“And Dodor—he’s a swell, too, I suppose—he says he’s de something or other!”
“Yes—Rigolot de Lafarce. I’ve no doubt he descends from the Crusaders, too; the name seems to favor it, anyhow; and such lots of them do in this country. His mother was English, and bore the worthy name of Brown. He was at school in England; that’s why he speaks English so well—and behaves so badly, perhaps! He’s got a very beautiful sister, married to a man in the 60th Rifles—Jack Reeve, a son of Lord Reevely’s; a selfish sort of chap. I don’t suppose he gets on very well with his brother-in-law. Poor Dodor! His sister’s about the only living thing he cares for—except Zouzou.”
I wonder if the bland and genial Monsieur Théodore—notre Sieur Théodore—now junior partner in the great haberdashery firm of “Passefil et Rigolot,” on the Boulevard des Capucines, and a pillar of the English chapel in the Rue Marbœuf, is very hard on his employés and employées if they are a little late at their counters on a Monday morning?
I wonder if that stuck-up, stingy, stodgy, communard-shooting, churchgoing, timeserving, place-hunting, pious-eyed, pompous old prig, martinet, and philistine, Monsieur le Maréchal-Duc de la Rochemartel-Boisségur, ever tells Madame la Maréchale-Duchesse (née Hunks, of Chicago) how once upon a time Dodor and he—
We will tell no tales out of school.
The present scribe is no snob. He is a respectably brought-up old Briton of the higher middle-class—at least, he flatters himself so. And he writes for just such old philistines as himself, who date from a time when titles were not thought so cheap as today. Alas! all reverence for all that is high and time-honored and beautiful seems at a discount.
So he has kept his blackguard ducal Zouave for the bouquet of this little show—the final bonne bouche in his bohemian menu—that he may make it palatable to those who only look upon the good old quartier latin (now no more to speak of) as a very low, common, vulgar quarter indeed, deservedly swept away, where misters the students (shocking bounders and cads) had nothing better to do, day and night, than mount up to a horrid place called the thatched house—la chaumière—
“Pour y danser le cancan
Ou le Robert Macaire—
Toujours—toujours—toujours—
La nuit comme le jour …
Et youp! youp! youp!
Tra la la la la … la la la!”
Christmas was drawing near.
There were days when the whole quartier latin would veil its iniquities under fogs almost worthy of the Thames Valley between London Bridge and Westminster, and out of the studio window the prospect was a dreary blank. No morgue! no towers of Notre Dame! not even the chimney-pots over the way—not even the little medieval toy turret at the corner of the Rue Vieille des Mauvais Ladres, Little Billee’s delight!
The stove had to be crammed till its sides grew a dull deep red before one’s fingers could hold a brush or squeeze a bladder; one had to box or fence at nine in the morning, that one might recover from the cold bath, and get warm for the rest of the day!
Taffy and the Laird grew pensive and dreamy, childlike and bland; and when they talked it was generally about Christmas at home in merry England and the distant land of cakes, and how good it was to be there at such a time—hunting, shooting, curling, and endless carouse!
It was Ho! for the jolly West Riding, and Hey! for the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee, till they grew quite homesick, and wanted to start by the very next train.
They didn’t do anything so foolish. They wrote over to friends in London for the biggest turkey, the biggest plum-pudding, that could be got for love or money, with mince-pies, and holly and mistletoe, and sturdy, short, thick English sausages, half a Stilton cheese, and a sirloin of beef—two sirloins, in case one should not be enough.
For they meant to have a Homeric feast in the studio on Christmas Day—Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee—and invite all the delightful chums I have been trying to describe; and that is just why I tried to describe them—Durien, Vincent, Antony, Lorrimer, Carnegie, Petrolicoconose, l’Zouzou, and Dodor!
The cooking and waiting should be done by Trilby, her friend Angèle Boisse, M. et Mme. Vinard, and such little Vinards as could be trusted with glass and crockery and mince-pies; and if that was not enough, they would also cook themselves and wait upon each other.
When dinner should be over, supper was to follow with scarcely any interval to speak of; and to partake of this other guests should be bidden—Svengali and Gecko, and perhaps one or two more. No ladies!
For, as the unsusceptible Laird expressed it, in the language of a gillie he had once met at a servants’ dance in a Highland country-house, “Them wimmen spiles the ball!”
Elaborate cards of invitation were sent out, in the designing and ornamentation of which the Laird and Taffy exhausted all their fancy (Little Billee had no time).
Wines and spirits and English beers were procured at great cost from M. E. Delevingne’s, in the Rue St. Honoré, and liqueurs of every description—chartreuse, curaçoa, ratafia de cassis, and anisette; no expense was spared.
Also, truffled galantines of turkey, tongues, hams, rillettes de Tours, pâtés de foie gras, fromage d’Italie (which has nothing to do with cheese), saucissons d’Arles et de Lyon, with and without garlic, cold jellies peppery and salt—everything that French charcutiers and their wives can make out of French pigs, or any other animal whatever, beast, bird, or fowl (even cats and rats), for the supper; and sweet jellies, and cakes, and sweetmeats, and confections of all kinds, from
