In the Days of My Youth Part 48

Here, for instance, were Roundhead crops and flowing locks of Cavalier redundancy--steeple-crowned hats, and Roman cloaks draped bandit-fas.h.i.+on--moustachios frizzed and brushed up the wrong way in the style of Louis XIV.--pointed beards and slouched hats, after the manner of Vand.y.k.e---patriarchal beards _a la Barbarossa_--open collars, smooth chins, and long undulating locks of the Raffaelle type--coats, blouses, paletots of inconceivable cut, and all kinds of unusual colors--in a word, every eccentricity of clothing, short of fancy costume, in which it was practicable for men of the nineteenth century to walk abroad and meet the light of day.

We had no sooner entered this salon, taken possession of a vacant table, and called for coffee, than my companion was beset by a storm of greetings.

"Hola! Muller, where hast thou been hiding these last few centuries, _mon gaillard?_"

"_Tiens!_ Muller risen from the dead!"

"What news from _la bas,_ old fellow?"

To all which ingenious pleasantries my companion replied in kind--introducing me at the same time to two or three of the nearest speakers. One of these, a dark young man got up in the style of a Byzantine Christ, with straight hair parted down the middle, a bifurcated beard, and a bare throat, was called Eugene Droz.

Another--big, burly, warm-complexioned, with bright open blue eyes, curling reddish beard and moustache, slouched hat, black velvet blouse, immaculate linen, and an abundance of rings, chains, and ornaments--was made up in excellent imitation of the well-known portrait of Rubens.

This gentleman's name, as I presently learned, was Caesar de Lepany.

When we came in, these two young men, Droz and De Lepany, were discussing, in enthusiastic but somewhat unintelligible language, the merits of a certain Monsieur Lemonnier, of whom, although till that moment ignorant of his name and fame, I at once perceived that he must be some celebrated _chef de cuisine_.

"He will never surpa.s.s that last thing of his," said the Byzantine youth. "Heavens! How smooth it is! How b.u.t.tery! How pulpy!"

"Ay--and yet with all that lusciousness of quality, he never wants piquancy," added De Lepany.

"I think his greens are apt to be a little raw," interposed Muller, taking part in the conversation.

"Raw!" echoed the first speaker, indignantly. "_Eh, mon Dieu!_ What can you be thinking of! They are almost too hot!"

"But they were not so always, Eugene," said he of the Rubens make-up, with an air of reluctant candor. "It must be admitted that Lemonnier's greens used formerly to be a trifle--just a trifle--raw. Evidently Monsieur Muller does not know how much he has taken to warming them up of late. Even now, perhaps, his olives are a little cold."

"But then, how juicy his oranges are!" exclaimed young Byzantine.

"True--and when you remember that he never washes--!"

"Ah, _sacredie!_ yes--there is the marvel!"

And Monsieur Eugene Droz held up his hands and eyes with all the reverent admiration of a true believer for a particularly dirty dervish.

"Who, in Heaven's name, is this unclean individual who used to like his vegetables underdone, and never washes?" whispered I in Muller's ear.

"What--Lemonnier! You don't mean to say you never heard of Lemonnier?"

"Never, till now. Is he a cook?"

Muller gave me a dig in the ribs that took my breath away.

"_Goguenard!_" said he. "Lemonnier's an artist--the foremost man of the water-color school. But I wouldn't be too funny if I were you. Suppose you were to burst your jocular vein--there'd be a catastrophe!"

Meanwhile the conversation of Messieurs Droz and Lepany had taken a fresh turn, and attracted a little circle of listeners, among whom I observed an eccentric-looking young man with a club-foot, an enormously long neck, and a head of short, stiff, dusty hair, like the bristles of a blacking-brush.

"Queroulet!" said Lepany, with a contemptuous flourish of his pipe. "Who spoke of Queroulet? Bah!--a miserable plodder, dest.i.tute of ideality--a fellow who paints only what he sees, and sees only what is commonplace--a dull, narrow-souled, unimaginative handicraftsman, to whom a tree is just a tree; and a man, a man; and a straw, a straw, and nothing more!"

"That's a very low-souled view to take of art, no doubt," croaked in a grating treble voice the youth with the club-foot; "but if trees and men and straws are not exactly trees and men and straws, and are not to be represented as trees and men and straws, may I inquire what else they are, and how they are to be pictorially treated?"

"They must be ideally treated, Monsieur Valentin," replied Lepany, majestically.

"No doubt; but what will they be like when they are ideally treated?

Will they still, to the vulgar eye, be recognisable for trees and men and straws?"

"I should scarcely have supposed that Monsieur Valentin would jest upon such a subject as a canon of the art he professes," said Lepany, becoming more and more dignified.

"I am not jesting," croaked Monsieur Valentin; "but when I hear men of your school talk so much about the Ideal, I (as a realist) always want to know what they themselves understand by the phrase."

"Are you asking me for my definition of the Ideal, Monsieur Valentin?"

"Well, if it's not giving you too much trouble--yes."

Lepany, who evidently relished every chance of showing off, fell into a picturesque att.i.tude and prepared to hold forth. Valentin winked at one or two of his own clique, and lit a cigar.

"You ask me," began Lepany, "to define the Ideal--in other words, to define the indefinite, which alas! whether from a metaphysical, a philosophical, or an aesthetic point of view, is a task transcending immeasurably my circ.u.mscribed powers of expression."

"Gracious heavens!" whispered Muller in my ear. "He must have been reared from infancy on words of five syllables!"

"What shall I say?" pursued Lepany. "Shall I say that the Ideal is, as it were, the Real distilled and sublimated in the alembic of the imagination? Shall I say that the Ideal is an image projected by the soul of genius upon the background of the universe? That it is that dazzling, that unimaginable, that incommunicable goal towards which the suns in their orbits, the stars in their courses, the spheres with all their harmonies, have been chaotically tending since time began! Ideal, say you? Call it ideal, soul, mind, matter, art, eternity,... what are they all but words? What are words but the weak strivings of the fettered soul that fain would soar to those empyrean heights where Truth, and Art, and Beauty are one and indivisible? Shall I say all this..."

"My dear fellow, you have said it already--you needn't say it again,"

interrupted Valentin.

"Ay; but having said it--having expressed myself, perchance with some obscurity...."

"With the obscurity of Erebus!" said, very deliberately, a fat student in a blouse.

"Monsieur!" exclaimed De Lepany, measuring the length and breadth of the fat student with a glance of withering scorn.

The Byzantine was no less indignant.

"Don't heed them, _mon ami_!" he cried, enthusiastically. "Thy definition is sublime-eloquent!"

"Nay," said Valentin, "we concede that Monsieur de Lepany is sublime; we recognise with admiration that he is eloquent; but we submit that he is wholly unintelligible."

And having delivered this parting shot, the club-footed realist slipped his arm through the arm of the fat student, and went off to a distant table and a game at dominoes.

Then followed an outburst of offended idealism. His own clique crowded round Lepany as the champion of their school. They shook hands with him.

They embraced him. They fooled him to the top of his bent. Presently, being not only as good-natured as he was conceited, but (rare phenomenon in the Quartier Latin!) a rich fellow into the bargain, De Lepany called for champagne and treated his admirers all around.

In the midst of the chatter and bustle which this incident occasioned, a pale, earnest-looking man of about five-and-thirty, coming past our table on his way out of the Cafe, touched Muller on the arm, bent down, and said quietly:--

"Muller, will you do me a favor!"

"A hundred, Monsieur," replied my companion; half rising, and with an air of unusual respect and alacrity.

"Thanks, one will be enough. Do you see that man yonder, sitting alone in the corner, with his back to the light?"