They are well off enough, anyhow, to spend a week in Paris at last, and even to stop at the Grand Hôtel! now that two of their sons are at Harrow (where their father was before them), and the third is safe at a preparatory school at Elstree, Herts.
It is their first outing since the honeymoon, and the Laird should have come with them.
But the good Laird of Cockpen (who is now a famous Royal Academician) is preparing for a honeymoon of his own. He has gone to Scotland to be married himself—to wed a fair and clever countrywoman of just a suitable age, for he has known her ever since she was a bright little lassie in short frocks, and he a promising A.R.A. (the pride of his native Dundee)—a marriage of reason, and well-seasoned affection, and mutual esteem—and therefore sure to turn out a happy one! and in another fortnight or so the pair of them will very possibly be sitting to breakfast opposite each other at that very corner table in the courtyard of the Grand Hôtel! and she will laugh at everything he says—and they will live happily ever after.
So much for hero number three—D’Artagnan! Here’s to you, Sandy McAlister, canniest, genialest, and most humorous of Scots! most delicate, and dainty, and fanciful of British painters! “I trink your health, mit your family’s—may you lif long—and brosper!”
So Taffy and his wife have come for their second honeymoon, their Indian-summer honeymoon, alone; and are well content that it should be so. Two’s always company for such a pair—the amusing one and the amusable!—and they are making the most of it!
They have been all over the quartier latin, and revisited the well-remembered spots; and even been allowed to enter the old studio, through the kindness of the concierge (who is no longer Madame Vinard). It is tenanted by two American painters, who are coldly civil on being thus disturbed in the middle of their work.
The studio is very spick and span, and most respectable. Trilby’s foot, and the poem, and the sheet of plate-glass have been improved away, and a bookshelf put in their place. The new concierge (who has only been there a year) knows nothing of Trilby, and of the Vinards, only that they are rich and prosperous, and live somewhere in the south of France, and that Monsieur Vinard is mayor of his commune. Que le bon Dieu les bénisse! c’étaient de bien braves gens.
Then Mr. and Mrs. Taffy have also been driven (in an open calèche with two horses) through the Bois de Boulogne to St. Cloud; and to Versailles, where they lunched at the Hôtel des Réservoirs—parlez-moi de ça! and to St. Germain, and to Meudon (where they lunched at la loge du garde champêtre—a new one); they have visited the Salon, the Louvre, the porcelain manufactory at Sèvres, the Gobelins, the Hôtel Cluny, the Invalides, with Napoleon’s tomb, and seen half a dozen churches, including Notre Dame and the Sainte Chapelle; and dined with the Dodors at their charming villa near Asnières, and with the Zouzous at the splendid Hôtel de la Rochemartel, and with the Duriens in the Parc Monceau (Dodor’s food was best and Zouzou’s worst; and at Durien’s the company and talk were so good that one forgot to notice the food—and that was a pity). And the young Dodors are all right—and so are the young Duriens. As for the young Zouzous, there aren’t any—and that’s a relief.
And they’ve been to the Variétés and seen Madame Chaumont, and to the Français and seen Sarah Bernhardt and Côquelin and Delaunay, and to the Opéra and heard Monsieur Lassalle.
And today being their last day, they are going to laze and flane about the boulevards, and buy things, and lunch anywhere, sur le pouce, and do the Bois once more and see tout Paris, and dine early at Durand’s, or Bignon’s (or else the Café des Ambassadeurs), and finish up the well-spent day at the Mouches d’Espagne—the new theatre in the Boulevard Poissonnière—to see Madame Cantharidi in Petits Bonheurs de Contrebande, which they are told is immensely droll and quite proper—funny without being vulgar! Dodor was their informant—he had taken Madame Dodor to see it three or four times.
Madame Cantharidi, as everybody knows, is a very clever but extremely plain old woman with a cracked voice—of spotless reputation, and the irreproachable mother of a grown-up family whom she has brought up in perfection. They have never been allowed to see their mother (and grandmother) act—not even the sons. Their excellent father (who adores both them and her) has drawn the line at that!
In private life she is “quite the lady,” but on the stage—well, go and see her, and you will understand how she comes to be the idol of the Parisian public. For she is the true and liberal dispenser to them of that modern esprit gaulois which would make the good Rabelais turn uneasily in his grave and blush there like a Benedictine Sister.
And truly she deserves the reverential love and gratitude of her chers Parisiens! She amused them all through the Empire; during the année terrible she was their only stay and comfort, and has been their chief delight ever since, and is now.
When they come back from La Revanche, may Madame Cantharidi be still at her post, “Les mouches d’Espagne,” to welcome the returning heroes, and exult and crow with them in her funny cracked old voice; or, haply, even console them once more, as the case may be.
“Victors or vanquished, they will laugh the same!”
Mrs. Taffy is a poor French
