Puslapio vaizdai
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If they could see me when I returna from the country, they would admire. But I cannot go to the country. It is money, Ventri, and there is yet another reason which I cannota tell; but it wrings my heart. Ventri, the lifa is hard-"

Ventrillon was inspired.

"That is it," he thought: "I shall send this Carmen to the country. In the meanwhile I shall seize the occasion by the hairs."

He leaped again upon a stool. "Gentlemen," he cried, "behold this Carmen! She is a model, it is true; but a model is nevertheless human. What is humanity, my ancients? Humanity is that which requires a beer. A beer for Carmen, messieurs! Subscribe to a beer for Carmen, and Carmen once more will pose that magnificent torso."

"That is true, Ventri," said Carmen; "I will posa. You are kind, Ventri, and I will dance a Habanera for you. It is fine to see me dance a Habanera."

There was a clattering of sous into a hat that was passed, and a beer materialized for Carmen. Carmen drank. "Alors, messieurs," she cried, "the music!"

They began roaring forth that cynical studio-song which begins, "Quand on est mort on est foutu-u-u," yodeling in a screaming falsetto on the final syllable.

And Carmen danced.

When you are dead, you 're up a spout!

The rhythm was not that of a Habanera, but it was a Habanera that Carmen danced. The chorus roared on:

For love is part of life, and we all must profit by it!

(Car l'amour est dans la vie, et il faut en profiter!)

The red robe swirled, the high heels clicked, and Carmen darted, poised, and postured among the easels. It was pitiful, the inquiring glance she cast on them after each new posture. "Do you yet admire?" it said.

Evidently they did, for there was a wild burst of applause at the end; and Carmen went back to her back-breaking pose with a smile of great satisfaction.

Now, all this was indeed great fun, but it gave Ventrillon a desire to weep. "Ah, this poor child!" thought he, who was little more than a child himself, "I must send her to the country." It is a noteworthy fact that he had not contributed a single copper sou toward Carmen's beer. He fingered the six francs in his pocket. There was his own humanity to consider. "I will send her to the country. How? I do not know. I am not the devil."

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That evening Ventrillon went to dine at the Restaurant Ste. Cécile on the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse. One eats there at little tables on the sidewalk, under a striped awning, and behind little hedges of clipped box growing in cases upon rollers.

Ventrillon was sad. He had eaten no luncheon, and, in consequence, still possessed the six francs. But he dared spend no more than two francs fifty; and, according to the menu, he could spend no less. Carmen was upon his mind, and the necessity of sending her to the country. The summer breeze flowed pleasantly down the boulevard, but the forehead of Ventrillon did not cool. He was thinking.

A little gutter-snipe in a greasy raincoat entered among the tables. The

urchin slipped off the rain-coat and dropped it on the pavement. A girl of perhaps a little over fourteen stood revealed. She wore a pair of dirty sneakers, a dirty gauze undershirt, a pair of cotton knickerbockers, which once might have been lavender, and that was all.

"Behold the little acrobat!" she cried, and put her left foot behind her right ear. "Changa of foot!" she announced, and became normal to put her right foot behind her left ear. "Changa da posa!" She lay on the pavement and clasped both feet behind her head.

Ventrillon's thoughts were upon Carmen, and he thought she had spoken. It was was the same heavy Italian accent colored with Spanish. He looked at the "little acrobat," and noted the crooked smile of pride in her accomplishments. He became aware that it was strangely familiar.

"Name of a dog!" he swore under his breath, "this is astounding. There is something terrible behind all this. It is her other reason. It is why Carmen cannot go to the country. I must seize the occasion by the hairs."

"Riposa of the little acrobat!" announced the child, and placed her arms and legs in every conceivable position impossible to average mankind. The effect was ghastly.

"Put her out!" demanded a woman. "How can one eat!" cried another. The child snatched up her rain-coat to flee incontinently, but stayed rooted in her tracks when she saw La Grosse Germaine, the largest of the waitresses, advancing upon her. She trembled with terror.

"No!" shouted the terrible baritone of Ventrillon, "put out my guest, and I shall summon the police. The little

one is dining with me. Come, little one. A table! la soupe!"

The child, as if hypnotized, moved to his table, and Germaine dared not touch her. There was danger of burning her fingers in the flame from Ventrillon's eyes.

"Shall I really sit down, sir?" said the child.

"Tonnerre de dieu!" swore Ventrillon, and frightened her half out of her wits. "Veritably. And you shall eat also."

She slipped trembling into a chair at the side of that beardless youth with the beauty of a Gallic archangel and the voice of a bull, in which he swore like a fishwife. The little acrobat was hungry; in fact, she was starving.

Ventrillon spent the remaining three francs fifty.

"You are human," he said to the child, who looked as if she doubted it, "and your humanity deserves a beer as well."

She attacked the little food that he had been able to buy her with the voracity of a starving hyena, and washed it down with great gulps of beer. He noted the thin, blue creases about the corners of her mouth and of her eyelids, the signs of starvation and anemia.

"Lick the plate, little one!" he cried, and the little one obeyed him to the letter.

"Now, then, since the little acrobat has finished this conjuring performance, she will tell me the name of her mother."

"Oh, non, monsieur; she has forbidden it."

"Look upon your benefactor, child. Is he not good? But is he God that you fear to confide in him?"

"Oh, yes, you are good, sir; I shall tella you. But you must not breathe

"Pardon, monsieur?"

it. She is Maddalena Vaccarès, and
they call her Carmen."
"Nom de dieu! did I not say it?" beer,"" said Ventrillon.
"I did not hear you, sir."

"I said, 'It's a pity there is no more

"How stupid you are, little one! I like stupidity. It is the first proof of humanity. Where do you and your mother live?"

"And when we come back, they will pay her more for posing. You see how that frees us from him?

In the country one's figure fills out like a young woman's. And there is milk, which will do me good also."

"It is evident," thought Ventrillon, "that I must save these women at once." What had been a mere goodnatured whim in the case of Carmen had now become a terrible stark necessity since he had talked with her daughter. "If God does not take care of His children, then Ventrillon must.

"Oh, I do not liva with her, sir. When it is warm, I sleep in the Bois da Bologna. When it is cold, on the closed book-stalls in the Mont-Parnassa railway station. The gendarmes are good. They do not arresta me, though every few hours through the night they must force me to move. It is the law, it appears." "Why do you not live with your That sees itself." mother!" he thundered.

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"Chut! chut! monsieur!" breathed the child in terror. "Not so loud, and I will tella you. It sees itself that you are good. My mother lives with a piano-tuner, and he does not lika the children. She would not dare to let him know she has a child, and we conceal this fact. He would beat her and leave her. She hates him, sir."

"Then why does she live with him?" "One must exist," said the child. She did not dream of all the callousness to shame her remark betrayed.

"What degradation!" said Ventrillon, with a strange chill in his chaste soul.

"Pardon, monsieur?"

"I said, "What an observation!" said Ventrillon.

"But we are going to the country, sir, my mother and I. She gives me all that she can steal from him, and I save it for that. When we have enough, we shall be free from him. I already have nine sous. Is n't that fine!

"O God!" said Ventrillon, "how can these things be!"

"Mademoiselle," he said aloud, "I adopt you."

And he felt in his pocket, in which his fingers encountered not a sou. "Now," he said to himself, "I have not only the mother, but the daughter, on my hands. In my present condition of finances I can do as much for both as for one. That is axiomatic." His fingers moved in the empty pocket.

§ 4

An excited young man with a very faint mustache ran in among the tables, and stopped at one where some men and girls were seated who were evidently friends of his.

"Figure to yourselves!" he cried. "The artists have arisen! All Montmartre is in revolt! The Cubists have declared a soviet. The Futurists are organizing. It is said that the Imagist poets have been organized for over a week. They are in full revolt, and they have declared for free beer and the socialization of the midinettes. is the latest pipe. I had it from a friend who is a veritable dispenser of

It

potins. It is the Revolution of Montmartre! The greatest joke of Paris is now on view. We must go! Vivement!"

There was a veritable sensation. A wild scramble ensued, and half the diners at the Ste. Cécile burst out upon the open boulevard to race to the boulevard St. Michel and take the omnibus to the other side of Paris.

"That will be amusing," said Ventrillon. "Little one, consider those words, free beer! Have you ever amused yourself, little one?"

"Non," said the child, and Ventrillon saw that the single monosyllable conveyed an entire tragedy.

"Then we shall seize the occasion by the hairs. The amusement, at least, is free. To-night you will sleep at my quarters. Do not fear. I am a first cousin of St. Anthony's. How we shall eat I do not know; but we can amuse ourselves. Come!"

They dashed out upon the pave ment. There Ventrillon stopped suddenly and struck his forehead with his hand.

"Sacré Ventrillon!" he cried, "we cannot take a bus; one must pay a bus. We cannot take a tram; one must pay a tram. I cannot buy one ticket on the Métro, and certainly not two. Behold! the great Ventrillon is floored. Nay, he is flattened out."

"I do notta know, sir. I have never been in one."

"Then listen to me, and remember this important fact. In a taxi one pays when one descends. Does that mean nothing to you?" "I fear not, sir."

"Name of a name of a name!" he roared, "thou art indeed a stupid one! It means that we shall take a taxi."

$ 5

It was not until the taxi had climbed the Mount of Martyrs as far as the Place Pigalle that any signs of the demonstration became evident. There the soviet of poets was organizing for a parade to the buttes. A wild, long-haired, disheveled person was haranguing them from an iron railing.

"We shall abolish the use of words in poetry," he said. "Down with words! They cramp the soul of the true poet. What shall we substitute? That, it is the duty of the soviet to find. Direct action! Direct action, and we shall save poetry from the abyss of language." He toppled from the railing and fell sprawling into the midst of his audience. But he who would save poetry could not save himself. From his remaining remarks one concluded that he himself was wallowing in the veritable abyss of language. "Look," said Ventrillon, "is that not

The child looked timidly up into his amusing?" handsome, girlish face.

"Monsieur," she said softly, "I shall give you my nine sous."

"Nom de dieu! no! Ungrateful pig and very stupid little one, am I the object of your charity? Listen to my words, and you will learn wisdom. Upon every other mode of transportation one pays on entering. But in a taxi when does one pay?"

"Oui, monsieur," said the girl.

The taxi sped on toward the cabaret of the Leaping Mole, which was the destination he had given. On every hand they passed processions with torches and transparencies. The people were howling, "Vivent the Futurist! Vivent the Vorticists! Vivent the soviets of Montmartre! Vive the daughter of the archbishop! Vivent the

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