of the good sense and many of the economies in the life of this most celebrated model. You can see her superb figure wrought in marble and bronze by some of the most famous of modern French sculptors all over Paris.

There is another type of model you will see, too--one who rang my bell one sunny morning in response to a note written by my good friend, the sculptor, for whom this little Parisienne posed.

She came without her hat--this "vrai type"--about seventeen years of age--with exquisite features, her blue eyes s.h.i.+ning under a wealth of delicate blonde hair arranged in the prettiest of fas.h.i.+ons--a little white bow tied jauntily at her throat, and her exquisitely delicate, strong young figure clothed in a simple black dress. She had about her such a frank, childlike air! Yes, she posed for so and so, and so and so, but not many; she liked it better than being in a shop; and it was far more independent, for one could go about and see one's friends--and there were many of her girl friends living on the same street where this chic demoiselle lived.

At noon my drawing was finished. As she sat b.u.t.toning her boots, she looked up at me innocently, slipped her five francs for the morning's work in her reticule, and said:

"I live with mama, and mama never gives me any money to spend on myself.

This is Sunday and a holiday, so I shall go with Henriette and her brother to Vincennes. It is delicious there under the trees."