“For goodness’ sake, don’t!” said Toto in alarm. “I want no one to know. With my blouse I become a man like other men; I give myself a year, and then—we will see what Otto Struve and De Nani say.” “But you are not serious, Toto?” cried Gaillard, who was now the man alarmed, for Toto was a little income to him, a cigarette mine, and a most joyous companion. “You would die, my child, under the hardships of such a life; you were not born to the blouse, you were born to the purple.” “I am serious!” cried the Prince, greatly exasperated; “you are as bad as the rest of them. You are——” “I am not; _mon Dieu!_ do not freeze me, Toto, with that face. I was but thinking of your health; you have cast frost upon me, and I was feeling so happy; besides, a garret may be made most comfortable—it may indeed: you can have a little charcoal-fire when the weather is cold, and a garret need not be ugly. I saw an old oak chest in the Rue Normandie to-day; it cried out to me to buy it, but I had not the money; we will buy it to-morrow. We will not have the walls papered; most have, but we need not be vulgar though we are poor. Oh, Toto, poverty is a romance if it is taken in the right way; we will teach the poor how to endure their poverty romantically. No, we will not have paper—plain plaster and an etching or two of Albrecht Dürer’s, a little library confined to one bookshelf. Loti, Baudelaire, and a few mystics; a lark to sing to one whilst one paints or writes; a girl with blue eyes to love; a pipe to smoke—what more does one want? In the name of Heaven, what more does one want? I call upon Heaven to witness. I think the problem of modernity solved in the one word ’simplicity.’ We are too be-scented, embroidered, and diffuse; we eat too much and love too broadly; we want concentration. Genius is like a burning-glass; it must be focused so that the rays come together in a narrow point, else the rays will not burn. I saw a stove in bronze of Henri Quatre; we will get that—it’s in the same place, Rue de Normandie. Did you see that girl pass by? She pulled up her dress to show me her ankles; they were like cow heels. Some people have no discretion; they show what they ought to hide, and hide what they ought to show. I have noticed it in everything, even conversation. Well, we will get the stove and some other things—it will be like making a nest; and when all is ready you will spread out your wings and sing, and the female bird will come. Heavens! I know just the place you want, in the Rue de Perpignan. I have a friend there, a genius, but very weird; they call him Fanfoullard, no one knows his real name. He is one of the mysteries of Paris; he subsists by painting fans, and will not get out of bed till dusk; he says inspirations come to him only when he is in bed. That necessarily imposes limitations on his art, but his fans are poems; he spreads them with autumn and spring, and sends them fluttering over the