May this not be for many, many years! Lorrimer himself would be the first to say so!
Tall, thin, red-haired, and well-favored, he was a most eager, earnest, and painstaking young enthusiast, of precocious culture, who read improving books, and did not share in the amusements of the quartier latin, but spent his evenings at home with Handel, Michelangelo, and Dante, on the respectable side of the river. Also, he went into good society sometimes, with a dress-coat on, and a white tie, and his hair parted in the middle!
But in spite of these blemishes on his otherwise exemplary record as an art student, he was the most delightful companion—the most affectionate, helpful, and sympathetic of friends. May he live long and prosper!
Enthusiast as he was, he could only worship one god at a time. It was either Michelangelo, Phidias, Paul Veronese, Tintoret, Raphael, or Titian—never a modern—moderns didn’t exist! And so thoroughgoing was he in his worship, and so persistent in voicing it, that he made those immortals quite unpopular in the Place St. Anatole des Arts. We grew to dread their very names. Each of them would last him a couple of months or so; then he would give us a month’s holiday, and take up another.
Antony did not think much of Lorrimer in those days, nor Lorrimer of him, for all they were such good friends. And neither of them thought much of Little Billee, whose pinnacle (of pure unadulterated fame) is now the highest of all—the highest probably that can be for a mere painter of pictures!
And what is so nice about Lorrimer, now that he is a graybeard, an academician, an accomplished man of the world and society, is that he admires Antony’s genius more than he can say—and reads Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s delightful stories as well as Dante’s Inferno—and can listen with delight to the lovely songs of Signor Tosti, who has not precisely founded himself on Handel—can even scream with laughter at a comic song—even a nigger melody—so, at least, that it but be sung in well-bred and distinguished company—for Lorrimer is no bohemian.
“Shoo, fly! don’tcher bother me!
For I belong to the Comp’ny G!”
Both these famous men are happily (and most beautifully) married—grandfathers, for all I know—and “move in the very best society” (Lorrimer always, I’m told; Antony now and then); la haute, as it used to be called in French bohemia—meaning dukes and lords and even royalties, I suppose, and those who love them and whom they love.
That is the best society, isn’t it? At all events, we are assured it used to be; but that must have been before the present scribe (a meek and somewhat innocent outsider) had been privileged to see it with his own little eye.
And when they happen to meet there (Antony and Lorrimer, I mean), I don’t expect they rush very wildly into each other’s arms, or talk very fluently about old times. Nor do I suppose their wives are very intimate. None of our wives are. Not even Taffy’s and the Laird’s.
Oh, Orestes! Oh, Pylades!
Oh, ye impecunious, unpinnacled young inseparables of eighteen, nineteen, twenty, even twenty-five, who share each other’s thoughts and purses, and wear each other’s clothes, and swear each other’s oaths, and smoke each other’s pipes, and respect each other’s lights o’ love, and keep each other’s secrets, and tell each other’s jokes, and pawn each other’s watches and merrymake together on the proceeds, and sit all night by each other’s bedsides in sickness, and comfort each other in sorrow and disappointment with silent, manly sympathy—“wait till you get to forty year!”
Wait even till each or either of you gets himself a little pinnacle of his own—be it ever so humble!
Nay, wait till either or each of you gets himself a wife!
History goes on repeating itself, and so do novels, and this is a platitude, and there’s nothing new under the sun.
May too cecee (as the idiomatic Laird would say, in the language he adores)—may too cecee ay nee eecee nee láh!
Then there was Dodor, the handsome young dragon de la garde—a full private, if you please, with a beardless face, and damask-rosy cheeks, and a small waist, and narrow feet like a lady’s, and who, strange to say, spoke English just like an Englishman.
And his friend Gontran, alias l’Zouzou—a corporal in the Zouaves.
Both of these worthies had met Taffy in the Crimea, and frequented the studios in the quartier latin, where they adored (and were adored by) the grisettes and models, especially Trilby.
Both of them were distinguished for being the worst subjects (les plus mauvais sujets) of their respective regiments; yet both were special favorites not only with their fellow-rankers, but with those in command, from their colonels downward.
Both were in the habit of being promoted to the rank of corporal or brigadier, and degraded to the rank of private next day for general misconduct, the result of a too exuberant delight in their promotion.
Neither of them knew fear, envy, malice, temper, or low spirits; ever said or did an ill-natured thing; ever even thought one; ever had an enemy but himself. Both had the best or the worst manners going, according to their company, whose manners they reflected; they were true chameleons!
Both were always ready to share their last ten-sou piece (not that they ever seemed to have one) with each other or anybody else, or anybody else’s last ten-sou piece with you; to offer you a friend’s cigar; to invite you to dine with any friend they had; to fight with you, or for you, at a moment’s notice. And they made up for all the anxiety, tribulation, shame, and sorrow they caused at
