“That is what they used to say to Rodolph Salis,” said he hoarsely--“that is what they used to say to Rodolph Salis.... Ah, that was a man. He knew how to live....” He got up, his hands twitching, and paced the room again: “It was Rodolph Salis that brought _the wits_ to Montmartre. It was Rodolph Salis who saw that Genius would condescend to roar at the tavern, not to snore at the academy--it was Rodolph Salis who saw that as artist he could only be one of many, but as tavern-keeper he might be immortal--so it came that Rodolph created the most renowned tavern of France--so it came that Rodolph Salis opened the tavern of _The Black Cat_; and to its artistic rooms, in the atmosphere of masterpieces hung on the walls round about amongst its old dark panelling, under the dim lights of its wrought-iron lamps, the wits fore-gathered to godlike entertainment. On those walls the pencil of Steinlen had traced a masterpiece, and Willette’s dainty fingers drawn the nervous laughing line; there, seated before his glass of absinthe, I have seen Paul Verlaine write the exquisite lyrics of France; there, among the splendid riot, have sat Daudet, and Zola, and Richepin, Meissonier and Puvis de Chavannes and the rest.... Hoho! Salis put his waiters into the livery of the Forty Immortals, green coats and green leaves and breeches and silk stockings and all--put his flunkies into the habit of them that drowse at the Academy down yonder across the river, each snoring in his seat, the fortieth part of Immortality, sleeping away the honour of France, between bouts of cudgelling their dullard wits to produce the printed book. Tshah! where are the Immortals, the gods? Outside. Outside and aloof they stand--Molière and Rabelais and Balzac, Diderot and Rousseau, Victor Hugo and Georges Sand, Montaigne and De Musset, Zola and Verlaine, Daudet and Flaubert and Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier.... And whilst the Fortieth parts of Immortality each slept, smugly overfilling his breeches’ girth, loading the Academy with dull breathing, Rodolph Salis called the wits together: and at his call the immortals flung the immortal phrase round about the board, tossed to and fro the splendid jest in his tavern of _The Black Cat_. Day and night, spontaneous, full-blooded, polished, they lived their scintillating life.... I can see Rodolph, orange-haired, orange-bearded, pale, green-eyed, his wondrous white hands restless with the leaping pulse and quick nerve, as he was wont to sit at dinner with the wits. _There_ was the real Academy of France. Ay, his waiters most fitly wore the leafed green coats and breeches of the Fortieth part of Immortality!... Ah, how the wine glowed!... With the dessert, Rodolph, sipping his coffee, listened with furrowed brow to the latest news, weighing it, testing it--the most brilliant journalists of France at his elbow. The quips, the jests, the biting comment! It was the centre of the world!... I can