The Celina Democrat. (Celina, O. [Ohio]) 1895-1921, 1916-02-11
CHAPTER l..

Troy0n's occupied a corner in a
jungle OF side streets, well withdrawn
from the hustle OF the adjacent boule'
wards OF St. German and st. Michel.
and in its day was a restaurant ia
nous with fame jealousy guarded
by select circle of patrons. Its
cooking was the best in Paris, its eel
lar second to none, its rates ridicu-
lously reasonable; yet Baedeker knew
II not. And in the wisdom OF those
who did know this was well; it were
a pity to loose upon so excellent an
establishment those swarms of tour
lists that profane every temple of gas
tronomy on the right bank of the
Seine.
The building was of three stories,
painted a dingy drab, and trimmed
with dull-green shutters. The restau-
rant occupied almost all of the street
front Of the ground floor; blank, non
commital double doorway at one eX-
treme of the plate-glass windows was
seldom open and even more seldom
noticed
A medieval maze of corridors, long
and short, complicated by many unex-
pected steps and staircases and enig-
matte doors, running every which
way. and as a rule landing one in the
wrong room, linked together some
twoscore bedchambers. There were
no salons or reception rooms, there
was never a bathroom, there wasn't
even running water aside from two
hallway taps, one to each story
With such accommodations the
guests of Troyon's were well content.
One did much as one pleased there,
providing one bill was paid with toll
cradle regularity and the hand kept
supple that operated the Gordon in the
small hours of the night. Papa Troyon
came from a tribe of innkeepers and
was liberal-minded; while as for
madame, his wife, she cared for moth
ing but pieces of gold.
To Troyons on a wet winter night
in the year 1898 came the child who,
as man, was to call himself Michael
Lanyard. He must have been four or
five years old at that time; an age at
which consciousness is just begin
ming to recognize its individuality and
memory registers with capricious ir-
regularity. He arrived at the hotel
in a state of excitement involving an
almost abnormal sensitiveness to i'm
pTessiOns; but that was soon drowned
deep in dreamless slumber of healthy
exhaustion; and when he came to
look back through haze of days, of
which each had made its separate and
imperative demand upon his budding
emotions, he found his store of mem
ories strangely dulled and disarticu-
late. And the child soon gave over
his instructive, but rather inconsecu-
tive, efforts to retrace his history
life at TrOyons furnished him with
compelling and obliterating interests
Madame saw to that,
It was madame who took charge of
the child when the strange man
dragged him crying from the cab
through a cold, damp place gloomy
with shadows and upstairs to a warm.
bright bedroom; a formidable body,
this madame, with cold eyes and
many hairy moles, who made odd
noises in her throat while she un-
dressed the little boy with the man
standing by, noises meant to sound
compassionate and maternal, but, to
the child at least, hopelessly other
wise.
Then drowsiness stealing upon one
over pillow wet with tears-ob-
livion.
And madame it was who ruled with !
iron hand the strange new world to
which the boy awakened.
The man was gone by morning, and |
the child never saw him again; but |
inasmuch as those about him under |
stood no English and he no French, |
1t was some time before he compre-
hended the false assurances OF |
madame that his father had gone on |
a tourney but would presently return. |
The child knew positively that the |
man was not his father, but when he
was able to make this correction the
matter had faded into insignificance-
life had become too painful to leave
time or inclination for the adjustment |
of such minor and incidental ques-
tions as that of ones parentage.
The little boy soon learned to know
himself as Marcel which wasn't his
name, and before long was unaware
he had ever worn another. AS he
grew older he became known as Mar
Gel Troyon; out by then he had for
gotten how to speak English
1t was few days after his arrival
that the warm, bright bedchamber
was exchanged for a cold, dark closet
opening off madame's boudoir, a cup
board furnished with a rickety cot
and broken chair, lacking any pro-
vision for heat or light and ventilated
solely by transom over the door; and
inasmuch as madame shared the
French horror of drafts and so kept
her boudoir Theoretically sealed nine
months of the year, the transom didn't
help matters much. But that closet
formed the boys sole refuge, IL pre-
carious one, through several years;
there alone was he ever safe from
kicks and cuffs and seedlings for
faults beyond his comprehension; but
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