 Part 2 of Part 5 of TrailBee. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Nadine Eckert-Boulet. TrailBee by Georges du Montrier. Part 5, Part 2. Here and there, some sweet old darling specially enslaved him by her kindness, grace, knowledge of life, and tender womanly sympathy like the dowager Lady Chizuhurst, or some sweet young one, like the lovely Duchess of Towers, by her beauty, wit, good humour and sisterly interest in all he did, and who in some vague, distant manner constantly reminded him of TrailBee, although she was such a great and fashionable lady. But just such darlings, old or young, were to be found with still higher ideals in less exalted spheres. And were easier of access with no impassable gulf between, spheres where there was no patronising, nothing but deference and warm appreciation and delicate flattery from men and women alike, and where the aged Venuses, whose prime was of the days of Waterloo, went with their historical remains duly shrouded like ivy-mental dunes, and in the middle distance. So he actually grew tired of the great before they had time to tire of him, incredible as it may seem, and against nature. And this saved him many a heart-burning, and he ceased to be seen at fashionable drums or gatherings of any kind, except in one or two houses where he was especially liked and made welcome for his own sake. Such, as Lord Chizuhurst in Piccadilly, where the Mundial found a home for a few years before going to its last home and final resting place in the National Gallery, or IP, or Berenstabenheims in Cavendish Square, where many lovely little watercolours sign WB occupied places of honour on gorgeously gilded walls, or the gorgeously gilded bachelor rooms of Mr. Moses Lyon, the picture dealer in Upper Country Street. For little Billy, I much grieved to say it of a hero of romance, was an excellent man of business. That infinitesimal dose of the good old oriental blood kept him straight and not only made him stick to his last through thick and thin, but also to those whose foot his last was found to match, for he couldn't or wouldn't alter his last. He loved to make as much money as he could, that he might spend it royally in pretty gifts to his mother and sister, whom it was his pleasure to load in this way and whose circumstances had been very much altered by his quick success. There was never a more generous son or brother than little Billy of the cloud at heart that couldn't love any longer. As a set-off to all these blanders, it was also his pleasure now and again to study London life at its lower than the easiest end of all. Whitechapel, the Minerys, the Docks, Radcliffe Highway, soon get to know him well and he found much to interest him and much to like among the denizens and made as many friends there among sheep carpenters, excisemen, longshoremen, jacktars and whatnot, as in basewater and Bill Gravia or Bloomsbury. He was especially fond of frequenting sing songs of free and easy, where good hard-working fellows made of an evening to relax and smoke and drink and sing round the table well loaded with steaming tumblers and pewter pots, at one end of which sits Mr. Chairman in all his glory and at the other Mr. Vice. They are open to anyone who can afford a pipe, a screw of tobacco and a pint of beer and who is willing to do his best and sing a song. No introduction is needed. As soon as anyone has seated himself and made himself comfortable, Mr. Chairman taps the table with his long clay pipe, begs for silence and says to his vis-à-vis, Mr. Vice, it strikes me as the gentleman as is just come in as God's singing face. Perhaps, Mr. Vice, you'll be so very kind as just to ask the foresay gentleman to blight us with a harmony. Mr. Vice then puts it to the newcomer, who, thus appealed to, simulates a modest surprise and finally professes his willingness, like Mr. Barquis. Then, clearing his throat a good many times, looks up to the ceiling and after one or two unsuccessful starts in different keys, bravely sings Kathleen Mavernin, let us say, perhaps in a touchingly sweet-tinole voice. Kathleen Mavernin, the cry don't is breaking, the owner of the enter is gone on the hill. And little Billy didn't mind the dropping of all these ages if the voice was sympathetic and well-intuned and the sentiment simple, tender and sincere, or else with a good rolling jingle bass it was all to hook in our ships, all to hook our men and we'll fight and we'll conquer again and again. And no imperfection of accent in little Billy's estimation subtracted one jot from the manly British plug that found expression in these noble sentiments, nor added one tittle to their swaggering, blatant and idiotically aggressive vulgarity. Well, the song finishes with general applause all round. Then the chairman says, You have a song, sir? And drinks, and all do the same. Then Mr. Weiss asks, What shall we have the pleasure of saying, sir, after that very nice harmony? And the blushing vocalist, if he knows the ropes, replies, a roast-legged mutton in Newgate and nobody to eat it. Or else may him as he's going up the hill of prosperity never meet a friend coming down. Or else years to us as snares are sorrows and doubles are joys. Or else years to us shares are joys and doubles are expenses and so forth. More drink, more applause, and many ear-ears. And Mr. Weiss says to the singer, You call, sir? Will you be so good as to call on some other gentleman for harmony? And so the evening goes on. And nobody was more quickly popular at such gatherings or saying better songs or proposed more touching sentiments or filled either chair or vice chair with more grace and dignity than little Billy. Not even Dodon or Zuzu could have beaten him at that. And he was as happy, as genuine and polite as much at his ease in these humble gatherings as in the gilded sands of the great where grand pianos are and hired accompanists and highly paid singers and a good deal of talk while they sing. So his powers of quick, wide, universal sympathy grew and grew and made up to him a little for his last power of being especially fond of special individuals. For he made no close friends among men and ruthlessly snapped all attempts at intimacy all advances toward an affection which he felt he could not return and more than one enthusiastic admirer of his talent and his charm was forced to acknowledge that with all his gifts he seemed heartless and capricious as ready to drop you as he had been to take you up. He loved to be wherever he could meet his kind, high or low and felt as happy on a penny steamer as on the yord of a millionaire on the crowded knife board of an omnibus as on the box seat of a nobleman's drag. Happier, he liked to feel the warm contact of his fellow men at either shoulder and at his back and didn't object to a little honest grime and I think all this genial caressing love of his kind this depth and breadth of human sympathy are patent in all his work. On the whole however he came to prefer for society that of the best and cleverest of his own class those who live and prevail by the professional exercise of their own specially trained and highly educated wits the skilled workmen of the brain from the lord chief justice of England downward the salt of the earth in his opinion and stuck to them. There is no class so genial and sympathetic as our own in the long run even if it be but the criminal class none where the welcome is likely to be so genuine and sincere so easy to win so difficult to outstay if we be but decently pleasant and successful none where the memory of us will be kept so green if we leave any memory at all. So little Billy found it expedient when he wanted rest and play to seek them at the houses of those whose rest and play were like his own little healths in a seeming happy life journey full of toil and strain and endeavour oasis of sweet water and cooling shade where the food was good and plentiful though the tents might not be of cloth of gold where the talk was of something more to his taste than court or sport or narrow party politics the new beauty, the coming match of the season the coming ducal conversion to Rome the last elopement in high life, the next and where the music was that of the greatest music makers that can be who found rest and play in making better music for love than they ever made for hire and were listened to as they should be with understanding and religious silence and all the fervent gratitude they deserved there were several such houses in London then and are still, thank heaven and little Billy had his little billet there and there he was wanting to drown himself in waves of lovely sound or streams of clever talk or rivers of sweet feminine adulation seas, oceans, a somewhat relaxing bath and forget for a while his everlasting chronic plague of heart insensibility which no doctor could explain or cure and to which he was becoming gradually resigned as one does to deafness or blindness or locomotor attacha for it had lasted nearly five years but now and again during sleep and in a blissful dream the lost power of loving of loving mother, sister, friend would be restored to him just as with a blind man who sometimes dreams he has recovered his sight and the joy of it would wake him to the sad reality till he got to know, even in his dream that he was only dreaming after all whenever that priceless boon seemed to be his own once more and did his utmost not to wake and these were nights to be marked with a white stone and remembered and nowhere was he happier than at the houses of the great surgeons and physicians who interested themselves in his strange disease when the little billies of this world fall ill the great surgeons and physicians like the great singers and musicians do better for them out of mere love and kindness than for the princes of the earth who pay them thousand gain if he is and load them with honors and of all these notable London houses none was pleasanter than that of Cornelies the great sculpture and little billy was such a favorite in that house that he was able to take his friends Taffy and the Laird there the very day they came to London first of all they dined together at a delightful little Franco-Italian pothouse near Leicester Square where they had Buia Bess imagine the Laird's delight and Spaghetti and Poulerotti which is such a different affair from a roast fall the salad which Taffy was allowed to make and mix himself and they all smoked just where they sat the moment they had swallowed their food as had been their way in the good old Paris days that dinner was a happy one for Taffy and the Laird with their little billy apparently unchanged as demonstrative, as genial and caressing as ever and with no swagger to speak of and with so many things to talk about that were new to them and of such delightful interests they also had much to say but they didn't say very much about Paris for fear of waking up heaven knows what sleeping dogs and every now and again in the midst of all these pleasant for gathering and communion of long-hearted friends the pangs of little billy's miserable mind-melody would shoot through him like poison arrows he would catch himself thinking how fat and fussy and serious about trifles Taffy had become and what a shiftless, feckless, feudal duffer was the Laird and how greedy they both were and how red and coarse their ears and gills and cheeks grew as they fed and how shiny their faces and how little he would care, try as he might if they both fell down dead under the table and this would make him behave more caressingly to them more genially and demonstratively than ever for he knew it was all a gruesome physical ailment of his own which he could no more help than a cataract in his eye then catching sight of his own face and form in a mirror he would curse himself for a puny, misbegotten shrimp a nimp, an abortion a hundred-ten bigger by the sight of the Herculean Taffy or the burly Laird of Cockpen a six-pen norther happens a wretch little overrated follower of a poor trivial craft a mere light amuser for what did pictures matter or whether they were good or bad except to the trifles who painted them the dealers who sold them the idle, uneducated perspired fools who bought them and stuck them up on their walls because they were told and he felt that if a dynamite shell were beneath the table where they sat and its fuse were smoking under their very noses he would neither wish to warn his friends nor move himself he didn't care at and always made him so lively and brilliant in his talk so fascinating and droll and witty that Taffy and the Laird wandered at the improvement success and the experience of life had brought in him and marveled at the happiness of his lot and almost found it in their warm affectionate hearts Oddly enough, in a brief flash of silence entre la poire et le fromage they heard a foreigner at an adjoining table one of a very noisy group exclaim and then the conversation became so noisily general it was no good listening anymore Swingily, how funny that name should turn up I wonder what's become of our Swingily by the way observed Taffy I remember his playing Chopin's impromptu said little Billy, what a singular coincidence there were to be more coincidences that night it never rains them but it pours so our three friends finished their coffee and liquored up and went to Cornelis three in a handsome like Mars, a smoke in their pipes and cigars Sir Louis Cornelis, as everybody knows lives in the palace on Camden Hill a house of many windows and whichever window he looks out of he sees his own garden and very little else in spite of his eighty years he works as hard as ever and his hand has lost but little of its cunning but he no longer gives those splendid parties but made him almost as famous a host as he was an artist when his beautiful wife died he shut himself up from the world and now he never stirs out of his house and grounds except to fulfill his duties at the Royal Academy and dine once a year with the Queen it was very different in the early sixties there was no pleasanter more festive house than his in London winter or summer no lordlier host than he or a resistable hostess than Lady Cornelis and her lovely daughters and if ever music had a right to call itself divine it was there you heard it on late Saturday nights during the London season when the foreign birds of song came over to reap the harvest in London town it was on one of the most brilliant of these Saturday nights that Taffy and the Laird, chaperoned by Little Billy made their debut at Magellan Lodge and were received at the door of the immense music room by a tall, powerful man with splendid eyes and a grey beard and a small velvet cap on his head and by a Greek matron so beautiful and stately and magnificently attired that they felt inclined to sing them on their bended knees as in the presence of some overwhelming eastern royalty and were only prevented from doing so, perhaps by the simple, sweet and cordial graciousness of her welcome and whom should they be shaking hands with next but Anthony, Lorimer and the Greek each with a beard and moustache of nearly five years' growth but they had no time for much exuberant greeting for there was a sudden piano crash and then an immediate silence as though for pins to drop and Signac Duclini and the wondrous maiden Adelina Patti sang the Miserere out of Signo Verdi's most famous opera to the delight of all but a few very superior ones who had just read Mendelssohn's letters or misread them and despised Italian music and thought cheaply of mere virtuosity either vocal or instrumental. When this was over little Billy pointed out all the lions to his friends from the prime minister down to the present scribe who was right glad to meet them again and talk of old long sign and present them to the daughters of the house and other charming ladies. Then Rourgouli, the great French baritone Saint-Durien's favorite song plaisir d'amour ne dure qu'un moment chagrin d'amour dure toute la vie with quite a little drawing room voice but quite as divinely as he had sung Noël Noël at the Madeline in full blast one certain Christmas Eve our three friends remembered well end of part two part fifth recording by Nathalie Descartes Boulez Copenhagen, Denmark. Part three of part fifth of Trilby this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Jersey City Frankie Trilby by George de Morier part fifth part three then there was a violin solo by Young Joachim then is now the greatest violinist of his time and a solo on the Piano Forte by Maram Schumann his only pyrrhus and these came as a wholesome check to the levity of those for whom all music is but an agreeable pastime a mere emotional delight in which the intellect has no part and also as a well-deserved humiliation to all virtuosi who play so charmingly that they make their listeners forget the master who invented the music in the lesser master who interprets it for these two men and women the highest of their kind never let you forget it was Sebastian Bach they were playing playing in absolute perfection an absolute forgetfulness of themselves so that if you weren't up to Bach you didn't have a very good time but if you were or wished it to be understood or thought you were you seized your opportunity and you scored and by the earnestness of your wrapped trans-immobility and the stony gorgon-like intensity of your gaze you rebuked the frivolous as you had rebuked them before by the listlessness and carelessness of your bored resignation to the signorina patties, trills and ferrite rues or machurro clays pretty little French mannerisms and what added so much to the charm of this delightful concert was that the guests were not packed together sardine-wise as they are at most concerts they were comparatively few and well-chosen and could get up and walk about and talk to their friends between the pieces and wander off into other rooms and look at endless beautiful things and stroll in the lovely grounds by moon or star or Chinese lantern light and there the frivolous could sit and chat and laugh and flirt when Bach was being played inside and the earnest wander up and down together in soul communion through darkened walks and groves where the sound of French or Italian warblings could not reach them and talk in earnest tones of the great Zola or Guy de Moff's Pant and Pierre Lotte and exalt in beautiful English over the inferiority of English literature English art English music and English everything else for these high-minded ones who can only bear the sight of classical pictures and the sound of classical music do not necessarily read classical books in any language no Shakespeare's or Dante's or Molière's or Goethe's for them they know a trick worth two of that and the mere fact that these three immortal French writers of like books I have just named had never been heard of at this particular period doesn't very much matter they had cognate predecessors whose names I happen to forget any stick will do to beat a dog with and history is always repeating itself Fadio or Flaubert let us say or for those who don't know French in the distant mind Miss Austin for to be dead and buried is almost as good as to be French and immortal and Sebastian Bach and Sandro Botticelli that all the art should be represented these names are rather discrepant but they make very good sticks for dog beating and with a thorough knowledge and appreciation of these or the semblance thereof you are well equipped in those days to hold your own among the elective intellectual London circles and snub the Philistine to writes and very late a tall good looking swarthy foreigner came in with the role of music in his hands and his entrance made quite a stir you heard all around here's glorioli or echo glorioli or voici glorioli to glorioli got on your nerves and beautiful ladies ambassadors female celebrities of all kinds fluttered up to him and beautiful ladies ambassadors female celebrities of all kinds fluttered up to him and cajoled and fawned as Sven Galli would have said princess and contestant serene English autism and they soon forgot their highness and their serenity for with very little pressing glorioli stood up on the platform with his accompanist by his side at the piano and in his hands a sheet of music at which he never looked he looked at the beautiful ladies and ogled and smiled in his scarcely parted moist thick bearded lips which he always licked before singing there issued the most ravishing sounds that had ever been heard from the throat of man or woman or boy he could sing both high and low and soft and loud and the frivolous were bewitched as was only to be expected but even the earnestness of all caught surprised wrapped astounded shaken tickled teased harrowed tortured tantalized aggravated seduced demoralized degraded corrupted into mere naturalness forgot to dissemble their delight and Sebastian Bach the especially adored of all really great musicians and also alas of many priggish outsiders who don't know a single note and can't remember a single tune all forgotten for the night and who were more enthusiastic than the two great players who had been playing Bach that evening for these at all events were broad and catholic and sincere and knew what was beautiful whatever its kind it was but a simple little song that glorioli sang as light and pretty as it could well be almost worthy of the words it was written to and the words are de mossettes and I love them so much for the mere sensuous delight of writing them as though I had just composed them myself bonjour sous-en mes fleurs de tes bois et tout toujours le plage li revient tel que tu ne vois d'un grand voyage dans l'Italie du paradis je fais des verres je fais de l'amour mais tem importe je passe de 20 maisons ouve ta porte j'ai vu Temps de l'Île tes corps joli venis d'équer tes destises je n'ai vu pas je n'ai vu pas qu'encore qu'est-ce que tu fues de puissement de part qui part trop tard mais que importe je passe de 20 maisons ouve ta porte bonjour sous-en and when it began and while it lasted and after it was over one felt really sorry for all the other singers and nobody sang anymore that night for a glorioli was tired and wouldn't sing again and none were bold enough or disinterested enough to sing after him some of my readers may remember that meteoric bird of song who though a mere amateur would condescend to sing for 100 guineas in the saloons of the great as mature jordan sold cloth who would sing still better for love and glory in the studios of his friends for glorioli a distinguished looking Jew that ever was one of the Sephardim one of the Seraphim hailed from Spain where he was junior partner in the great firm of Morales, Perelis, Gonzalez and glorioli wine merchants Malaga he traveled for his own firm his wine was good and he sold much of it in England but his voice would bring him far more gold in the month he spent here for his wines had been equaled if it be not libelous to say so but there was no voice like his it is anywhere in the world and no more finished singer anyhow his voice got into libeli's head more than any wine and the boy could talk of nothing else for days and weeks and was so exuberant in his expressions of delight and gratitude that the great singer took a real fancy to him especially when he was told that this fervent boyish admirer was one of the greatest of English painters and as a mark of his esteem privately confided to him after supper every century two human nightingales were born only two a male and a female and that he, glorioli was the representative male Rossignol of this sway descendee Nivon Sisi I can well believe that and the female your mate that should be the Rossignol if there is such a word and word little Billy ah mon ami it was Alboni till the petit Edeline Patti came out a year or two ago and now it is Lasfangali Lasfangali oui mon fait you will hear her some day et oui, moi, en dires de nouvel why you don't mean to say that she's got a better voice than Madame Alboni mon ami and apple is an excellent thing until you have tried a peach her voice to that of Alboni is as a peach to an apple I give you my word of honor but bah, the voice is a detail it's what she does with it, it's incredible it gives one cold all down the back it drives you mad it makes you weep hot tears by the spoon fill ah, the tear mon fait Tinez, I can draw everything but that Tinez peste d'une main coude I can only madden with love but Lasfangali and then in the middle of it all prrt, she makes you laugh ah la bourrière ferrière avec des larmes plein les yons oui la, qui mais pas mon ami, when I heard her it made me swear that even I would never try to sing anymore it seemed too absurd and I kept my word for a month at least and you know j'sais que quoi des moi you are talking of Lasfangali I bet, said Signor Sparsia oui par below you have heard her? yes, at the end of last winter rejoined the greatest singing master in the world jean-suis-faux, hélas I thought I could teach a woman how to sing till I heard that Blackard Spangali's pupil he has married her, they say that Blackard Spangali exclaimed little Billy, why that must be a Spangali I knew in Paris, a famous pianist a friend of mine that's the man a pupil, sauvable respect his real name is Adler his mother was a Polish singer and he was a pupil at Lipsic Conservatario but he's an immense artist and a great singing master to teach a woman like that and such a woman Belle Comonong, Miesbe Comonpol I tried to talk to her all she can say is j'avoue, or douche or nine or saut or French or Italian though she sings them, oh, but divinely it is Belcanto come back to the world after a hundred years but what voice is it? asked little Billy every voice a mortal woman can have three octaves, four and of such a quality that people who can't tell one tune from another cry with pleasure at the mere sound of it directly they hear her just like anybody else everything that Paganini could do with his violin she does with her voice only better and what a voice! un vrai boin! now I don't mind petting that you are speaking of La Svencalie said Herr Kreuzer the famous composer joining in Quelle Merphiel hin I heard her at St. Petersburg at the Winter Palace the woman all vent mat and pulled off their barrels and teemots went to her then down on her knees and cried and kissed her hands she did not say one third she did not even smile the men sniffled in the corners and looked at the pictures and tassembled often I, Johann Kreuzer even the Emperor you're joking, said little Billy my friend I never joke when I talk about the singing you will hear her someday yourself and you will agree with me that there are two classes of people who sing in the one class La Svencalie in the other all the other singers and does she sing good music? I don't know all music is good when she sings it I forget this song I can only sing other singer any good singer any beautiful song and give pleasure, I suppose but I would sooner hear La Svencalie sing a scale than any party else sing the most beautiful song in the world even of my own that is perhaps how Zongzi create Italian singers of the last century it was a lost art and she has found it and she must have begun to sing before she began to speak but not have had time to learn all that she knows for she is not yet Zerte she sings in Paris in October Gazzidonc and comes here after Christmas to sing to Trulian Lane Trulian gifts her ten thousand pounce I wonder now why that must be the woman I heard at Warsaw two years ago or three said young Lord Widow it was at Councilp Doshes he'd heard her sing in the streets with a tall black bearded ruffian who accompanied her on a guitar in a little fiddling gypsy fellow she was a handsome woman with hair down to her knees but stupid as an owl she sang at Zilzok's and all the fellows went mad and gave her their watches and diamond studs and gold scarf pins by God I never heard or saw anything like it I don't know much about music myself couldn't tell God save the queen from popcoast the weasel of the people didn't stand to take their hats off but I was mad as the rest why I gave her a little German silver vinaigrette I'd just bought for my wife hanged if I didn't and I was only just married, you know it's the peculiar twang of her voice I suppose and hearing all this little Billy made up his mind that life had still something in store for him since he would someday hear a less phone golly anyhow he wouldn't shoot himself till then he wouldn't shoot himself away the princessen, comtesen and serene English altessen and other ladies of less exalted rank departed home in cabs and carriages and hostess and daughters went to bed late sitters of the rudor sex sucked again and smoked and chatted and listened to comic songs and recitations by celebrated actors noble dukes hobnob with low comedians world famous painters and sculptors sat at the feet of Hebrew capitalists and aceless millionaires judges, cabinet ministers eminent positions and warriors and philosophers saw Sunday morning steal over Camden Hill and threw the many windows of Michelin Lodge and listened to the pipe of half-awaken birds and smelt the freshness of the dark summer dawn and as Taffy and the Laird walked home to the old hummus by daylight they felt that last night was ages ago and that since then they had foregathered with much there was of the best in London and then they reflected that much there was of the best in London were still strangers to them except by reputation for there had not been time for many introductions and this had made them feel a little out of it and they found they hadn't had such a very good time after all and there were no cabs and they were tired and their boots were tight and the last they had seen of little Billy before leaving was a glimpse of their old friend in the corner of Lady Cornely's Boudoir gravely playing cup and ball with Fred Walker for six pences both so wrapped in the game that they were unconscious of anything else and both playing so well with either hand that they might have been professional champions and that Saturnine Young Sawbones Jake Talboys, now Sir Jakes and one of the most genial of Her Majesty's Physicians who sometimes after supper and champagne was given to the thoughtful, sympathetic and cute observations of his fellow man remarked to the Laird in a whisper that was almost convivial rather an enviable pair their United Ages amount to forty-eight or so their United Weights to about fifteen stone and they couldn't carry you or me between them but if you were to roll all the other brains that have been under this roof tonight into one you wouldn't reach the sum of their united genius I wonder which of the two is most unhappy the season over the songbirds flown summer on the wane his picture the Moondyle sent to Moses Lyons the picture dealer in Conduit Street little Billy felt the time had come to go and see his mother and sister in Devonshire and make the sun shine twice as brightly for them during a month or so and the dew fall softer so one fine August morning found him at the Great Western Station and all London I think except the stations that book you to France and far away it always seemed so pleasant to be going west little Billy loved that station and often went there for a mere stroll to watch the people starting on their westward way following the sun towards heaven knows what joys or sorrows and envy them their sorrows or their joys any sorrows or joys that were not merely physical like a chocolate drop or a pre-tune a bad smell or a toothic and as he took a seat in the second class carriage it would be third in these democratic days south corner back to the engine with Silas Mariner and Darwin's origin the species which he was reading for the third time and punch and other literature of a lighter kind to beguile him on his journey he felt rather bitterly how happy he could be if the little spots or not or blot or clot which paralyzed the convolution of his brain where he kept his affections could but be conjured away the dearest mother the dearest sister in the world in the dearest little seaside village or town that ever was and other dear people especially Alice sweet Alice with her hair so brown his sister's friend the simple, pure and pious maiden of his boyish dreams and himself but for the wretched little killjoyous cerebral occlusion as sound as healthy as full of life and energy as he had ever been and when he wasn't reading Silas Mariner or looking out the window at the flying landscape and watching it revolve around its middle distance as it always seemed to do he was sympathetically taking stock of his fellow passengers and mildly envying them one after another indiscriminately a fat old wheezy Philistine with a bulbous nose and only one eye a plain sickly daughter to whom he seemed devoted body and soul an old lady who still wept furtively at recollections of the parting with her grandchildren which had taken place at the station they had born up wonderfully as grandchildren do a consumptive curate on the opposite corner seat by the window whose tender anxious wife sitting by his side seemed to have no thoughts in the whole world but for him and her patient eyes were his stars of consolation since he turned to look into them almost every minute and always seemed a little happier for doing so there is no better stargazing than that so little Billy gave her up his corner seat that the poor sufferer might have those stars where he could look into them comfortably without turning his head indeed as was his want with everybody little Billy made himself useful and pleasant to his fellow travelers in many ways so many that long before they had reached their respective journeys ends they had almost grown to love him as an old friend and long to know who this singularly attractive and brilliant youth this genial dainty benevolent little Princekin could possibly be who was dressed so fashionably and yet went second class and took such kind thoughts of others and they wondered at the happiness that must be his at merely being alive and told him more of their troubles in six hours than they had told many an old friend a year but he told them nothing about himself that self he was so sick of and let them to wonder at his own journey's end the farthest end of all he found his mother and sister waiting for him in a beautiful little pony carriage his last gift and with them sweet Alice and in her eyes for one brief moment that unconscious look of love surprise which is not to be forgotten for years and years and years can only be seen by the eyes that meet it and which for the time it lasts just the flash makes all women's eyes look exactly the same I'm told and it seemed to little Billy that for the 20th part of a second Alice had looked at him with trilby's eyes or his mother's when that he was a little tiny boy it all but gave him the thrill he thirsted for another 20th part of a second perhaps and his brain trouble would have melted away and little Billy would have come into his own again the kingdom of love a beautiful human eye any beautiful eye a dog, a deer, a donkey an owl's even to think of all that it can look and all that it can see it can even seem sometimes what a prince among gems what a star but a beautiful eye that lets the broad white light of infinite space so bewildering and garish and diffused into one pure virgin heart to be filtered there and lets it out again duly warmed, softened concentrated, sublimated focused to a point as in a precious stone that it may shed itself a love laden effligence into some stray fellow heart close by through pupil and iris entree quartz ze yul the very elixir of life alas that such a crown jewel can ever lose its luster and go blind not so blind or dim however but it can still see well enough to look before and after and inward and upward and drown itself in tears and yet not die and that's the dreadful pity of it and this is a quite uncalled for digression and I can't think why I should have gone out of my way at considerable pains to invent it in fact, of this ear-song should I be axed the reason for the show I don't exactly know but all my family dwells upon Nancy how pretty Alice's grown mother quite lovely I think and so nice but she was always as nice as she could be so observed little Billy to his mother that evening as they sat in the garden and watched the crescent moon sink to the Atlantic ah, my darling Willie if you could only guess how happy you would make your poor old mammy by growing fond of Alice in blanche too what a joy for her hey, Heaven's mother, Alice is not for the like of me she's for some splendid young Devon Squire, six foot high and acreed and whiskered within an inch of his life ah, my darling Willie, you are not of those who ask for love in vain if you only knew how she believes in you she almost beats your poor old mammy at that and that night he dreamed of Alice that he loved her as a sweet good woman should be loved and knew, even in his dream but oh, it was good and he managed not to wake and it was a night to be marked with a white stone and still in his dream she had kissed him and healed him of his brain trouble forever but when he woke next morning alas his brain trouble was with him still and he felt that no dream kiss would ever cure it nothing but a real kiss from Alice's own pure lips and he rose thinking of Alice and dressed in breakfasted thinking of her and how fair she was and how innocent and how well and carefully trained up the way she should go the beau-ideal of a wife could she possibly care for a shrimp like himself for in his love of outward form he could not understand that any woman who had eyes to see should ever quite condone the signs of physical weakness in man in favor of any mental gifts or graces whatsoever End of Part 3, Part 5 and a punch that all women without exception all English women especially must see with the same eyes as himself he had once been vain and weak enough to believe at Trellby's love with a taffy standing by a careless, unsusceptible taffy who was like unto the gods of Olympus and Trellby had given him up at a word for all his frantic clinging she would not have given up taffy poor sipew had taffy but lifted a little finger it is always just whistle and I'll come to you my lad with the likes of taffy but taffy hadn't even whistled yet still he kept thinking of Alice and he felt he couldn't think of her well enough till he went out for a stroll by himself on a sheep trimmed down so he took his pipe and his Darwin and out he strolled into the early sunshine up the green red lane past the pretty church Alice's father's church and there at the gate patiently waited for his mistress sat Alice's dog an old friend of his whose welcome was a very warm one little Billy thought of Thackeray's lovely poem in pendiness she comes she's here she's past may heaven go with her then he and the dog went on together to a little bench on the edge of the cliff within sight of Alice's bedroom window it was called the honeymooners bench that look that look that look ah but Trollby had looked like that too and there are many taffies in Devon he sat himself down and smoked and gazed at the sea below which the sun still in the east had not yet filled with glare and robbed of the lovely sapphire blue shot with purple and dark green that comes over it now and again of a morning that smells beautiful coast there was a fresh breeze from the west and the long slow bellows broke into creamier foam than ever which reflected itself as a tender white gleam in the blue concavities of their shining shoreward curbs as they came rolling in the sky was all of turquoise but for the smoke of a distant steamer a long thin horizontal streak of dun and there were little brown or white sails here and there dotting and the stately ships went on little Billy tried hard to feel all this beauty with his heart as well as his brain as he had so often done when a boy encouraged his insensibility out loud for at least the thousand and first time why couldn't these waves of air and water turned into equivalent waves of sound that he might feel them through the only channel that reaches his emotions that one joy was still left to him but alas alas he was only a painter of pictures and not a maker of music he recited break break to Alice's dog who loved him and looked up into his space with affectionate eyes and whose name like that of so many dogs in fiction and so few in fact was simply trey for a little Billy was much given to monologues out loud and profuse quotations from his favorite bards everybody quoted that particular poem either mentally or aloud when they sat on that particular bench except a few old fashioned people who still said roll on though deep and dark blue ocean roll or people of the very highest culture who only quoted the nascent and crescent Robert Browning or people of Norl culture at all who simply held their tongues and only felt the moor trey listened silently ah trey the best thing but one to do with the sea is to paint it and the next best thing to do is to bathe in it the best of all is to lie asleep at the bottom how would you like that and on thy ribs the limpid sticks and in thy heart the score shall play trey's trail became as a wagging point of interrogation and he turned his head first on one side and then on the other he fixed on little Billy's his face irresistible in its genial doggy wistfulness trey what a singularly good listener you are and therefore what singularly good manners you've got I suppose old dogs have said little Billy and then in a very tender voice he exclaimed Alice Alice Alice and trey uttered a soft cueing nasal croon in his head register though he was a baritone dog by nature with portentous warlike chest tones of the jingle order trey your mistress is a parson's daughter and therefore twice as much of a mystery as any other woman in this puzzling world trey if my heart won't stop with walks like the ears of the companions of Ulysses when they rode past the sirens you've heard of Ulysses trey he loved the dog if my heart weren't stopped with walks I should be deeply in love with your mistress perhaps she would marry me if I asked her there's no accounting for tastes and I know enough of myself to know that I should make her a good husband that I should make her happy and I should make two other women happy besides as for myself personally trey it doesn't very much matter one good woman would do as well as another if she's equally good looking you doubt it wait till you get a pimple inside your bump of your bump of wherever you keep your fondness trey for that's what's the matter with me a pimple just a little clot of blood at the root of a nerve and no bigger than a pin's point that's a small thing to cause such a lot of wretchedness and rack a fellow's life isn't it oh curse it curse it curse it every day and all day long and just as small a thing will take it away I'm told grains of sand are small things and so are diamonds but diamond or grain of sand only Alice has got that small thing Alice alone in the all the world has got the healing touch for me now the hands the lips the eyes I know it I feel it I dreamed it last night she looked to me well in the face and took my hand both hands and kissed me eyes and mouth and told me how she loved me ah what a dream it was and my little clot melted away like a snowflake on the lips and I was my old self again after many years and all through that kiss of a pure woman I've never been kissed by a pure woman in my life never except by my dear mother and sister and mother and sisters don't count when it comes to kissing ah sweet physician that she is and better than all it will all come back again with a rush just as I dreamed and we will have a good time together we three but your mistress is a parson's daughter and believes everything she's been taught from a child just as you do at least I hope so and I like her for it and you too she has believed her father will she ever believe me who thinks so differently and if she does will it be good for her and then where will her father come in oh it's a bad thing to live and no longer believe and trust in your father trey to doubt either his honesty or his intelligence for he, with your mother to help has taught you all the best he knows he's been a good father till someone else comes and teaches you better or worse and then what are you to believe of what good still remains of all that early teaching and how are you to sift the wheat from the chaff kneel undisturbed fair saint either one will never seek to undermine thy faith in any father on earth or above it yet there she kneels and her father's church her pretty head bowed over her cosped hands her cloak and skirts falling in happy folds above her I see it all and underneath that poor sweet soft pathetic thing of flesh and blood the eternal woman great heart and slender brain forever enslaved or enslaving never self-sufficing never free that dear weak delicate cheap so perishable so perishable that I've had to paint so often and know so well by heart and love ah I love it only painter fellows and sculptor fellows can ever quite know the fullness of that pure love there she kneels and pours forth her praise or a plaint meekly and duly perhaps it's for me she's praying leave thou thy sister when she prays she believes her poor little prayer will be heard and answered somewhere up aloft the impossible will be done she wants what she wants so badly and prays for it so hard she believes she believes what doesn't she believe Trey the world was made in six days it is just six thousand years old once it all lay smothered under rainwater for many weeks miles deep because there were so many wicked people about somewhere down in Judea where they didn't know everything a costly kind of clearance and then there was Noah who wasn't wicked and his most respectable family and his ark and Jonah and his whale and Joshua and the son and what not I remember it all you see and oh such wonderful things that have happened since and there's everlasting agony for those who don't believe as she does and yet she is happy and good and very kind for the mere thought of any life creature in pain makes her wretched after all if she believes in me she'll believe in anything let her indeed I'm not sure that it's not rather ungainly for a pretty woman not to believe in all these good old cosmic pterodidols as it is for a pretty child not to believe in little red riding hood and Jack and the Bainstock and Mojana and the 40 thieves we learn them at our mother's knee and how nice they are let us go on believing them as long as we can till the child grows up and the child dies and it's all found out yes Tray I will be dishonest for her dear sake I will kneel by her side if ever I have the happy chance and ever after night and morning and all day long on Sundays if she wants me to what will I not do for that one pretty woman who believes in me I will respect even that's belief and do my little best to keep it alive forever it is much too precious and earthly boon for me to play ducks and drinks with so much for Alice Tray your sweet mistress and mine but then there's Alice's papa and that's another pair of slaves as we say in France ought one ever to play yet make believe with a full grown man for any consideration whatever even though he be a person and a possible father-in-law there's a case of conscience for you when I ask him for his daughter as I must and he asked me for my profession of faith as he will what can I tell him the truth and now I regret to say the reticent little Billy is going to show his trusty four-footed friend the least attractive side of his many-sided nature it's dreary skepticism his own unhappy portion of la maladie du siècle but then what will he say what alloan says will he make for a poor little weak need well-meaning waif of a painter fellow like me whose only choice lay between Mr. Darwin and the Pope of Rome and who has chosen once and forever and that long ago before he'd ever even heard of Mr. Darwin's name besides why should he make allowances for me I don't for him I think no more of a person than he does of a painter fellow and that's precious little I'm afraid what will he think of a man who says look here the God of your belief isn't mine and it's never will be but I love your daughter and I'm the only man to make her happy he's no jeffta he's made of flesh and blood although he's a person and loves his daughter as much as Shilac loved his tell me trey thou that livest amongst persons what man not being a person himself can guess how a person would think an average person confronted by such a poser as that does he dare he can he ever think straight or simply on any subject as any other man thinks hedged in as he is by so many limitations he is as shrewd, vain, worldly self-seeking, ambitious jealous, sensorious and all the rest as you or I trey for all his Christian profession and just as fond of his kids he is considered a gentleman which perhaps you and I are not unless we happen to behave as such it is a condition of his noble calling perhaps it's in order to become a gentleman that he's become a person it's about as short a royal road as any to that enviable distinction as short almost as Her Majesty's commission and much safer and much less expensive within reach of the sons of most fairly successful butchers and bakers and candlestick makers while still a boy he has bound himself irrevocably to certain beliefs which he will be paid to preserve and preach and enforce through life and act up to through thick and thin at all events in the eyes of others theorist and theorist even the wife of his bosom they are his bread and butter these beliefs and a man mustn't quarrel with his bread and butter but a parson must quarrel with those who don't believe as he tells them yet a few years thinking and reading and experience of life one would suppose might possibly just shake his faith a little just as though instead of being parson tinker, teller, soldier sailor, gentleman apothecary, plow boy thief and teach him that many of these beliefs are simply childish and some of them very wicked indeed and most immoral it is very wicked and most immoral to believe or effect to believe and tell others to believe that the unseen, unspeakable, unthinkable immensity were all part and also love, source of eternal infinite indestructible life and light and might is a kind of wrathful, glorified and self-glorifying ogre in human shape with human passions and most inhuman hate who suddenly makes us out of nothing one fine day just for a freak and makes us so badly that we fell the next and turned us adrift the day after damn does from the very beginning ab obo ab obo uski admarum ha ha and ever since never gave us a chance all merciful father indeed what a prince of darkness was an angel in comparison and a gentleman into the bargain just think of it Tray a finger in every little poultry pie an eye and an ear at every keyhole even that of the larder to catch us tripping but if we're praising loud enough or groveling low enough or fasting hard enough poor god forsaken worms and if we're naughty and disobedient everlasting torment for us torture of so hideous a kind that we wouldn't inflict it on the basis criminal not for one single moment or else if we're good and to do as we are bid an eternity of bliss so futile so idle and so tame that we couldn't stand it for a week but for thinking of its one horrible alternative and of our poor brother forever and ever roasting away and howling for the drop of water he never gets everlasting flame or everlasting dishonor nothing between isn't it ludicrous as well as pitiful a thing to make one snigger through one's tears isn't it a grievous sin to believe in such things as these and go about teaching and preaching them and being paid for it a sin to be heavily chastised and ashamed what a legacy they were shocking bad artists those conceited narrow-minded Jews whose poor old doting monks and priests and bigots of the gruesome dark age of faith they couldn't draw a bit no perspective no anatomy no chiaroscuro and it's a woeful image they managed to evolve for us out of the depths of their fathomless ignorance in their zeal to keep us off all the forbidden fruit were all so fond of because we were built like that and by whom by our maker I suppose who also made the forbidden fruit and made it very nice and put it so conveniently for you and me to see and smell and reach and sometimes even pick alas and even at that it's a failure this precious image only the very foolish little birds are threatened into good behaviour the naughty ones laugh and wink at each other and pull out its hair and beard when nobody's looking and peel their nests out of the straw it's stuffed with the naughty little birds in black especially and pick up what they want under its very nose and thrive uncommonly well and the good ones fly away out of sight and someday perhaps find a home in some happy useful fatherland far away where the father isn't a bit like this who knows and I'm one of the good little birds Trey at least I hope so and that unknown father lives in me whether I will or not and I love him whether he be or not just because I can't help it and with the best and bravest love that can be the perfect love that believeth no evil and seeketh no reward and casteth out fear for I'm his father as much as his mine since I've conceived the thought of him after my own fashion and he lives in you too Trey you and all your kind yes good dog you king of beasts I see it in your eyes ah bon Dieu père le Dieu des bonnes gens oh if we only knew for certain Trey what martyrdom would we not endure you and I with a happy smile and a grateful heart for sheer love of such a father how little should we care for the things of this earth but the poor person he must willingly go on believing or affecting to believe just as he is told word for word or else goodbye to his wife and children's bread and butter his own preferment perhaps even his very gentility that gentility of which his master thought so little and he and his are apt to think so much with possibly the bishop of Canterbury at the end of it the baton de maréchal that lies in every clerical knapsack what a temptation one is but human so how can he be honest without believing certain things to believe which without shame one must be as simple as a little child as by the way he is so cleverly told to be in these matters and so cleverly tells us and so seldom is himself on any other matter whatever his own interests other people's affairs the world the flesh and the devil and that's clever of him too and if he chooses to be as simple as a little child why shouldn't I treat him as a little child for his own good and fool him to the top of his little bent for his dear daughter's sake that I may make her happy and thereby him too and if he is not quite so simple as all that and makes artful little compromises with his conscience for good purpose of course why shouldn't I make artful little compromises with mine and for better purpose still and try to get what I want in the way he does I want to marry his daughter far worse than he can ever want to live in a palace and ride in a carriage and pair with a metro on the panels if he cheats why shouldn't I cheat too if he cheats he cheats everybody all around the wide, wide world and something wider and higher still that can't be measured something in himself I only cheat him if he cheats he cheats for the sake of very worldly things indeed tithes, honors influence, power authority, social consideration and respect not to speak of bread and butter I only cheat for the love of a lady fair and cheating for cheating I like my cheating best so whether he cheats or not I'll confound it what old Taffy do in such a case I wonder oh, bother it's no good wondering what old Taffy would do Taffy never wants to marry anybody's daughter he doesn't even want to paint her he only wants to paint his beastly ragamuffins and thieves and drunkards and be left alone besides Taffy is as simple as a little child himself and couldn't fool anyone and wouldn't if he could be a good person but if anyone tries to fool him my eyes don't he cut up rough and call names and kick up a shindie and even knock people down that's the worst of fellows like Taffy they're too good for this world and too solemn they're impossible and lack all sense of humor in point of fact Taffy's a gentleman poor fellow here we go I'm not simple worse luck and I can't knock people down I only wish I could I can only paint them and not even that as they really are good old Taffy Finch Harps never won fair lady oh happy happy thought I'll be brave and win I can't knock people down or do dirty deeds in the same little way the only way I can I'll simply lie through thick and thin I must I will nobody need ever be a bit the wiser I can do more good by lying than by telling the truth and make more deserving people happy including myself and the sweetest girl alive the end shall justify the means that's my excuse and this lie of mine is on so stupendous a skill that it will have to last me for life it's my only one but it's name is Lyon and I'll never tell another as long as I live and now that I know what temptation really is I'll never think any harm of any person anymore never never never so the little man went on and if he knew all about it had found it all out for himself and nobody else had ever found it out before and I am not responsible for his ways of thinking which are not necessarily my own it must be remembered in extenuation that he was very young and not very wise no philosopher no scholar just a painter of lovely pictures and more also that he was reading Mr. Darwin's immortal book for the third time and it was a little too strong for him also that all this happened in the early 60s long-ear religion had made up her mind to meet science halfway and hobnob and kiss and be friends alas before such a lying down of the lion and the lamp can ever come to pass religion will have to perform not sure of the journey than half I fear then still carried away by the flood of his own eloquence for he had never had such an innings as this nor such a listener he again apostrophized the dog Trey who had been growing somewhat inattentive like the reader perhaps in language more beautiful than ever oh to be like you Trey love and goodwill for more until night from not till morning like saliva without effort with never a moment cessation of flow even in disgrace and humiliation how much better to love than to be loved to love as you do my Trey so warmly so easily so unremittingly to forgive all wrongs and neglect and injustice so quickly and so well a kindness never a lucky dog that you are oh could I feel as I have felt or be as I have been or weep as I could once have wept or many a vanished scene as springs and deserts found seem sweet all brackish though they be so midst this withered waste of life though tears would flow to me what do you think of those lines Trey I love them because my mother taught them to me when I was about your age six years old or seven and before the bard who wrote them had fallen like Lucifer son of the morning have you ever heard of Lord Byron Trey he too like Ulysses love the dog and many people think that's about the best there is to be said of him nowadays poor Humpty Dumpty such as well as he once was not all the king's horses nor all the here Trey jumped up suddenly and bolted he saw someone else he was fond of and ran to meet him it was the vicar coming out of his vicarage a very nice looking vicar fresh clean alert well tanned by sun and wind and weather the vicar still tall stout gentlemen like shrewd kindly worldly a trifle pompous and authoritative more than a trifle not much given to abstract speculation and thinking 50 times more of any sporting and orthodox young country squire well inched and well anchored and well whiskered then of all the painters in Christendom when Greeks joined then was the tug of war thought little Billy and he felt a little uncomfortable Alice's father had never loomed so big and impressive before or so distressingly nice to look at welcome my appellees to your own country which is growing quite proud of you I declare young Lord Archie Waring was saying only last night that he wished he had half your talent about painting you know and actually wants to be a painter himself the poor dear old Marcus is quite sore about it with this happy Exordium the parson stopped and shook hands and they both stood for a while looking seaward the parson said the usual things about the sea its blueness its greenness its greenness its beauty its poetry who shall put forth on the unfathomable sea who indeed answered little Billy quite agreeing I vote we don't at all events so they turned inland the parson said the usual things about the land from the country gentlemen's point of view and the talk began to flow quite pleasantly with quoting of the usual poets and capping of quotations in the usual way who already had known each other many years both here and in London indeed the vicar had once been little Billy's tutor and thus amicably they entered a small wooded hollow then the vicar turning of a sudden his full blue gaze on the painter asked sternly what books that you've got in your hand Willy ah ah it's The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin I'm very fond of it I'm reading it for the third time it's very good it accounts for things you know then after a pause and still more sternly what place of worship do you most attend in London especially of an evening William then stammered little Billy all self-control for saking him I just don't attend any place of worship at all morning afternoon or evening I've long given up going to church all together I can only be frank with you I'll tell you why and as they walked along the talk drifted on to very momentous subjects indeed and led unfortunately to a serious falling out for which probably both were to blame and closed in a distressful way at the other end of the little wooded hollow a way most sudden and unexpected and quite grievous to relate when they emerged into the open the parson was quite wide in the painter crimson sir said the parson squaring himself up to more than his full height and breadth and dignity his face big with righteous wrath his voice full of strong menace sir you're you're a you're a thief sir you're trying to rob me of my saviour never you dare to darken my doorstep again sir said little Billy with a bow if it comes to calling names you're hey no you're Alice's father and whatever else you are besides I'm another for trying to be honest with a parson so good morning to you and each walked off in an opposite direction stiff as pokers and trace stood between looking first at one receding figure then at the other this consulate and thus little Billy found out that he could no more lie than he could fly and so he did not marry sweet Alice after all and no doubt was it ordered for her good and his but there was a trepulation for many days in the house of baggert and for many months in one tender pure and spious bosom and the best and the worst of it all is that not very many years after the good vicar more fortunate than most clergyman who dabble in stocks and shares grew suddenly very rich through a lucky speculation in Irish beer and suddenly also took to thinking seriously about things as a man of business showed more seriously than he had ever thought before so at least the story goes in North Devon and it is not so new as to be incredible little doubts grew into big ones big doubts resolved themselves into downright negations he crawled with his bishop he crawled with his dean he even crawled with his poor dear old Marcus who died before there was time to make it up again and finally he felt it in his duty in conscience to secede from a church which had become too narrow to hold him and took himself and his belongings to London where at least he could breathe but there he fell into a great disquiet but a long habit of feeling himself always on evidence and being looked up and listened to without contradiction of exercising influence and authority in spiritual matters and even temporal of impressing women especially with his commanding presence his fine sonorous voice his lofty brow his soft big waving hands which soon lost their country tan all this had grown as a second nature to him the breath of his nostrils a necessity of his life so he rose to be the most popular positivist preacher of his day and pretty broad at that but his dear daughter Alice she stuck to the old faith and married a venerable high church archdeacon who very cleverly clutched at and caught her and saved her for himself just as she stood shivering on the very brink of Rome and they were neither happy nor unhappy together and thus Alice the bond of religious sympathy that counts for so much in united families no longer existed between father and daughter and the heart's division divided them so kusse kudunu the pity of it and so no more of sweet Alice with hair so brown and of part 5 recording by J. C. Guan Montreal June 2010 part 1 of part 6 of Troll Bay or LibriVox recording or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by J. C. Guan Troll Bay by Georges Dumaurier part 6 part 1 Troll Bay he comes through the mountains crazy behold our three musketeers of the brush once more reunited in Paris famous after long years in emulation of the good Dumas we will call it 5 years after it was a little more Taffy stands for porthos and athos rolled into one since he is big and good natured and strong enough to assume our number d'un coup de poing and also stately and solemn of aristocratic and romantic appearance and not too fat not too much unbonk poing as the laird called it and also he does not dislike a bottle of wine or even two and looks as if he had a history the laird of course is d'artagnan since he sells his pictures well and by the time we are writing of has already become an associate of the royal academy like Quentin Durvord this d'artagnan was a Scotsman ah was no hierogi this Piper of Dundee and little Billy the dainty friend of Duchesses must stand for Aramis I fear it will not do to push the simile too far besides unlike the good Dumas one has a conscience one does not play ducks and drakes with historical facts or tapper with historical personages and if others porters and company are not historical by this time I should like to know who are well so are Taffy the laird and little Billy tout ce qu'il y a de plus historique our three friends well groomed frock coated with an inch of their lives duly scarved and scarf pinned chimney pot hatted and most beautifully trousered and balmorily booted or neatly spattered or whatever was most correct at the time our breakfasting together on coffee, rolls and butter at a little round table in the huge courtyard of an immense caravan's array paved with asphalt and covered in at the top a roof that admits the sun and keeps out the rain and the air a magnificent old man as big as Taffy in black cloth coat and breeches and black silk stockings and a large metal chain round his neck and chest looks down like Joe from a broad flight of marble steps as though to welcome the coming guests who arrive in cabs and railway omnibuses through a huge archway on the boulevard or to speed those who part through a lesser archway opening on to a side street Bon voyage, messieurs et dames at campus other little tables other voyagers are breakfasting or ordering breakfast or having breakfasted or smoking and chatting and looking about it is a babble of tongs the cheerfulest, busiest merriest scene in the world particularly the costly place of Rendezvous for all wealth in Europe and America an atmosphere of banknotes and gold already Taffy has recognized and been recognized by half a dozen old fellow Croymans of unmistakable military aspect like himself and three canny Scotsmen have discreetly greeted the layered and as for little Billy he is constantly jumping up from his breakfast and running to this table or that drawn by some irresistible British smile of surprised and delighted female recognition what? you hear how nice come over to hear Las Vingalia I suppose at the top of the marble steps in the long terrace with seats and people sitting from which tall glazed doors elaborately carved and gilded as to luxurious drawing rooms dining rooms reading rooms, laboratories postal and telegraph offices and all round and about are huge square green boxes out of which grow tropical and exotic evergreens all the year round with beautiful names that I have forgotten and leaning against these boxes are placards announcing what theatrical or musical entertainment plays in Paris that they are not and the biggest of these placards and the most fantastically decorated informs the cosmopolite world that Madame Vingalia intends to make her first appearance in Paris that very evening at 9 punctually in the Cirque des Bâchibasouques rue Saint-Honoré our friends had only arrived the previous night but they had managed to secure stalls a week beforehand no places were any longer to be got for love or money many people had come to Paris on purpose to hear Las Vingali many famous musicians from England and everywhere else but they would have to wait many days the fame of her was like a rolling snowball that had been rolling all over Europe for the last two years with the snow to be picked up in the shape of golden dukets their breakfast over taffy, the lured and little Billy cigar in mouth arm in arm the huge taffy in the middle crossed the sun shiny boulevard into the shade and went down de rue de la paix through the Place Vendôme and de rue Castiglione to de rue de Rivoli quite leisurely with a brief warming sensation of freedom and delight at almost every step arrived at the corner pastry cooks they finished the stumps of their cigars and they looked at the well-remembered show in the window then they went in and had taffy and Madeleine the lured and Baba and little Billy is Savarin and each I regret to say a liquor glass of rum de la Jamaïque after this this centered through the Thuileries gardens and by the quay to the favorite Pondésart and looked up and down the river comme autrefois it is an enchanting prospect at any time and under any circumstances but on a beautiful morning in mid-october when you haven't seen it for five years and are still young almost every stock and stone that meets your eye every sound, every scent has some sweet and subtle reminder for you let the reader have no fear I will not attempt to describe it I shouldn't know where to begin nor when to leave off not but what many changes had been wrought many old landmarks were missing and among them, as they found out nature and much to their chagrin the good old morgue they inquired of a gardien de la paix who told them that a new morgue une bien jolie morgue ma foi and much more commodities and comfortable than the old one had been built beyond Notre-Dame a little to the right Monsieur devrait voir ça on y est très bien but Notre-Dame herself was still there and la Saint-Chapelle and Le Pont-Neuf and the equestrian statue of Henry IV c'est toujours ça and as they gazed and gazed each framed unto himself mentally a little picture of the themes they had just left and thought of Waterloo Bridge and St. Paul's and London but felt no homesickness whatever no desire to go back in a hurry and looking down the river westward there was but little change on the left hand side the terraces and garden of the hotel de la Roche Martel the sculptured entrance of which was in the rue de Lille still over stopped the neighbouring houses and shaded the quay with tall trees whose lightly falling leaves yellowed the pavement for at least a hundred yards of frontage or package rather for this was but the rear of that stately place I wonder if Zuzu has come into his dukdom yet said Taffy and Taffy the realist Taffy the modern of moderns also said many beautiful things about old historical French dukdoms which in spite of their plantarfulness were so much more picturesque than English ones and constituted a far more poetical and romantic link with the past partly on account of their beautiful high-sounding names Amourie de Brissac de Ronseau de la Roche Martel boissegure what a gorgeous mouthful why the very sound of it is redolent of the 12th century not even Howard of Norfolk can beat that for Taffy was getting sick of this ghastly thin-faced time of ours as he sadly called it quoting from a strange and very beautiful poem called Fustine who had just appeared in the spectator and which our three enthusiasts already knew by heart and beginning to love all things that were old and regal and rotten and forgotten and of bad repute and too long to paint them just as they really were ah they managed these things better in France especially in the 12th century and even the 13th said the laird still Howard of Norfolk isn't bad at a pinch foot de mouf he continued, winking at little Billy and they promised themselves that they would leave cards on Zuzu and if he wasn't a duke invite him to dinner and also Dodor if they could manage to find him then along the quay and up to Hudesen and by well-remembered little mystic ways to the old studio in the Place Saint-Anatole des Arts here they found many changes a row of houses on the north side by Baron Hausmann the well named a boulevard was being constructed right through the place but the old house had been respected and looking up the north window of their good old abode blindless and black and black but for a white placard in the middle of it with the words alloué they entered the courtyard through the little door in the porte-cochère and beheld Madame Vunard standing on the step of her lodge her arms a Kimbell giving orders to her husband who was sewing locks for firewood as usual at that time of the year and telling him he was the most helpless log of the lot she gave them one look threw up her arms and rushed at them saying oh mon dieu les trois anglices and they could not have complains have any lack of warmth in her greeting or in Monsieur Vunard's oh mais quelle bonne heure de vous revoir et comme vous avez bonne mine tous et Monsieur Littre-Billy donc il a grandi etc etc me vous allez boire la goutte avant tout vite viner la ratafia de Cassie que Monsieur Durian nous a envoyé la semaine dernière and they were taking them to the lodge and made free of it welcomed like prodigal sons a fresh bottle of blackcurrant brandy was tapped and did duty for the fatted calf it was an ovation and it made quite a stir in the quartier le retour des trois anglices cinq ans après she told them all the news about Bouchardy, Papelard Jules Guineau who was now the new minister de la guerre Pariselle who had given up the art and gone into his father's business Durian who had married six months ago and had a superb atelier Thébou and was coining money about her own family Aglès who was going to be married to the son of the Charbonnier at the corner of the rue de la canicule un bon ménage bien solide Nynish who was studying the piano at the conservatoire and had won the silver medal Isidor who alas had gone to the bad to see Jolies Guercons vous concevez ça ne lui a pas porté bonheur par exemple and yet she was proud and said his father would never have had the pluck A 18 ans pour ces doncs and that good M. Carrel he is then you know and M. Savessa yes he died at Dieppe his natal town Durian de Winter from the consequences of an indigestion que voulez vous he always had the stomach so feeble and the beautiful interment M. 5000 people in spite of the rain Car il pleuvait avers and M. Le Maire and his adjunct walking behind the house and the gendarmerie and the douanerie and the battalion of the 12ème chasseur à pied with their music and all the sapeurs pompiers en grande tenue with their beautiful brass and the town was there following so there was nobody left to see the procession go by que c'était beau mon dieu que c'était beau ce que j'ai pleuré de voir ça n'est-ce pas Vinar Da me oui ma biche je crois bien it might have been M. Le Maire himself that one was entering in person Ah sa voyons Vinar thought not going to compare the Maire of Dieppe to a painter like M. Carrel certainly not my biche but still M. Carrel was a great man all the same in his way besides I wasn't there nor thou either as to that oh dieu comme il était dieu sa Vinar of a stupidity to cut with a knife why thou might almost be a Maire die self sacred imbécile that thou art and that animated discussion arose between husband and wife as to the prospective merit of a country Maire on one side and a famous painter and a member of the institute on the other during which les trois anglices were left out in the cold when M. Vinar had sufficiently routed her husband which did not take very long she turned to them again and told them that she had started a magasin de bricabrack vous verrez ça the studio had been to let for three months would they like to see it here were the case they would of course prefer to see it by themselves alone je comprends ça et vous verrez ce que vous verrez then they must come and drink once more again the drop an inspector magasin de bricabrack so they went up all three and let themselves into the old place where they had been so happy for a while so miserable it was changed indeed bare of all furniture for one thing shabby and unswept with a pathetic air of dilapidation spoliation desecration and a musty shut up smell the windows so dirty you could hardly see the new houses opposite the floor a disgrace all over the walls were caricatures in charcoal and white chalk with more or less incomprehensible legends very vulgar and trivial in course some of them and pointless for trois anglices but among these touching to relate they found under a square of plate glass that had been fixed on the wall by means of an oak frame little billies old black and white and red chalk sketch of traubies left foot as fresh as if it had been done only yesterday over it was written souvenir de la grande trilby par W.B. litre-bellies and many carefully engrossed on imperishable parchment and pasted on the glass the following stanzas pauvre trilby la belle et bonne et chère je suis son pied de vine qui voudra que le tendre et la chérie s'en aguerre encadre d'elle et d'un amour sincère se souvenir charmant qu'un caprice inspirat qu'un souffle emportera j'étais jumeau qui est devenu mon frère hélas hélas l'amour nous égara Eternité nous unira j'espère et nous ferons comme autrefois la paire au fond de l'ibien chaste ou nul ne troublera le trilby qui dormira autant de ramy sans nous qu'allez vous faire la portée close au trilby demeura le paradis est loin et sur la terre qui nous fut douce et lui sera légère pour trouver nos pareilles si bien qu'on cherchera beau chercher ton aura Taffy drew a long breath into his manly bosom and kept it there characteristic french doggerel for so he chose to call this touching little symphony in air and ra his huge frame thrilled with tenderness and petty and fond remembrance and he said to himself letting out his breath dear dear trilby ah if you had only cared for me I wouldn't have to let you give me up not for anyone on earth you were the maid for me and that as the reader had guessed long ago was big taffy's history the laird was also deeply touched and could not speak had he been in love with trilby too had he ever been in love with anyone he couldn't say but the thought of trilby's sweetness and unselfishness her gaity, her innocent kissing and caressing her drollery and frolicsome grace her way of feeling whatever place she was in with her presence the charming sight and the genial sound of her and felt that no girl no woman no lady he had ever seen yet was a match for this poor wave and stray this long-legged can-can dancing quartier latin grisette blanchisseuse de faim and heaven knows what besides i can get all he mentally ejaculated i wished goodness had married her myself little billy said nothing either he felt unhappier that he had everyone's felt for five long years to think that he could gaze on such a memento as this, a thing so strongly personal to himself with dry eyes and a quiet pulse and he unemotionally, dispassionately wished himself dead and buried for at least a thousand and first time all three possessed casts of trollby's hands and feet and photographs of herself but nothing so charmingly suggestive of trollby as this little masterpiece of a true artist this happy fluke of a happy moment it was trollbiness itself as the layered thought and should not be suffered to perish end of part one part six recording by J.C.Iguan Montreal June 2010