THE HAT OF EIGHT REFLECTIONS By JAMES MAHONEY From Century

ONE REFLECTION

WITH his rusty, black felt hat in his hand and oblivious of passers-by, Ventrillon stooped before the shop window until the reflection of his finely chiselled young face came into place, with the forehead of the image nicely adjusted into the crown of the hat behind the clear plate glass. It was a magnificent hat, an elegant hat, a formidable hat, a hat which was all there was of chic, a genuine, glistening stove-pipe hat, a véritable chapeau à huit reflets—an authentic hat of eight reflections—and the Ventrillon in the glass was wearing it. The effect was amazing.

“But why should it surprise me,” said Ventrillon, “when such is my present character? C’est idiot!”

For not only was this shabby young man contorting himself before the shop window the youngest prize winner of the spring Salon, but that afternoon he was going into society; for the first time, it is true, and into a very curious stratum of it, but society even so. Nevertheless, though he had spent the last of the three hundred francs of his prize money on an elegantly tailored costume of morning coat and striped trousers, he had expected to wear the rusty, broad-brimmed black felt he held in his hand. But as he marvelled at the effect of his reflection in the window, the hat before him became essential. It was the final touch, and it is the final touch which is vital.

And yet, once he appeared on the boulevards in such a hat, he would never dare to face his comrades at the Closerie des Lilas again.

They were a gay company of vagabonds: Sabrin, who worshipped Ventrillon like a mild-eyed dog; Clo-clo, whose golden ringlets outside her head would have compensated fully for the complete emptiness inside it even if there had not been her childlike adoration of Sabrin; Pinettre from Marseilles, whose passionate tenor he had heard so often seizing upon the stars above the terrace of the café, r-r-rolling the r’s of “Tor-rn a Sor-r-rento!” cow-eyed scarlet-mouthed Ginette, who always wept at Italian music; poor little Tric-trac, the poet, who invariably, when drunk, recited “Le moulin de mon pays,” the only poem he had ever managed to have published; Olga, the husky Russian girl, who invariably, when drunk, bussed Tric-trac resoundingly with what she called “little soul kisses”; Noiraud, the wag; Hélène, the inviolate; LePaulle, whose capital P was an affectation; Margoton, who had no taste—all of them penniless and none of them disturbed by that fact. For if one of them had the price of the beer, all drank. They had made the bomb together, ah, they had made the bomb! One would not soon forget that night when they had invaded the Cabaret of the Two Armadillos and had driven the regular clients into the streets by thundering with full lungs:

pounding the tables with their beer mugs to the terrific rhythm of their music; nor yet those mad evenings when they raced arm-in-arm down the broad pavements of the Boulevard St.-Michel, startling the bourgeois and screaming with laughter.

He could conceal that damning morning coat beneath his well worn imperméable, but how could one conceal a hat of eight reflections and wear it? They would think that he had become a snob, they would say that his prize had mounted to his head, they would ridicule him, they would begin to misconstrue his every statement, they would take offence; for them the hat would amount to betrayal, and he knew that he would not be able to bear it.

But Ventrillon at that moment visualized himself entering the carved portals of a great house in the Avenue Victor Hugo, the whole effect of his newly bought elegance destroyed by the rusty black felt. It was indeed the final touch which was vital. “I am beginning to see,” said Ventrillon, “that though they are undeniably amusing, they are all a little vulgar. It appears that my taste is improving in advance.” But having spent the last franc of his prize money, in the whole wide world he possessed not a single perforated sou.

He crossed the Seine to his garret in the Rue Jacob, stripped off the clothes he wore, and carefully arrayed himself in the full splendour of his new garments. From the slim patent-leather shoes to the exquisitely tied cravat he was perfect. Then he went bareheaded into the streets.

When he reached the shop he hesitated not, but entered with an air of command.

“My hat has just blown off into the Seine,” he explained to the first clerk in sight. “Show me the best silk hat you have in the shop; and quickly, or I shall be late for my appointment.”

The clerk, after inquiring the head size of this elegant, bareheaded youth, produced a counterpart of the hat in the window.

Ventrillon put the hat on his head and adjusted it before a mirror.

“The fit is perfect,” he said, “though I had hoped for a better quality. But—I have no time to waste. You will place it on my account.” He turned to walk out of the shop.

The clerk came hurriedly, but politely, from behind the counter, and modestly touched Ventrillon’s elbow.

“Then monsieur has an account here?” he inquired.

“Of course,” said Ventrillon, impatiently, and with his fingertips dusted the sleeve the clerk had touched. “And have I not told you that I have an important appointment?”

The clerk adroitly interposed himself between Ventrillon and the door.

“But I do not know the name of monsieur,” he persisted, always polite.

“You do not know who I am!” cried Ventrillon, as if the statement were proof positive of an utter imbecility he had already suspected.

“I am afraid not, sir,” faltered the clerk.

Then Ventrillon’s voice, a huge baritone absolutely astounding from a throat so young, roared out to its full, thundering in the clerk’s ears and frightening him half out of his wits:

“I am Odillon Ventrillon, name of God!” shouted Ventrillon.

The clerk, who for some reason he has never fully understood was under the impression that this was the family name of the Prince of Monaco or perhaps the King of Spain, and murmured, “Oh, I demand a thousand pardons, sir,” has never been able to explain this affair to the complete satisfaction of the proprietor.

For, before the clerk could recover, Ventrillon had left the shop and, having dashed impudently past the ticket puncher, was well on his way in the Métro, wearing the hat of eight reflections. In the dark tunnel he could see his image facing him in the windows of the lighted car.

“Undoubtedly,” reflected Ventrillon, adjusting his lapels, “it is the final touch which is vital.”

ANOTHER REFLECTION

When a handsome young man commits a murder, forges a check, or sets his heart upon a hat of eight reflections, one may well say to oneself, “It is a woman.” And a woman it was; but it was Mme. Sutrin.

A work of art, upon obtaining a public success, however slight, becomes forthwith an irresistible magnet to its maker. Though every day had seen Ventrillon setting out to walk in the opposite direction, every day had found him at last somewhere in the neighbourhood of his prize-winning canvas in the Grand Palais.

It was there that he was discovered by Eugène Savillhac, an acquaintance who since his success had become his friend. In that portion of society smarter than good Savillhac was one of those hangers-on who boost their own stock by boosting the stock of others. It appeared, incredibly, that every one of the hundreds he knew was the most extraordinary person in Paris.

“Ah, there you are, mon vieux!” he cried. “What luck! The youngest prize winner of the spring Salon and the most extraordinary woman in Paris are under the same roof. It is the first duty of a celebrity to be known by Madame Sutrin.”

He indicated a large woman in black silk whose plain skirt, neither full enough to be picturesque nor scant enough to be fashionable, swayed like a peasant’s from side to side as she waddled briskly through the crowd. Before her marriage to Timoléon Sutrin, the rich sugar industrial, she had been the beautiful Simone d’Estray of the Opéra Comique; but her beauty had been of that drastic sort which perfectly represents the triumph of feminine mind over matter, and after her marriage, with her future secure, she had comfortably allowed herself to become what nature had always intended her to be—very fat and very ugly. But she had the faculty of retaining all her old friends and quickly making new ones, and her flamboyant hôtel in the Avenue Victor Hugo was continually the scene of brilliant though somewhat dubious gatherings of boulevard celebrities, leavened with a scattering of those persons of real distinction who find delight in such society.

“Come, and I shall present you,” said Savillhac, and darted across the space, Ventrillon unenthusiastically trailing.

Smiling benevolently, Mme. Sutrin turned to face them. Her tight black bodice was pointed like a basque, and a large plastron of jet beads was applied down its generous front from the high collar about her neck to where her skirt was gathered in at her expansive waist. The unmistakable shadow of a coming event decorated her upper lip.

“Aha,” boomed Mme. Sutrin in the mighty bass which once had been a magic contralto, “and to what lady of the Opéra Comique do you want me to introduce you now?”

“Ah, madame,” said Savillhac, “you deceive yourself. I have brought a young man to introduce to you. The most extraordinary young man in Paris, in fact. My friend Ventrillon, the youngest prize winner of the spring Salon.” With a fine gesture he produced Ventrillon from invisibility.

Mme. Sutrin gasped as if struck in the face.

“Bon dieu!” she exploded at last, “Adonis!”

“Enchanted, madame,” murmured Ventrillon. “I am honoured——”

“Don’t waste a look like that on an old woman!” boomed Mme. Sutrin. “Young man, this world is badly arranged. Either I should have been born twenty years later, or you twenty years earlier. You should have known me in my youth. Both of us would have profited.

“I know nothing about painting,” she rumbled on, “and I do not like yours; but I like you, though your clothes are abominable. Come to my house Wednesday afternoon. It will be a dancing. Do you fox trot? But it does not matter. Smile at everybody the way you are smiling at me, and grow a moustache as soon as you can.” She turned to Savillhac. “If Gabrielle sees him, his fortune is made. You know how she goes in for the young ones. But those clothes will never do. I’ll wager he hasn’t a sou. But make him sell his bed and buy something that wouldn’t shame a cab driver.” Then abruptly she shook hands with both the young men and, swinging her skirts, waddled her way.

“A droll of a type,” commented Ventrillon.

“Sacré nom de dieu!” breathed Savillhac, staring at him aghast.

“Why—why—what is the matter?” stammered Ventrillon.

“You are invited to Madame Sutrin’s on Wednesday afternoon, and you say, ‘What is the matter?’ It is you who are the droll of a type to ask it.”

“But of course I shall not go.”

“Then you will be an imbecile. It is the chance of your life. All Paris will be there. Does that mean nothing to you—tout Paris?”

Tout Paris! A definite social unit, it is a social unit without definition. Many belong, but more do not. If one goes where tout Paris goes, does what tout Paris does, says what tout Paris says, knows the people tout Paris knows, does not know the people tout Paris does not know, then one is of tout Paris. But if one is not of tout Paris, one can do none of these things. One does not know how. Tout Paris is success, it is failure, it is the heights, it is the depths, and it is always seeking a new sensation. Without laws, it is of fashion the law, and is of the greatest importance; for if the newspapers say, “tout Paris was there,” that settles the matter. But, above all, tout Paris can applaud, and the applause of tout Paris can more quickly than anything else fill the empty pockets. The pockets of Ventrillon were usually abysmally empty, as he again remembered.

“And do you not know who is this Gabrielle of whom she spoke?” Savillhac continued. “The great Gabrielle Belletaille herself, nom de dieu! The most extraordinary woman in Paris. And you heard what Madame Sutrin said? If the Belletaille becomes interested in you, she will soon introduce you to everybody of any importance. Think of the marvellous portraits you can paint, and the prices you can charge! Perhaps she may even allow you to paint her portrait! Who knows? Then you will be in a position to refuse kings and queens.”

Gabrielle Belletaille, the prima donna of the Opéra Comique, was, as everybody knew, the idol of tout Paris. There was nobody like her. Where she led, tout Paris followed. Where tout Paris leads, all the world follows. Ventrillon stood for a moment silent. His clear, deep eyes held a wonder such as one sees in the eyes of those who pause upon the thresholds of strange palaces.

“But,” he said at last, “I shall not know what to say to her, even if I see her.”

“Say anything but the name of Fanny Max,” said well-posted Savillhac. “She is beginning to attract attention, and you can understand what that means to the Belletaille.”

“But——” said Ventrillon again. Ruefully he looked down at his own baggy corduroys, his cracking shoes, his threadbare coat, and the rusty, black felt hat he held in his hand. Then he considered the slimly clad, gray-striped legs of the impeccable Savillhac, the glistening footgear, the smart morning coat with a gardenia in its lapel, the shining top hat. Savillhac was fashion itself, the embodiment in one person of tout Paris. Ventrillon reflected.

“My prize has brought me three hundred francs,” he said. “Take me to your tailor. But I refuse to wear one of those hats. I should be assaulted in the Boulevard du Montparnasse.”

For it was not until he had seen his image in the plate glass of the shop window that his head was completely turned.

THIRD REFLECTION

In the Métro station of the Étoile, Ventrillon dusted his patent-leather shoes with his pocket handkerchief, shot his cuffs, tilted the hat of eight reflections to its most killing angle, and then sallied forth into the Avenue Victor-Hugo. Unfortunately, custom would not permit his wearing the hat in the salon of Mme. Sutrin. As he reluctantly surrendered it at the entrance his ears were assailed by an incredible noise, which increased in discordant violence as he neared the door of the salon.

The large room was crowded. The shining faces of a group of perspiring American blacks grinned with yellow teeth and rolled their white eyeballs above a variety of strange instruments that the Negroes were tormenting with wild, angular abandon of elbows and knees. To the barbarous compulsion of the bizarre rhythm a number of couples were moving about the floor, poising and posturing with the curious exotic dignity of the Parisian fox trot. In fashionable dishevelment smiling-eyed ladies sat about on chairs and ottomans, drinking tea; and miraculously tailored gentlemen of figures ranging from the concave to the convex stood balancing teacups in saucers.

The grace of his embarrassment fulfilling somehow the perfection of his garments, Ventrillon made an exquisite figure against the futurist splendour of Mme. Sutrin’s flamingo and purple portières. She saw him standing overwhelmed in the doorway, uttered a hoarse little shriek of delight and, in her tight gown of magenta velvet rushed with a sort of oscillating precipitation to take his hands. Names of the mighty poured into his ears as she introduced him at random to everybody within reach. But he was not long abashed. He was never long abashed. And, besides, to any man, as a wise American has said, the consciousness that he is well dressed is a consolation greater even than the consolations of religion.

Mme. Sutrin left him to the mercies of a group watching the dancing from the end of the room opposite the jazz band.

“This noise,” began Ventrillon, promptly, to a negligible lady beside him, “is it music?”

“Ah, no, monsieur,” confessed the lady; “but it is the fashion.”

“Then I must like it,” said Ventrillon.

“One has not met you before, I believe, monsieur?” said the lady.

“I have not been a success before,” said Ventrillon.

The lady laughed.

“Then you do not know anybody. I shall have to inform you. The little woman with the red hair near the door is Madame Ribot, the wife of the journalist. She has a wicked tongue; it is well to cultivate her. Her husband controls public opinion, and she controls him. The man behind her is the Minister of Public Services——”

A passing couple jostled the minister’s arm and, awkwardly, attempting to save it, he dropped his teacup. Crimson even to the barren scalp of his head, he stooped to mop with his handkerchief at the spilled tea in the lap of Mme. Ribot. The little red-haired woman smiled, clenched her teeth, and bided her time.

“Madame,” said Ventrillon, “I sit at your feet and learn. I had never before known that a Minister of Public Services could drop a teacup.”

The lady laughed again.

“Monsieur,” she said, “you are delicious. Look! The tall blonde who enters is the Belletaille——”

With a resounding metallic crash, the jazz band happened at that moment to stop short. Short of breath, the dancing couples separated. In the gap of the portières stood a lean, hawk-nosed woman in black, with a dead-white face of astonishing and fascinating ugliness. One shoulder was held higher than the other, one chalky hand rested with fingers wide-spread upon her uncorseted hip, and the other caressed at her waist the enormous bunch of scarlet amaryllis without which she was never seen. Everybody turned to look. The Belletaille, as usual, had achieved an entrance.

“’Allo evreebodee!” she cried in English, showing all her fine white teeth. “Ah, there you are, my Marianne! Kiss me! And, oh, my dear Madame Sutrin, how pleased I am to come! C’est épatant! A jazz band! Bon dieu, but it is ravishing! Aha! Théodule—ça gaz?” She had called the Minister of Public Services Théodule and asked him how he was in slang. “That,” thought Ventrillon, “is success.”

Taking for granted that everybody was overwhelmed with delight at seeing her, on she came, with a bow here and a handshake there, until in the centre of the room she halted abruptly.

“Théodule,” she cried, “I forgot to tell Madame Hortense to send up that gown this evening. Telephone her for me. And hasten, or the shop will be closed.” The Minister of Public Services obeyed and left the room.

Then she turned and on she came again. With the sinuous step of the walk she had learned at the Conservatoire, on and on, smiling, smiling, her eyelids painted sky blue, her alizarin lips smiling apart like something unreal, jingle by jingle, faintly clicking her high heels on the parquetry, on and on, smiling always, came the great Gabrielle Belletaille of the Opéra Comique.

Ventrillon had never before in his life made an effort to please, and now his mind refused to work. In fact, it was scattered into tiny little bits all over the salon of Mme. Sutrin. “What a marvellous subject to paint!” was the only idea his devastated brain could hold. He could do naught but stare at the extraordinary creature and breathe with difficulty. She was almost upon him.

Now she was speaking to him in that golden voice, a single intonation of which could break a thousand hearts, and was extending one of those chalk-white hands, a single gesture of which could from a thousand bodies draw a thousand souls.

“And this,” she was saying, “must be the Adonis of whom Madame Sutrin spoke.”

Ventrillon grasped his impudence and yearned for his breath and his voice; but everything he could conceive was either too long or too obvious, and with every fraction of a second it was swiftly becoming too late. One of those terrible tea-silences had fallen when nobody can think of anything more to say.

“Ah, Madame Venus,” he heard his voice stammer at last, resounding in his ears above the tinkle of teaspoons, as if he had been shouting, “n-n-not Adonis; for that f-foolish Adonis ran away!”

He saw her narrow her eyes as she looked at him, and heard the sharp intake of her breath. “Oh, my God!” thought Ventrillon, “I am ruined! I have gone too far!”

“Audacious!” she murmured. “I like audacity.” She flashed all her teeth upon him and for the moment blinded him. “Come and talk to me.”

She sat down, letting her long arms drift from the arms of her chair. “I hope you don’t fox trot. I refuse to fox trot. It is so vulgar. When that Fanny Max began to fox trot, the Belletaille ceased. Now tell me all about yourself. I am a person in whom one can confide. Everybody tells me everything. I am always so interested in other people. It is my character. That is why I am never bored. Only the stupid are bored. And then my life has been so interesting, so full of such strange coincidences and such fascinating episodes.” Then, before allowing him one word of the telling all about himself, or herself the time to catch her breath, she shrieked the length of the room to the Minister of Public Services, who had at that moment entered again, “What did she say, Théodule?”

“She will send the gown at once,” said the minister, mopping his forehead. “But what a devil of a time I had getting her! Telephonists have lost all respect. I did not remember the number and I did not want to waste the minutes, so I said to the telephonist, ‘I know, my girl, it is forbidden to call without a number, but this is the Minister of Public Services who speaks.’ And figure to yourselves what she says! ‘Flute alors!’ she says. ‘Go on with you! That is what they all say!’”

“Oh,” laughed red-haired little Mme. Ribot, “that is exactly what happened to Fanny Max, the new soprano everybody is talking about, you know.” Ventrillon saw Mme. Sutrin give the little woman a warning glance, and knew that Belletaille had stiffened at the mention of the name. But Mme. Ribot wore a gown which had been ruined by the Minister of Public Services, and she was about to make him pay through the nose. Nothing could have stopped her. “Excepting that she said she was the wife of the Minister of Public Services; and the telephone girl said——”

Mme. Sutrin, having not the vaguest idea what that telephone girl had said, but knowing Mme. Ribot’s tongue only too well, made a desperate gesture to the leader of the jazz band, hoping to drown it in cacophony. The Negro had gone out for a drink. Mme. Sutrin subsided hopelessly.

“The telephone girl said,” Mme. Ribot continued calmly and deliberately—“she said, ‘Oh, the pig! He has deceived me!’”

The minister went a violent shade of royal purple.

“And that very day,” the shameless red-haired little creature went on, “Fanny Max went to the telephone bureau with a riding whip, and it required six men to eject her. Ministers of public services must be fascinating.” She looked up wickedly at the minister, who looked down at her in turn as if he would have liked to bite her. She was obtaining royal indemnities for her gown.

“Oh, spare me!” cried the Belletaille. “I suffocate! All one hears is Fanny Max! Fanny Max! Fanny Max! The newspapers are full of her. Why people will discuss such a creature I cannot understand. Such vulgarity! It makes me ill. And she will do anything for notoriety. I abhor notoriety myself. I loathe notoriety. And voice? It is like the screech of a rusty hinge. Really, Madame Sutrin, if we are to have nothing but Fanny Max——”

“I assure you, madame,” said the minister to Mme. Ribot, striving to keep his rage from his voice, “that I have not the honour of knowing Mademoiselle Max——”

“Oh,” she cried quickly, “never fear! Your wife will not hear it from me.”

“Ugh!” said the Belletaille to Ventrillon, “it continues! It is disgusting! It is unspeakable! It is——”

“Mademoiselle,” interrupted Ventrillon, “why speak of her? She exists only to be ignored by you.”

The Belletaille gave him her grateful full face. “I knew it the moment I saw you,” she declared. “You are a mystic, and I think mysticism is so fascinating. You have the eyes. I am a mystic myself. Everybody notices it. Sometimes I think we mystics alone know the true soul of things. What a truth that is, ‘She exists only to be ignored by me!’ You are a painter, aren’t you? It is these young ones, these young mystics, who do the great things. Why do you not paint my portrait?”

Ventrillon gulped.

“I dared not ask it,” he said.

“Then that is settled. We shall begin to-morrow afternoon. But come, take me to my car. It is evident that these surroundings are not for us. Ah, Madame Sutrin,” she said sweetly as she took her hostess’s hand, “it has been so interesting! One finds so many people at your house one would never dream of meeting anywhere else.”

When she passed the minister, Ventrillon heard her hiss something into his face. It sounded extraordinarily like, “Never speak to me again!” But Ventrillon was never sure of this, for the jazz band had begun anew. Nevertheless, he distinctly saw little Mme. Ribot look up from under her red hair to observe this brief passage, and then down to contemplate a large wet stain on her satin skirt with a smile of enormous satisfaction.

“After all,” reflected Ventrillon, “the great are all ridiculous. It is easier than I had thought.”

FOURTH REFLECTION

At the curb Ventrillon handed the Belletaille into her limousine.

“Till to-morrow,” she said graciously as he stood there bowing, with the hat of eight reflections in his hand. The car, purring, was about to move off, but she signalled the driver with a vibratory gesture of both her long white hands, and then tore with them at the vivid bouquet at her waist. She leaned from the car and thrust a scarlet amaryllis into Ventrillon’s buttonhole. “It is my flower,” she said, “the guaranty of our bargain.”

As the car rolled silently from the curb into the traffic, he raised the lapel of his coat and gallantly pressed his lips to the flaming lily. He saw her smile with all her teeth and wave her hand.

“Undoubtedly,” he said to himself as he strolled leisurely on down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, “it is because I happened to be designed by nature to wear a hat of eight reflections.”

His recent success ran in his blood like champagne. The scarlet badge of it was brave in his buttonhole, and if he had been wearing his old black felt and strolling down the Boulevard St.-Michel, he would have sung. But such behaviour was not for the man he had become. Neither was the company at the Closerie des Lilas.

In the Champs-Élysées he passed his good old friend Sabrin, who was promenading Clo-clo on his arm. Clo-clo shook her golden ringlets and giggled.

“Regard me that, if you please!” she cried. “Ventrillon has become a bourgeois! Ventri in a hat of eight reflections!”

How shabby they looked!

Ventrillon lifted the hat of eight reflections and bowed—with a grace, and hoped nobody saw him do it. Sabrin’s mild eyes deepened as if he had been a dog and Ventrillon had struck him, but Clo-clo gave a delighted little scream of amusement.

“I do not think,” reflected Ventrillon, his ears blazing as he walked on, “that I shall frequent the Closerie des Lilas any more.”

As that was the only place in Paris where might be found a friend to buy him a dinner, and the reason for his walking the long distance from the Étoile to the Rue Jacob was that he had not even the price of a Métro ticket, Ventrillon went to bed early that night, imploring sleep to quiet his hunger.

FIFTH REFLECTION

If it had not been for the sandwiches the Belletaille served with her tea and the suppers to which she had him invited, Ventrillon might have starved. But in the smart company at those suppers in fashionable restaurants he had begun to wonder how he had ever been able to endure the shabbiness of the Closerie des Lilas. And every day he could glimpse his image in the shop windows as he wore the hat of eight reflections along the boulevards to the doorway of the greatest singer in Paris.

She had arranged with Volland for a public exhibition of the portrait in his celebrated galleries on the day after it was finished. Volland well knew that the portrait of such a woman could not fail to bring tout Paris in crowds to his doors. After the cachet of a commission from the Belletaille and an exhibition at Volland’s, other commissions would begin to pour in to Ventrillon, and complete success would follow rapidly. He who now wore a hat of eight reflections with bravado could then wear it with authority. Ventrillon would be a personage of tout Paris. Cannot one well bear one’s hunger for that?

Enthroned in a tall-backed Spanish chair draped with cloth of gold, the Belletaille sat in emerald green and all her make-up. She insisted upon the make-up.

“Without it,” she said, “the portrait would not be decent. You might as well paint me in the nude.”

Ventrillon worked in rapt absorption. He was doing the most brilliant bit of painting he had ever done, and this youth with the bright face of an archangel could paint like the devil himself. “It is my chance,” he said to himself as the composition took form on the canvas with which the Belletaille had supplied him, “and I am going to startle the natives.”

She refused to look at the portrait.

“The Belletaille is beautiful,” she said, “and an unfinished painting is not. I shall wait until it is hung in a good light at Volland’s.”

During the repos she would sing to him, or feed him with sandwiches and tea. The number of sandwiches he ate astonished and delighted her. “He is a true original,” she thought. “They always eat like that. Besides, he has such nice eyes.”

She sang for him, without accompaniment, songs which she said she reserved from the public for her dearest friends alone. It was a curious collection of unknown things: strange, wild songs of the Sicilian peasants, weird, lonesome songs of Siberian slaves; and sad, earthy songs from the Hebrides, all unwritten, and passed down by tradition.

“These songs are old; God knows how old,” she would say. “They are ageless, cosmic things. That is why they are so amusing.”

“One must confess,” thought Ventrillon, “that it is better than hearing Pinettre squeal ‘O Sole mio!’ at the Closerie. And to think that I am hearing it all free! Evidently I was born for this.”

They worked in the music room, and whenever she sang she opened the windows, all of which faced the street.

“It is for my children,” she would say, “the people of Paris. Sometimes they gather in crowds beneath my windows, and it is touching to hear their applause. You will not envy them the crumbs of your feast.”

On the last day Ventrillon placed a slender high light down the length of the nose, and heightened the green reflection of her gown under the curve of the chin. With these two strokes the portrait sprang into solidity and completion. Ventrillon stood back, astonished.

“Nom de dieu!” he swore, completely forgetting how far he had risen out of the atmosphere of the Closerie des Lilas. “I shall not only startle the natives, but, ma foi, I have startled myself!”

“Is it really like that!” cried the Belletaille, eagerly, and ran to the easel. But she restrained herself, covering her eyes with her hands. “No, I shall not look! My children must see me when I look upon it for the first time at Volland’s. I must give them that privilege. But I know that you have done me a great portrait. I said at the beginning that you had the eyes. I shall sing for you. I shall sing for you a song I almost never sing. It was written for me by Rimsky-Korsakof himself. Even Rimsky had no copy. ‘It is for you alone,’ he said to me; but, my friend, I shall sing it for you!” She opened the windows, and went to stand in the curve of her piano.

“Ah,” she said, “but this song is bitter! Bitter, bitter. You will hear how bitter it is.” She thrust one bony knee forward, and clasped her long thin hands upon her head, crushing her hair down into her eyes. Her rouged lips taut, she sang through her teeth, and her eyes became malignant slits under her hair. Slowly, in the deepest, the most troubling tones of all her extraordinary range, she began:

She stopped.

“Now, do you hear? Is it not bitter? Is there anything else so bitter in all the world? But wait until you hear the A in altissimo at the end! That is the bitterest of all. I give it my full voice, and it is terrible. You will never hear anything like it as long as you live. Never! Listen!

Her full voice, loud, hard, and colourless, cut the last syllable out of its shrill heights like an ominous, sharp-edged knife. Shiver followed shiver down Ventrillon’s spine. He sat spellbound. When she sang she was truly great.

Outside the windows rose a burst of applause from a crowd which had gathered in the street.

“Listen!” cried the Belletaille, shaking her widespread, long white fingers above her head with joy. “My children!” She darted to a window.

As she stood in the window, holding the draperies apart with her hands, the radiance upon her face flickered and died. Her chin thrust steadily forward from between her thin shoulders, and the cords of her neck stood out like wires under her skin.

“Ah-h-h-h!” she gasped, hoarse with rage, “the cow! the camel! the pig! the poiasse! The’—the—agh-h-h-h-h-h!” She could not think of words terrible or scorching enough to soothe the hot desire of her throat for exacerbation. Ventrillon felt like stopping his ears against what she would say next. “The—the species of indelicate!” she cried at last, and subsided, thwarted by the French language.

Ventrillon went to her side and looked out. One side of the street was packed with a mass of excited people, gesticulating, laughing, applauding. The other was deserted save for a little Dresden-china figure in a ridiculous frilly frock, with a tiny absurdity of a hat cocked down above her impertinent, tip-tilted nose, and the two huge black leopards she was promenading through the streets of Paris on a leash. The muscles of the black beasts slid like snakes beneath their sleek hides, their soft muzzles slobbered, their red tongues lolled, and their jade-green eyes shifted uneasily as they dragged the foolish little creature behind them along the pavement on her stilted heels. She was laughing with delight, and flicking them frivolously with a jewelled riding whip. It was Fanny Max.

Four gendarmes stood in the street, consulting in whispers. The one with the longest moustache took his courage in his hands and advanced with his chest out. The others gallantly followed. The crowd cheered again. Fanny Max touched her beasts toward the gendarmes. One leopard snarled. The gendarmes ignominiously fell back. Fanny Max laughed a silvery little “ha! ha!” and continued her triumphant progress. The crowd cheered wildly and howled with delight. The Belletaille burst into wild tears.

“T-to think,” she sobbed, “that she would have the impudence to come here! In my street! She does it purposely! I know she does it purposely. Oh, but she is vulgar! And her notoriety! How it is disgusting! How I ab-b-bominate n-n-notoriety!”

Suddenly the Belletaille straightened. She turned to clutch both Ventrillon’s arms with hands like steel fetters.

“Tell me,” she demanded hungrily, “it is true that this portrait is great, is it not? It is something incredible, it is an amazing portrait, it is true that it will startle them, is it not?”

“Mademoiselle,” said Ventrillon, “have I not said that it startles even me?”

“Ah,” murmured the Belletaille, reassured, “then to-morrow! To-morrow! I will not look. I could not recapture the emotion. I must give them that emotion to-morrow! To-morrow at Volland’s! Let me kiss you upon your forehead—like a mother.”

Ventrillon had not fully realized that no more than a single day lay between him and his triumph. Thus far, to tout Paris, he had been only a protégé of the Belletaille. That in itself was no small distinction. But within twenty-four hours, to-morrow, to-morrow at Volland’s, he would be Ventrillon, the most celebrated portrait-painter in Paris. As the Belletaille pressed her painted lips to his forehead, the remunerative applause of tout Paris already resounded in his youthful ears. His heart began to beat faster, and his blood throbbed in his temples.

“To-morrow!” he said, with eyes like stars. “To-morrow at Volland’s!”

SIXTH REFLECTION

Ventrillon brushed the hat of eight reflections until it shone again. He had eaten no luncheon, and was compelled to walk all the way, but he had become accustomed to both these facts. Besides, from under the gay awnings of the cafés along the boulevards people pointed him out to one another as he passed, and that was a compensation. As he neared the doorway of Volland’s his heart was beginning to swell in his chest, and his head was growing dizzy beneath the refulgent hat.

To the point of discomfort the great exhibition salon was packed with tout Paris. Volland shoved his way about amid richly dressed shoulders, beaming upon them with his little pig-like eyes, and tugging at his goatee with joy. Luminous with electric light, and the only ornament of the barren gray expanse of his walls, the portrait dominated the hall. It was a tremendous success. Not only was it the portrait of the most conspicuous figure in Paris, but the brilliancy of colour and design was sensational. On every hand one heard: “Superb! Magnificent! One expects her to speak!” The crowd, already too closely pressed, increased, but nobody left the salon; for tout Paris was waiting for a still greater sensation. The morning papers had announced that the Belletaille would arrive that afternoon to look upon her portrait for the first time. The Belletaille had seen to that.

A new enthusiasm developed near the door and spread rapidly through the entire assembly. “It is she herself!” they whispered, and made way for her. It was the Belletaille. She was entering.

She advanced to within a few yards of the portrait and halted for a magnificent moment, confronting her painted self.

A young girl whispered excitedly:

“It is exactly like her! One knows not which is which!” Then she gave a little frightened shriek and shrank back into the crowd, for the Belletaille had turned on her like an angry tigress.

It is a curious fact that every one of us carries in his secret heart an image of himself totally different from the person that others see. The hardened portrait painter strives to approximate that image. But the portrait which Ventrillon, the novice, had painted was more like the Belletaille than was the Belletaille herself. For that great lady was, in every moment of her life, hard at work being something else. Perhaps that is the true cause of what followed, and perhaps it is not.

She collected herself. Opening her vanity case with splendid quick movements of those famous chalk-white hands, she took out a little ivory-handled manicure implement to do with it a thing for which it had not been designed.

She advanced upon the portrait, and with the gesture that she had until that moment reserved for slaying the baritone, slashed the tiny knife through and through the canvas until it dangled from the frame in twisting, slattern shreds. Then she turned to face her awestruck audience.

“The Belletaille is beautiful!” she cried in a sonorous middle voice. “None but the hand of time shall dare to deface her!”

Whereupon, with the magnificent walk of her second act of “Tosca,” she strode toward the door. As she reached it, Ventrillon was entering, his young cheeks hot, and his eyes shining with elated expectancy.

Those who saw the ensuing event were to boast of it afterward, and those who had not seen it were to pretend that they had.

“Pig!” she cried full in his face, and swinging high her parasol, broke it over the hat of eight reflections. Carrying the remains of the parasol with her, she stalked, always magnificent, into the street.

Vaguely, Ventrillon removed the ruin from his head, and stared at it, stupefied. The crowd was wild with restrained excitement, but he heard not their whispers, or even their sudden, suppressed little outbursts of high-strung laughter. The portrait was destroyed. The Belletaille hated him. She had made him ridiculous. Tout Paris would reject him. There were now no future commissions on which to count. He was hungry, he had not a sou, and even the hat of eight reflections was a wreck in his hand.

Ventrillon reflected. This was his to-morrow, his to-morrow at Volland’s.

SEVENTH REFLECTION

But certain fierce and earnest words whispered in his ear with excited persistency began at last to penetrate the vacuum of his deadened brain. Puzzled, he turned to face the speaker.

A thin, blond young man with white eyelashes was begging anxiously:

“I’ll give you a hundred francs for that hat! I’ll give you two hundred! I’ll give you five hundred——”

Ventrillon blinked. Then his brain cleared, as does the atmosphere with lightning.

“No!” he thundered in a voice which filled the room. “Nom de dieu! No!” And Ventrillon was himself again.

“A chair!” he shouted. “Somebody find me a chair!”

Nobody knew what was going to happen next, but everybody was ready and delighted to do anything which might promote its happening. From somewhere a chair was passed over the heads of the crowd. Ventrillon mounted upon it.

For a moment he paused. The beauty of his young face and the verve of his pose commanded a spontaneous burst of applause; but as he opened his mouth to speak, the noise died quickly into breathless silence.

“Messieurs et ’dames,” he cried, “Regard me this hat! There is none other like it. Never has such a thing happened before, and never will it happen again. Here is the unique hat crushed by the umbrella of the great Belletaille, and merely to own it is to render yourself famous. Now attend to this extraordinary fact! I, Odillon Ventrillon, stand here upon this chair, willing to part with this treasure. It is incredible, but, messieurs et ’dames, how much am I bid?”

This turn of affairs was not banal; it was not at all banal. And it was perfectly true that the shapeless hat which Ventrillon was offering was already historic. It was on a par with the shoes of Catherine de’ Medici in the Musée de Cluny. The highest bidder would be the envied of tout Paris.

“Six hundred francs,” piped the tenor of the blond youth, breaking the silence.

“A thousand francs,” cried an extravagantly dressed South American, enjoying himself hugely. There was a burst of applause.

“Ah, no, monsieur,” regretted Ventrillon; “there will be higher bids than that.”

“Two thousand,” abruptly announced an ambitious lady, wearing pink pearls, from the midst of a group of her three daughters dressed exactly alike in yellow cotton.

“Only two thousand francs!” shouted Ventrillon. “Madame, you do yourself the injustice of underestimating its value.”

“Two thousand, five hundred,” recklessly screamed the blond youth. The ambitious lady turned pale.

“O Maman,” cried the eldest of her three daughters, “bid again! We are so rich, and he is so beautiful!”

“Yes, Maman!” urged the other two, breathlessly. A ripple of amusement spread through the crowd.

“Two thousand, five hundred, and seventy-five,” announced that lady with excessive poise, and switched a superior smile over the entire assembly.

But the bidding became general, and little by little the price went up. The hat was now the sensation of Paris; every franc bid increased the sensation; and tout Paris, which lives on sensation, bid on. Then entered the lists a modest little gentleman with a pince-nez, a nouveau riche of the war, who felt himself intruding wherever he went. His timid voice becoming weaker with every increase until at last it was only a whisper, he began persistently overtopping every bid made.

“Four thousand, forty-five,” bid the blond youth.

“Four thousand, fifty,” bid the gentleman in the pince-nez.

“Four thousand, fifty-five,” bid the lady in pearls.

“Four thousand, sixty,” bid the gentleman in the pince-nez, almost automatically.

The lady in pearls set her jaw.

“Four thousand, sixty-one,” she pronounced grimly.

The blond youth mopped his overheated brow and shot his bolt.

“Four thousand, eighty!” and, immediately over-bid by the little gentleman in the pince-nez, rushed frantically from the room. Another bid in a voice without identity.

“Five thousand miserable little francs!” thundered Ventrillon, scornfully. “And the rate of exchange, what it is? Bon dieu! It is an insult to Mademoiselle Belletaille!”

But the sum was already beyond even reason of unreason; it was as if a cold wind had blown into the room. Ventrillon became sensitive to the situation.

“Five thousand, five hundred,” suddenly whispered the little gentleman in the pince-nez.

“Five thousand, five hundred,” shouted Ventrillon, quickly. “Going, going—-” For a moment there was dead silence.

“O Maman,” excitedly cried the eldest daughter of the lady in pearls, “is it too late?”

“Chut!” hissed the mother, pinching her daughter’s arm until she squealed.

“Gone,” thundered Ventrillon, with finality—“gone to the dignified monsieur in the pince-nez.”

That little man advanced conspicuously to take possession. The crowd cheered wildly. Volland made his way in through the uproar.

“Of course, my friend,” he said genially, rubbing his hands before the chair of Ventrillon, “you will not forget my commission. A hat is not art, to be sure, but I am accustomed to 10 per cent. on sales made in my galleries.”

Ventrillon, with an air, peeled off five hundred-franc notes and one fifty from the huge packet the dignified little monsieur with the pince-nez had produced from his pockets, and presented them to Volland.

He who was accustomed to wearing a hat of eight reflections went bareheaded that evening to his garret.

“But,” reflected Ventrillon, “one never wears a hat to eat. Politeness forbids.” And that night he would dine extravagantly.

EIGHTH REFLECTION

At noon the next day Ventrillon woke from the long slumber of the well fed to a nervous knocking at his door.

“Who is there?” he roared angrily.

“Chut! Chut! But it is I,” loudly whispered the awed voice of the concierge. “There is a lady below——”

“Tell her I cannot see her.”

“But, monsieur, she says that she is the great Mademoiselle Belletaille of the Opéra Comique.”

Ventrillon started in alarm. Perhaps that astonishing woman had come with a gun.

“Tell her I cannot see her.”

“But, monsieur, she resembles precisely her photographs in ‘Excelsior’——”

“I don’t care whose photographs she resembles——” But he stopped short, for he heard the footsteps of the Belletaille herself running up the stairs.

Ventrillon leaped from his bed, and in his bare legs and shirt flung himself against the door.

“Open your door to me!” cried the ecstatic voice of the Belletaille. “Have you seen the morning papers? You cannot refuse me the pleasure of grasping your hand! The name of that Fanny Max does not appear. There was no room for it. She had not even the distinction of being among those present.”

“But, mademoiselle,” protested Ventrillon, “I cannot see you.”

“Tout Paris is wild with the news,” the Belletaille rushed on; “even your head-size appears in the papers. It was a clever idea of me to destroy that portrait, was it not? Even as I plunged it into my own likeness, I felt that I plunged my little knife into the heart of that creature. But you have surpassed me. It was a stroke of genius. And what an advertisement for my American tour! I must kiss you on both your cheeks——”

“But, mademoiselle,” cried Ventrillon, in agony. “I am not dressed. Would you have me receive you in my shirt?”

“Then open your door a little way. All the world will want to know you now; but can you not come to me this afternoon? We must begin another portrait. Open it only a little way! Permit me to give you the present I have brought you.”

Ventrillon allowed her to intrude a large bandbox through the gap of the partly opened door. When she had gone, he examined it, gingerly; he wondered if she had handed him an infernal machine. He had heard of such things, and could not trust her honeyed words.

He placed it on his table, and opened it by cautiously cutting away pieces of its sides with his pocket-knife. When all the cardboard had been cut away, there stood upon his table, crown-side down, and filled with scarlet amaryllis, a hat, a magnificent hat, an elegant hat, a formidable hat, a hat which was all there was of chic, a genuine glistening stove-pipe hat, an authentic hat of eight reflections.

Ventrillon stared. It was really true that he was higher in the favour of the Belletaille than ever. He was probably the most talked-of person in Paris. He could that afternoon begin another portrait, and a greater celebrity than he had ever hoped for was within his grasp. There was even before him on his table a shining hat of eight reflections in which to walk before the admiring eyes of tout Paris.

Now the concierge, who, fascinated, had remained behind to peek in at the crack of the door, saw a strange thing. When she reported it eagerly to him that evening, her worthy spouse remarked that now he knew what had become of that bottle of eau-de-vie his uncle had sent up from the country, and he was not a man to be taken in by a woman’s lies, even when she was sober.

Slinging its contents of scarlet amaryllis about the floor, Ventrillon snatched the hat from the table, placed it accurately in the seat of his chair, and sat upon it.

“It is curious, old fellow,” he reflected aloud, without rising from the inchoate mass it had become—“it is curious how strange one always feels when one discovers that one has been human. But to-night you and I—you and I are going together to the Closerie des Lilas. May the francs in my pocket persuade our friends to be merciful!”

So far as the concierge could ascertain, he was addressing a rusty, broad-brimmed black felt hat which hung shapeless from a nail on the opposite wall.

Which, of course, was absurd.