Leonard Merrick

“ She is the only woman I have ever loved."
"A—ah," rejoined Pitou; "certainly, I have heard of her a thousand times—only she has never been called 'Claudine' before."
"Let us keep to the point," said Tricotrin. "Claudine represents the devotion of a lifetime. I think seriously of writing a tragedy for her to appear in."
"I shall undertake to weep copiously at it if you present me with a pass," affirmed Pitou. "She is an actress, then, this Claudine? At what theatre is she blazing—the Montmartre?"
"How often I find occasion to lament that your imagination is no larger than the quartier! ”

“ Pitou answered Tricotrin.
It is superb, such friendship, hein?
In the mind of the poet who had accomplished tragedies majestic—in the mind of the composer, the most classical in Montmartre—there had been born a new ambition: it was to write a comic song for Paulette Fleury!
It appears to you droll, perhaps? Monsieur, to her lover, the humblest divette is more than Patti. In all the world there can be no joy so thrilling as to hear the music of one's brain sung by the woman one adores—unless it be to hear the woman one adores give forth one's verse. ”

“ I must write what is to be said, and La Voix must believe that it has been written by Labaregue. Come, we are getting on famously—we have now decided what we are to avoid!"
"By D'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis," cried Pitou, "this will be the doughtiest adventure in which we have engaged!"
"You are right, it is an adventure worthy of our steel ... pens! We shall enlighten the public, crown an artiste, and win her heart by way of reward—that is to say, I shall win her heart by way of reward. ”

“ It is astonishing how quickly a dog recognises a good heart."
"Good heart, or not," exclaimed the concierge, "it is to be understood that I do not consent to this outrage. The poodle shall not remain!"
"Be discreet," urged Juliette. "I entreat you to be discreet, for your own sake; if you must have the whole truth, he is a fairy poodle!"
"What do you say?" ejaculated madame Cochard.
"He is a fairy poodle, and if we treat him ungenerously, we shall suffer. Remember the history of the Lodgers, the Concierge, and the Pug!" ”

“ What are you laughing at?"
"I laugh, like Figaro," said Tricotrin, "that I may not be obliged to weep. When are you going to throw yourself away, my little Lisette? Has my accursed rival induced you to fix a date?'
"We are to be married in a fortnight's time," she said. "And if you could undertake to be sensible, I would ask Alphonse to invite you to the breakfast."
"In a fortnight's time hunger and a hopeless passion will probably have made an end of me," replied the poet; "however, if I survive, the breakfast will certainly be welcome. Where is it to be held? ”

“ Why do not the critics call attention to an outrage which continues year by year? It appears to me that I shall have to use my influence with the Press." And so serious was the tone in which he made this boast, that the fair Claudine began to wonder if she had after all underrated the position of her out-at- elbows gallant.
"Your influence?" she questioned, with an eager smile. "Have you influence with the critics, then?"
"We shall see what we shall see," repeated Tricotrin, significantly. "I am not unknown in Paris, and I have your cause at heart—I may make a star of you yet. ”

“ Now I begin to understand why you have become so prodigal with the blacking; for some time I have had the intention of reproaching you with your shoes—our finances are not equal to such lustre."
"Ah, when one truly loves, money is no object!" said Tricotrin. "However, if it is time misspent to write a sonnet to her, it is even more unprofitable to pass the evening justifying one's shoes." And, picking up his hat, the poet ran down the stairs, and made his way as fast as his legs would carry him to the Comédie Moderne. ”

“ I thirst for a career behind the footlights. Alas! I cannot sing, or dance, or act. There is only one chance for me—to possess an Illusion that shall take Paris by storm. I am told that there is nothing produced to-day fit to hold a candle to the former 'Miracles Bourjac.' Will you help me? Will you design for me the most wonderful Illusion of your life?"
"Mademoiselle," said Bourjac, with a shrug, "I have retired."
"I implore you!" she urged. "But I have not finished; I am poor, I am employed at a milliner's, I could not pay down a single franc. My offer is a share of my salary as a star. ”

“ Mon Dieu, that beautiful wretch, that creature without conscience, or a note in her voice—by a shrug of her elegant shoulders she condemns me to the Seine!"
"Ah, do not give way!" exclaimed Tricotrin, leaping out of bed.
"Courage, my poor fellow, courage! Are there not other managers in
Paris?"
"There are—and Patatras has been refused by them. La Coupole was our last chance, and it has collapsed. We have no more to expect— it is all over. Is it not so, Lajeunie?"
"All over," sobbed Lajeunie, bowing his head on the washhand-stand. "Patatras is dead!" ”

“ Only, once in a blue moon, Jules, there is a woman born of the People with a gift that is a blessing, and a curse—and her genius makes an epoch, and her name makes theatrical history. And if a lover of the stage like me discovers such a woman, you stodgy old soldier, and blazes her genius in his work, he feels like Cheops, Chephrenus, and Asychis rearing the Pyramids for immortality! ”

“ They stroll back; she takes his arm—under the moon, under the stars; but she sees only the lamps of Paris!—she sees only that he can say nothing she cares to hear!"
"Ah, unhappy man!" murmured the poet.
"They sit at a café table, and he talks, the fiancé, of the bliss that is to come to them. She attends to not a word, not a syllable. While she smiles, she questions herself, frenzied, how she can escape. She has commanded a sirop. As she lifts her glass to the syphon, her gaze falls on the ring she wears—the ring of their betrothal. 'To the future, cher ange!' says the fiancé. ”

“ THE FAIRY POODLE They were called the "Two Children" because they were so unpractical; even in bohemia, where practicality is the last virtue to flourish, their improvidence was surprising; but really they were not children at all—they had been married for three years, though to watch their billing and cooing, you would have supposed them to be bride and bridegroom.
Julian and Juliette had fallen in love and run to the Mairie as joyously as if chateaubriands were to be gathered from the boughs in the Jardin des Buttes-Chaumont ”

“ Your income? Does it suffice to support her in the style to which she is accustomed? What may your occupation be?"
"I am in madame's own profession—I, too, am an artiste."
"So much the more congenial! I foresee a joyous union. Come, we go famously! Your line of business—snakes, ventriloquism, performing- rabbits, what is it?"
"My name is 'Tournicquot,'" responded the comedian, with dignity. "All is said!"
"A-ah! Is it so? Now I understand why your voice has been puzzling me! Monsieur Tournicquot, I am enchanted to make your acquaintance. I declare the matter arranges itself! ”

“ I sought a painter called Goujaud. And observe how careless is Reality in the matter of coincidences! I learnt from his concierge that precisely the same thing had befallen monsieur Goujaud. He, too, is Christmassing alfresco."
"Mon Dieu," faltered the clerk, "how it rejoices me that I have met you! All my life I have looked forward to encountering a genius in such a fix."
"Alas!" sighed Tricotrin, with a pensive smile, "to the genius the fix is less spicy. Without a supper—"
"Without a supper!" crowed Petitpas. ”

“ I see madame apologising for the cuisine, instead of reminding me that my credit is exhausted, and the waiter polishing my glass, instead of indicating the cheapest item on the menu. Such changes hurt!" He was much moved. "A fortune is not everything," he sighed, forgetting that his pockets were as empty as his stomach. "Poverty yielded joys which I no longer know."
The poet embraced him with emotion. "I rejoice to find that Fame has not spoilt your nature," he cried; and he, too, forgot the empty pockets, and that the contract from La Coupole had yet to come. ”

“ THE CONSPIRACY FOR CLAUDINE "Once," remarked Tricotrin, pitching his pen in the air, "there were four suitors for the Most Beautiful of her Sex. The first young man was a musician, and he shut himself in his garret to compose a divine melody, to be dedicated to her. The second lover was a chemist, who experimented day and night to discover a unique perfume that she alone might use. The third, who was a floriculturist, aspired constantly among his bulbs to create a silver rose, that should immortalise the lady's name."
"And the fourth," inquired Pitou, "what did the fourth suitor do?" ”

“ Heaven knows I trust you will be happy, but I cannot persuade myself that this Pomponnet shares your ambitions; with his slum and his stale pastry he is quite content."
"It is not stale," she said.
"Well, we will pass his pastry—though, word of honour, I bought some there last week that might have been baked before the Commune; but to recur to his soul, is it an affinity?"
"Affinities are always hard up," she pouted.
"Zut!" exclaimed Touquet; "now your mind is running on that monsieur Tricotrin—by 'affinities' I do not mean hungry poets. Why not have entrusted your happiness to me? ”

“ For a few weeks my patron fulfilled his compact with tolerable punctuality, but I never failed to notice when we met that he was a prey to some terrible grief. At last, when he had reduced the sum to two thousand five hundred and forty-three francs—the figures will be found graven on my heart—he confided in me, he made me a strange request; he exclaimed:
"'Tricotrin, I am the most miserable of men!'
"'Poor fellow!' I responded. 'It is, of course, a woman?'
"'Precisely,' he answered. 'I adore her. Her beauty is incomparable, her fascinations are unparalleled, her intelligence is unique. ”

“ I am not celebrated. I am Tricotrin, mademoiselle—Gustave Tricotrin, at your feet! For years I have written, aided by ambition, and an uncle who manufactures silk in Lyons. Well, the time is arrived when he is monstrous, this uncle. He says to me, 'Gustave, this cannot last—you make no living, you make nothing but debts. (My tragedies he ignores.) Either you must be a poet who makes money, or you must be a partner who makes silk,' How could I defy him?—he holds the purse. ”

“ I expect you will die like the babes in the wood, for you are no more fit to make a living than a cow is fit to fly."
"Dear madame Cochard," they answered, peacefully, "why distress yourself about us? The first of January is more than a week distant; in a week we may sell a picture, or some fairy tales—in a week many things may happen!" And they sunned themselves on the boulevard the same afternoon with as much serenity as if they had been millionaires. ”

“ Come and have a drink!"
"I feel like Rodolphe at the end of La Vie de Bohème," he confided to Tricotrin in their garret one winter's night, as they went supper-less to their beds. "Now that the days of privation are past, I recall them with something like regret. The shock of the laundress's totals, the meagre dinners at the Bel Avenir, these things have a fascination now that I part from them. I do not wish to sound ungrateful, but I cannot help wondering if my millions will impair the taste of life to me." ”

“ The young man, Tricotrin, well understood that the girl she described was herself.
"What does she consider while she sits sewing?" she continued. "That the pastrycook loves her, that he is generous, that she will do her most to be to him a good wife? Not at all. Far from that! She considers, on the contrary, that she was a fool to promise him; she considers how she shall escape—from him, from Rouen, from her ennui— she seeks to fly to Paris. Alas! she has no money, not a franc. And she sews—always she sews in the dull room—and her spirit rebels."
"Good!" said the poet. ”

“ The man's dream of awakening her tenderness was speedily dispelled; he had been accepted as the means to an end, and he was held fast to the compact. She grudged him every hour in which he idled by her side. Driven from her arms by her impatience, old Bourjac would toil patiently in the workroom: planning, failing—surmounting obstacles atom by atom, for the sake of a woman whose sole interest in his existence was his progress with the Illusion that was to gratify her vanity. ”

“ He shrieked his remorse, his lacerating remorse. "I am a murderer," he sobbed; and in the hall one might have heard a pin drop.
There was no applause when he finished—that set the seal on his success; he bowed and withdrew amid tense silence. Still none moved in the hall, until, with a rush, the representatives of the Press sped forth to proclaim Jacques Roux an unparalleled sensation.
The triumph of Robichon! How generous were the congratulations of Quinquart, and how sweet the admiring tributes of Suzanne! ”

“ Myself, I have not the style dramatic, though I avow to you I admire that.
"We are in a provincial town," she said to the young man, "we are in Rouen—the workroom of a modiste. Have no embarrassment, monsieur Tricotrin, you, at least, are invisible to the girls who sew! They sew all day and talk little—already they are tristes, resigned. Among them sits one who is different—one passionate, ambitious—a girl who burns to be divette, singer, who is devoured by longings for applause, fashion, wealth. She has made the acquaintance of a little pastrycook. ”

“ Do we give our love to a face, or to a temperament? I swear to you that I could not have known that woman's temperament more intimately if we had made our confidences in each other's arms. I knew everything of her, except the trifles which a stranger learns in the moment of being presented— her height, her complexion, her name, whether she was married or single. ”