i left jacques after this jesting remark which i laughed at him with a gaiety sufficiently well simulated for the strange pain i was stifling to escape his irony. here was my cowardice again, my grievous inconsequence of heart which was always the same in spite of experience, in spite of resolution, and in spite of age! i had run after my friend all the afternoon to beg him not to slight his poor friend by abandoning her so brutally. i had come to the theatre to exhort camille not to judge her lover as she did, for her possible vengeance had moved me with anxiety to the depths of my soul. i ought then to rejoice at their reconciliation. so much the better if madam de bonnivet’s coquetry had produced naturally a result which without doubt my counsel would not. but it was not so. the fact of the actress pardoning with the facility of a true lover wounded me in a still unsuspected place, and the thought of their appointment on the morrow was more painful still. i could see them in each other’s arms, with the help of that terribly precise imagination which a painter’s craft develops in him. this unsupportable vision made me admit the sad truth. i 112was jealous, jealous without hope, and the right to be so, with a childish, grotesque and unacceptable jealousy. i was about to enter, i had entered into that hell of false sentiments in which one feels the worst of passion’s sorrow without tasting any of its joys. how well i knew that cursed path!
in the course of my love affairs, which were as incomplete and incoherent as the rest of my existence, i had already experienced this dangerous situation more than once. i had been the too tender friend of a woman who was in love with some one else, but never with the sudden emotion, with the troubled ardour in the sympathy which camille favier inspired in me. i was afraid, so i concluded a solemn compact with myself. i took my hand and said aloud: “i give my word of honour to myself i will keep my door shut all the week, and i will neither go to see jacques, nor to the theatre, nor to the rue de la barouillére. i will work and cure myself.”
every one in his character has strong points which correspond to his weak ones. the latter are the ransom of the former. my task of energy in positive action is compensated by a rare power of passive energy, if that expression is allowable. incapable of going forward vigorously, even when my keenest desire urges me on, i am capable of singular endurance in abstention, in abnegation and absence. telling a woman that i love her stifles me with timidity into thinking that i shall die of it. i have been able to fly with savage energy from mistresses i have passionately adored, 113and remain even without answering their letters, though in agonies of grief, because i had sworn never to see them again. to keep my oath as regards camille was much easier. in fact the week i deemed sufficient for my cure passed without my giving to her or to jacques any sign of my existence. neither did the two lovers give me any sign of their existence.
the first part of the programme was completed, but not the second, for the cure did not come. i must say that my wisdom in my actions was not accompanied by equal wisdom in my thoughts. i worked hard, but at what! i tried at first for forty eight hours to resume my “psyché pardonnée.” i could not become absorbed in it. the smile and the eyes of my friend’s mistress ceaselessly interposed between my picture and myself. i put down my brush. i told malvina ducras, my stupid model with a common voice and such sad eyes, to take a little rest, and while the girl smoked cigarettes and read a bad novel, my mind went far away from my studio and i could see camille again. i had read too many books, as my custom was, about this fable of psyché for it not to make me dream. the idea represented by this story, this cruel affirmation that the soul can only love in unconsciousness, has always appeared to me to be a theme of inexpressible melancholy. alas! it is not for matters of love only that the psyché imprisoned and palpitating in each of us submits to this law of ignorant and obscure instinct. this stern law dominates matters of religion and 114matters of art. to believe is to renounce understanding. to create is to renounce reflection.
when an artist like myself suffers from a hypertrophy of the intelligence, when he feels himself intoxicated by criticism, paralysed by theories, this symbol of the cursed and wandering nymph who expiates in distress the crime of wishing to know, becomes, too, too real, too true. it agitates too powerfully cords which are too deep. i always felt myself attracted by this subject, without doubt on account of that, and i have never been able to make a success of the scenes of canvasses on which i have begun to treat the subject. camille favier is far away and the “psyché pardonnée” is still unfinished. i would like to introduce into the picture, too, many tints. but then the slightest pretext has always been and will always be enough to distract me. the clear impression which i retained of camille was of all these pretexts the most delightful, and the one which least disturbed my craft as a painter, thanks to the strange compromise of conscience which i devised, about which i will tell you.
“as i cannot help thinking of her all day long,” i said to myself at last, “suppose i try to paint her portrait from memory? goethe pretended that to deliver himself from a sorrow, it was sufficient for him to compose a poem. why should not a painted poem have the same virtue as a written one?” was not this paradoxical and foolish enterprise, the portrait without a model of a woman seen but twice, the work of a poet? it was paradoxical but not foolish. i had to fix 115upon canvas this pale silhouette which haunted my dreams, my first impression of which was so clear that by shutting my eyes i could see her before me just as she appeared—upon the stage, fine and fairylike in her youth and genius beneath her make-up, with the blue costume of her part; then in her dressing-room, by turns tender and satirical, with the picturesque disorder around her which betrayed the thousand small miseries of her calling; then along the wall of the invalides under the stars of that december night, leaning on my arm, pale and magnified as if she were transfigured by the sadness of her confidences; and last of all at home, tragic and trembling at the deceit practised upon her? all these camilles were blended in my mind into an image hardly less clear than her presence itself. i dismissed malvina. i relegated “psyché” to a corner of the studio, and i made a large red crayon drawing of my phantom. the likeness in this portrait outlined in the fever of a passionate pity was striking. camille smiled at me from the bluish paper. it was only a sketch, but so lifelike that i was astonished at it myself.
as usual i doubted my own talent, and to verify the fact that this portrait from memory was really successful to this extent, i went to a shop in the rue de rivoli where photographs of famous people were for sale. i asked for one of the fashionable actress. they had a collection of six. i bought them with a blush on my face, a ridiculous timidity considering my age, my profession, and the innocence 116of the purchase. i waited before examining, them in detail till i was alone beneath the bare chestnuts in the tuileries on this overcast autumn afternoon, which accorded well with the nostalgia with which i was seized before these portraits. the most charming of them represented camille in walking dress. it must have been at least two years old, at a period certainly before she became jacques’ mistress. there was in the eyes and at the lips of this girlish picture a maidenly and somewhat shy expression, the shamefaced nervous reserve of a soul which has not yet given itself—the soul of a child which foresees its destiny and fears it, but desires the mysterious unknown. two others of these photographs represented the debutante in the two parts she had played at the odéon. she was the same innocent child, but the determination to succeed had formed a wrinkle between her brows, and there was the light of battle in her eyes; the firm, almost strained fold of the mouth revealed the anxiety of an ambition which doubts itself. the three latter photographs showed in the costume of the blue duchess the woman at last born from the child. the revelation of love was displayed by the nostrils which breathed life, and by the eyes in which the flame of pleasure, light and burning, floated; and the mouth had something like a trace, upon its fuller lips, of kisses given and received.
would another day come when other pictures would tell no more of the romance of the artist and lover, but of the venal slave of gallantry, kept 117by a tournade, by several tournades, and forever branded by shameless and profligate luxury. but i always went back to the earliest of these photographs, the one i would have desired, had i been able to meet the living model in that same garden of the tuileries, on her way to the conservatoire. now i could think of her only as she had been before her first stain, such as she would never be again!
“poesy is deliverance”; yes, perhaps, for a goethe, or for a leonard, for one of those sovereign creatures who throw all their inner being into, and incarnate it in, a written or painted work. there is another race of artists to whom their work is only an exaltation of a certain inner state. they do not rid themselves of suffering by expressing it, they develop it, they inflame it, perhaps because they do not know how to express it and to entirely rid themselves of it. this was so in my own case. before these photographs my project for a portrait became praise. i only retained the first one. it was the eighteen-year-old camille i wished to evoke and paint. it was a phantom, the phantom of her whom i might have known in her purity, as a virgin, might have loved and perhaps married. it was a portrait of a phantom, of a dead woman.
from this task was diffused upon me during the week’s seclusion and uninterrupted labour that vague and satisfying delight which floats around a woman’s form which has gone for ever. in analysing under the microscope the tiny details 118of this face upon this bad and almost faded photograph, i enjoyed for hours a voluptuous and unutterably attractive soul’s pleasure. there was not a trait in this ingenuous face in which i did not discover a proof, quite obvious and physiological to me, of an exquisite delicacy of nature in the person, of whom that had been a momentary likeness. the tiny ear with its pretty lobe told of her breeding. her pale silky hair displayed tints in its ringlets which seemed faded and washed out. the construction of the lower part of the face could be seen to be fine and robust beneath her slender cheeks. there was a shade of sensuality in her lower lip which was slightly flattened and split by the wrinkle which betokens great goodness. there was intelligence and gaiety in her straight nose, which was cut a trifle short in comparison with her chin. but what of her eyes? her great, clear, profound eyes, innocent and tender, curious and dreamy! as i looked at them, to my overwrought imagination they seemed to be animate. her little head turned upon a neck, which fine attachment displayed the slenderness of the rest of the body.
i never understood so well as in that period of contemplative exaltation that oriental jealousy which protects their women from the caress of the glance, which is as passionate, as enveloping, and almost as deflowering as the other caresses. to contemplate is to possess. how i felt that during those long sittings spent in putting on to canvas such a real and deceptive mirage as the 119smile and eyes of camille, her smile of the past, and her eyes of to-day lit by ether flames! how i felt, too, that my talent was not in the depths of my soul, since the intoxication of this spiritual possession was not achieved by a definite creature! i have only sketched these days in which i lived and experienced the sensations produced by the achievement of a masterpiece. at least i respected in myself this attack of the sacred fever, and i never again touched, to complete it, the portrait i had drawn in that week. why was not the period prolonged?
why? the fault is not alone in my own weakness. a simple incident occurred which did not depend upon my will. it sufficed to dismiss me from the drama of coquetry and real love which i wished to shun, to avoid being the confidant of former tragedies boasted of by jacques—a confidant himself wounded and bleeding. because of my troubles during the day following my introduction to the bonnivets, and during my week’s solitary work, i had neglected to call upon them and leave my card. for that reason i felt i was not likely to see queen anne again. but that was the quarter from which reached me the pretext to break this period of solitude and work in the ordinary shape of a perfumed note emblazoned and scrawled in the most coquettish and impersonal english handwriting, by madam de bonnivet herself. it was an invitation to dine with her and a small party of mutual friends.
the fact that this invitation reached me after 120my breach of etiquette proved clearly enough that her quarrel with jacques had not lasted. the brief notice the dinner was for the following day, showed on the other hand that it was an unexpected invitation. a third fact added an enigmatic character to this note, which was as commonplace as the writing in it! why had it not reached me through jacques or with a few lines from him? my first idea was to refuse it. a dinner in town had appeared to me for years an insupportable and useless task. the too numerous family feasts i am constrained to attend, why?—the monthly love feasts of fellow artists which i am weak enough to frequent—why again?—two or three friends who dine with me from time to time—because i like them—the dining-room at the club where i go when i am very bored—these gatherings to a great extent suffice for the social sense which has withered in me with age. i shall end, i think, by only dining out about once in three years.
the dinner to which the beautiful and dangerous queen anne had invited me was one the more to be avoided, as it plunged me once more into the current of emotions i had stemmed so resolutely and painfully. i sat down to write a note of refusal, which i put into an envelope and stamped. then instead of sending the letter to the post, i put it in my pocket to post myself. i called a passing cab, and instead of telling the driver to stop at the nearest post office i gave him molan’s address, place delaborde—the house i had sworn 121not to enter again. would there not still be time to send my refusal after finding out from jacques the reason of madam de bonnivet’s amiability, about which i could say with ségur of the promotion of officers, after the battle of moskwa: “these favours threatened?”
the page showed me this time into the great man’s study. molan was sitting at his writing-table which was of massive oak with numerous drawers in it. bookcases were all round this little room, and in appearance the volumes were works of reference often used but always put back in their places. there was no dust on them, nor was there any trace of the disorder to be found with the writer-born, whose fancy ceaselessly interrupts his work. a high desk held out an invitation for standing composition. another bookcase, lofty and revolving, full of dictionaries, atlas, books of reference, and maps stood at the corner of the writing-table; and the order of the latter piece of furniture, with its sheets of paper carefully cut, its stock of useful articles, its place for answered letters and for letters to be answered, demonstrated the methodical habits of work daily allotted and executed. these details of practical installation were too like their owner for a single one to escape me. there was not a work of art to be seen, not even on the mantelpiece, where stood the usual library clock. this timepiece which marked the hours of work was a good, accurate instrument, metallic and clear in its glass and copper case.
122what other portrait could one paint of this writer, who was an absolute stranger to anything not his own business, as methodical as if he were not a man of the world, as regular as if he were not, by his art itself, the painter of all the troubles and all the disorders of the human soul, than sitting at his table with his cold and reflective face, and his way of using his pen with a free, measured and regular gesture. to make his portrait really typical it was necessary to paint molan as i surprised him, engaged in reading the four pages he had written since his awakening that morning—four little sheets covered with lines of equal length in a handwriting every letter of which was properly made, every t crossed and every i dotted. was i envious as i noted these details with an irritation not justified in appearance? he had the right after all, this fellow, to administer his literary fortune as if it were a house of business. but is there not something in us, almost a sense which this indefinable deception offends: this working of a fine talent, with so much egoism, so much calculation at its base, and so little moral unity between the written thought and the thought lived?
another mannerism of jacques’ irritated my nerves. he stretched out his hand to me with an indifferent cordiality quite his own. he had been for months without seeing me till we met at the club, and he spoke to me then in as friendly a way as if we had met on the previous day. he had told me about the two adventures he had on hand as if i were his best and surest friend. 123directly i turned on my heel i saw or heard no more of him. i had ceased to exist as far as he was concerned. when i saw him again he greeted me with just the same handshake. how much i prefer, to these smiling and facile friends, the suspicious, the susceptible, and the irritable ones with whom you quarrel, who either want you or do not do so, who often get angry with you, sometimes wrongly and by the most involuntary negligence, but for whom you exist and are real with human living reality! to the real egoists, on the other hand, you are an object, a thing the equal in their eyes of the couch they offer you to sit down upon with their most amiable and empty smile. your only reality to them is your presence, and the pleasure or the reverse they feel at it. to be entirely frank, perhaps i should have wished camille’s lover to receive me in the way he always had done, with his impersonal graciousness, if i had not found him looking a little pale and heavy-eyed; and i was obliged to attribute this slight fatigue to his love of the charming girl, whose maidenly grace of the past i had just spent a week in evoking, sustained by the most passionate of retrospective hypnotism. this impression was as painful to me as if i had over camille other rights than those of dream and sympathy. i had really come to talk about her, and i would have liked to depart without even her name being mentioned. this silence was the more impossible as after our greeting i held out to jacques madam de bonnivet’s invitation.
124“were you the cause of this being sent to me?” i asked him. “who will be present at this dinner? what answer shall i give?”
“i?” he said, after reading the letter, unable to conceal his astonishment. “no. i had nothing to do with it. you must accept for two reasons: first because it will amuse you, and then you, by doing so, will be rendering me a real service.”
“you a service?”
“yes. it is very simple,” he replied, a little impatient at my stupidity. “you don’t understand that madam de bonnivet has invited you because she hopes to find out from you my actual relations with camille favier? it is a little ruse. as a matter of fact, you have deserted me again and are not up-to-date. but you know me well enough to be sure that i have not let the week pass without man?uvring skilfully in the little war which queen anne and myself are waging! i say skilfully, but it is merely working a scheme, the foundation of which never varies. mine has progressed in the way i told you, by persuading the lady more and more that i have a profound passion for little camille. there is no need for me to tell you my various stratagems, the simplest of which has been to behave with camille as if i really loved her. but queen anne is clever, and is studying my play. i have only to make one slip and my plan will fail.”
“come. i don’t understand you. one fact is that you are courting madam de bonnivet. you talk to her about your passion for little favier; 125that is another fact. how do you manage that? for to pay court to one is not to have a passion for the other?”
“but, my dear fellow,” he interrupted, “you forget the remorse and the temptation. i am not paying court to queen anne, i am arranging to do so. have you ever kept a dog? yes. then you have seen it, when you were at table enjoying a cutlet, look at you and the bone with eyes in which the honest sentiments of duty and the gluttonous appetite of the carnivorous animal were striving for mastery? ah, well, i have those eyes for queen anne at each new ruse she employs to arouse my desire for her beauty. the man being superior to the dog in virtue, sir, and in self-control, duty carries him away. i leave her quickly like some one who does not wish to succumb to temptation. stop, shall i give you an illustration? take, for example, yesterday; we were in a carriage in the fog; it was what i call a nice little adultery fog. madam de bonnivet and i had met in a curiosity shop, where she had gone to buy tapestry, and so had i. what luck! she offered me a lift.”
“in her own carriage?” i asked.
“you would have preferred a public carriage, would you not?” he asked me. “i do not, for let me tell you that carriage rides are very fashionable. there are innocent and guilty ones. you can imagine us, then, in this small carriage filled with the perfume of woman, one of those vague and penetrating aromas in which a hundred scents 126are mingled. queen anne and i were in this soft, warm atmosphere. the fog enveloped the carriage. i took her hand, which she did not withdraw. i pressed the little hand, and it returned my pressure. i put my arm around her waist. her loins bent as if to avoid me, in reality to make me feel their suppleness. she turned to me as if to become indignant, but in reality to envelop me with her staring eyes and madden me. my lips sought her lips. she struggled, and suddenly instead of insisting, i repulsed her. it was i who said: 'no, no, no. it would be too wicked.’ i could not do that to her, and made use of the expressions usual to her sex at such times. i it was who stopped the carriage and fled! with a mistress on the other side of paris, who loves and pleases you, to whom to bring the desire awakened by her rival, this is truly the most delightful of sports. it is very natural that queen anne will allow herself to be taken. the feeling that she is passionately desired and at the same time shunned is likely to provoke the worst follies in a woman, who is a little corrupt and a little cold, a little vain and a little curious.”
“then if i have understood you, my part at to-morrow’s dinner would consist of lying to the same effect as yourself when madam de bonnivet speaks to me of camille? in that case it would be useless for me to accept the invitation. i will not commit that villainy.”
“villainy is a hard word. why not?” asked jacques with a laugh.
127“because i should feel remorse at contributing to the success of this dirty intrigue,” i replied, getting quite angry at his laughter. “whether madam de bonnivet does or does not deceive her husband is no business of mine, nor would it concern me if either of you injured yourself through the villainous game you are playing. but when i meet real sentiment, i take my hat off to it, and i do not trample on it. it is real sentiment which camille favier feels for you. i heard her speak of her love, the evening i saw her, while you were at supper with your coquette. i saw her, too, the next day when she received your cruel reply. this girl is true as gold. she loves you with all her heart. no, no, i will not help you to betray her, all the more so as the crisis is graver than you think.”
i was wound up. i went on telling him with all the eloquence at my command the discoveries i had made and omitted to tell him a week before: the troubles of the pretty actress, what he had been, what he was to her, the ideal of passion and art she believed she was realizing in their liaison, the temptations of luxury which surrounded her, and the crime it is to provoke the first great deception in a human being. at last i was expending, in defending the little blue duchess to her lover, the warmth of the unfortunate love i myself felt for her. and i was so jealous of it! it was a grievous sentimental anomaly which jacques did not discern in spite of his keenness. he could only see in my protests the deplorable na?veté with 128which he always believed me to be contaminated, and he replied with a smile more indulgent than ironical—
“did she tell you this in the two or three hours you were together? it is not a boat she has manned, it is a squadron, a flotilla, an armada! but, my friend, do you think i have not noticed the feelings of our little blue duchess? it is perfectly true that she was chaste before meeting me. but as she first threw herself at my head and knew perfectly well what she was doing, however modest she may have been, you will permit me to have no remorse, and all the more so since i have never concealed from her that i only offered her a fantasy and that i did not love her with real love. even i have my own code of loyalty to women, although you don’t think so. only i place it so as not to deceive them upon the quality of the little combination to which i invite them in courting them. it is for them to accept and take the consequences. if to-day camille experiences the temptation for luxury, which, by the way, i think very natural, this temptation has nothing to do with her broken ideal. she makes that pretty excuse to herself, and that, i think, is very natural too. she is almost as sincere as the young girls who make a wealthy marriage and excuse themselves for a first love betrayed. let her take her rich lover—you can give her my permission; let him pay for dresses for her by worth, horses, carriages, a house and jewels! let her take him this afternoon, to-morrow, 129and i swear to you i shall have no more remorse than i have in lighting this cigarette. it will even amuse me when she does so. in the meantime, accept madam bonnivet’s invitation. you will have a good dinner, a thing never to be disdained, and then you can thwart my dirty intrigue, as you call it, as much as you please. in love it is just as at chess. nothing is so interesting as playing in difficulties. besides, i am foolish to suppose even for a moment that you would not go. you will go, i can see it in your eyes.”
“how?” i asked him, somewhat confused at his perspicacity. it was true that i felt my resolution to refuse destroyed by his presence alone.
“how? by your look while you are listening to me. would you pay such attention if the story did not passionately interest you? it means that you would imagine us all three, camille, madame bonnivet and myself, rather than pass from knowing us. i told you the other day, you are a born looker-on and confidant. you have been mine. you suddenly became camille’s, and now you must become madam de bonnivet’s. you will receive the confidences of this woman of the world; you will receive them and believe them!” he insisted, accentuating each syllable, and he concluded: “that will be the punishment for your blasphemies. but it has just occurred to me, when do you begin the portrait of the blue duchess?”
it must be admitted that this devil of a man was not wrong; as a matter of fact, his adventure 130hypnotized me with irresistible magnetism. after all, i did not leave his study till i had written with his pen on his paper a letter of acceptance to madam bonnivet. besides that, i had done worse. in spite of the spasm of unreasonable and morbid jealousy which clutched my heart each time i thought of the intercourse between jacques and his mistress, i made an appointment to begin the promised portrait, not that of the ideal dream camille, but of the real one, who belonged to this man, who gave him her mouth, and her throat, and who surrendered herself entirely to him, and we arranged the first sitting for the day after madam de bonnivet’s dinner, in my studio!
i repented of these two weaknesses before i was down the staircase of the house in the place delaborde, but not enough, alas, to return and take back my note, which jacques had promised to deliver. my remorse increased as directly i entered my studio i saw camille’s head upon my easel. delicious in her phantom and unfinished life, she smiled at me from her frameless canvas. “no, you will never finish me,” she seemed to say to me with her sad eyes, her fine oval face, and her mouth framed in a melancholy smile. it is certain that neither that evening nor during the hours which followed had i the courage to touch that poor head, nor have i done so since. the enchantment was broken. i passed the ensuing hours in a state of singular agitation. i was seized again by the fever of my new-born 131passion, and this time i had neither the hope nor the will to struggle. i felt that this week of renunciation and seclusion with the ideal camille had given me the only joy that this passion, which was so false and also condemned in advance, would ever give me. these joys i renounced were symbolized to me by this chimerical portrait.
but to continue, i spent the day before madam de bonnivet’s dinner in contemplation. then when the moment of departure had come, i wished to bid adieu to this picture, or, rather, to ask its pardon. i experienced in the presence of this dream portrait, with which i had spent a sweet romantic week, as much inner remorse as if it had been the image, not of a chimera, but of an actually betrayed fiancée. i can see myself now as i appeared in the large mirror of the studio, walking with my fur coat open like a guilty man towards the canvas, which, after gazing at for the last time, i was about to hide by turning it face towards the wall in an adjoining garret. did not the camille favier of my fancy disappear to give place to another as pretty, as touching perhaps, but not my camille?
but come, my sweet phantom, one more sigh, one more look, and i will return to reality. reality was, in fact, a cab waiting at the door to take me through the driving rain to the rue des écuries d’artois, where the fashionable rival of the pretty actress dwelt. what would she say when jacques told her that i had dined at her rival’s house? he would be sure to tell her in order to enjoy my 132embarrassment. what would madam de bonnivet herself say? why had she invited me? what did i really know about it? what did i know of her, save that the sight of her gave me a pronounced feeling of antipathy, and jacques had told me many unpleasant things about her? but my antipathy might be mistaken, and jacques might be slandering her as he did camille favier. “suppose,” i asked myself, “this coquette is caught in the net? it is not very likely,” i replied, “seeing the hard blue of her eyes, her thin lips, her sharp profile, and the haughty harshness of her face. but still she might!”
it was less probable still, when one came to consider the frequent festivities and the gaiety at the house before which my modest cab stopped in the course of this monologue. i don’t consider myself more stupidly plebeian than most people, but the sensation of arriving at a 600,000 franc house to take part in a fifty pound dinner in a vehicle fare thirty-five sous will always suffice to disgust me with the smart world without anything else. but other things had a similar effect on me, and the bonnivets’ house was one of them, for it seemed to me most like a parody of architecture, in which the feat has been achieved of mingling twenty-five styles and building a wooden staircase in the english style in a renaissance framework; the hang-dog faces of the footmen in livery seemed like a gallery of mute insolence to the visitor. how could i bear this adornment of things and people without perceiving its hideous artificiality? 133how could i help detesting the impression made by this furniture, which smelt of plunder and curiosity shops, for nothing was in its place: eighteenth century tapestry alternated with sixteenth century pictures, with furniture of the days of louis xv, with modern sliding curtains, and with bits of ancient stoles furnishing off a reclining chair, the back of a couch, or the cushion of a divan! in short, when i was ushered into the boudoir drawing-room where madam de bonnivet held her assizes i was a greater partisan than ever of camille, the brave little actress, as she had appeared to me in the modest room in the rue de la barouillére.
the millionairess rival of this poor girl was reclining rather than sitting upon a kind of bed of the purest empire style, after the manner in which david has immortalized the cruel grace of madam récamier, the illustrious patroness of coquettes of the siren order. she wore one of those dresses which are very simple in appearance, but which in reality mark the limit between superior elegance and the other kind. the greatest artists in the business are the only ones successful with them. it consisted of a skirt of a thick dead-black silk which absorbed the light instead of reflecting it. a cuirass, a jet coat of mail, applied to this stuff, showed distinctly the shape of the bust, and allowed the whiteness of the flesh to shine through at the bare places at the shoulders and arms. a jet girdle, a model of those worn in ancient statues on tombs by queens of the middle ages, followed 134the sinuous line of the hips, and terminated in two pendants crossed very low down. enormous turquoises surrounded by diamonds shone in this pretty woman’s ears. these turquoises and a golden serpent on each arm—two marvellous copies of golden serpents in the museum at naples—were the only jewels to lighten this costume, which made her figure look longer and more slender even than it was. her blonde pallor, heightened by the contrast of this sombre harmony in black and gold, took the delicacy of living ivory. not a stone shone in her clear golden hair, and it looked as if she had matched the blue of her turquoise with the blue of her eyes, so exactly similar was the shade, except that the blue of these stones, which is supposed to pale when the wearer is in danger, revealed tender and almost loving shades when compared with the metallic and implacable azure of her eyes. she was fanning herself with a large feather fan as black as her dress, on which was a countess’ coronet encrusted in roses. it was without doubt a slight effort towards a definite relationship with the real bonnivet. i have found out since that she went further than that. but the real duc de bonnivet, on the occasion of a charity fête, where queen anne had risked claiming a title, had interposed with a lordly and inflexible letter, and all that was left of this thwarted pretension was this coronet, embroidered here and there, without a coat of arms.
near this slender and dangerous creature, so blonde and white in the dead-black sheath of her 135spangled corsage and skirt, senneterre, “the beater,” was sitting on a very low chair, almost a footstool, while pierre de bonnivet warmed at the fire the soles of his pumps as he talked to my master miraut. the latter seemed somewhat surprised, and not very pleased to see me. dear old master; if he only knew how wrong he was in thinking that i was his rival for a 20,000-franc portrait! but this pastel merchant comes of the race of good giants. besides his six foot in height, and suppleness from exercise, his porter’s shoulders, broadened still more by his daily boxing, his francis i profile, sensual, fine, and gluttonous, he has retained, beneath the trickery of the profession, a generous temperament. so he received me with a friendly though a little too patronizing greeting!
“ah! then you know my pupil?” he said to madam de bonnivet. “he has great ability, only he lacks assurance and confidence in himself.”
“but there are so many who have too much of these qualities,” the young woman interposed, casting an evil glance at the pastelist who seemed disconcerted. “he makes up for them.”
“good!” i thought, “she is not in a good humour, nor even polite. it is quite true that miraut is a little too conceited. but he is a man of great talent, who has done her a great honour by coming here. how bad-tempered she looks this evening! bonnivet, too, looks preoccupied in spite of his mask of gaiety! i will stand by what 136i told jacques the other day. i would not trust either the woman or the husband. these cold-looking blondes are capable of anything, and so are strong full-blooded men like the husband. now we shall see jacques’ man?uvre. to think that he could be so happy quite simply with his little friend! life is really very badly arranged.”
this fresh internal monologue was almost as distinct as i have written it. this doubling process proved the extreme excitement of my faculties. for my clear, distinct thoughts did not prevent me being all attention to the conversation which was reinforced by the presence of count and countess abel mosé. he is an accomplished type of the great modern financier. strange to say, this kind of face which is often met with among the jews is not displeasing to me. i can see in it the setting of a real passion. for people of this kind the vanity of their club and drawing-room life has at least its realism. in playing the part of the noble host they prove they have mounted one step of the social ladder. the life of fashion is to them a second business, which is in juxtaposition to the other and continues it. it is a step gained; but what a life theirs must be to endure the wear and tear of these two existences, anxious cares alternating with exhausting pleasures, and years made up of days on the stock exchange followed by dinners in town. then, too, madam mosé is very beautiful in her oriental fashion, with nothing of the conventional style and irregular features about her! she is the 137biblical judith, the creature with eyes burning like the sands in the desert, over which the soldiers of holophernes passed. “who could hate the hebrews when they have such women?” i said with them.
five minutes afterwards pretty madam éthorel entered with her husband; then—“naturally,” as miraut said between his teeth, to make me understand that he knew the secrets of this society—crucé the collector; then came machault, a professional athlete, whom i have seen fence at the school of arms; then appeared a certain baron desforges, a man of sixty, whose eye at once struck me as being almost too acute, and whose colour was too red, like that of a man of the world grown old. the conversation began to buzz, obligatory questions as to the weather and health being mingled with previous scandals and recollections of the day, which were very often full of ennui and simply mentioned for the sake of something to say. i can still hear some of these phrases.
“you don’t take enough walking exercise,” desforges was saying to mosé, who had declared that he felt a little heavy after a meal. “people digest with their legs, that is what doctor noirot is always dinning into my ears.”
“but the time?” the financier replied.
“try massage then,” desforges went on. “i will send noirot to you. massage is the essence of exercise.”
“you did not buy these two candelabra?” crucé was saying to éthorel. “at three thousand 138francs, my dear fellow, they were being given away.”
“you were not skating this morning, anne, dear,” madam mosé was saying to madam de bonnivet; “it is a fine chance to take advantage of the early winter. before the first of january, too! think of it! it does not happen twice in a century. i looked for you there!”
“so did i,” madam éthorel said. “you would have been amused at the sight of that old fool madam hurtrel on the ice, running after young liauran. she was red in the face and perspiring, while he was carrying on with mabel adrahan.”
“it amuses you, madam. but if i said i pitied her?” senneterre said.
“respect love! we know her,” madam de bonnivet interrupted with that bitter laugh which i had noticed at the theatre. she was visibly in a nervous state, which i explained to myself when the dinner was served and jacques had not arrived. i was soon to learn both the false excuse and the real reason of his absence. during the first course the flowers and silver upon the dinner-table directed the conversation to the subject of the taste of the period and mistakes made on the stage. the guests all combined to praise the skill of the late m. perrin in the putting on of modern comedies. the talk drifted to actual plays, and an allusion being made to la duchesse blue, one of the guests, machault, i think it was, said—
“has its run ceased altogether? as i passed 139along the boulevard i saw there was a change of bill at the vaudeville this evening. do you know the cause of it?”
“because bressoré has a severe cold and is too unwell to act. i heard that by accident at the club,” mosé said, “and the play rests upon his shoulders. he is clever, but he is the only one in the company,” he went on, and this proved that madam de bonnivet’s antipathy to camille favier had not escaped the dark, observant eyes of the business man.
“it appears to be contagious in the theatre,” said bonnivet. “molan should have been here, but he excused himself at the last moment. he has a slight attack himself.”
as he said this he looked at his wife, who did not even deign to listen to him. she was talking to miraut, who was near her. neither her metallic voice nor her hard, clear eyes betrayed the least sign of trouble, but the cruel curves she sometimes had at the corners of her mouth made it more cruel, and a little throbbing of the nostrils, imperceptible but to one of my profession or a jealous man, revealed that the absence of jacques was the cause of her nervousness. at the same time i felt that bonnivet was scrutinizing my face with the same look which he gave to his wife, and three things became evident to me: one, and the most terrible was that the husband was suspicious of the relations between queen anne and my comrade; the second was that my companion had seized the opportunity of the change of bill to 140provoke in the coquette an access of spiteful jealousy by passing, or pretending to pass, the evening with camille favier; the third was that this simple ruse wounded the vanity of the pretty actress’ rival to the quick. these three instinctive conclusions, two of which at least were fraught with the most serious consequences, were sufficient to render the commonplace dinner passionately interesting to me.
i could not help concentrating my whole attention on pierre de bonnivet and his wife. on the other hand, i feared that directly we left the dinner-table they would try to make me talk, and i did not wish to betray molan either to her, or particularly to him. the easily distended veins of his full-blooded forehead, his greenish eyes so quick to display anger, and the coarse red hair, which grew right down his arms to his fingers, were all signs of brutality which gave me the impression that he was a redoubtable person. tragic action would be as natural to him as grievous timidity to me or fatuous insolence to jacques. the evening ought not to end without furnishing me with the proof that my diverse intuitions had not deceived me. we had just left the dinner-table for the smoking-room when machault said to me as he took my arm—
“you see a good deal of jacques molan, don’t you, la croix?”
“we were at college together, and i see him sometimes still,” i replied evasively.
“ah, well! if you see him in a day or two, 141warn him that senneterre met him to-night when on his way here. consequently they know his cold and headache are only an excuse. it is of no other importance, but with anne it is always better to be well informed.”
i had no time to question the brave swordsman, who had smiled an unaccountable smile as he uttered this enigmatic phrase, for just then pierre de bonnivet came towards us with a box of cigars in one hand and a box of cigarettes in the other. i took a russian cigarette, while the robust gladiator put into his mouth a veritable tree trunk, wrinkled and black. then before the coffee, espying upon the table a bottle of fine champagne, he filled a little glass, which he proceeded to enjoy, saying as he did so—-
“this is an excellent appetizer with which to start the evening.”
“will you have, m. la croix, a cup of coffee? no. a drop of kummel or chartreuse?” bonnivet asked. “not even a thimbleful of cherry brandy?”
“no liqueur or coffee this evening,” i said, and i added with a smile: “i have not the stomach or the nerves of a hercules.”
“there is no need to be as strong as machault to like alcohol. take our friend molan, for instance,” the husband said, watching me as he pronounced the name. then after a short silence he said: “do you know what is really the matter with him?”
“i don’t know,” i replied. “perhaps he has 142overworked himself. he works harder than he drinks.”
“but he loves little favier still more?” my questioner insisted, giving me another keen glance.
“he loves little favier more still,” i replied in the same indifferent tone.
“has this affair been going on for long?” the husband asked after a little hesitation.
“as long as la duchesse blue has been running. it is a honeymoon in its first quarter.”
“but his indisposition this evening when she is not acting?” he asked me without entirely formulating his question, though i completed it in my reply, giving it a cynical form which relieved my discomfort.
“would it be an excuse to pass an evening with her and afterwards the night? i don’t know, i am sure, but it is very likely.”
i could see at these words, which i hope if camille favier ever reads these pages she will forgive, the face of the jealous husband brighten. evidently the note of excuse sent by molan at the last minute had not seemed to him genuine. he had found out that madam de bonnivet was annoyed at it, and asked himself the reason. did he think that he had stumbled upon, between his wife and jacques, one of those momentary quarrels which, more than constant attentions, denounce a love intrigue? he suspected that i was in my comrade’s confidence. he thought i knew the real reason of his absence, and his suspicion was soothed at the sincerity of my voice. as jealous 143people, being all imagination, mistrust themselves and reassure themselves at the same time, he assumed his most charming manner to say to baron deforges, who came in, having delayed a little while in joining us—
“ah, well, frederick, were you pleased with the dinner?”
“i have just called asmé to congratulate him on the little timbales and to make an observation about the foie gras,” the baron replied. “i shall not tell you what it was, but you shall judge from experience. he is, as i have always said, what i call a real chef. but he is still young.”
“he will shape better,” said bonnivet as he threw me a meaning look, “with a master like you.”
“he is the seventh who has passed through my hands,” deforges said with a shrug of the shoulders and in the most serious tones, “not one more, since i have known what eating really is. the seventh, do you hear? then i pass them on to you and you spoil them by your praise. chefs are like other artists. they are not proof against the compliments of the ignorant.”
i had reckoned on going for a short time from the smoking-room to the drawing-room and, after a short period of polite and general conversation there, on leaving in the english fashion, taking advantage of the return of the smokers or the arrival of fresh guests to do so. when i reached the drawing-room there were only the two ladies who had dined and senneterre there. such small parties being unfavourable to private conversation, 144i had reason to hope that madam de bonnivet would not have the opportunity of cornering and confessing me. i little knew this capricious and authoritative woman who was also well acquainted with her husband’s ways. she had realized that it would not do for her to talk to me in bonnivet’s presence. directly i appeared she rose from the couch where she was sitting by madam éthorel’s side facing madam mosé, with senneterre on a low chair at her feet holding her fan. she came towards me and led the way into a second drawing-room which opened out of the first, where she sat down upon a couch near me.
“we can talk more quietly here,” she began. then she sharply said: “is your portrait of mademoiselle favier far advanced?” she had a way of questioning which betrayed the despotism of the rich and pretty woman who regards the person to whom she is talking in the light of a servant to amuse or inform her. each time i come across this unconscious insolence in a fashionable doll an irresistible desire seizes me to give her a disagreeable answer. jacques had without doubt speculated upon this trait of my character in making me play the part of exciter, which, however, i refused with such loyal energy to do.
“the portrait of mademoiselle favier? why, i have not even begun it,” i replied.
“ah!” she said with a nasty smile, “has molan changed his mind and forbidden it? you are in love with the pretty little woman, m. la croix, confess it?”
145“in love with her?” i replied. “not the least bit in the world.”
“it looked like it the other day,” she said, “and jacques molan was, in fact, a little bit jealous of you.”
“all lovers are more or less jealous,” i interposed, and yielding to the desire i felt to hurt her, i added: “he is very wrong; camille favier loves him with all her heart, and she has a big heart.”
“it is a great misfortune for her talent,” madam de bonnivet said, knitting her blonde brows just enough to let me know that i had struck home.
“i cannot agree with you, madam,” i replied this time with conviction. “little favier has not only adorable beauty, but she has a sort of genius too, and a charming heart and mind.”
“one would never suspect it from seeing her act,” she replied, “at least, in my opinion. but if so, it is worse still. happiness has never yet inspired a writer. but i am sure this affair will not last long. molan will find out that she has deceived him with a side scene with a member of the company and then——”
“you are wrongly informed about this poor girl, madam,” i interrupted more quickly than was absolutely polite. “she is very noble, very proud, and quite incapable of a mean action.”
“but that does not prevent her being kept by molan,” she interrupted, “if my information is accurate, and eating up his author’s rights to the last sou.”
146“kept!” i cried. “no, madam, your information is very inaccurate. if she desired luxury she could have it. she has refused a house, horses, dresses, jewels, and all the things which tempt one in her position, to give herself where her heart is. she loves jacques with a most sincere and beautiful attachment.”
“i pity her if you are right,” she said with a sneer; “for your friend is not much good.”
“he is my friend,” i replied with an aggressive dryness, “and i am original enough to defend my friends.”
“that is a reason why one should attack them all the more.” this pretty woman’s fine face expressed, as she made this commonplace observation, such detestable wickedness, and the conversation betrayed on her part such odious meanness and hatred, that my antipathy for her increased to hate, and i replied to her insolence by another—
“in the world in which you live, perhaps, madam, but not in our world where there are a few decent people.”
she looked at me as i launched this impertinence, which was not even clever, at her. i read in her blue eyes less anger than surprise. one of the peculiar characteristics of these coquettish jades is to esteem those who oppose them in some degree or manner. she smiled an almost amiable smile.
“molan told me that you were original,” she replied. “but you know i am somewhat original, too, and i think we should get on together.”
147here was a sudden change of front in her conversation, and i was again given an exhibition of that female intelligence which in the box had enabled her to hit upon the words to please me. now she talked to me of my travels. she herself had visited italy. without doubt she had there met some distinguished artist who had acted as her guide, for she enunciated ideas which contrasted strangely with the mediocrity of her previous conversation. assuredly the ideas were not her own, but she retained them and realized that now was her chance to place them. she made in this way two or three ingenuous remarks upon perugins and raphael, notably upon the illogicalness of the latter, in eliminating from his madonnas every christian sentiment to give them too much beauty, a paganism of health irreconcilable with the mystic beyond and his dream. she had such a way of appearing to understand what she was saying, that i did not think ridiculous the admiration with which the ninny senneterre, who had joined us, listened to her remarks. this jealous fellow had not been able to prevent himself from interrupting our tête-à-tête, and as madam de bonnivet, strange to say, did not bully him, he began to lavish his benevolence upon me. he had his plan, too, the final scene of his na?ve thinking out being a vaudeville scene that evening when i experienced for a moment a little dramatic shudder. he insisted, when i said good night, before eleven, on accompanying me, and he began to sing the praises of queen anne as we walked along the champs élysées. then 148as we passed the avenue d’antin he asked me carelessly—
“have you ever done any pistol shooting?”
“never,” i replied.
“bonnivet is a first-rate shot,” he went on, “quite first class. go and see his target cards some day. he has put ten shots in a space as large as a 20 franc piece; it is quite a curiosity, i can assure you.”
he left me to go along the rue fran?ois i, where he lived, with this sinister warning.