They reached the Rue de Perpignan at last, and found _déjeuner_ waiting. There was a little salad, some stewed beef, and a bottle of white wine, also some fruit on a plate.
As Toto and Célestin embraced, Garnier looked around him with a sigh. His room was an attic, yet I doubt if he would have exchanged his attic, where he lay abed on Sunday reading the “Mysteries of Paris” and imagining himself Prince Rudolph, and of a week-day night reading the _Intransigèant_ by the light of a tallow candle and imagining himself Henri Rochefort, for this atelier, even were Célestin thrown in—at least, at present.
Not that he undervalued Célestin, even at the first glance; far from it. The great, noisy Garnier was silent and quelled for quite ten minutes. He had never met Célestin before amidst all the women he had met, and he seemed undecided for a while as to whether an angel or a child was dispensing the cold stewed beef and the salad. Then he made up his mind, evidently, that it was a child, and began to play with her. He told stories, really droll little stories, that a child or a man might laugh over, and stainless as the white roads of Provence. And he mimicked old men and women without malice, and in such a way that Célestin wept from laughing.
After _déjeuner_ he taught his hostess how to make cat’s cradles, and Dodor’s history was told to him whilst he sat on the couch and nursed his knee and smoked his villainous cigarettes of Caporal.
The guitar was taken down from the wall, and he played _café-chantant_ songs, things with the ghost of an air moving in a whirl of sound, and sang the “Girls of Avignon” with tears in his eyes, that seemed to behold the whirl of the farandole, the white road to Arles, the moonlight, the fireflies, and the orange trees shivering in the mistral.
Altogether it was a most enjoyable afternoon, and the excitement and laughter left Célestin quite spent. A fit of coughing seized her when the time came for them to go out to dinner, and she declared that she must lie down. So she lay down on her bed, and Toto covered her up with a shawl, and gave her one of the lozenges Mme. Liard had placed in her trunk to suck.
Then he went out with Garnier, and they dined at a little café for two francs each, wine included.