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THE FATAL FLOROZONDE

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Before Pitou, the composer, left for the Hague, he called on Théophile de Fronsac, the poet. La Voix Parisienne had lately appointed de Fronsac to its staff, on condition that he contributed no poetry.

"Good-evening," said de Fronsac. "Mon Dieu! what shall I write about?"

"Write about my music," said Pitou, whose compositions had been rejected in every arrondissement of Paris.

"Let us talk sanely," demurred de Fronsac. "My causerie is half a column short. Tell me something interesting."

"Woman!" replied Pitou.

De Fronsac flicked his cigarette ash. "You remind me," he said, "how much I need a love affair; my sensibilities should be stimulated. To continue to write with fervour I require to adore again."

"It is very easy to adore," observed Pitou.

"Not at forty," lamented the other; "especially to a man in Class A. Don't forget, my young friend, that I have loved and been loved persistently for twenty-three years. I cannot adore a repetition, and it is impossible for me to discover a new type."

"All of which I understand," said Pitou, "excepting 'Class A.'"

"There are three kinds of men," explained the poet. "Class A are the men to whom women inevitably surrender. Class B consists of those whom they trust by instinct and confide in on the second day; these men acquire an extensive knowledge of the sex—but they always fall short of winning the women for themselves. Class C women think of merely as 'the others'—they do not count; eventually they marry, and try to persuade their wives that they were devils of fellows when they were young. However, such reflections will not assist me to finish my causerie, for I wrote them all last week."

"Talking of women," remarked Pitou, "a little blonde has come to live opposite our lodging. So far we have only bowed from our windows, but I have christened her 'Lynette,' and Tricotrin has made a poem about her. It is pathetic. The last verse—the others are not written yet—goes:

"'O window I watched in the days that are dead,

Are you watched by a lover to-day?

Are glimpses caught now of another blonde head

By a youth who lives over the way?

Does she repeat words that Lynette's lips have said— And does he say what I used to say?'"

"What is the answer?" asked de Fronsac. "Is it a conundrum? In any case it is a poor substitute for a half a column of prose in La Voix. How on earth am I to arrive at the bottom of the page? If I am short in my copy, I shall be short in my rent; if I am short in my rent, I shall be put out of doors; if I am put out of doors, I shall die of exposure. And much good it will do me that they erect a statue to me in the next generation! Upon my word, I would stand a dinner—at the two-franc place where you may eat all you can hold—if you could give me a subject."

"It happens," said Pitou, "that I can give you a very strange one. As I am going to a foreign land, I have been to the country to bid farewell to my parents; I came across an extraordinary girl."

"One who disliked presents?" inquired de Fronsac.

"I am not jesting. She is a dancer in a travelling circus. The flare and the drum wooed me one night, and I went in. As a circus, well, you may imagine—a tent in a fair. My fauteuil was a plank, and the orchestra surpassed the worst tortures of the Inquisition. And then, after the decrepit horses, and a mangy lion, a girl came into the ring, with the most marvellous eyes I have ever seen in a human face. They are green eyes, with golden lights in them."

"Really?" murmured the poet. "I have never been loved by a girl who had green eyes with golden lights in them."

"I am glad you have never been loved by this one," returned the composer gravely; "she has a curious history. All her lovers, without exception, have committed suicide."

"What?" said de Fronsac, staring.

"It is very queer. One of them had just inherited a hundred thousand francs—he hanged himself. Another, an author from Italy, took poison, while all Rome was reading his novel. To be infatuated by her is harmless enough, but to win her is invariably fatal within a few weeks. Some time ago she attached herself to one of the troupe, and soon afterwards he discovered she was deceiving him. He resolved to shoot her. He pointed a pistol at her breast. She simply laughed—and looked at him. He turned the pistol on himself, and blew his brains out!"

De Fronsac had already written: "Here is the extraordinary history of a girl whom I discovered in a fair." The next moment:

"But you repeat a rumour," he objected. "La Voix Parisienne has a reputation; odd as the fact may appear to you, people read it. If this is published in La Voix it will attract attention. Soon she will be promoted from a tent in a fair to a stage in Paris. Well, what happens? You tell me she is beautiful, so she will have hundreds of admirers. Among the hundreds there will be one she favours. And then? Unless he committed suicide in a few weeks, the paper would be proved a liar. I should not be able to sleep of nights for fear he would not kill himself."

"My dear," exclaimed Pitou with emotion, "would I add to your anxieties? Rather than you should be disturbed by anybody's living, let us dismiss the subject, and the dinner, and talk of my new Symphony. On the other hand, I fail to see that the paper's reputation is your affair—it is not your wife; and I am more than usually empty to-day."

"Your argument is sound," said de Fronsac. "Besides, the Editor refuses my poetry." And he wrote without cessation for ten minutes.

The two-franc table-d'hôte excelled itself that evening, and Pitou did ample justice to the menu.

Behold how capricious is the jade, Fame! The poet whose verses had left him obscure, accomplished in ten minutes a paragraph that fascinated all Paris. On the morrow people pointed it out to one another; the morning after, other journals referred to it; in the afternoon the Editor of La Voix Parisienne was importuned with questions. No one believed the story to be true, but not a soul could help wondering if it might be so.

When a day or two had passed, Pitou received from de Fronsac a note which ran:

"Send to me at once, I entreat thee, the name of that girl, and say where she can be found. The managers of three variety theatres of the first class have sought me out and are eager to engage her."

"Decidedly," said Pitou, "I have mistaken my vocation—I ought to have been a novelist!" And he replied:

"The girl whose eyes suggested the story to me is called on the programmes 'Florozonde.' For the rest, I know nothing, except that thou didst offer a dinner and I was hungry."

However, when he had written this, he destroyed it.

"Though I am unappreciated myself, and shall probably conclude in the Morgue," he mused, "that is no excuse for my withholding prosperity from others. Doubtless the poor girl would rejoice to appear at three variety theatres of the first class, or even at one of them." He answered simply:

"Her name is 'Florozonde'; she will be found in a circus at Chartres"—and nearly suffocated with laughter.

Then a little later the papers announced that Mlle. Florozonde—whose love by a strange series of coincidences had always proved fatal—would be seen at La Coupole. Posters bearing the name of "Florozonde"—yellow on black—invaded the boulevards. Her portrait caused crowds to assemble, and "That girl who, they say, deals death, that Florozonde!" was to be heard as constantly as ragtime.

By now Pitou was at the Hague, his necessities having driven him into the employment of a Parisian who had opened a shop there for the sale of music and French pianos. When he read the Paris papers, Pitou trembled so violently that the onlookers thought he must have ague. Hilarity struggled with envy in his breast. "Ma foi!" he would say to himself, "it seems that my destiny is to create successes for others. Here am I, exiled, and condemned to play cadenzas all day in a piano warehouse, while she whom I invented, dances jubilant in Paris. I do not doubt that she breakfasts at Armenonville, and dines at Paillard's."

A Chair on the Boulevard

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