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BOOK ONE
SPRING
I
Montparnasse,
April 1914.
All day the sun has shone into my little attic, a bitter sunshine
that brightened yet did not warm. And so as I toiled and toiled
doggedly enough, many were the looks I cast at the three faggots I had saved
to cook my evening meal. Now, however, my supper is over, my pipe alight,
and as I stretch my legs before the embers I have at last a glow of comfort,
a glimpse of peace.
My Garret
Here is my Garret up five flights of stairs;
Here's where I deal in dreams and ply in fancies,
Here is the wonder-shop of all my wares,
My sounding sonnets and my red romances.
Here's where I challenge Fate and ring my rhymes,
And grope at glory -- aye, and starve at times.
Here is my Stronghold: stout of heart am I,
Greeting each dawn as songful as a linnet;
And when at night on yon poor bed I lie
(Blessing the world and every soul that's in it),
Here's where I thank the Lord no shadow bars
My skylight's vision of the valiant stars.
Here is my Palace tapestried with dreams.
Ah! though to-night ten ~sous~ are all my treasure,
While in my gaze immortal beauty gleams,
Am I not dowered with wealth beyond all measure?
Though in my ragged coat my songs I sing,
King of my soul, I envy not the king.
Here is my Haven: it's so quiet here;
Only the scratch of pen, the candle's flutter;
Shabby and bare and small, but O how dear!
Mark you -- my table with my work a-clutter,
My shelf of tattered books along the wall,
My bed, my broken chair -- that's nearly all.
Only four faded walls, yet mine, all mine.
Oh, you fine folks, a pauper scorns your pity.
Look, where above me stars of rapture shine;
See, where below me gleams the siren city . . .
Am I not rich? -- a millionaire no less,
If wealth be told in terms of Happiness.
Ten ~sous~. . . . I think one can sing best of poverty when one is holding it
at arm's length. I'm sure that when I wrote these lines,
fortune had for a moment tweaked me by the nose. To-night, however,
I am truly down to ten ~sous~. It is for that I have stayed in my room
all day, rolled in my blankets and clutching my pen with clammy fingers.
I must work, work, work. I must finish my book before poverty crushes me.
I am not only writing for my living but for my life. Even to-day
my Muse was mutinous. For hours and hours anxiously I stared
at a paper that was blank; nervously I paced up and down my garret;
bitterly I flung myself on my bed. Then suddenly it all came.
Line after line I wrote with hardly a halt. So I made another
of my Ballads of the Boulevards. Here it is:
Julot the ~Apache~
You've heard of Julot the ~apache~, and Gigolette, his ~mome~. . . .
Montmartre was their hunting-ground, but Belville was their home.
A little chap just like a boy, with smudgy black mustache, --
Yet there was nothing juvenile in Julot the ~apache~.
From head to heel as tough as steel, as nimble as a cat,
With every trick of twist and kick, a master of ~savate~.
And Gigolette was tall and fair, as stupid as a cow,
With three combs in the greasy hair she banged upon her brow.
You'd see her on the Place Pigalle on any afternoon,
A primitive and strapping wench as brazen as the moon.
And yet there is a tale that's told of Clichy after dark,
And two ~gendarmes~ who swung their arms with Julot for a mark.
And oh, but they'd have got him too; they banged and blazed away,
When like a flash a woman leapt between them and their prey.
She took the medicine meant for him; she came down with a crash . . .
"Quick now, and make your get-away, O Julot the ~apache~!" . . .
But no! He turned, ran swiftly back, his arms around her met;
They nabbed him sobbing like a kid, and kissing Gigolette.
Now I'm a reckless painter chap who loves a jamboree,
And one night in Cyrano's bar I got upon a spree;
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