to-day as i pass in detail these recollections, just as one inks over a half-effaced pencil route upon a map, i clearly understand a truth which escaped me at the time. i had fallen in love with camille favier the moment i saw her on the stage with her fine beautiful face so like the art type of a master whom i have studied much. this little actress, of whom i knew nothing, except that she spoke well and was the mistress of a fashionable author, had at once touched one of the most vibrating fibres in my heart. in spite of molan’s boasting, in spite of the childish grace of her reception, she might be a profligate or a schemer. certainly she was a very cunning innocent, since by my companion’s confession the siege of her virtue had nothing in common, either in length or in difficulty, with the siege of troy or even the siege of paris. a person does not reflect much when his heart is captivated as mine was.
this child already occupied such a prominent place in my feelings, that the idea of her leaving the theatre with molan that evening gave me a strange feeling of sadness. now that the time is past i can explain these impressions; then, i contented 45myself with feeling them. seated in the box, opera glass in hand, i thought in good faith that this sadness proceeded to establish that commonplace and discouraging statement, that the most beloved of men are those who love the least. then neither use nor age have hardened me concerning disloyalty in love. i never could lie to a mistress, even one engaged like an extra cook for a week. actually i have not known many of that sort. my caprices have lasted for eight years, and i have experienced deception which ought to make me indulgent where the ruses of men against women are concerned. people like jacques molan revenge us others who have never made ourselves loved, simply because we love. perhaps i ought to have experienced in this box at the vaudeville on this strange evening that not very delicate but very natural feeling, the joy of the avenged company, if the victim of that vengeance had not been the little blue duchess. when she appeared on the stage, i was seized with pity at noticing the happier look in her eyes, the more joyful fire of her acting, and the visible tremors in her supple and nervous person, of a lover who believes herself loved. when she disappeared into the wings, my pity grew and changed into indignation. my friend got up with a malicious look upon his face. as i watched him in the distance enter madam de bonnivet’s box i said to myself not without bitterness—
“why can one only please a woman by being as womanish as herself in the worst sense of the 46word? the charming camille is happy now. she is undressing and dressing with the gaiety of a brave creature who has been under fire and won a battle for the man she loves. she has acted so well in this scene. hardly is her back turned when he deceives her. this treachery doubles the pleasure he experiences in man?uvring with the other woman. no coquette ever had her eyes so lit with desire to please as the famous author then. he is cordially shaking hands with the two men who are with the lady! one of them probably is her husband and the other a rival. good, he is talking of me, for her wicked blue eyes had fixed me with the aid of glasses. let me follow the play. it will be more worthy and more agreeable.”
was i talking to myself quite frankly? no, alas, i vaguely felt i was not. molan’s perfidy, and it alone, would not have disgusted me like this. had it been applied to any other person than the little burne-jones girl of the vaudeville, i should have found it amusing enough. particularly i should have been diverted by his somewhat sheepish look when he got back to our box.
“you have not quite the air of triumph i expected, but everything seemed to go on well from the distance.”
“very well,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “madam de bonnivet has invited me to supper with her after the performance.”
“but what of little favier?” i asked.
“you have put your finger on the sore,” he 47replied. “i have promised to see her home. i cannot desert her at the last moment.”
“ah, well!” i said, “desert madam de bonnivet. she does not play in the piece, and as you admitted just now, is a coquette and a half. she will invite you again.”
“in the meantime, i have accepted,” he interrupted, “that was the coquettish thing to do. playing with women would be very simple if it only consisted of feigning coldness. there are times when one has to take a high hand with them, while at others one must obey their lightest caprice. so i repeat i have accepted. i must find a way of getting rid of camille. good,” he said after a moment’s silence; “i think i have it, if you will help me. i will present you to madam de bonnivet. she will invite you to supper; she is a woman of that sort. you will refuse.”
“i should refuse in any case,” i replied. “but i do not understand your scheme.”
“you will see later,” he said, his eyes again expressing the joy he felt in performing before a sympathetic audience of one; “give me the pleasure of scheming and promise to do something else for me. oh, it is nothing wrong, noble person. this is the interval. before going to see queen anne, we will go and see camille again. it is all in the scheme. what a good house there is to-night!”
the curtain had fallen amid enthusiastic applause and frequent calls, while jacques associated me, almost without my consent, with his 48trickery. i had a good mind to refuse, for it was scarcely in accordance with my recent indignation. my scruples gave way to my curiosity to know how this m. célemére of literature would escape from the snare in which he had entangled himself. at least that was the excuse i found for myself. to-day i think i yielded simply on account of the attraction the pretty actress had for me. a person should never be too severe about another’s deceit. the most scrupulous are ready to accept and aid their schemes, when they are in accordance with their own secret desires. the real cynical truth was that we went into the wings to reach the retreat where the pseudo-burne-jones was waiting for us, as an actress waits. though the actress’ affection for her lover was sincere, she was none the less the fashionable comédienne who had to humour her admirers, and she could not even keep the seclusion of her modest dressing-room intact. voices were audible as we approached it. jacques listened to them for a moment with a nervous expression of face which made me forgive him for much. if he was teasing it was because he was jealous. consequently his unconcerned mockery was a pretence. i learned once more from his example that there is not necessarily any connexion between jealousy and love.
“camille is not alone,” he said.
“then we will return later,” i replied. “she will prefer to talk to you more privately, and it is better, too, seeing what you say to her.”
“on the contrary,” he replied with a sudden 49gay smile in a low tones, “i can recognize the two voices, they belong to tournade and figon. you don’t know them, do you? figon is wonderful; you shall see him. he is a very fine specimen of a snob, a disgusting helot of vanity. tournade is the son of the great candle maker; everybody burns tournade candles. of course he is worth millions of francs, and i am inclined to think he is willing to lay a few at camille’s feet. ah,” he went on still more maliciously, “you are going to lose the flower of your first impression. the little woman has a heart and more delicacy than her profession allows, but a person is not at the theatre for nothing, and she does not always take the same tone she did with us just now. come along, be brave!”
he knocked at the door with his cane in a way which somewhat contradicted his words. there was a certain amount of authority combined with nervousness in his knock. “decidedly there is more in it than he is willing to admit,” i said to myself while the door was opening. two lamps and several candles all lighted had made the atmosphere of the narrow room stifling, and there were in it besides the actress and her dresser, the persons jacques had mentioned.
i recognized at once the two types of fast men so wonderfully drawn by forain. one, whom i guessed by his looks to be tournade, had a fat red face, like that of an overfed coachman, with a heavy and ignoble mouth, brutal, sly and satiated eyes, an incipient baldness, short red whiskers, 50and the shoulders of a professional boxer. he had a hand, with long fat fingers covered with big rings with large stones in them. some greedy peasant lives over again in people of this kind, and they bring to a life of elegant debauchery the ignobly positive soul of a usurer’s son with a porter’s temperament. the other one, figon, was thin and weak, with a never-ending nose, and every tooth in his head was a masterpiece of gold stopping. his eyes were green and twinkling. his sparse hair, narrow shoulders, and worn-out spine were a fine example of the exhaustion found in every race which would justify the anger of the workers against the middle classes if they themselves, who are nourished and corroded by the same vices, were not still less worthy. both the obese tournade and the skinny figon had that way of wearing evening dress, the large gilt buttons on the front, the button-hole, and the hat on the back of the head, all of which constitute the uniform of foolishness or infamy, which the genial caricaturist of the doux pays—that jeering goya of the dismal revels of paris—has illustrated in his legends, in which its correctness makes its baseness more apparent.
lighted by the rough lights of the little dressing-room, these two visitors were standing leaning against the wall, handling their canes in a brutish way, and watching the little actress who was at her toilette with a wrapper round her shoulders. she was making up her face for the next act in which she had to appear in disguise, in the costume 51of the picture after which the play was called, all in blue from the satin of her shoes to the ribbon in her hair. the only long chair and couch had a dress and cloak spread out on them. evidently the persons had intruded upon her, had not been asked to sit down, and she was about to dismiss them. this sign of her independence caused me keen pleasure. i conceived for these young fellows a violent antipathy—after that how could i doubt presentiments?—especially for the candle maker’s heir, who exchanged a brief greeting with jacques. figon made use, to the fashionable author, of all the usual “dear masters,” and eulogies of the piece which were imbecile platitudes.
jacques received these compliments with his mouth pursed up. incense is always agreeable however common it may be, even when it is in the vulgar form of tobacco smoke. he nodded his head as figon concluded.
“you are my two favourite authors, you and——” i will not repeat here the name of the obscene and outrageously mediocre writer with whom the fool associated poor jacques. the latter gave a start which almost made me burst out laughing, while the actress interrupted—
“are you going to be quiet?” she said. “i have already told you that i would put up with you if you never spoke of books or the theatre.” when she addressed the young man, he looked at her grinning with stupidity, and she continued: “if molan does not bring you into his next play, he will be good to you. what do you think he has 52just told me, jacques, about gladys, his old mistress; you know her, the woman you called the 'gothen du gotha,’ because of her love affairs with smart people. she left him for a counter-jumper; and now she has left the counter-jumper to live with a lord, so we can recognize her again, m. de figon says.”
“come,” tournade interposed with the air of authority of a smart man who does not wish another man of his own set to be treated with a lack of respect in the presence of ordinary literary men or painters; “you know very well that louis was joking, and it is not kind of you to chaff him. you would be the first to grieve if you saw his name in some newspaper.”
“first of all,” she replied turning to him, “these gentlemen are not journalists; find out to whom you are talking, my boy. for a day when you have not been drinking, you are missing a fine opportunity for silence. besides if you are not satisfied you know this is my dressing-room.” she had such an ugly look as she uttered, with increasing bitterness in her voice, these insolent remarks, and her intention of getting rid of these two young men was so obvious, that i had a feeling of shame and almost pity for them, and especially for tournade, who though he looked like a brutal and vulgar man, had some pride and blood in his veins. he contented himself with answering by a laugh as common as himself and a shrug of the shoulders, while jacques said—
“we came to pay our compliments to you, little 53duchess, but it does not appear to be the evening for politeness.”
“it is always so for you and your friend,” she said, turning to us her face which had become tender once more, and her shining eyes which uttered, proclaimed, and cried aloud this phrase: “here is my lover whom i love, and i am proud of him; i want you to know him, to quote him; i want the whole world to know him.”
“thank you,” said jacques. without doubt his fatuity had been sufficiently fed. it displeased him to triumph too openly over a tournade or a figon, for he went on: “allow me just a little criticism?”
camille cast a fresh glance at him now, somewhat uneasily, as she went on putting the rouge on her face, and he began to quote two insignificant remarks i had made concerning the excessive emphasis at two places in her part. one of them concerned the manner in which the actress had to say to a friend, “i do not want him,” speaking of the husband she loved; the other was a gesture on recognizing the writing on the address of a letter.
i could not help admiring the change of look and voice in both of them in the course of this little discussion. the sudden seriousness of their faces showed how, in spite of his vanity in himself, and his passion for her, the reality of their personality was there in the technicality of their art. they had forgotten the existence of tournade, figon, and myself. on their part the two men 54about town pretended to talk of things which interested them, which we could not understand. i heard the names of horses, no doubt famous at that time, mentioned: farfadet, shannon, little duck and fichue rosse, alternating with the professional phrases of the author and the actress. ah, how quickly the shrewd molan had appropriated the two poor ideas i had given him without mentioning their origin! his sole consideration for my feelings was to call me to support his thesis!
“ask vincent, for he has studied faces.”
“ah, well!” he said to me a few minutes later as we were leaving before tournade and figon, “we will leave her a prey to the beasts, like a christian martyr, though she may be neither a christian nor a martyr. you saw that she conceals a little roughness under her pre-raphaelite profile, like many of her fellows. now we have gone, those two funny fellows will occupy her attention. what a singular machine a woman is! you would think that a watertight bulkhead separated the lover from the ordinary woman.”
“does she often lose her temper like that?” i asked him; “and why do those two fellows put up with such treatment?”
“bah!” he replied with his habitual modesty, “she would have said much more to them to prove that i was the only person she loved. for between ourselves i know that tournade is courting her. do you think that in their eyes the pleasure of saying while they are standing at a bar about midnight imbibing a drink through a straw, ‘we 55were with little favier just now, how quaint she is?’ counts for nothing.” then as we reached our box and i made as if to enter he said: “no! no! you forget we must first pay madam de bonnivet a visit.”
“whose invitation i will refuse. that is agreed.” he took my arm and one of the staff opened most respectfully for us the communicating door between the stage and the auditorium. as we mounted the staircase my friend continued: “as a recompense to you, i will let you into one of the details of the plan which will enable me to get rid of camille this evening. you will see what a good idea it is. with women, especially actresses, i believe in tremendous untruths. remember the receipt. they are the only sort which succeed, because they do not believe any one would have the audacity to invent such stories. presently during the last act i shall have a letter brought to me which i shall pretend to read. you are there! i shall display great astonishment and scribble a few words upon my card which i leave with you. then i shall go out. camille will have seen it all and will be uneasy. she will play her great scene with nervous force. that is what is required. afterwards you will take my card to her, on which i shall explain that fomberteau—you know him well, don’t you? no. he is one of the few critics who has not picked holes in the duchess, and on that account camille loves him—that fomberteau has had this evening an altercation with a colleague and wants to see me 56so that i may act on his behalf. i shall not be able to refuse. you will confirm the story. she believes you and the feat will be accomplished. but madam de bonnivet’s box is 32, and we have passed it. good, here it is.”
he knocked at the door as he said this, but the knock was more deferential than the one just before had been at the dressing-room door.
a man in a black coat opened the door to us with a smile, greeted us and disappeared. it was bonnivet to whom i was introduced, then i was presented to madam de bonnivet, and then to the vicomte de senneterre, who was the “beater.” i was soon sitting upon one of the chairs vacated by one of these gentlemen. the lady was picking bits of frosted raisin from a box with a pair of golden tongs. she ate them, showing her small white teeth as she did so with a sort of sensual cruelty.
“are you going to paint little favier’s portrait, m. la croix? molan told me you were,” she asked. “she is a pretty girl. i hope you will give her another expression though. if the dear master were not here i would say that when she is not talking she is like the classic cow watching the train pass.”
she looked at the man of letters whom she called “dear master” as she spoke with sovereign impertinence. knowing him to be the lover of this woman to whom she applied this vulgar epigram, what impertinence this was with a harsh laugh as its accompaniment! her laughter, the voice of 57her eyes, was pretty but metallic, clear but implacable, a gay laugh which sounded frightfully brutal to me! if one could not—i repeat this as it was the striking impression of this first meeting—imagine real warm tears from those eyes of stony blue, neither could one imagine her stifling a sigh, nor imagine music in her voice, nor indulgence in her gaiety. but that which at once made her distasteful to me was not her words—the meanness of a jealous woman was their justification—it was a curious trait in her personality.
how can i find words for the indefinable shades of expression on her face which three pencil lines and two touches of colour would clearly reproduce how can i explain that something about her which was at the same time insensible and enervated, glacial and crazy, and so plain in the contrast between her banter and her fine aristocratic profile, which was almost ideal: between her jeering laugh and her fine mouth, between the disdainful carriage of her neck and her willingly familiar manners? this pretty delicate head, with its haughty and fragile grace, which had at once evoked in me the image of a queen of elfs with its blonde hair and flowerlike complexion, was, i have since understood, the victim of the most terrible ennui in the world, that which absolute insensibility in the midst of all the good things of the world, and the radical incapacity of enjoying anything when one possesses all one desires, inflicts upon us. since then, i have thought the “dear master” was very greatly mistaken on his own 58account, that this ennui, so like that of a man of the world growing old, perhaps came from abuse, and that there was a blasé woman in this weary one. i guessed that she had dared many things with singular intrepidity. but there was no need for these hypotheses upon the secrets of her life for uneasiness to overcome me. the direct way in which she questioned me, who cannot bear questioning, gave me a feeling of insecurity.
“have you known molan long?” she asked me.
“about fifteen years,” i replied.
“have you ever seen him in love except in his books?”
“you will at once intimidate him, madam,” my friend replied for me. “he is not used to your imperial manner.”
she went on, still keeping her eyes fixed on molan, though addressing me—
“has little favier any brains?”
“oh, yes!” he replied quickly and in good faith. i should have made the same answer to this creature whose accent alone was sufficient to irritate me. i then began an enthusiastic eulogy of the poor girl i hardly knew, and who had surprised me by her sudden vulgarity. jacques listened to me as i sang the praises of his mistress in a stupor which madam de bonnivet construed into a sense of umbrage. she was not the woman to neglect this opportunity of sowing the seeds of discord between two friends. it is my test for all feminine or masculine natures, this instinctive tremor of sympathy or antipathy before the sentiments of 59others. it was sufficient for madam de bonnivet to believe that jacques and i were united by sincere comradeship, for the temptation to sever this friendship to seize her.
“stop,” she said; “should the painter be so amorous of his model?” she laughed her wicked laugh. then suddenly she turned her head and said to her husband: “pierre, you don’t take enough exercise, you are getting fat. it makes you look ten years older than you really are. you should take senneterre as your example.” this evening the “beater” was polished and fastened together like an old piece of furniture, so that this praise of his apparent youth was fearful irony. “come,” she concluded, “don’t get angry, but have some raisins, they are exquisite.”
“what an amiable child!” i said to myself as she offered us the box of fruit in a peevish way. “what time is she put to bed?” her character, which had no inner truth, was ceaselessly dominated by a double need in which two moral miseries were manifest: the unhealthy appetite for producing an effect developed in her by the abuse of worldly success, the even more unhealthy appetite for emotion at all costs, the result of secret licentiousness, which had made her blasé, and her lack of heart. have i mentioned that she was a mother, and that she did not love her child, who had been at a boarding school for years? she could not dispense with astonishment, and she had that strange taste for fear, that singular pleasure of provoking man’s anger, that joy of feeling that 60she was threatened with brutality which is the great sign of woman in her natural state. except on serious occasions the most childish things were good enough to procure for her these two emotions: such as dazzling a poor devil of a painter by ways so contrary to her social pretensions, and lighting in her husband’s eyes, without any cause, the light of anger which i had just seen there.
senneterre and bonnivet began to laugh a similar laugh to that of tournade and figon in little favier’s dressing-room. the comparison struck me at once, as it has done under different conditions when i have skirted “high society.” the actress and the woman of the world had exactly the same bad tone. only the bad tone of the delicate burne-jones girl betrayed a depth of passionate soul, and an extraordinary facility for allurement, while in the case of madam de bonnivet it was the intolerable and fantastic caprice of the spoilt child; but it was very fine, for no shade of feeling escaped her, not even the antipathy of an unimportant person like myself, nor the ill-humour of her husband disguised by his laughter.
“my dear senneterre,” bonnivet had simply said, “we are done with. but an old husband and an old friend are umbrellas upon which much rain has fallen!”
there was in these few words a strange mixture of irony with regard to the two artists, new-comers into their circle, to whom the young woman was talking, and a deep irritation which no doubt procured 61for her the little tremor of fear she loved to feel. she gave her husband, whom she had so saucily braved, a coquettish glance almost tender, while the glance she gave me was indignant, and rather exciting than provoking. i had irritated her curiosity by being refractory to her seductiveness. then, changing her conversation, and almost her accent, with a prodigious suddenness, she asked me in the most simple way possible a question about the school of painting to which i belonged. it was a starting point for her to talk of my art, without much knowledge, but strange to say with as much intelligence and good sense as before she had displayed lack of it in her jeering chaff. she talked of the danger to us artists in going much into society, and she spoke according to my idea, with a perfectly accurate view of the failings of vanity and charlatanism which the society of the idle induces. it was as if another person had replaced the original woman. they resembled one another in one point. it was the production of an effect upon a new-comer. only this time she had divined the precise words it was necessary to use. cold-blooded coquettes have these intuitions which take the place of knowledge concerning their adorers. i was already too much on my guard to be the dupe of this man?uvre and not to discern its artifice. but still, how could i help admiring her versatility?
“is not my little bonnivet clever?” jacques molan said after we had taken our departure; “she understands everything before it is said. but 62why did she not invite you to supper? for she is interested in you. you could see that by senneterre’s ill-humour. he hardly returned your greeting.” the game he did not bring was not to his liking, nor was the man who brought it. “yes,” he went on in the tones of a man playing a very careful game and watching every detail of his opponent’s play, “why did she not invite you to supper?”
“why should she invite me?” i asked.
“obviously to make you talk about camille and myself,” he said.
“after my eulogy of little favier,” i replied, “she had very little to ask me. it did not please her. that is an excellent sign for you, and a sufficient reason for not wishing to hear it again.”
“possibly,” he said. “but what do you think of the husband?”
“weak to allow himself to be spoken to like that, and i am astonished that he does so on account of his broad shoulders. he might well reply with an evil look. but he is weak, i repeat, very weak.”
“yes,” jacques went on, “their relations are stranger than you would think. bonnivet, you see, is a parisian husband like many others, who by himself would not move in any circle of society, and who owes his whole position to his wife’s coquetry. husbands of this kind do not always do this by design. but they profit by it and can be divided into three groups: the noodles, who are persuaded against the weight of evidence that 63this coquetry is innocent; the philosophic ones, who have made up their minds never to find out how far this coquetry goes; and the jealous ones, who wish to profit by this coquetry to have a full drawing-room and elegant dinners. besides, they go into a cold sweat at the thought that their wife might take a lover. that was bonnivet’s case. he accepted all the flirtations of queen anne with a good grace. he shook my hand. he assisted in silence like the most complaisant of men his better half’s man?uvres. very well, i am of opinion that if he suspected this woman of the least physical familiarity beyond this moral familiarity, he would kill her on the spot like a rabbit. she knows it and is afraid, and that is the reason that she prefers him in her heart to us all, and that in my humble opinion she has not yet deceived him. but she loves to brave his anger in her moments of nerves. she has one of them every hour. camille is too pretty. between ourselves that was the origin of the supper: she does not want the little blue duchess to be in her admirer’s company this evening. i think, too, that was the reason she did not invite you. she hopes you will profit by my absence. it is high comedy. moliére, where is your pen?”
“but,” i said to him, as i thought of the two half-mute persons whose rather tragic picture he was painting to me, “if that is your opinion of m. de bonnivet, it is not reassuring for you when you become his wife’s lover.”
“if,” he answered shrugging his shoulders. 64“my dear fellow, i have calculated. to take any woman at all as your mistress is to always run the same number of risks of meeting face to face some one who will kill. it is just like travelling in a carriage or on the railway, or drinking a glass of fresh water which chemists declare is infested with microbes. i brave the dangers, railway accidents, runaway horses, typhoid fevers, and jealous husbands because i love to travel quickly, to refresh and amuse myself. then madam de bonnivet knows her tyrant, her pierre, who rejoices in the idyllic names of pierre amédié placidi; she knows of what he is capable. she amuses herself by exciting him just far enough to procure for herself that little tremor of fear. when she wants to overstep the mark, she will do it like the reasonable creature she is. suspicious husbands are like vicious animals. they are ridden more safely after they have been carefully studied and their peculiarities discovered. but now have you a pencil? good. i will scribble on my card in the box. while we are waiting, let me arrange with the attendant about the letter i want brought to me.”
we were at the door of our box. he stopped and exchanged a few words with the attendant, and i saw him hand her a letter which he took from his pocket-book. at this moment his face assumed its real expression, that of a beast of prey, feline and supple, and his fashionable elegance became almost repulsive.
“that is it,” he said, “and now we are going 65to applaud our friend as if we were not the author and his friend. we owe that to her, poor little girl! she will be so disappointed! write me a line to-morrow or come and see me to let me know how she takes it. i am not at all uneasy as to the result. a woman who loves never suspects the truth. she swallows the most improbable things like a carp does the hook and a yard of string as well.”
“but if she guesses that i am lying?” i interrupted. this trick which made me his accomplice weighed upon my conscience, and i was upon the point of refusing my assistance. but if i refused it i should not see camille again that evening.
“she will not guess,” he replied.
“but if she insists and demands my word of honour?”
“give it to her. in the case of women false oaths are permissible. but she will not ask you. here she is! are we not like two conspirators. how pretty she is! to think that if i might have——but no, there is an old french saying, that the woman a man adores is not the one he possesses, but one he has not yet possessed. you must admit that these words contain more truth than all the works of our analytical friends the hair splitters, claude larcher and julien dorsenne?”
camille favier had reappeared upon the stage. she had begun to act with a happy grace which was changed into nervousness when the attendant brought, according to the plan, into our box the 66sham letter from fomberteau. the actress missed her cue when she saw jacques take a pencil from his pocket, scribble a few words upon a card, then hand it to me and leave the box. but the impostor was right. her trouble as a woman only intensified her playing as an actress. she suddenly ceased to look in the direction of the box which her lover had left. the entire strength of her being appeared to be concentrated in her part, and in the great final scene very ingeniously borrowed from la princesse georges, she displayed a power of pathos which roused the audience to a delirium of enthusiasm. only when she was recalled by an enthusiastic audience and returned to bow did her eyes again turn to the box in which i sat alone. she expressed in her look her pretty regret at being unable to offer this triumph to her lord and master. as far as i was concerned it was an artist’s pride in an artist. but her look was a supplication to me not to go without speaking to her, and when the curtain fell for the last time she came towards me without troubling about being seen by her colleagues.
“what has happened?” she asked. “where is jacques gone?”
“he has left this card for you,” i answered evasively.
“come into my dressing-room,” she said after looking at the card, “i want to speak to you.” her impatience was so keen that i found her waiting on the stairs for me. she seized my arm at once.
67“is it true?” she asked me point-blank. “is fomberteau going to fight? with whom? why?”
“i don’t know any more than you do,” i replied still with the same indefiniteness.
“did he know that jacques was at the theatre this evening? had they an appointment? why did he not tell me about it? he knows how interested i am in his friends, especially fomberteau. he is such a loyal comrade and so bravely defended 'adéle’ and 'la duchesse’! don’t you see how strange it seems to me?”
“but jacques seemed as surprised as you are,” i murmured.
“ah!” she said as she gripped my arm more lightly, “you are an honourable man. you cannot lie very well.” then in emotional tones she said: “but you would not give your friend away; i know him too.” and after a short silence she continued: “you live in the same direction as myself, jacques told me; will you wait for me and see me home?”
she had disappeared into her dressing-room and closed the door before i could find an answer for her. how displeased i felt with myself! what contradictory sentiments i experienced in the theatre lobby, which was filled to overflowing with the departing audience! one must be twenty-three and have a romantically tortured soul as camille’s eyes showed she had to add to the exhausting emotions of the stage those of the conversation she was prepared to have with 68me. how i feared that talk! how i regretted not making some excuse and leaving her! how sure i was, in spite of her words upon the duty of friendship, that this passionate child would try to make me say something i did not want and ought not say! it would have been better perhaps if this fear had been verified and the profligate had appeared in her at once beneath the lover. but do i sincerely regret the strange minutes of that night? do i regret that walk beneath the cold and starry january sky, unexpected as it was, for at seven o’clock that evening i did not know this young woman even by name; it was so innocent, almost foolish, too, since i was the extemporized diversion of her love for another; it was so short, too, as the walk from the vaudeville to the rue de la bareuillére does not take more than three quarters of an hour. those three quarters of an hour count for me among the rare gleams of light in my dark and sorrowful life. nothing but evoking its last charm would be worth the trouble of beginning the tale of this long and monotonous suffering.
although i was quite sure that camille had not kept me to play the scene between la camargo and the priest in les marrons du feu, by the wonderful musset, described so foolishly by molan as a bad poet, my heart beat faster than usual when the dressing-room door opened. the actress reappeared enveloped in a large black cloak with a big cape at the shoulders. a thick black silk ruff was around her neck, and her head, on 69which she wore a dark blue bonnet, looked almost too small as it emerged from her heavy wrap. she appeared to me to be taller and younger. i could at once see by her eyes that she had been crying, and i could tell that she was nervous by the way in which she said good night to her dresser. then, as she leant upon my arm to descend the staircase, i asked her, thinking i might cheer her by this kindly pleasantry—
“are you not afraid of being talked about, leaving the theatre like this with a gentleman?”
“being talked about!” she said with a shrug of her fine shoulders. “that does not worry me. everybody at the theatre knows that i am jacques’ mistress. i do not conceal the fact, neither does he. he has told you, has he not? confess!”
“he told me he loved you,” i replied.
“no,” she said with a pretty, sad smile, which displayed her fine mouth and made a dimple in her pale cheek, “i know him too well to think that. he told you that i loved him, and he was right. all the same, it is good of you to want me to think that he speaks tenderly of me. i repeat to you that i shall be very quiet. i shall not try to question you. after all, this story about fomberteau is not an impossible one. it would have been very simple though for him to have wished me good-bye first. i had looked forward so to his escort this evening.”
we were in the rue de la chaussée d’antin when she said this, and it was followed by a long silence. women who love are unconsciously 70cruel. but how could i expect her not to regret her lover to me when all her charm was in her spontaneity and the untouched ingenuousness of her nature? then i began to be in love with her, and this conversation, seen when talking of some one else, enfolded me and intoxicated me with that enchantment of the beloved presence which is in itself a pleasure. the warmth of her arm in mine made my blood flow to my heart. in what a discreet pose this pretty arm leant upon mine, but with a reserve so different from the abandon of love! but her step instinctively kept time with mine. we kept in step as we walked, and this fusion of our movements, by making me feel the light rhythm of her body, revealed to me, too, that though she knew very little of me, she had perfect confidence in me. i experienced extreme pleasure at the sudden intimacy, so complete and so devoid of coquetry; my self-respect had one more idea of humiliation than hers had of pretence over her relations with my comrade. by what mysterious magic of second sight had she divined at once that i would be for her with molan precisely the advocate she needed, and also that she could express her feelings in my presence in full sincerity?
it is a fact that, in our walk, first along the crowded boulevards, then through streets becoming quieter and quieter, till we reached the deserted avenues of the invalides and montparnasse, our conversation was that of two beings deeply, definitely, and absolutely sure of one another. i 71will not try to explain this first strangeness, the prelude and omen of relations in which everything would be anomalous. i, who am as reluctant to receive confidences as to give them, listened to this actress with a passionate insatiable avidity to hear the story of her life. though her confidences were very singular when addressed to a stranger almost an unknown, i did not think of doubting them, nor of rating them as impudence or acting. but time goes backward and the months which separate us from that hour disappear. the sky of that winter’s night again palpitates with its crowd of stars. our steps, which seem almost joined together, sound upon the empty pavements. her voice rises and falls in turn with its tender tones. i can hear the music of her voice still. i can feel again the trouble which was at the same time delicious and grievous, with which each of her words filled me: they appeared to me so touching when that dear voice pronounced them. to-day they seem to me cruelly ironical. how life, cruel life, has frozen the fresh sweet flowers of sentiment which opened in this young heart, and how my heart falters when i recall her eyes, her gestures, her smile, and the pretty way she nodded her head as she said—
“yes, when i can go home with him like this in the evening he knows that i am happy. he knows, too, what it costs me to procure this liberty. usually mother comes to meet me. poor mother! if she suspected! jacques knows how painful 72it is to me to lie about little things, more so perhaps than about important matters. the meanness of certain tricks makes one understand better how ugly and wretched deception is. i have to say that my cousin comes to meet me, and tell my cousin too. no, i was not born for this trickery. i love to say what i think and what i feel. at first i did not blush at my life. but for jacques i should have told my mother everything.”
“does she really suspect nothing?” i asked her.
“no,” she said with profound bitterness, “she believes in me. i am the revenge of her life, you see. we were not always as we are now. i can recollect a time when we had a house, carriages and horses, though i was only a little girl then. my father was a business man, one of the largest outside brokers in paris. you know better than i do what happened: an unfortunate speculation and we were ruined. my stage name is not my father’s name, but my mother’s maiden name.”
“but jacques has not told me that,” i said in such an astonished way that she shrugged her fine shoulders. what disillusion there was already in that sad and gentle gesture which indicated that she clearly judged the man whom she continued to love so much.
“the story was without doubt not sufficiently interesting for him to recollect. it is so commonplace, comprising as it does the death of the unfortunate man who killed himself in a fit of despair. the least commonplace part of the story is that 73mother sacrificed her fortune to preserve my father’s honour. it is true it was a fortune he had settled upon her and it had come from him. that makes no difference. there are not many women in the world of wealth which jacques loves so dearly, who would do that, are there? every debt was paid, and we are left with an income of 7,000 francs, on which we lived till last year, when i appeared at the vaudeville.”
“how did the idea of going on the stage enter your mind?” i asked.
“you want a confession,” she said, “and you shall have one. is it possible to say why one’s existence turns in this or that direction? a person would not go out in the street but for the thought of events which lead to a meeting.” she smiled as she uttered this phrase which awakened in me a very clear echo. i realized that it was one of those chances which had made me acquainted with her, for the destruction of my peace of mind. she went on—
“if i believe in anything, you see, it is in destiny. among the few persons we continued to meet was a friend of my father’s, a great lover of the theatre. he is dead now. he listened to me one day, without my knowing it, reciting a piece of poetry i had learnt by heart. our old friend spoke to me of his memory, which was failing him. he advised me to cultivate mine. this little chance shaped my life. he realized that i recited those few verses well. for amusement he gave me others to learn. i was fifteen years old, and 74he treated me without any more ceremony than he would his own niece. after my second effort at reciting he had a long conversation with mother. we were poor. we might become worse off still. we had nothing to expect from our relatives, who had been very hard on my poor father. a talent is a livelihood, and to-day the stage is a career like painting and literature. the days of prejudice are past. you can imagine the arguments of the old parisian and my mother’s objections. but the latter could not outweigh the authority our friend had acquired over us by remaining faithful to us. we had been so utterly deserted by our other friends, though perhaps it was partly our own fault. mother was so proud! the joy i displayed when i was consulted was what finally convinced mother. that was how i first went to a professor and then to the conservatoire, which i left three years ago with two first prizes. an engagement at the odéon was followed directly by one at the vaudeville; and now you know as much as i do about camille favier.”
“about mademoiselle favier,” i corrected her, “but not about camille.”
“ah, camille!” she replied, releasing my arm as if an irresistible instinct made her recoil. “camille is a person who has never had much good sense, and now she has still less than she used to have,” she added with a melancholy and arch nod of the head, a gesture i always noticed her make in times of emotion.
“without a doubt i take after my dear father 75who had no good sense at all, i have been told, for he married mother for love, and that his brothers, sisters and cousins never forgave. poor father and poor camille! but you can see”—she said this with a smile—“that i have no good sense at all by my telling you this after an acquaintance of two hours. i have a theory, however, that friendship is like love, it either comes all at once or not at all.”
“in my case you have realized that it has come?” i said to her.
“yes,” she said with almost grave simplicity as she took my arm again and pressed it against her own. “you would like to ask me about my feelings for jacques? i guessed as much, and you dare not. i should like to explain to you, but i don’t know how. as i have begun to tell you everything, i will try. it seems to me that you will not think so badly of me afterwards, and i don’t want you to think badly of me. i must go back to the beginning again. i have told you how and why i entered the conservatoire. it is a curious but not very well-known place where there is everything, from the very good to the very bad, corruption and artlessness, intrigues, youth, exasperated vanity, and enthusiasm. during the years i spent there, this enthusiasm for the stage was my romance. yes, i had the frenzy and fever for being one day a great actress, and i worked. how i worked! then as one does not reach the age of eighteen without dreaming, without ears to hear and eyes to see, on the day i left there, 76you can understand, if i was virtuous it was not the virtue of ignorance. i had seen, i think, as many ugly happenings as i shall see in the course of my life. i shall not be courted more brutally than i was by some of my companions, nor more hypocritically than by some of the professors. i shall not receive more depraved advice than i did then from some of my friends, nor less enchanting confidences. but my environment has never had much influence over me. what i was told went in at one ear and out of the other. i listen to the little inner voice of conscience which speaks to me when i am alone. it was this little voice which whispered to me 'yes’ at once when our old friend spoke of the stage. it was the little voice which prevented me succumbing to the temptations by which i was surrounded. don’t you think the counsels of this little voice were very good ones? think what a task it was for a girl of my age: always repeating words of love, putting the accents of love into my voice, and giving to my face and gestures the expressions of love. at this acting, a woman ends by catching the fever of the parts she plays. a wish to taste on one’s own account the sentiments one has tried so often to depict arises. i cannot explain that to you, but without a doubt i was born for the stage, where i cannot play a part without almost becoming that person i represent, and when i have to say to another character
'i feel that i love you.’
77you don’t know how i sometimes desire to say this sweet caressing phrase on my own account.”
“alas!” i answered her when she was silent, “that is our story to every one. we read of this feeling in books. there is something contagious in a poet’s suffering. we imitate them unconsciously, and we are sincere in this imitation. all this once more proves that the heart is a very complicated machine.”
“more complicated than you think,” she said with a knowing smile, “when it concerns a girl who lives as i lived. i have told you that i was madly enthusiastic over my art. why did i decide, in my own poor head, that this art is not compatible with the middle-class respectability of a regular existence, and that prosaic and monotonous virtue is the enemy of talent? i don’t know how to explain it to you, but it is like this. i was convinced that no one could be a great artiste without passion. even now i don’t think i was wrong. this evening, for example, i acted my last scene as i have never done before. there was nervousness in all my words and gestures. i gave myself up to my part madly! why? because i had seen jacques leave your box and i did not understand. if you only knew what anguish i suffered at the moment i looked at that frightful madam de bonnivet’s box! how i hate that woman! she is my bad genius and that of jacques as well. you see, if she had left the theatre before the end of the play with her fool of a husband, i should have thought that she and 78jacques had gone away together; i should have fallen down on the stage. forgive me, i will go on with my story if it does not weary you. all these romantic, confused and vague sentiments which moved in me while i worked hard at my studies on leaving the conservatoire, are summed up in a dream at which i beg you not to laugh too much. yes, all the sorrows and joys of love, all the emotions which must exalt the artiste and make me into a rival of rachel, desclée, sarah bernhardt and julia bartet, i desired to feel for some one whom they would exalt while they exalted me, for a man of genius whom i would inspire in inspiring myself, and who would write sublime plays which i should afterwards act with a genius equal to his own. how difficult it is to clearly describe what one feels! i am searching for a name in the history of the theatre which will explain to you these chimeras more clearly than my poor gossip.”
“you would have liked to be a champmeslé; to meet racine and create for him 'phédre’ after posing to him,” i interrupted.
“that is it,” she said quickly. “that is it. yes, champmeslé and racine; or rachel and alfred de musset, the rachel of the supper if she had loved him. yes. to meet a writer, a poet, who needed to feel before he could write, to make him feel, to feel with him, to incarnate the creations of his talent on the stage, and thus go through the world together, and attain glory together in a legend of love, that was my dream. do you think 79there can be blue enough for the heavens and your pictures in the head of a little actress, who rehearses her part in an old street in the faubourg saint germain by her old mother’s side, with imagination as her only stage property? such a desire is an absurdity, a chimera, a folly. but i thought i could grasp this chimera and realize this folly when chance threw me in the path of jacques. i should realize it, if he only loved me;” and in a deeply moved voice, with a sigh, she repeated, “if he loved me!”
“but he does love you,” i answered her. “if you had heard him speak of you this evening.”
“do not hope to mislead me,” she said seriously and sadly. “i know very well that he does not love me. he loves the love i have for him, but how long will it last?”