They took the keys back to Madame Vinard in silence.
She said: “Vous avez vu—n’est-ce pas, messieurs?—le pied de Trilby! c’est bien gentil! C’est Monsieur Durien qui a fait mettre le verre, quand vous êtes partis; et Monsieur Guinot qui a composé l’épitaphe. Pauvre Trilby! qu’est-ce qu’elle est devenue! comme elle était bonne fille, hein? et si belle! et comme elle était vive elle était vive elle était vive! Et comme elle vous aimait tous bien—et surtout Monsieur Litrebili—n’est-ce pas?”
Then she insisted on giving them each another liqueur-glass of Durien’s ratafia de cassis, and took them to see her collection of bric-a-brac across the yard, a gorgeous show, and explained everything about it—how she had begun in quite a small way, but was making it a big business.
“Voyez cette pendule! It is of the time of Louis Onze, who gave it with his own hands to Madame de Pompadour(!). I bought it at a sale in—”
“Combiang?” said the Laird.
“C’est cent-cinquante francs, monsieur—c’est bien bon marché—une véritable occasion, et—”
“Je prong!” said the Laird, meaning “I take it!”
Then she showed them a beautiful brocade gown “which she had picked up at a bargain at—”
“Combiang?” said the Laird.
“Ah, ça, c’est trois cents francs, monsieur. Mais—”
“Je prong!” said the Laird.
“Et voici les souliers qui vont avec, et que—”
“Je pr—”
But here Taffy took the Laird by the arm and dragged him by force out of this too seductive siren’s cave.
The Laird told her where to send his purchases; and with many expressions of love and goodwill on both sides, they tore themselves away from Monsieur et Madame Vinard.
The Laird, however, rushed back for a minute, and hurriedly whispered to Madame Vinard: “Oh—er—le piay de Trilby—sur le mure, vous savvy—avec le verre et toot le reste—coopy le mure—comprenny? … Combiang?”
“Ah, monsieur!” said Madame Vinard—“c’est un peu difficile, vous savez—couper un mur comme ça! On parlera au propriétaire si vous voulez, et ça pourrait peut-être s’arranger, si c’est en bois! seulement il fau—”
“Je prong!” said the Laird, and waved his hand in farewell.
They went up the Rue Vieille des Mauvais Ladres, and found that about twenty yards of a high wall had been pulled down—just at the bend where the Laird had seen the last of Trilby, as she turned round and kissed her hand to him—and they beheld, within, a quaint and ancient long-neglected garden; a gray old garden, with tall, warty, black-boled trees, and damp, green, mossy paths that lost themselves under the brown and yellow leaves and mould and muck which had drifted into heaps here and there, the accumulation of years—a queer old faded pleasance, with wasted bowers and dilapidated carved stone benches and weather-beaten discolored marble statues—noseless, armless, earless fauns and hamadryads! And at the end of it, in a tumble-down state of utter ruin, a still inhabited little house, with shabby blinds and window-curtains, and broken windowpanes mended with brown paper—a Pavillon de Flore, that must have been quite beautiful a hundred years ago—the once mysterious love-resort of long-buried abbés with light hearts, and well-forgotten lords and ladies gay—red-heeled, patched, powdered, frivolous, and shameless, but oh! how charming to the imagination of the nineteenth century! And right through the ragged lawn, (where lay, upset in the long dewy grass, a broken doll’s perambulator by a tattered Punchinello) went a desecrating track made by cartwheels and horses’ hoofs; and this, no doubt, was to be a new street—perhaps, as Taffy suggested, “La Rue Neuve des Mauvais Ladres!” (The New Street of the Bad Lepers!).
“Ah, Taffy!” sententiously opined the Laird, with his usual wink at Little Billee, “I’ve no doubt the old lepers were the best, bad as they were!”
“I’m quite sure of it!” said Taffy, with sad and sober conviction and a long-drawn sigh. “I only wish I had a chance of painting one—just as he really was!”
How often they had speculated on what lay hidden behind that lofty old brick wall! and now this melancholy little peep into the once festive past, the touching sight of this odd old poverty-stricken abode of Heaven knows what present grief and desolation, which a few strokes of the pickaxe had laid bare, seemed to chime in with their own gray mood that had been so bright and sunny an hour ago; and they went on their way quite dejectedly, for a stroll through the Luxembourg Gallery and Gardens.
The same people seemed to be still copying the same pictures in the long, quiet, genial room, so pleasantly smelling of oil-paint—Rosa Bonheur’s Labourage Nivernais—Hébert’s Malaria—Couture’s Decadent Romans.
And in the formal dusty gardens were the same pioupious and zouzous still walking with the same nounous, or sitting by their sides on benches by formal ponds with gold and silver fish in them—and just the same old couples petting the same toutous and loulous!1
Then they thought they would go and lunch at le père Trin’s—the Restaurant de la Couronne, in the Rue du Luxembourg—for the sake of auld lang syne! But when they got there the well-remembered fumes of that humble refectory, which had once seemed not unappetizing, turned their stomachs. So they contented themselves with warmly greeting le père Trin, who was quite overjoyed to see them again, and anxious to turn the whole establishment topsy-turvy that he might entertain such guests as they deserved.
Then the Laird suggested an omelet at the Café de l’Odéon. But Taffy said, in his masterful way, “Damn the Café de l’Odéon!”
And hailing a little open fly, they drove to Ledoyen’s, or some such place, in the Champs Élysées, where they feasted as became three prosperous Britons out for a holiday in Paris—three irresponsible musketeers, lords of themselves and Lutetia, beati possidentes!—and afterwards had themselves driven in an open carriage and pair through the Bois
