"Amaury de Brissac de Roncesvaulx de la Rochemartel-Boissegur was a generous mouthful! Why, the very sound of it is redolent of the twelfth century! Not even Howard of Norfolk can beat that!"

For Taffy was getting sick of "this ghastly thin-faced time of ours," as he sadly called it (quoting from a strange and very beautiful poem called "Faustine," which had just appeared in the _Spectator_--and which our three enthusiasts already knew by heart), and beginning to love all things that were old and regal and rotten and forgotten and of bad repute, and to long to paint them just as they really were.

"Ah! they managed these things better in France, especially in the twelfth century, and even the thirteenth!" said the Laird. "Still, Howard of Norfolk isn't bad at a pinch--_fote de myoo_!" he continued, winking at Little Billee. And they promised themselves that they would leave cards on Zouzou, and, if he wasn't a duke, invite him to dinner; and also Dodor, if they could manage to find him.

Then along the quay and up the Rue de Seine, and by well-remembered little mystic ways to the old studio in the Place St. Anatole des Arts.

Here they found many changes: A row of new houses on the north side, by Baron Haussmann--the well-named; a boulevard was being constructed right through the place; but the old house had been respected, and, looking up, they saw the big north window of their good old abode blindless and blank and black but for a white placard in the middle of it with the words: "a louer. Un atelier, et une chambre a coucher."

They entered the court-yard through the little door in the porte cochere, and beheld Madame Vinard standing on the step of her loge, her arms akimbo, giving orders to her husband--who was sawing logs for firewood, as usual at that time of the year--and telling him he was the most helpless log of the lot.

She gave them one look, threw up her arms, and rushed at them, saying, "Ah, mon Dieu! les trois Angliches!"

And they could not have complained of any lack of warmth in her greeting, or in Monsieur Vinard's.

"Ah! mais quel bonheur de vous revoir! Et comme vous avez bonne mine, tous! Et Monsieur Litrebili, donc! il a grandi!" etc., etc. "Mais vous allez boire la goutte avant tout--vite, Vinard! Le ratafia de ca.s.sis que Monsieur Durien nous a envoye la semaine derniere!"

And they were taken into the loge and made free of it--welcomed like prodigal sons; a fresh bottle of black-currant brandy was tapped, and did duty for the fatted calf. It was an ovation, and made quite a stir in the quartier.

_Le Retour des trois Angliches--cinq ans apres!_

She told them all the news: about Bouchardy; Papelard; Jules Guinot, who was now in the Ministere de la Guerre; Barizel, who had given up the arts and gone into his father's business (umbrellas); Durien, who had married six months ago, and had a superb atelier in the Rue Taitbout, and was coining money; about her own family--Aglae, who was going to be married to the son of the charbonnier at the corner of the Rue de la Canicule--"un bon mariage; bien solide!" Niniche, who was studying the piano at the Conservatoire, and had won the silver medal; Isidore, who, alas! had gone to the bad--"perdu par les femmes! un si joli garcon, vous concevez! ca ne lui a pas porte bonheur, par exemple!" And yet she was proud! and said his father would never have had the pluck!

"a dix-huit ans, pensez donc!

"And that good Monsieur Carrel; he is dead, you know! Ah, messieurs savaient ca? Yes, he died at Dieppe, his natal town, during the winter, from the consequences of an indigestion--que voulez-vous! He always had the stomach so feeble!... Ah! the beautiful interment, messieurs! Five thousand people, in spite of the rain! Car il pleuvait averse! And M. le Maire and his adjunct walking behind the hea.r.s.e, and the gendarmerie and the douaniers, and a bataillon of the douzieme cha.s.seurs-a-pied, with their music, and all the sapper-pumpers, en grande tenue with their beautiful bra.s.s helmets! All the town was there, following: so there was n.o.body left to see the procession go by! q'c'etait beau! Mon Dieu, q'c'etait beau! c'que j'ai pleure, d'voir ca! n'est-ce-pas, Vinard?"

"Dame, oui, ma biche! j'crois ben! It might have been Monsieur le Maire himself that one was interring in person!"

"Ah, ca! voyons, Vinard; thou'rt not going to compare the Maire of Dieppe to a painter like Monsieur Carrel?"

"Certainly not, ma biche! But still, M. Carrel was a great man all the same, in his way. Besides, I wasn't there--nor thou either, as to that!"

"Mon Dieu! comme il est idiot, ce Vinard--of a stupidity to cut with a knife! Why, thou might'st almost be a Mayor thyself, sacred imbecile that thou art!"

And an animated discussion arose between husband and wife as to the respective merits of a country mayor on one side and a famous painter and member of the Inst.i.tute on the other, during which _les trois Angliches_ were left out in the cold. When Madame Vinard had sufficiently routed her husband, which did not take very long, she turned to them again, and told them that she had started a _magasin de bric-a-brac_, "vous verres ca!"

Yes, the studio had been to let for three months. Would they like to see it? Here were the keys. They would, of course, prefer to see it by themselves, alone; "je comprends ca! et vous verrez ce que vous verrez!"

Then they must come and drink once more again the drop, and inspect her _magasin de bric-a-brac_.

So they went up, all three, and let themselves into the old place where they had been so happy--and one of them for a while so miserable!

It was changed indeed.

Bare of all furniture, for one thing; shabby and unswept, with a pathetic air of dilapidation, spoliation, desecration, and a musty, shut-up smell; the window so dirty you could hardly see the new houses opposite; the floor a disgrace!

All over the walls were caricatures in charcoal and white chalk, with more or less incomprehensible legends; very vulgar and trivial and coa.r.s.e, some of them, and pointless for _trois Angliches_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'AH! THE BEAUTIFUL INTERMENT, MESSIEURS!'"]

But among these (touching to relate) they found, under a square of plate-gla.s.s that had been fixed on the wall by means of an oak frame, Little Billee's old black-and-white-and-red chalk sketch of Trilby's left foot, as fresh as if it had been done only yesterday! Over it was written: "Souvenir de la Grande Trilby, par W. B. (Litrebili)." And beneath, carefully engrossed on imperishable parchment, and pasted on the gla.s.s, the following stanzas:

"Pauvre Trilby--la belle et bonne et chere!

Je suis son pied. Devine qui voudra Quel tendre ami, la cherissant naguere, Encadra d'elle (et d'un amour sincere) Ce souvenir charmant qu'un caprice inspira-- Qu'un souffle emportera!

"J'etais jumeau: qu'est devenu mon frere?

Helas! Helas! L'Amour nous egara.

L'eternite nous unira, j'espere; Et nous ferons comme autrefois la paire Au fond d'un lit bien chaste ou nul ne troublera Trilby--qui dormira.

"o tendre ami, sans nous qu'allez-vous faire?

La porte est close ou Trilby demeura.

Le Paradis est loin ... et sur la terre (Qui nous fut douce et lui sera legere) Pour trouver nos pareils, si bien qu'on cherchera-- Beau chercher l'on aura!"

Taffy drew a long breath into his manly bosom, and kept it there as he read this characteristic French doggerel (for so he chose to call this touching little symphony in _ere_ and _ra_). His huge frame thrilled with tenderness and pity and fond remembrance, and he said to himself (letting out his breath): "Dear, dear Trilby! Ah! if you had only cared for _me_, _I_ wouldn't have let you give me up--not for any one on earth. _You_ were the mate for _me_!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "PAUVRE TRILBY"]

And that, as the reader has guessed long ago, was big Taffy's "history."

The Laird was also deeply touched, and could not speak. Had he been in love with Trilby, too? Had he ever been in love with any one?

He couldn't say. But he thought of Trilby's sweetness and unselfishness, her gayety, her innocent kissings and caressings, her drollery and frolicsome grace, her way of filling whatever place she was in with her presence, the charming sight and the genial sound of her; and felt that no girl, no woman, no lady he had ever seen yet was a match for this poor waif and stray, this long-legged, cancan-dancing, quartier-latin grisette, blanchisseuse de fin, "and Heaven knows what besides!"

"Hang it all!" he mentally e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "I wish to goodness I'd married her _myself_!"

Little Billee said nothing either. He felt unhappier than he had ever once felt for five long years--to think that he could gaze on such a memento as this, a thing so strongly personal to himself, with dry eyes and a quiet pulse! and he unemotionally, dispa.s.sionately, wished himself dead and buried for at least the thousand and first time!

All three possessed casts of Trilby's hands and feet and photographs of herself. But nothing so charmingly suggestive of Trilby as this little masterpiece of a true artist, this happy fluke of a happy moment. It was Trilbyness itself, as the Laird thought, and should not be suffered to perish.

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 etes partis; et Monsieur Guinot qui a compose _l'epitaphe_.

Pauvre Trilby! qu'est-ce qu'elle est devenue! comme elle etait bonne fille, hein? et si belle! et comme elle etait vive elle etait vive elle etait 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-gla.s.s of Durien's ratafia de ca.s.sis, 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 marche--une veritable occasion, et--"

"Je p.r.o.ng!" 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.