Chapter XIX

[In which we translate a letter from Henry Gastonard of the Maison du bon Tabac, at Hampstead, to Mimi the Simpleton, at Felixstowe.]

Maison du bon Tabac, Hampstead,
August 29, 1905.

Chère Mimi,--Do you remember when Mademoiselle Marcelle taught us to sing--

“J’ai du bon tabac dans ma tabatière, J’ai du bon tabac, tu n’en aurais pas?”

There is a song _ma mie_, which others have been singing this afternoon in the house which their old comrade Mimi will not enter. _Ah, mes enfants!_ And what shall I say to them?

Behold the builder, and ask if he be not punished enough. So much is admitted by those who have climbed upward to this height as you and I, _ma mie_, climbed upward in the old days, by the Villa Polichinelle, under the sails of La Galette, to the little house where Gabriel de Math had written immortality upon the windows and your old friend Desmond Barrymore used to sing you to sleep while he painted.

They came here, Mimi, out of the Paris they love, to bring a message from the Butte to this savage land. But one is missing who should have welcomed them--_ah, mes enfants_.

It is not Paris, this new house of the _bon Tabac_ at Hampstead, but you might rub your eyes sometimes and believe another story. Here, as upon our own beloved Butte, there stands the villa with the roses twined about it; here is the same tangle of a garden that served the Chevalier for his verses; here we sip the red wine and sing the songs which Jean Bataille taught us. One voice alone is missing. One who used to love us will not come to us--and the roses droop, and silence falls, and we know that we have not forgotten.

Riches did not build this house, _ma mie_, nor will they support it. We are all poor as in the splendid days. If we open a little window and look down to the valley, we see the great city, and try to make believe that it is the Paris we love. Ah, what a cheat is that, and how willingly we consent to say, There is the dome of the Invalides, and there St. Jacques, and there the frowsy houses of the Mich’. Georges Oleander, the pitiful old mendicant, started the game and is the busiest to play it--but your old friend Desmond Barrymore makes one of the conspirators, and he has a little bust of you in clay upon the table as I write.

Not Paris, but to those who will that it shall be so, a city of their desires. For what land is not a home to us when old friends are about us and there is good wine upon the table, and we may eat a Chateaubriand aux pommes and hear the Chevalier singing to us, and laugh at old Georges Oleander when he would beg the money for a new debauch to-morrow. Fifty francs may be the sum total of our riches--I doubt that it will be more. Each is poorer than his neighbour, and proud of the fact. When you come to us, _ma mie_, let your hands be full of gold, or we shall starve. Let Mimi be the Queen of our Treasury.

You will find the house without difficulty, for your new friends will be aware of its situation when you tell them that it is in the Walk at Hampstead Heath, near London, and has the verses of Villon--though they will not have heard of him--upon the façade. Should you remember our loneliness, take an early train to London, enter a chariot, and demand to be driven here. As I say, your friends will direct you--and are you not rich, Mimi?

This is the message of the Chevalier Honoré de Villefort: Let Mimi come to us.

And this the command of Georges Oleander: Let Mimi come to us.

And this the great hope upon the lips of Desmond Barrymore: Let Mimi come to us.

And this the prayer of one whose house is empty when Mimi is not here.

_Ah, mes enfants._

Henry Gastonard.