.dt The Blue Duchess, by Paul Bourget—A Project Gutenberg eBook
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THE BLUE DUCHESS
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THE LOTUS LIBRARY
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FULL LIST OF VOLUMES IN THE LIBRARY
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THE TRAGEDY OF A GENIUS | Honoré de Balzac
VATHEK | William Beckford
THE MATAPAN JEWELS | Fortuné du Boisgobey
THE BLUE DUCHESS | Paul Bourget
ANDRÉ CORNÉLIS | Paul Bourget
A WOMAN’S HEART | Paul Bourget
OUR LADY OF LIES | Paul Bourget
THE CHILDREN OF ALSACE | René Bazin
THE WOMAN OF THE HILL | “Une Circassienne”
THE ROMANCE OF A HAREM | “Une Circassienne”
SAPHO | Alphonse Daudet
THE POPINJAY | Alphonse Daudet
SIDONIE’S REVENGE | Alphonse Daudet
THE NABOB | Alphonse Daudet
A PASSION OF THE SOUTH | Alphonse Daudet
THE BLACK TULIP | Alexandre Dumas
THE LADY WITH THE CAMELIAS | Alexandre Dumas
MADAME BOVARY | Gustave Flaubert
SALAMMBÔ | Gustave Flaubert
THE TEMPTATION OF ST. ANTHONY | Gustave Flaubert
THAÏS | Anatole France
THE SHE-WOLF | Maxime Formont
THE DIAMOND NECKLACE | Franz Funck-Brentano
CAGLIOSTRO & CO. | Franz Funck-Brentano
THE BLACKMAILERS (“Le Dossier No. 113”) | Emile Gaboriau
THE RED SHIRTS | Paul Gaulot
MDLLE. DE MAUPIN | Théophile Gautier
THE MUMMY’S ROMANCE | Théophile Gautier
CAPTAIN FRACASSE | Théophile Gautier
LA FAUSTIN | Edmond de Goncourt
THE OUTLAW OF ICELAND (“Hans D’Islande”) | Victor Hugo
A GOOD-NATURED FELLOW | Paul de Kock
COUNT BRÜHL | Joseph Kraszewski
THEIR MAJESTIES THE KINGS | Jules Lemaître
MADAME SANS-GÉNE | E. Lepelletier
THE ROMANCE OF A SPAHI | Pierre Loti
WOMAN AND PUPPET | Pierre Louys
THE DISASTER | Paul and Victor Margueritte
THE WHITE ROSE | Auguste Maquet
A WOMAN’S SOUL | Guy de Maupassant
THE LATIN QUARTER (“Scénes de la Vie de Bohéme”) | Henri Murger
A MODERN MAN’S CONFESSION | Alfred and Paul de Musset
HE AND SHE | Alfred and Paul de Musset
THE RIVAL ACTRESSES | Georges Ohnet
THE POISON DEALER | Georges Ohnet
IN DEEP ABYSS | Georges Ohnet
THE WOMAN OF MYSTERY | Georges Ohnet
LIFE’S LAST GIFT | Louis de Robert
THE DESIRE OF LIFE | Matilde Serao
WHEN IT WAS DARK | Guy Thorne
THE KREUTZER SONATA | Leo Tolstoy
SEBASTOPOL | Leo Tolstoy
DRINK | Emile Zola
THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN | Anonymous
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.ca Paul Bourget
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[Illustration: PAUL BOURGET]
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THE
Blue Duchess
By
PAUL BOURGET
Translated by
ERNEST TRISTAN
London: GREENING & CO.
New York: BRENTANO’S
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PREFACE
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Paul Bourget was born in the cathedral
city of Amiens about fifty years ago, but
there are a number of other interesting things to
say about him. Like so many famous authors,
he began, in 1873, with verse. Probably the
verse did not bring him the instant fame that we
all desire with our first book, for he soon turned
to prose, which of course as Saltus has hinted, is
more difficult. Again, it is probable that verse
and prose are not really so very far apart, but are
related, as an angel is related to a saint, or a lovely
sister to her handsome but very masculine brother.
Essays followed Bourget’s lyrics, then a triumphal
procession of novels and travels, till, in 1904, he
became a poet again by wearing the blue and gold
costume of the French Academy.
For about ten years now the writings of Paul
Bourget have had great success in London’s capitol,
Mayfair, among a certain set or circle of ladies
whose minds are as carefully tended as are their
beautiful bodies. They have read him, even as
they have read Anatole France and Marcel Prévost,
because of notes of distinction in the writings, the
lack of discord, the evidences of balanced, graceful,
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well-valeted life. Bourget belongs to the group
of writers who are sometimes termed Salon-writers.
I imagine it is a German classification;
it brings before the vision one writing with a gold
pen using a silver standish upon a table of sycamore.
Perhaps if we say in English “the kid-glove
school” the phrase will describe, if it does
not please. This note of refinement in style, distinction
in utterance, is certainly represented best
in France by Bourget, in Italy by D’Annunzio,
in Holland by Couperus, in America by Saltus.
Of course other countries have claims too. There
has been very little written about Bourget in
English, not because he writes French, but because
he writes. In a conte charmingly named
A Bouquet of Illusions Bourget himself is one
of the characters, the protagonist part in fact.
The conte is written by Saltus and is worthy
of both novelists.
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G. F. MONKSHOOD.
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London,
1908.
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
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Not long ago I assisted at the unexpected end
of an adventure, which, after it had just
missed being a tragedy, concluded in an almost
comic fashion. Although I was only cast for a
very small part, as a simple spectator, my heart
was too much mixed up in it for me to-day not to
feel in similar circumstances the bitter sensation
of the irony of things, which may be either cruel
or beneficial. It is the chill of the steel which cuts
you, though it cures you too. It has occurred to
me to make the adventure into a story. Obviously
it would be more reasonable to go on with
one of my unfinished pictures, “The Pardon of
Psyche,” for instance, which has been standing on
the easel for years, or one of those inanimate
objects: old furniture, silver, and books, which
will comprise the series called “Humble Friends.”
“A painter,” my master, Miraut, used to say,
“should only think brush in hand.” It is
my opinion, from numerous illustrious examples
including Miraut himself, that he should not
think at all. But I know only too well, I am
but half a painter, an artist in intention rather
than in temperament, the outline of a Fromentin of
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the twelfth rank. That is a singular feeling of
sadness too: the feeling that one is but an inferior
double of another, a small and poor proof of a block
already printed, a sample of humanity in the likeness
of a model who has already lived, and in
whose destiny it is possible to read beforehand
one’s own destiny! But not all one’s own destiny!
For I am only too well aware that I suffer
from the same failings as Fromentin without
possessing his brilliance. But the brush was not
sufficient for this complex and elaborate master.
He wanted, with the nervous hand which transmitted
colours to canvas, to put ink upon paper,
and what was the result? We other painters said
his painting was too literary, and literary men said
his literature was too technical, too pictorial, and
not intellectual enough.
In my own case at each exhibition of my work
for years past my fellow-painters’ reserve, and
their praise particularly, have signified to me that
I lack a real artist’s original and visionary nature.
But I do not require my fellow artists’ judgment;
what does my own conscience say? If I really
expressed myself with my brush alone, should I
have brought back from Spain, Morocco, Italy and
Egypt as many pages of notes as sketches? I
have for fifteen years, wandered between numberless
contradictory forms of art and mind. I have
wandered from country to country seeking the
sun and health; from museum to museum seeking
æsthetic revelations, and later from art school
to art school seeking an artist’s creed, and from
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dream to dream in search of a love. My affairs
of the heart have all been incipient and abortive
for the same reason as my affairs of the mind: my
irremediable incapacity to make up my mind and
stand firm, in which to-day I recognize the strange
originality of my character.
When we see with what infrangible conditions
nature surrounds us, is it not best to accept them?
At least, I have made up my mind upon an essential
point, my work. That is something. I have
promised myself to fret no more over vain ambitions.
I will be a mediocre painter; that is all.
In that case why should I deny myself the pleasure
of writing, a thing which formerly discipline forbade?
As it is certain that the name of M.
Vincent la Croix will never shine in the sky of glory
with the names of Gustave Moreau, of Puvis
de Chavannes, and of Burne-Jones, why should
M. Vincent la Croix deprive himself of this compensation:
wasting his time after his own fashion,
like the rich amateur, the dilettante and the critic
he is? That is the reason why, when about to live
over again in thought the episodes of a real little
romance, into which chance introduced me, I have
prepared paper, a pen, and ink. Here is a fresh
proof that I shall always lack spontaneous and
gushing geniality; I have gone out of my way to
explain my motives at the beginning of this story,
instead of starting it simply and boldly. I can
see its most minute details before me, so what
need have I of excusing in my own eyes a work
which tempts me? I shall be at liberty to destroy
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it if I am too ashamed of it when it is finished.
Many a time have I painted out a canvas which
I considered bad! This time two logs in the
fireplace and a match will suffice. That is one
of the unspeakable superiorities of literature over
painting.
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CHAPTER I
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The reason I can clearly recollect the exact
date of the beginning of the adventure I
am about to relate, is that it was my thirty-sixth
birthday. That is twenty-nine months ago.
That anniversary found me more melancholy than
usual. The reason of it was still the same: the
feeling that my faculties were at the same time
unemployed and limited, and that the boundary
of my talent was continually being reached. The
pretext? I smile at the pretext. But what imaginative
man has not had in his youth childish and
heroic determinations? What artist has not fixed
beforehand the stages in his glorious career, comparing
himself to some illustrious person? Caesar,
who was as good as most people, said: “At my
age Alexander had conquered the world.” That
is an heroic cry when the pride of a still unknown
power palpitates in it, but it is harrowing when
the conviction of definitive impuissance utters this
useless sigh towards triumph. I am not Caesar,
but all my diaries—and I have many—abound in
dates which were rendezvous given by me to
Fame, but which she failed to keep.
On my thirty-seventh birthday I had, as my
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custom was, been looking through my papers and
reflecting that I was still as little known to fame as
I had been in my youth, still as lacking in glorious
works, great actions, and grand passions, and my
hope was gradually departing. That morning, too,
an agency to which I was foolish enough to subscribe,
had sent me two newspaper cuttings mentioning
my name and making unfriendly comments
upon my work. A fresh wave of discouragement
swept over me, paralyzing the
creative energy of the soul, and clearly demonstrating
to me my own shortcomings. My
communion with my thoughts on that darkening
autumn afternoon frightened me, and I took
refuge in a means of distraction which was usually
successful, a visit to the School of Arms in the
Rue Boissy d’Anglais. There I overcame my
nerves by a series of exercises performed with
all the vigour of which I was capable. A cold
bath and a rub down followed by dinner in congenial
company and a rubber used to pass the
evening. Towards eleven o’clock I could return
home without much risk of insomnia. I had
carried out the first part of this programme on
the first evening of my thirty-seventh year and
should have completed it if I had not, on entering
the dining-room of my club, met perhaps the
oldest of my Parisian comrades, an old school-fellow
too, the celebrated novelist and dramatic
author, Jacques Molan.
“Will you come and dine?” he asked me.
“I have a table, do dine with me.”
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Under any other circumstances, in spite of our
long friendship, I should have excused myself.
Few personalities weary me so quickly as Jacques.
He has combined with faults I detest the quality
most lacking in me: the power to impose himself,
the audacity of mind, the productive virility, and
the self-confidence without which a man is not a
great artist. Do the great virtues of genius of
necessity bring with them an abuse of the “I,”
of which this writer was an extraordinary example?
The two other men of letters I knew best, Julien
Dorsenne and Claude Larcher, were most certainly
not tainted with egotism. They were modest
violets, holy and timid violets, small and humble
in the grass by the side of Jacques. “His” books,
“his” plays, “his” enemies, “his” plans, “his”
profits, “his” mistresses, “his” health, existed
for himself alone, and he talked of no one but himself.
That was the reason Claude said: “How
can you ever expect Molan to be sad? Every
morning he gazes at himself in the looking-glass
and thinks: 'How happy I am to dress as the
first author of the day!’” But Claude was
slightly envious of Jacques, and that was one of
the latter’s superiorities; through his self-conceit
he was ignorant of any feeling like envy. He did
not prefer himself to others, he ignored them.
The explanation of this mystery was: with his
almost unhealthy vanity only equalled by his
insensibility, this fellow had only to sit down with
paper in front of him, and beneath his pen came
and went, spoke and acted, enjoyed and suffered
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passionate and eloquent beings, creatures of flesh
and blood full of love and hate—in a word, real
men and women. A whole world was produced,
so real, so intense, so amusing, or so moving in turn,
that even I am filled with admiration every time
I read his books. But I know it is only illusion,
only magic, only a sleight-of-hand trick; I know
that the spiritual father of these heroes and
heroines is a perfect literary monster, with a flask
of ink in the place of a heart. I am wrong. He
still has there the passionate love of success. What
marvellous tact, what fingering in the playing upon
that surprising organ, public taste!
Jacques is the accomplished type of what we
call in studio slang a “profiteur,” the artist who
excels in appropriating another’s work, and displaying
it to the best advantage! For example,
at the period of his rise, Naturalism was in the
ascendant. Zola’s admirable Assommoir had
just appeared, and almost immediately came the
extraordinary studies of peasants and girls which
revealed to the world of letters the name of the
unhappy Maupassant. Jacques realized that no
great success was possible in any other form of
novel, and at the same time he divined that after
these two masters he must not touch trivial
and popular environment. The reader was satiated
with that. Molan then conceived the idea,
which amounted to genius, of applying to high life
the results of the bitter observation and brutal
realism so popular then. His four first volumes
of novels and short stories were thus, the description
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being bestowed upon them on their first
appearance, pomaded with Zola and perfumed
with Maupassant. Epigrams are epigrams, and
success is success. Molan’s success was very rapid,
it may be remembered.
Soon after, certain indications made him realize
that the reader’s taste was changing again, that
it was turning in the direction of analysis and
psychological study. Then he abruptly changed
his methods and we had the three books which
have done most for his reputation: Martyre
Intime, Cœur Brisé and Anciennes Amours. In
them he preserved the faults usual in imitators:
long dissertations, the philosophic treatment of
little love adventures, and particularly, the abuse
of worldly adornment. He had originated naturalism
in high life. He introduced analysis of the
poor, humble and middle classes. Afterwards,
when virtue suddenly appeared to be the order of
the day, we had from his pen the only novel of the
period which rivalled in honest success, L’abbé
Constantin. It was Blanche Comme Un Lys.
When social problems became the critic’s copy,
Molan once more changed his methods and wrote
the novel on a working-class family called Une
Épopée de ce temps, a work of imagination in two
volumes, of which 65,000 copies were sold. See
the vanity of æsthetic theories! All these books
were conceived with different principles of art.
Through them we could follow the history of the
variations of fashion. Not one of them is sincere
in the real sense of the word, and all of them have
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in an equal degree that colour of human truth
which seems in this wayward writer an unconscious
gift. The same gift he displayed, when fearing to
weary his readers by an abuse of the novel, he
began to write plays. He wrote Adéle, a great
success at the Français; La Vaincue, at the Odéon
was another, and the newspapers had informed
me of his fresh success at the Vaudeville, with an
enigmatically entitled comedy, La Duchesse
Blue.
Now the fact that we were at school together
proves that this enormous output: ten volumes of
fiction, two of short stories, a collection of verses,
and three plays was produced in sixteen years. Jacques,
too, lived while he worked like this. He had
mistresses, made necessary journeys which allowed
him to truthfully write in his prefaces sentences
like this: “When I picked anemones in the
gardens of the Villa Pamphili!” or like this:
“I, too, offered up my prayer on the Acropolis”;
or again: “Like the bull I saw kneel down to die
in the bull ring at Seville.” I have quoted these
phrases from memory. Besides all this, the animal
looked after his relatives and his investments,
and preserved his gaiety and youthful appetite.
I had proof of that the evening I mechanically
dined with him; in spite of my secret antipathy
dominated by the suggestion of vitality emanating
from every one of his gestures. We were no sooner
seated than he asked me—
“What wine do you prefer, champagne or
Burgundy? They are both very good here.”
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“I think that Eau de Vals will do for me,” I
replied.
“Have you not a good digestion?” he asked
with a laugh; “I don’t know that I have a stomach.
Then I will have extra dry champagne.” His
egoism was of a convenient kind, as he never discussed
other people’s caprices, nor allowed them
to discuss his. He ordered the dinner and asked
me if I had seen his play at the Vaudeville, what
I thought of it, and whether it was not the best
thing he had done.
“You know,” I replied in some embarrassment,
“I hardly ever go to the theatre.”
“What luck!” he went on good-humouredly.
“I will take you this evening. I shall find out
your first impression of it. Will you be frank with
me? You will see that it is not so bitter as Adéle,
nor quite so eloquent as La Vaincue. But the way
to succeed is to baffle expectations; never, never
repeat oneself! Those who reproached me with
lack of brain and ignorance of my business, have
had to acknowledge their mistake. You know me.
I say out loud what I think. When I published
Tendres Nuances, last year, you remember what I
said to you: 'It is not worth the trouble of reading’;
but La Duchesse Blue is different. The
public is of the same opinion as myself.”
“But where do you find your titles?” I asked.
“What!” he cried; “you, a painter, ask me
that question? Don’t you know Gainsborough’s
'Blue Boy’ in the gallery of Grosvenor House in
London? My play has for its heroine a woman
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whom one of your colleagues, better informed than
yourself in English manners, has painted in a
harmony of blue tints as the Gainsborough boy.
This woman, being a Duchess, has been nicknamed
in her set the Little Blue Duchess, because of the
portrait. With my dialogue and little Favier!”
“Who is little Favier?” I asked.
“What!” he cried, “don’t you know little
Favier? You pretend to live in Paris! Not that
I blame you for not frequenting the theatres.
Seeing the kind of plays usually put on, I think it
was high time they gave us young ones a chance.”
“That does not tell me about little Favier,” I
insisted.
“Well! Camille Favier is the Blue Duchess.
She acts with talent, fantasy and grace! I discovered
her. A year ago she was at the Conservatoire.
I saw her there and recognized her talent,
and when I sent my play to the Vaudeville, I told
them I wanted her to take the part. They engaged
her, and now she is famous. My luck is contagious.
But you must do her portrait for me as she is in
the play, a symphony in blue major! It will be
a fine subject for you for the next Salon. I repeat
I am very lucky. Then what a head she has for
you: twenty-two years old, a complexion like a
tea-rose, a mouth sad in repose and tender when
smiling, blue eyes to complete the symphony, pale,
pale, pale blue with a black point in the middle,
which sometimes increases in size; her hair is
the colour of oriental tobacco, and she is slender,
supple and young. She lives with her mother in a
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third floor in the Rue de la Barcuellére, in your
neighbourhood. That detail is good as a human
document. People talk of the theatre’s corruption:
nine hundred francs rent, one servant, and
an outlook on a convent garden! She believes
in her art, and in authors! She believes too
much in them.”
He said these words with a smile, the meaning
of which was unmistakable. His remarks had
been accompanied by an insolent and sensual look,
gleaming and self-satisfied. I had no doubt as to
the feeling the pretty actress inspired in him. He
told me about these private matters in a very loud
voice, with that apparent indiscretion which implies
thoughtlessness and so well conceals design. But
this sort of gossip always has a prudent limit.
Besides, the diners at the next table were three
retired generals, to interrupt whose conversation
then gun-shot would have been required. The
noises made by the thirty or forty persons dining
were sufficient to drown even Jacques’ most distinct
phrases. So there was really no reason for my
companion to speak in low tones, as I did in questioning
him. But what a symbol of our two
destinies! I instinctively experienced, before even
knowing Mademoiselle Favier, the shameful timidity
of the sentiment of which Jacques experienced the
joy.
“You are paying court to her, that is what you
mean?” I asked him.
“No, she is courting me,” he said with a laugh,
“or rather has been doing so. But why should I
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not tell you, for if I introduce you to her, she will
tell you everything in five minutes? In fact, she
is my mistress. With my reputation, my investments,
my books, I can marry whom I please; and
there is plenty of time. The pear is ripe. But
if we were always reasonable, we should be only
common people, should not we? She began it. If
you had seen, at rehearsal, how she stealthily
devoured me with her eyes! I took good care not
to notice her. She is a coquette and a half. An
author who has a mistress at the theatre when he
does not act himself, is responsible for a serious
orthographical error. You know the proverb:
the architect does not hobnob with the mason.
But after the first performance, after the battle
was won, I let myself go. Here is another
human document: little Favier had gone through
the Conservatoire, had been on the stage, and my
dear fellow she was still virtuous, perfectly virtuous.
Do you understand me?”
“Poor girl!” I cried involuntarily.
“No, no!” Jacques replied shrugging his shoulders.
“Some lover must be first, and it is better
to have a Jacques Molan than a pupil of the Conservatoire,
or, as is usually the case, one of the
professors there, is it not? But I am her poesy,
her real romance to tell her friends. I have been
kind to her. She desired our love concealed from
her mother and we did so. She desired meetings
in cemeteries at the graves of great men and I have
gone there. Can you imagine me, at my age, with
a bunch of violets in my hand, waiting for a friend
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with my elbows sentimentally resting upon the
tomb of Alfred de Musset, a poet whom I detest?
Quite a student’s idyll, is it not? I repeat it is
very foolish, but I found her so amiable and so
fresh the first time. She 'rested me’ from this
Paris in which everything is vanity.”
“And now?” I asked.
“Now?” he repeated, and the insolent and
sensual expression came into his eyes once more.
“You want me to confess? That is two months
ago, and a two months’ idyll is a little less fresh,
amiable and restful.” Then in a lower and more
confidential tone he asked: “Do you know pretty
Madam Pierre de Bonnivet?”
“You still seem to forget that I am not a fashionable
painter,” I replied, “that I have not a little
house on the Monceau Plain, that I do not ride
in the Bois, and frequent the noble Faubourg
though I live there.”
“Don’t let us mix up our localities,” he replied
with his usual assurance. “The Monceau Plain
and the Bois have nothing in common with the
Faubourg and the nobility, nor has the charming
person to whom I am referring, anything in common,
except her name, with the real Bonnivet
descended from the constable or admiral, the friend
of Francis I.”
“There is one less imbecile among her ancestors
then,” I interrupted. “That is one of the advantages
the false nobility sometimes has over the
true nobility.”
“Good,” Jacques said, shrugging his shoulders
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at the sally with which I had satisfied my ill-humour
against her pretensions. “You remind
me of Giboyer. You are a pedant, sir. But I
shall not defend what you call the noble Faubourg
against your attacks. I have seen enough of it to
never wish to set foot in it again. There is too
much fashion about it for me. Grand drawing-rooms
are not in my line. I have nothing to do
with aristocratic ladies. One-twentieth of the
women in Paris, some young, some not, some titled,
some not, have pretensions to be literary, political,
or æsthetic, but they are all brainy and intellectual,
and they are not courtesans. My pleasure is to
turn them into courtesans when it is worth the
trouble. If I ever show you Bonnivet, you will
agree that she is worth the trouble. Besides there
is at her house lively conversation and good food.
Don’t look so disgusted. After ten years in Paris
even with my stomach, dinner in town becomes a
terrible bore. At her house dinner is a feast, the
table exquisite and the cellar marvellous. Father
Bonnivet has made ten or twelve million francs
out of flour. It is not sufficient for his wife for
the celebrated men about whom she is curious to
honour her drawing-room with their presence.
They have to fall in love with her as well, and I
believe they have all done so, till now.”
I urged him to continue his story, though his
cynicism made me shudder, his loquacity exasperated
me, and I was horrified at his sentiments,
which were so brutally plebeian in their dilettante
disguise, for I was greatly interested in his confidences.
.pn +1
.bn 025.png
He gladly opened his heart to me as I
listened to him, though he actually liked me no
more than I did him. He instinctively felt the
fascination he exercised over me and it pleased him.
We were at college together, and that strange bond
would unite us till death in spite of everything.
He went on—
“There is nothing to tell you except that for
some time Queen Anne, as her intimate friends
call her, absolutely refused to be introduced to me.
In parenthesis, I wonder if this name Anne has
been selected as coquettishly heraldic? I sometimes
dine at the house of Madam Éthorel, her
cousin, whom she detests. I met her there, and
I also pretended to avoid her. She told any one
who would listen to her that I had no talent, and
that my books either bored or repelled her, that
being the classic method of a fashionable woman
who wishes to pique a famous man by not appearing
to join the throng of his admirers. Kind
friends always let one know of this amiability.
La Duchesse Blue was produced with some success,
as I have told you, and then, I don’t know how or
why, there came an entire change of front. One
of her beaters—she has beaters, just like a sportsman,
whom she recruits from her most ardent
admirers—Senneterre, whom you know well;
the old blond who sometimes takes the bank here,
and is a great admirer of mine. Generally we
merely exchanged greetings, but instead of that
he showered compliments upon me and finished
up by inviting me to dine at the Club in the room
.pn +1
.bn 026.png
reserved for fashionable ladies. That is five
weeks ago. 'How are they going to make use of
me?’ I thought as I went up the stairs. The first
person I met in the anteroom, one of the prettiest,
most elegant corners in Paris, was Madam Pierre
de Bonnivet.”
“She was just like little Favier,” I interposed,
“a coquette and a half. Ever since I have known
you your stories have always been the same: they
consist of playing with the women who have the
least heart, and you always win.”
“It is not quite as simple as all that,” he replied
without getting angry; “I amused myself with
Queen Anne, but not in the way you think. The
beater placed us side by side at the table. I should
like you to have been there in hiding listening to
us. The conversation was sweet, simple, friendly
and melting, the meeting of two beautiful souls.
She spoke well of all the women we knew, and I
spoke well of all my colleagues. We declared in
agreement that the great awkward Madam de
Sauve has never had a lover, and that Dorsenne’s
novels are his masterpieces, that the demon Madam
Moraines is an angel of disinterestedness, and that
the noodle, René Vincy is a great poet. Judge of
our sincerity. It was as if neither she nor I had ever
suspected that one writer could slander another,
that a woman of the world could commit adultery.
We have taken our revenge since, and we are at this
moment in that state of bitter warfare which is
disguised by the pretty name of flirtation. I spare
you the details. It is sufficient to know that she
.pn +1
.bn 027.png
is aware that little Favier is my mistress; she thinks
I am madly in love with her, and her sole aim is
to steal me from her. Accustomed as she is to
masculine ruses, she has laid the snare which has
always been successful since the earth has revolved
around the sun: there is no virtue like the sensation
of stealing a love from another woman. The
most curious thing is that Queen Anne might easily
have been virtuous. Oh, she is very fast. But I
should not be surprised to hear that she has never
had a real lover. Besides, if she had had twenty-five
lovers her scheme would still have succeeded.
I would wager that in the earthly paradise the
serpent only told our mother Eve that he was
about to pluck the apple for the female of his own
species.”
“But what of Camille Favier?” I asked.
“Naturally she guessed or else I told her—I don’t
know how to lie—so she is no less jealous of
Bonnivet than Bonnivet is of her. I have not been
bored for the last week or two I can assure you.
Things have moved quickly, and the rapid are
just as successful in gallantry as in everything
else.”
We were having dessert, and he was balancing
a piece of pear on the end of his dessert fork as he
concluded his confidence with this brutal cruelty
which made me say—
“You are between two women again? You
are playing a dangerous game.”
“Dangerous?” he interrupted with his confident
joviality. “To whom? To me? Happily
.pn +1
.bn 028.png
or unhappily, I am insured against these fires. To
Madam de Bonnivet? If she does not love me,
what risk does she run? If she loves me, she will
be grateful. Suffering requires feeling, and to
women of this kind that is everything. But I
think she is as hard as I am. As for Camille, it
will develop her talent.”
“Suppose one of the lady admirers of the novels
of your second period, Anciennes Amours or Martyre
Intime, were to hear you now?” I said to him.
“For this is quite the reverse of what you put in
those two books.”
“Ah!” he said. “If one lived one’s books,
there would be no trouble in writing them. Come.
Let us go down quickly and have coffee. I want
you to see the beginning of the first act. I have
only one quality, but that is a strong one. I can
compose. A play or novel of mine is compact,
there is nothing useless in it. The first and third
acts are the best in the play. Madam de Bonnivet
prefers the second and Camille the fourth. All
tastes are suited. Waiter, bring two cups of coffee
and two fine cigars at once. Give me just time
to cast my eye down the closing prices on the
Stock Exchange and I am at your service. Good.
My gold mine shares are going up. I am about
three thousand francs to the good. How is your
money invested?”
“I have not invested it,” I said sadly, “it stays
where it is and brings in from two and a half to
three per cent.”
“That is absurd!” Jacques said as he lit a cigar.
.pn +1
.bn 029.png
“I will advise you. I have good friends, one of the
Mosé among others, who keep me well informed. I
know as much as they do, and if I were not a literary
man, I should like to be a financier. But we
must hurry. Queen Anne may be at the theatre
this evening, though she has already seen the play
four times. If she is there, you will see two comedies
instead of one. But I am very glad to have
met you this evening.”
.pn +1
.bn 030.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER II
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.7
This author who could when he liked depict
with the greatest subtlety was no fit person
to preside over a temperance society. When we
reached the little theatre where La Duchesse Blue
was being performed he was a little more jolly than
the beautiful women who drove up in their carriages
from all corners of fashionable Paris, suspected.
I still felt the inexplicable attraction, a
mixture of antipathy and admiration, of which
I have spoken. I listened to Jacques as he told me
his plans for new works, and I forgot his horrible
failings of heart and character in my admiration
for the imagination from which ideas spurted,
as I had seen the lava in the crater of Vesuvius
do, while fiery stones of the size of a man shot
into the air with a report like a cannon. There
the atmosphere is suffocating and full of stench.
The sulphur smokes beneath your feet and burns
them. Tears trickle from your eyes. Your
breath fails. It is unbearable. But this brutal
outburst of the forces of nature keeps you there,
hypnotizes you.
Jacques, too, in his way is a force of nature.
.pn +1
.bn 031.png
His artistic vitality will always overwhelm me,
and it did so this evening in proportion with such
a hypnotism. For between the formidable exterminating
monster which waves its column of
smoke above the devastated Pompeii, and the
inoffensive cerebral volcano whose smoky eruptions
overflow into yellow volumes, or crystallize into
three, four or five act plays, the difference is really
very great. Without ironical extenuation such a
comparison would be rather comic. Whether
justified or not, I gave myself up to this sensation
without discussion. Wearied as I was by my day of
moral lassitude, was not this way of spending my
evening an unexpected pleasure? The comedy
might interest me, for this foppish egoist had great
talent. The actress might be pretty, although
doubtless Jacques’ fatuity had transformed for my
astonishment a Conservatoire fool into a bird of
paradise. I had too often accompanied Claude
Larcher into Colette Rigaud’s dressing-room not
to know these footlight-mistresses and their vulgarity.
But there are always exceptions, and
Madam Pierre de Bonnivet might be an exception to
her class, although a rich woman who collects
celebrities was hardly likely to please me. In
any case, it was worth the trouble of accompanying
Molan to the Vaudeville simply to have the pleasure
of seeing him enter the theatre.
“We will go in by the stage door,” he said “in the
Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin. It is very charming
here in the two little stage boxes, and upon the
stage behind the curtain. We can get to the
.pn +1
.bn 032.png
boxes through the wings, if either of them is
vacant.”
He got out of the carriage before me as he said
this; he greeted the door-keeper and went through
a doorway and up a staircase with the gait which is
unique in the world: that of the fashionable author
visiting his paper, his editor, or his theatre. Every
gesture seemed to say, “The house belongs to me”;
his foot was lighter, his cane waved in his hand, and
his shoulders involuntarily swaggered. These
things are in themselves of no importance, but we
painters who have studied portraiture make it our
business to seize upon these trifles. The theatre
staff, when they saw “their author” pass, displayed
inexpressible and unconscious respect.
How I should like to inspire some picture dealer
with like respect! When shall I have in displaying
my pictures to a friend, the peaceful and innocently
puerile pride which Jacques displayed in
opening for me the door of one of the stage boxes,
fortunately unoccupied, where we sat down
while he whispered to me—
“The first act has been in progress for five
minutes. You will follow it directly. A former
mistress of the Duke’s is trying to make the Duchess
jealous. Was I lying to you when I said that little
Favier is pretty? She has caught sight of me.
Fortunately she has nothing to say for a minute
or two, or she would have forgotten her lines.
She is looking at you. You interest her. She
knows the three or four friends I usually bring.
Now hear her speak. Is not the timbre, the music
.pn +1
.bn 033.png
of her voice, exquisite? Listen to what she is
saying.”
I have heard La Duchesse Blue many times since
till I know by heart every phrase. It is a fine
delicate play in spite of the affectation of the title.
It contains an extremely good study of a rare but
very human jealousy. It is the story of a friend
who is amorous of his friend’s wife, and who remains
faithful to his friendship in his love. He never
mentioned his feelings to the woman. He has
never admitted it to himself, and he cannot bear
any one else to pay court to this young woman.
He ends by saving her from a irreparable mistake,
without her knowing the reason or who he is.
The first scene in which the childish Duchess confides
in her husband’s former mistress, without
suspecting the recollections she is awakening by
the avowal of her own joys, is a marvel of moving,
vibrating analysis, which might be called tenderly
cruel. This play is a little masterpiece of to-day
by Marivaux—a Marivaux whose airy gaiety would
be like lace upon a wound. But I did not perceive
the real value of the comedy on this first evening;
although Molan was present to comment upon its
smallest details. The painter in me was too
keenly attracted by the extraordinary appearance
of this Camille Favier, whom my friend had so
carelessly called his mistress. The box being
almost on the stage allowed me to follow the
smallest movements of her face, her most furtive
winks, and the most rapid knitting of her
brows. I could see the layers of cream and rouge
.pn +1
.bn 034.png
unequally distributed on her face, and the lengthening
of her lashes with black crayon. Even made
up in this way she realized in an extraordinary
way the ideal type created by the most refined
English artists: Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Morris.
Her fine features were almost too slight for the
perspective of the stage. Her large, slightly
convex forehead seemed clouded with dreams.
The elongated oval of her face made her smile
float into her cheeks. Her straight nose, rather
short, ennobled her profile. Her full lips drooped
at the corners and were at the same time sad and
sensual, voluptuous, and bitter. This make up
even gave to her beauty a particular charm, which
touched me strangely in its mixture of the real and
the artificial. Her rosy cheeks were visible through
her rouge, the fringe of her long lashes beneath the
crayon, the fresh purple of her lips through the
carmine, just as in her playing of the part she
represented; a true, sincere and tender woman,
was visible or seemed to be visible.
“It is the thunder-clap,” he said, “you have
just felt! You can listen, too. Your sublimes
will amalgate, as Saint Simon said of some one.
But now turn and look with your glasses in the
fourth box of the first tier on the left. You see a
woman in white, fanning herself with a fan, with silk
muslin flounces, white too, and an invention of her
own? That is Madam Pierre de Bonnivet. What
do you think of her? It is amusing, is it not, to
play the game of love and hazard with these two
pretty creatures as partners?”
.pn +1
.bn 035.png
I looked in the direction Jacques indicated, and
I soon had my glasses fixed on the fashionable
rival of the Bohemian Camille Favier.
The fatuous insolence which my comrade affected
then appeared to me justified, and more than
justified, by the beauty of this elegant female who
coquetted with him, as he told me. I knew he
was too daring a fellow not to go on quickly from
liberty to liberty. If Camille recalled, even with
her rouge and patches, the Psyches and Galateas
of the most suave of the Pre-raphaelite Brothers,
Madam Pierre de Bonnivet, with her arched nose,
her wilful chin, the fine line of the cheek, her
elegant haughty mouth, had beauty enough to
justify the most aristocratic pretensions. How,
coming of a poor family—I have found out since that
she was a Taraval—she inevitably recalled one of
those princesses so dear to Van Dyck, that incomplete
master, whom no other has equalled, in the
art of portraying breeding, and the indomitable
pride and heroic energy concealed beneath the
fragility of feminine grace. The habits of wealth for
two or three generations produce these mirages.
It is certain that the painter of the divine Marquise
Paola Brignole, of the Red Palace at Genoa,
never found a model more suited to his genius.
His brush alone could have properly reproduced
the glory of that tint whose dead white was not
anæmic—the red lips told that—with the cloud of
blonde hair which paled in the light. The simple
sight of the thick rolls of golden hair lying upon
her neck, when she turned her head, betokened that
.pn +1
.bn 036.png
physiological vitality of one of those slender persons
who conceal beneath the tenderness of a siren the
courage of a captain of dragoons. Her neck,
though a little long, was well developed, and the
fingers of her nervous hands were a little long also;
her bust, which was outlined at each movement by
her supple white corsage, was so young, so elegant,
and so full. But the most significant thing to me
about this creature of luxury was her blue eyes,
as blue as those of the other woman, with this
difference, that the blue of Camille Favier’s eyes
recalled the blue of the petals of a flower; while
Madam de Bonnivet’s eyes were the azure of metal
or precious stone. They gave one the idea of
something implacable, in spite of their charm,
something hard and frigidly dangerous in their
magnetism. To complete this singular sensation
of graceful cruelty, when the young woman laughed
her lips were raised a little too much at the corners
displaying sharp white teeth close together, almost
too small, like those of a precious animal of the
chase.
In to-day trying to exactly reproduce the impressions,
which I felt in the presence of Jacques
Molan’s two partners in his favourite game of
heartless love, I am taking into account that my
actual knowledge of their characters influences
my recollection of this first meeting. I do not
think I am giving too powerful a touch to this
souvenir. I can still hear myself say, while
applause was being showered upon little Favier, to
Jacques—
.pn +1
.bn 037.png
“You make a good choice, when you like.”
“I do what I can,” he said as he nodded his
head.
“I am asking myself,” I continued, “with
mistresses of such beauty——”
“One mistress,” he corrected me. “Madam de
Bonnivet is not my mistress.”
“It comes to the same thing, as far as it concerns
what I am going to say. I am asking myself, how
you manage to escape scandal.”
“I am like Proudhon,” he replied with a laugh,
“whom Hugo pretended had the skin of a toad in
his pocket. It appears that this charm protects
one from every danger.”
“Do you think your luck will hold? Then
what of the women themselves?”
“Larcher has an axiom: 'a woman is the best
antidote against another woman.’”
“But the result of that is spiteful vengeance,
vitriol, and the revolver. One of these two women,
I should not trust.”
As I said that, I pointed with my cane to Madam
Bonnivet.
“Really! beautiful Queen Anne gives you the impression,
also, of a coquettish bird of prey, of a little
spitfire of a falcon, whom it is not wise to tease.
Ah, well! If you like,” he went on as he got up,
“the act is over, I will present you to one or the
other of them. It is very funny. Would you
believe that in my stories I have always more or
less need of a looker-on; when we think that
there are people foolish enough to criticize the
.pn +1
.bn 038.png
classic tragedies on this account? In my opinion
there is no more natural person.”
He took my arm as he said this, assigning me
the part of witness, of satellite borne along in
the orbit of its sun. It is a strange thing that
I am really made for those secondary parts,
Pylades to an Orestes, Horatio to Hamlet; and his
coolness did not wound me. Alas! it has been
decreed that I should be, like Horatio, always
and everywhere an unsuccessful man. What irony
to have as my Hamlet the implacable egotist who
was showing me the way to little Favier’s dressing-room!
I followed him behind the scenes, up a
staircase crowded with dressers and supernumeraries,
and along corridors full of doors from behind
which came the sounds of laughter, singing, argument,
and of expressions used at a card-party.
Previously, I had only been behind the scenes
at the Comédie Française of the famous theatres;
where I often accompanied the unfortunate Claude.
At that theatre, was to be found the correct and
conventional respectability, which too often spoils
the acting of members of the company of that
famous house. My horror of pretentiousness has
always made me dislike the Comédie, with its
elegant appearance, its secular portraits, its venerable
busts, and its elegant green room. There,
more than elsewhere I have experienced the disenchantment
of the contrast between the play and
the back of the stage, between theatrical prestige
and its kitchen. On the contrary, behind the
scenes of the smaller theatres, where my friends
.pn +1
.bn 039.png
have taken me, the Varieties, the Gymnase and the
Vaudeville on that evening, I have felt the picturesque
antitheses, the supple improvization, the
animal energy which constitute an actor’s business.
Chance willed that in the company of Jacques
Molan, after being a prey to impuissance for the
entire day, I should find a complete cure for my
vitality. Did we not hear, as we knocked at the
door of Mademoiselle Favier’s dressing-room,
the following dialogue exchanged by two actors
playing the piece, the famous Bressoré, and a
gentleman in a frock coat and tall hat, whose
clean-shaven face and bluish cheeks showed he
was an actor of this or some other company.
“I was not up to much in my new part,” the
latter asked, “was I? Tell me the truth.”
“You were very good,” Bressoré replied,“but
you have one failing.”
“What is that?”
“You don’t stand firm and look the audience
straight in the face.”
“That fellow has just mentioned the secret of
success in the arts,” Jacques Molan said to
me with a laugh; “between ourselves as friends,
you are a little lacking in assurance yourself. If
I met you more often I would give you——”
In saying this he did not suspect how gaily and
hardly he was touching a sore in my artistic
conscience; and I did not give him the answer
which rose to my lips. “That simply proves the
baseness and brutality of success, and that the
artist who succeeds is often a charlatan in disguise.”
.pn +1
.bn 040.png
He had just knocked at the dressing-room door.
A voice had answered, “Who is there?” then
without waiting for a reply the door opened and
Camille Favier appeared with a smile of happiness
upon her pretty face which changed into a constrained
expression when she saw that her lover
was not alone.
“Ah!” she said, slightly confused, “I did not
think you would bring any one, and my dressing-room
is untidy.”
“That does not matter,” said Jacques as he
gently pushed her back into the room with one hand
and introduced me with the other. “My friend
is no one of importance as you think he is, little Blue
Duchess. He is a very old friend of mine and a
painter, a very great painter, you understand.
All our friends are great men. He is used to disorder
in his own studio, so make your mind easy.
He asked to be introduced to you because he has
long wished to paint your portrait.” He nudged
me with his elbow to warn me not to contradict his
delicate handling of the truth. “I forgot to
mention his name, M. Vincent la Croix. Do not
say you have seen his work, for he shows very little.
He belongs to the timid school. You are warned.
Now the ice is broken let us sit down.”
“You can do so,” the young woman said with
a laugh. My companion’s banter, though not very
flattering to me, had already transformed her.
“You will allow me to tidy up a little?” she went
on as with almost incredible rapidity she spread a
clean towel over a basin of soapy water in which
.pn +1
.bn 041.png
she had just washed her hands. She rolled up and
threw under the dressing-table several other dirty
towels. She put the lids on three or four boxes of
pomade, and hung a red wrapper over a chair, on
which I had noticed a well worn pair of common
corsets, which she generally wore for economy’s
sake. She did all this with a smile, and then
noticed a pair of pale green stockings which she
wore upon the stage. These she picked up with
wonderful quickness, and I thought I could detect
a tremor of shame in her as she did so. Those silk
stockings which still displayed the shape of her
fine leg and tiny foot were a small part of her nudity.
She concealed them in the first object which came
to hand, and it turned out to be a hat-box. “That
is all,” she said as she turned to Jacques. “Do
you think I anticipated your visit and changed my
costume in ten minutes, watch in hand? You
will not have to endure the presence of my dresser,
who, poor woman, displeases you.” She went on
in a caressing and frightened tone: “Were you
satisfied with me this evening? Did I play my
great scene well?”
If she had seduced me the moment I saw her
on the stage by her charming finesse and ingenuous
grace, how the charm worked with more powerful
magic in these common surroundings still more unworthy
of her! This simple dressing-room, so
untidy, so lacking in embroidery and ornaments,
where everything seemed a makeshift for the sake
of economy, recalled to me by its contrast the
sumptuousness and luxury of the dressing-room
.pn +1
.bn 042.png
where Colette Regaud reigned at the Français.
Ah, if Colette had only had for Claude, when I
accompanied that unfortunate fellow to her
dressing-room, the evident love which the Blue
Duchess showed for Jacques Molan even in the
tones of her most ordinary conversation, the
ardour of her most fleeting glances, and the fever
of her smallest gestures! She was a delightful
child, who loved as she gave herself, with her whole
being, naturally and spontaneously. What divine
tenderness my companion enjoyed simply out of
vanity! I felt how delighted he was while talking
to his mistress, at directing this little performance!
His eyes became shining instead of tender. I
could see that he was studying me in a mirror in
front of us, instead of looking at the love-sick
girl as he answered her—
“You were exquisite as you always are. Ask
Vincent if I did not say so?”
“Is that true?” she asked.
“Quite true,” I replied.
“He echoed my remarks too, I assure you,”
Jacques continued.
“Then I really acted my scene well,” she said,
with a naïve gleam of contentment in her eyes; then
she knitted her brows and nodding her pretty head
said: “ah, well, I am surprised at it.”
“Why?” I asked her in my turn.
“You ought not to ask her that,” Jacques said,
with a laugh. “I know beforehand what her
answer will be.”
“No,” she said quickly, and her mobile mouth
.pn +1
.bn 043.png
assumed the bitter curve it had in repose. “Do
not listen to him, sir. His is going to tease me,
and it is very unkind of him, about one of the
nervous impressions which we all have—you two as
well. Do you not sometimes experience a shudder
of antipathy in the company of certain people, whose
presence alone freezes you and takes away all at
once your memory, your power, and your mind?
Their presence alone produces a feeling that one
cannot breathe the same air as them without being
stifled.”
“Yes, I do know those antipathies!” I cried.
“I feel them for people I meet by chance, whom I
have never seen before, who are nothing to me, but
their approach is quite intolerable to me, just as if
they were my avowed enemies. Once I used to try
and resist this instinctive feeling of repulsion.
I found from experience that I was always wrong
not to yield to it, and I am sure to-day that an
antipathy of this kind, either strong or slight, is
nature’s second sight, and an infallible warning
that a danger threatens us through the being
whose existence annoys us thus.”
“You see,” Camille said turning to Molan,
“I am not so ridiculous after all.”
I had at once guessed the name of the person
whose presence in the theatre so disconcerted this
frail Burne-Jones nymph, transformed by the
bad fairy presiding over her destiny into a poor
devil of an actress in love with the writer in Paris
the most incapable of love. If I had not guessed
the name Jacques would not have left me in ignorance
.pn +1
.bn 044.png
of it for long. He is no worse than any one
else. I have heard of his good actions and seen his
generosity. To my knowledge he has put his purse
at the disposal of colleagues whom he had more or
less slandered. It is difficult to reconcile that, for
example, with the indelicate unkindness which
made him name his mistress’ rival at a time when
he saw the pretty child was so troubled. The
explanation, however, is quite simple. Such a
thing as good or evil, unkindness or generosity,
never entered into his calculations. He always
played to the gallery, and a single spectator sufficed
to compose this gallery, which in turn made him
perform the best or worst actions, and made him
magnanimous or mean. While playing the part
of looker-on for him I realized how correct are
the casuists who pretend that our actions are
nothing, but our motives everything. His motives
I could see as distinctly as the movement of a
watch in a glass case.
“She talks to you in enigmas,” he said to me
with a gleam in his eyes which meant: “You shall
see if my diagnosis is correct and if she loves me.”
How could this Tussolin Don Juan resist the chance
of satisfying two vanities at the same time, that
of the observer and that of the seducer? He
went on: “I am going to amuse you with the name
of the member of the audience who so troubles her
this evening. She is not so complex as you are, and
it is simply a woman who gives her this feeling of
annoyance.”
“Jacques!” the actress cried in a supplicating
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voice, without noticing that the use of his Christian
name betrayed their secret even more than her
lover’s odious teasing.
“I warn you that Vincent is one of her admirers,”
the latter insisted in spite of this appeal.
“Ah!” Camille said, looking at me with a
sudden feeling of distrust; “does he know her?”
“He is teasing you, mademoiselle; I have seen
in the theatre no face to which I could give a
name.”
“Then I am a liar,” Molan went on, “and you
did not say just now that Madam Pierre de Bonnivet
was a Van Dyck who had stepped out of a picture
just as, according to you, the Blue Duchess has
stepped from a picture by Burne-Jones. There
is no need to be surprised, Camille. Comparison
with pictures is a mania with painters. To them a
woman or a landscape is only a bit of canvas without
a frame. This little infirmity is to their mind
what an ink stain is to us authors, and he
displayed, in spite of his elegant attire as a man
about town, a slight black stain upon the middle
finger of his right hand where he held his pen.
That is just like the rouge upon the actress’
face, the little professional mark. Yes or no, did
you say that about Madam de Bonnivet?”
“It is quite right I said that,” I quickly replied,
“but mention the fact that it was you who pointed
this woman out to me, and that I have not been
introduced to her. I told you, too, that I could
see in her eyes a frightfully hard and bitter look.
In spite of her beauty, elegance, and slenderness
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to me she seems almost ugly, and more than that—repulsive;
I can quite understand Mademoiselle
Favier’s impression.”
The look of gratitude which the actress threw me
was a fresh admission of her liaison with my friend.
Besides she no more thought of concealing it than
he did, though for a different reason. She could
not conceal it because she was so much in love,
while he paraded the intrigue because he was not
in love at all. He caught her look and resumed
in his bantering tone—
“Ah, well, Camille, see how good I am. I have
brought you some one to talk to you. He understands
you already. Think what it will be when
he has painted your portrait! For he is going to
do so for me! Are you agreeable?”
“Perhaps your friend has not the time just
now!”
“Did not I tell you that was the reason of our
visit?” he replied. I myself was rather afraid
that this project would fall through. “But time
is up, you must be on the stage when the curtain
rises,” I said. “Good-bye, mademoiselle.”
“No,” he continued, “good-bye till presently.
Is it not so, Camille?”
“Certainly,” she said with a laugh. I saw by
her eyes that she was experiencing a little emotion.
“Allow me to say a word to your friend?” she
added turning to me.
“Good!” I thought. “She is going to reproach
him, and she will be right.” I fell into a melancholy
reverie which contrasted with the place where
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I was, at least as much as did the delicate sensibility
revealed by each of the young actress’
gestures and words. We had only been with her a
quarter of an hour, and in that time the appearance
of the corridor had changed. Feverish haste now
betokened the approaching rise of the curtain and
the fear of being too late. The call-boy went along
knocking at a door here and there. Visitors
hurriedly departed. The game of bezique went
on in a neighbouring dressing-room, that of an
actress who only appeared in the last act.
“Here I am,” Jacques said, interrupting my
meditation by touching me on the shoulder, “let
us get back to our box at once. If Camille does
not see me when she appears on the stage, she will
look for me in Madam de Bonnivet’s box and lose
her power.”
“Why do you amuse yourself by exciting her
jealousy?” I replied. “How can you be so hardhearted?
You pained her just now. She was
angry.”
“Angry?” he cried, “angry? Why she has just
asked me to see her home to-night. Her mother
is not coming for her. Angry? Why women love
teasing. It troubles them at first, but then they
are like all vicious animals, they can only be subdued
by hurting them. I want you now to see her
rival. About the middle of the act Favier goes
off the stage, and I will go to Madam de Bonnivet’s
box and ask permission to present you. You shall
see what a different woman she is.”
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.pb
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER III
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.7
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
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myself 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
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word? 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 manœuvring 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
.pn +1
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replied. “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
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trickery. 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
.pn +1
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gay 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,
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and 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
.pn +1
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of 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
.pn +1
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just 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
.pn +1
.bn 057.png
Duchess, 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
.pn +1
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about 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
.pn +1
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were 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
.pn +1
.bn 060.png
so 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
.pn +1
.bn 061.png
her 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
.pn +1
.bn 062.png
account, 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
.pn +1
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others. 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
.pn +1
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she 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
.pn +1
.bn 065.png
for 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 manœuvre 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
.pn +1
.bn 066.png
why 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
.pn +1
.bn 067.png
this 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 manœuvres. 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.
.pn +1
.bn 068.png
“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
.pn +1
.bn 069.png
to 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
.pn +1
.bn 070.png
sham 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.
.pn +1
.bn 071.png
“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
.pn +1
.bn 072.png
me. 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
.pn +1
.bn 073.png
which 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
.pn +1
.bn 074.png
cruel. 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
.pn +1
.bn 075.png
will 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
.pn +1
.bn 076.png
it 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
.pn +1
.bn 077.png
mother 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
.pn +1
.bn 078.png
he 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
.pn +1
.bn 079.png
who 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,
.pn +1
.bn 080.png
you 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
.nf c
'I feel that I love you.’
.nf-
.pn +1
.bn 081.png
.ni
you don’t know how I sometimes desire to say
this sweet caressing phrase on my own account.”
.pi
“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
.pn +1
.bn 082.png
Jacques 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
.pn +1
.bn 083.png
there 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?”
.pn +1
.bn 084.png
.pb
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER IV
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.7
How distinct the least important words of
this conversation have remained in my
memory with their gay or sad, sentimental or
bantering, disabused or tender intonation! I
could continue to note down pages and pages of
details without weariness. It seems to me, while
writing this upon cold mute paper, that the clock
has gone backwards and it is once more the time
when the conversation ended, too soon for my
liking, and we reached the house in the Rue de
la Barouillére. I can see myself saying good-bye
to Camille before the massive door which a sleepy
porter was very slow in opening. I think I can
hear the sound of the bell and feel the warmth of
her little feverish hand in mine, while I wished her
good-bye and she appeared to me, in the light of
the moon, like an adorable phantom ever disappearing.
She half closes her fine eyes which were
heavy with sleep, she bows her head with a smile,
she puts her finger to her mouth with a malicious
gesture, to remind me to be discreet over the confidences
she had entrusted to me. Her little head
and long cloak disappeared in the darkness and
the door closed with a dull sound.
.pn +1
.bn 085.png
Unconsciously I listened for a moment longer. I
stretched out my hand to clasp hers and felt instead
a metal object, the lamp which was left for her
every evening. A match was struck, a hasty step
sounded, and another door, the staircase door,
closed. That was all, so I went towards home in
the pale moonlight along streets deserted except
for a few stray cats and dogs, a few policemen
on their beats, a belated cab, and a group of young
artists just leaving a café in the Boulevard Saint
Michel, which were the only things which testified
to the existence of life in the great sleeping mansions,
dark convents, the little houses with a single
jet of gas burning, and the black, sinister-looking
hospitals. This quarter is really one of the suburbs
of Paris, though it is so near the densely populated
Boulevards, just as Camille’s peaceful life with her
mother is so near her passionate stage life.
It had only taken us three quarters of an hour
to return from the theatre, though our pace was
unequal, sometimes slow and sometimes rapid, as
if we were hastening over our confidences. It took
me less time to reach the little house on the Boulevard
des Invalides where I live, though I wandered
aimlessly in this deserted part overwhelmed by a
trouble for which I could scarcely blame myself.
That sudden burning of the inner being, that
handling and interminable repetition of phrases
which one has just heard, that obsession of thought
at the same time pleasing and terrifying, that
occupation as if by force by a creature to whom
one was the previous evening and the same day a
.pn +1
.bn 086.png
perfect stranger—these are the signs which denote
the fatal fever, malaria of the soul, which takes
longer to cure than other and more dangerous
maladies.
“A good night’s sleep,” I said to myself, “and
to-morrow these foolish ideas will be gone; besides
she is a friend’s mistress. I know myself. The
thought of their caresses simply would prevent
me from becoming amorous of her, if I desired to.
But I shall not have this desire. She has moved
me this evening in her real life as she moved
me at the theatre, as she would have moved me in
a novel. But that is pure imagination. To-morrow
I shall not think of her, and if I think of her,
I shall not see her nor Molan again. That is all.”
Pure imagination is an expression easily used.
But is there not a profound and very sensible point
by which this imagination touches our heart, is
our heart in fact? When a woman’s grace has
wounded this point, we always discover motives
why we should not remain faithful to the prudent
programme of not seeing her again. The fact was,
I began by not having the good night’s sleep I
promised myself, and when I awakened from my
morning doze I thought of Camille Favier with as
much troubled interest as I had done the evening
before. I at once found a pretext for breaking my
good resolution not to see either her or Molan
again. Had I not promised Jacques to inform him
as to the success or otherwise of his scheme? All
the same, it was not without remorse that about
ten o’clock I set out to fulfil my strange mission.
.pn +1
.bn 087.png
I had forgotten the previous evening that I had
a model coming at ten. A girl called Malvina
came to pose for my never-ending “Psyché
pardonnée.” When I sent her away I heard the
little inner voice, of which on the previous evening
Camille had prettily spoken, whisper: “Coward!
Coward!” But even without the little voice,
did not the presence of this creature demonstrate
to me the absurdity of my incipient sentiment?
Malvina had, too, like Camille, the ideal head for
the primitive Madonna, and she was pleasure personified.
Her mouth, which looked so beautiful
in its silent smile, only opened to retail obscenity.
What a good plan it is never to believe in the bewitching
charm of a face! Fate has warnings like
this for us which we disregard with an obscure
feeling of the irreparable. After Malvina had gone
I looked round my studio, at the unfinished canvas,
my colour box, my palette, and I went out pursued
by their mute reproach. Why did I not listen!
To reach the Rue Delaborde, where Jacques
Molan lived, I had fortunately to traverse a nice
part of Paris, of the sort to distract my attention.
I know it so well from making numerous studies
of it when I was preoccupied, as the critics say
when they are looking on our pictures for an opportunity
to theorize and be modern. That is finished
as far as I am concerned. It has profited me all
the same; for if I no longer think a picture ought to
represent freaks of light without significance, or
bodies of human life without essential value, I have
kept for these studies a keener taste, a more refined
.pn +1
.bn 088.png
sense of certain landscapes, those of the Seine, for
example, the Tuileries, and the Place de la Concorde.
I love them especially in their morning tints which
give them a tender freshness, distinct water-colour
transparencies, with a thrill of alert activity. That
morning, though my nerves were still quivering
with the intoxication of my new-born passion, the
water of the river seemed to me fresher than ever;
the grey-blue of the sky more delicate above the
leafless trees; the water of the fountains more
sparkling with a whiter and more noisy foam. My
over-excited being more readily appreciated the
charm of the trees, houses, and flowing water. I
unconsciously forgot my wise resolution and my
remorse at leaving my work, to picture to myself the
renewal of the soul which a liaison such as the one
satiated Jacques Molan held so cheaply would
instil into me. Then the irresistible demon of
irony took possession of me.
“Yes,” I actually or almost said to myself,
“what a dream it would be to be loved by a woman
like Camille! Just free enough to give long hours
to her lover and not free enough to absorb his time;
enough of an artist to understand the most delicate
and subtle shades of impression; natural enough to
be amused at the Bohemian caprices, which are
so savoury when they are not accompanied by
misery; enthusiastic enough for a constant encouragement
to work to emanate from her, and
too spontaneous, too sincere to ever drive you to
that slavery to success, which is the fatal influence
of so many mistresses and wives. And then what
.pn +1
.bn 089.png
an adorable lover she would be! Was it a rare
tint of soul, which the story she told me yesterday
had, and was it different from the ones in the heads
of her little friends? A rich protector and much
advertisement is the usual ideal of such girls!
The only actress who thinks differently must needs
meet with Molan, the cold machine for producing
prolific copy. But what is the use of my understanding
and appreciating her like this, when I
am on my way to contribute to the closeness of
their intimacy? What absurd chance made me
meet Jacques yesterday evening? That must
happen to me: it is the symbol of our whole lives,
his and mine. I am, or rather am ready to be, the
man who really loves; he is the lover. I have the
sensibility of a real artist, while he achieves works
and reaps the glory of them. Meanwhile I am
wasting a very clear morning and my picture is at
a standstill. Ah, I shall soon be back and I will
send for Malvina. I will work all the afternoon, I
will make up for lost time. Directly my commission
is executed I will hurry away. I am rather curious
to see how the animal is lodged. He must be making
just now from 80,000 to 100,000 francs a year,
and it is a great change from his former position.”
It was a long time since I had called upon my
old friend. While the lift-man whisked me up to
the second floor, where he lived, of a large new house
with bow windows of coloured glass, I recalled the
numerous quarters where I had known this author,
who was such a clever administrator of his wealth
and talents, and ran over in my mind his rapid
.pn +1
.bn 090.png
advance along the highway of Parisan glory.
First of all on leaving college he had a little furnished
room in the Rue Monsieur le Prince. A portrait
of Baudelaire by Félicien Rops and a few bad
medallions by David constituted the personal
furniture of this retreat. The fastidious arrangement
of the books, papers and pens on the table
already testified to the worker’s strong will.
Jacques’ only resource then was a small income
of 150 francs a month allowed him by his only
relative, an old grandmother, who lived in the
Provinces, and to whom he behaved like a grateful
grandson. I saw him weep real tears when she
died, and then he put her into a book. Strange to
say, that was the only one of his books which was
really bad. Could it be that talent of writing is
only nourished by imaginative sensibility, which,
to be realized, has need of expression, whereas real
sensibility exhausts itself and comes to an end
through its own reality? Happily for him, in the
early years of his literary life he only depicted
sentiments which he had not. His first volume,
so elegant and yet so brutal, was, strange to say,
scrawled in this Latin Quarter garret. His joining
the staff of a Boulevard paper and a change of
residence showed that the writer did not intend
to vegetate in the same narrow circle. He took
rooms in the Rue de Bellechasse still on the left
bank of the river, but now very close to the right
bank. The portrait of Baudelaire still remained,
to proclaim his fidelity to his early artistic convictions;
but now it was framed in velvet and hung
.pn +1
.bn 091.png
upon red Adrianople tapestry, which gave to this
retreat an air of a padded shelter. This counter-balanced
the lack of artistic character in the furniture,
which was on the hire system and very solid
and commonplace, without any other pretension
than the quality of its old oak. The noted trader
in literary wares, which Molan was, betrayed himself
by his choice of durable furniture and a well
made desk never likely to need repair. His success
still increased, and the period of the little house
at Passy came, though directly afterwards the
house became unsuitable.
Jacques had not been there eighteen months
when the opulent and final abode of the successful
man took its place. The anteroom where I was
received by a little page in livery was sufficient to
convince me. A commissionaire, whom I seemed
to have seen stationed in my own neighbourhood,
was in attendance. I was shown into a large
smoking-room which adjoined a small study and
contained a case full of rare curios, consisting of old
Chinese lacquer-work, admirable sixteenth century
bronzes, polished boxes, statuettes from Saxony,
and old sweetmeat boxes. The dissimilarity of the
objects expressed Molan’s utilitarian ideas. He
studied the possibility of sale in case of misfortune.
A few pictures decorated the walls, but they were
all modern with the most excessive and extravagant
modernity. Paintings by an obscure contemporary
sometimes turn out a good investment,
for he may be a Millet or a Corot. It is a ticket
in a lottery, but the prize is a good one. Molan
.pn +1
.bn 092.png
bought these pictures for a few pounds from young
painters in distress, and received them as a return
for a little advertisement.
But it was necessary to know him as I knew him
to understand the use of this smoking-room, which
was destined by the fashionable author for show,
for interviews and receptions. Its significant
feature was order, implacable, studied and fastidious
order. Everything displayed this order,
but most of all the arrangement of the books on
the book-shelves. The books themselves were all
the work of young colleagues, who would be flattered
by seeing their works bound in colours
appropriate to their talents, the colourists in red,
the elegists in mauve, and the stylists in Japanese
paper. The brilliant new silver articles, the freshness
of the Havanna carpet and many other little
things showed the eye of a master difficult to please,
whose wishes extended to the smallest detail without
ever being satisfied. The conversation that
the author had with me the previous evening
concerning his investments came back to my mind,
and I thought he had told me the truth. He himself
entered, manicured, shaved, with keen eyes,
a fresh colour, and wearing the most delightful
lounge coat that ever a tailor of genius had made
for a man about town. He had in his hand a quill
pen which he showed me before throwing it into
the fire, saying—
“Have I kept you waiting? I had to finish my
third page. If I do one page more by half-past
twelve I shall have done my day’s work. Four
.pn +1
.bn 093.png
pages a day, whether it is a novel or a play, is my
method,” and pointing out to me a long row of
books not so tastefully bound as the others:
“And that is the result.”
“Can you leave and resume your work when you
please?” I asked him.
“When I like. It is force of habit, you see. I
have regulated my brain as a gas meter is regulated.
Does the comparison scandalize you? You have,
as I have done, meditated upon these words of a
great master: 'Patience is that which in man most
resembles the proceeding which nature employs
in her creations.’ Almost automatic regularity is
the secret of talent! But let us talk of your
errand last evening to Camille. There was much
weeping and gnashing of teeth, was there
not?”
“Not at all,” I replied, rather pleased at being
able to disconcert his fatuity; “she did not even
question me in order not to make me tell lies.”
“Yes,” he said with a shrug of the shoulders,
“that delicacy is just like her. We live in an
amusing time. You meet with a woman of
exquisite sentiment, and a delightfully fine heart.
She turns out to be a poor little actress. Another
woman with an income of 200,000 francs, coming
of a good family, bearing a famous name, beautiful,
and with a position in society, is a bad actress.
But if the little one is romantic, she is shrewdly
romantic. She had scruples about making you
speak, so as not to ask you to betray a friend.
Then she turned to the right place to learn the
.pn +1
.bn 094.png
truth. She sent an express message to Fomberteau
this morning.”
“Did you not foresee that?”
“I reckoned on calling upon her when I went
out. She was too quick for me. Fomberteau
sent her this reply,” and he took a piece of paper
from his pocket. “Imagine Camille as she read
this”—
“'Dear friend, I had no duel to fight. Your
Jacques therefore was not my second. Except
that, all the rest is true. Set your mind at rest
regarding both of us, and as it is press day please
excuse me from coming in person to thank you
for your kind anxiety.’ To this Camille has added
a postscript: 'As you gave me an explanation
yesterday which was not true, I have the right to
another one, the true one, and I am waiting for it.’”
“What time did you get this letter?” I asked
him.
“About twenty-five minutes ago. The messenger
is waiting. I wanted to see you and know what
she said to you. She has lost nothing by waiting.
I am going to reply to her in my best style.”
“I should be curious,” I said, “to know by
what new scheme you will excuse yourself.”
“I!” he replied as he sat down at a little table
and began to write, “by none. I am telling her
that I have not the least explanation to give her,
and I do not wish her to allow herself another time
to play tricks upon me as she did when she sent to
Fomberteau.”
“You will not do that,” I interrupted him
.pn +1
.bn 095.png
quickly. “The poor girl loves you with all her
heart. She could not bear the doubt. She
thought you were lying to her and she wanted to
know the truth. Come, is not that natural?
Had she not the right? Be just. It is so simple to
find another excuse. Rather tell her the truth
as she asks for it; it will, too, be less trouble.”
“There is only one slight objection,” Jacques
replied as he fastened the note, rang the electric
bell to summon the messenger, and gave it to him,
“and it is that I should be perfectly happy if Camille
quarrelled with me. That is, too, another principle
as absolute as the regularity of work. When
a man wishes to break with his mistress, the more
insignificant the motive the better. My progress
is so good in the other direction that I don’t need
her any longer to urge on her rival. As you are
my 'beater,’ and I know that you are as silent as
a tomb, I will tell you everything in spite of those
noble phrases about discretion, more especially as
up to the present this confidence only compromises
me. Last evening I obtained an appointment
from Madam de Bonnivet. You would never guess
the place though, not in a thousand times. At
Pére Lachaise, before the tomb of Musset like the
other girl. You don’t think that is very grand,
do you? From the cemetery to the carriage is
like the sublime to the ridiculous, and it is only one
step, and from the carriage to a place of my acquaintance
is the programme and only another step.
For you know one never ought to take a woman
to one’s own home. Under these circumstances
.pn +1
.bn 096.png
Camille quarrels with me, so much the better!
But don’t look at me as if you would like to say:
'My dear Molan, you are a monster.’”
If I had still doubted the keen sentiment inspired
in me by the charming Camille, the doubt
would have been swept away by the cruel emotion
I experienced at this cynical speech. I could see
the reality of the drama in which I was concerned
as a witness; as in some duels the sight of a life
very dear to him in danger makes the second paler
than the duellist, Little Favier’s passionate love
served Jacques as an attack upon the vanity of the
blasé woman of the world who was coquettish
and coldly perverse without doubt, but also elegant,
envied and rich, and afterwards whom his vanity
and curiosity attracted. The heart of the poor
little actress which had remained naïve and romantic
in spite of his disenchanting existence, her true
heart—which I had felt to be so true, which had
opened with such spontaneity in an hour of inward
suffering—was about to be broken, torn and
crushed between two prides fighting one against
the other—and what prides they were!
This most ferocious and implacable of all prides,
that of an almost great lady and an almost great
author, both gangrened with egoism by their
habitual display, was withered by their constant
and detestable study of the effect produced, without
which a person does not retain the world’s uncertain
prestige. By frightfully certain intuition,
I at once measured the depth of the abyss in
which my friend of the previous evening unknown
.pn +1
.bn 097.png
to herself was plunged. The extreme clearness of
this vision prevented me answering Jacques with
indignation, as he no doubt expected and was
prepared to amuse himself at my simplicity. He
would have chaffed me, and that would have
annoyed me. He would have told me in words what
his enigmatic smile expressed. “If she pleases
you so there is a place for you to take at once as
her consoler.” I can give myself the credit for
not using that ugly expression. But I lay claim
to no other merit. Is there any merit in not profaning
in oneself an image which only pleases when
it is tender and pure? Strange though it may
seem to apply this word to a girl whom I knew to
be the mistress of one of my comrades, I respected
in Camille that foolish illusion by which her twenty-two
years risked on a single card their precious
treasure of delicate dreams, naïve tenderness and
noble chimeras. I respected in her the dream
which she had already made me dream.
During that conversation last evening, the
inmost depths of my melancholy had trembled at
the thought that had I met her a little sooner,
before she gave herself to Molan, understood and
pleased her, perhaps this unreasonable and touching
child would have turned to me in her need to
take up with another artist those ancient and
ridiculed parts of muse and inspirer. What
maker of beauty, however, has not sighed for the
presence near him of a charming woman’s mind,
of a dear and devoted face from which to drink
in courage in times of lassitude, of two weak but
.pn +1
.bn 098.png
steady hands to clasp in his own weary ones, or a
faithful shoulder on which to rest his weary brow.
It was enough to have associated this sigh of regret
for some minutes with the name of Jacques’
mistress for the hope of a common and spiteful
adventure with this poor girl not to need dismissing.
But the fact of my not nourishing a dirty
gallant project did not prevent my sympathy,
which was already unhealthy, growing during this
talk with my comrade. That is why instead of
writing to Malvina the model, according to the
wise plan formed a few hours before, I followed my
illogical visit of the morning by one still more
illogical in the afternoon, and that imprudent day
terminated by a third also foolish visit. An attack
of irrationality was beginning. It is not over yet
as my pen trembled in my hand at recording
Jacques’ brutal phrases. On the point of setting
down the details of these two other episodes which
finished the prologue of this private tragedy, I
had to put down the pen. I had a pain in my
memories, just as a person suffers from a badly-closed
wound. Nevertheless, by a contradiction
which I suffered without being able to explain, a
charm arises from these sorrowful souvenirs, a
magic and an attraction.
The second visit I paid was, as can easily be
guessed, to the poor Blue Duchess herself, as I
had begun to call her in my heart; and I forgot
the pedantic reminiscence which had inspired
Jacques Molan with this name, in making it convey
the tender grace, and the fantastic melancholy of
.pn +1
.bn 099.png
one of Watteau’s dreams which are chimerical
and caressing, ideal and voluptuous. There was
certainly no more difference between the sentimentalism
which this pretty child had ingenuously
confessed to me on the previous evening, and the
practical materialism of her lover, than between
the sumptuous new house in the Place Delaborde
and the third floor in the modest Rue de la Barouillére
where I rang about two o’clock. The faded
tints of the badly painted front harmonized with
the sordidness of the hall, and the glacial chill of
the uncarpeted wooden staircase, the dirty stairs
of which sloped towards the street. An air of
shabby mediocrity extended over the old building,
and the common visiting cards nailed to the doors,
at which I was curious enough to look, revealed
what sort of tenants dragged out their existence
there. These poor houses abound in the old streets
near the Faubourg Saint Germain, and as the
highest rent is 1,200 francs they are the last haven
open to all the waifs of humble middle-class virtue.
While I listened to the bell and the sound of approaching
footsteps all my impressions were
moved at this evidence of sentimental analogy
which touched me still more. I wished to discover
in the fact that the already well-known
actress continued to live here a proof that she had
not lied to me when she spoke of her mother’s and
her own peaceful life, an obvious sign of a total
absence of vanity and an indisputable evidence of
her pride. If she had ceased to be modest, she
had not sold herself for luxury. She had given
.pn +1
.bn 100.png
herself to love and adoration. Alas! I was very
quickly to learn that the temptation for great
Parisan elegance, too natural to a fine young creature
when she has known and lost it, still composed
one of the elements of the moral drama which was
being enacted in her.
While these thoughts were in my mind the door
opened. An old servant, very simply dressed, after
some hesitation told me she would see if the ladies
were at home and showed me into a little drawing-room.
It was full of furniture, too full in fact.
If I had raised the covers from the furniture I should
have seen that the quality of the upholstery and
the gilded wood betokened former opulence. A
beautiful tapestry covered one of the walls. It
had been necessary to double it up to adapt it to
the size of the room, the ceiling of which I could
almost reach with my cane. The grand piano, the
great bronze clock, and the too lofty candelabra
had also come from a financier’s mansion. These
mute witnesses of vanished splendour told by their
presence alone of the melancholy of the ruin with
more eloquence than any phrases could do. Besides,
I had scarcely time to meditate upon what
Claude Larcher, in his evil days of pedantry, had
called the psychology of this furniture before a
woman of about fifty entered the drawing-room.
I could see at a glance that she was Camille’s
mother.
Madam Favier at an interval of a quarter of a
century resembled her child with a similarity of
features which became almost sad in its aging and
.pn +1
.bn 101.png
deformation. There is something very sorrowful
in finding oneself face to face with the anticipated
spectre of a fine young beauty, whom one admires
and is beginning to love. Still the mother’s and
daughter’s expression were so different that the
likeness was at once corrected. Just as Camille’s
blue eyes, with their pupils in turn very clear or
very dark, very animated and very languishing,
revealed a passionate inequality of soul, and profound
troubles, so did the peaceful and sluggish
azure of Madam Favier’s eyes tell of passive
serenity, resigned acceptance, and above all happiness.
This woman, the widow of the stock-broker,
whose life ended in a tragedy, was the
image of internal peace. Seeing her as I saw her,
a little fat, with the fresh colour of health in her
full cheeks, and if not elegant at any rate very tasteful
in a dress which was almost fashionable, it was
impossible at first to imagine that this woman had
endured the trials of a drama, of ruin and suicide,
and that this tranquil and irreproachable dowager
was simply an actress’ mother.
But we have changed all that, as my friend used
to say. Did I myself look like a painter who
believed in the ancient traditions, or did my comrades?
Does the aspiring clubman, dressed like
a tailor’s fashionplate as Jacques Molan, look
any more like Henry Murger’s Bohemians? But
do we not live in the days when a successful play
brings in an income for years equal to the capital
and revenue of a farm in Beauce, when the portrait
of an American brings in 15,000, 20,000, or 30,000
.pn +1
.bn 102.png
francs, and when an associate of the Comédie
Française draws the salary of an Ambassador
before retiring with the red ribbon in his button-hole,
while actresses on tour abroad are received
at monarch’s receptions. The barrier of prejudices
or principles which separated the artistic life from
the world of society has been broken down, to the
applause of the democrats and progressives? The
example of Jacques and my studies have convinced
me that it is on the contrary one of the worst errors
of the period. The artist has always gained by
being treated almost like an outcast. His natural
taste for the brilliant, which is the inevitable ransom
of his powers of imagination, so soon turns to
vanity when it is the dupe of decorum, luxury
and the praises of the smart woman in particular,
which is also a flattery irresistible to his self-respect
and senses! When he does not succumb to the
temptation, he goes to the other excess, quite as
natural to this irritable class and no less dangerous,
that of revolted and misanthropic pride.
But I am falling into a great failing of mine, that
of indefinite and never-ending reverie. Let us go
back to that which remains the true corrective of
all vices, intellectual and otherwise, “Reality.”
So I was sitting facing the respectable Madam
Favier, in the drawing-room with its covered up
furniture, with a rather sheepish look at finding
myself with the mother when I had come to see
the daughter. The widow, however, soon reassured
me as she entertained me with commonplace conversation
suitable to her appearance and birth.
.pn +1
.bn 103.png
I have found out since that she was the daughter
of a small business man in the north, and had been
married for her beauty by the romantic father of
the romantic Camille after a chance meeting.
“Camille is coming directly,” she said to me.
“The dressmaker is with her trying a dress on.
The poor child is not very well to-day. Her profession,
sir, is a very trying one, and she wants a
rest already. We were wrong not to go to the seaside
this year. Do you know Yport, sir? It is
very pretty, and very quiet, but we have been
there six summers. I like, when I go into the
country, to go to a familiar place. You are so
much better treated if you do, and feel more at
home. When my dear husband was alive we
spent two months every year in Switzerland. We
always went on July 16 and came back on September
15. I have never been there since, for it would
bring sad memories back to my mind. Have you
come to talk to Camille about her portrait?”
“Has she spoken about it to you then? She
has not forgotten?” I said.
“No, certainly not,” her mother answered,
“and I was very pleased and astonished when
she told me, for it is very difficult to get her to sit
for her portrait. Did you think of showing
Camille’s portrait at the annual exhibition of
pictures? It will be an excellent thing, I think,
for you, and not bad for her. We are waiting,
before moving back to our old neighbourhood
where we have a few friends, till Camille has signed
a definite engagement. The Théâtre-Français
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has offered her one, but as they let her go after
she had won two prizes, she has been advised to
make them pay her a large salary now she is
famous. I am willing for her to do so; but I tell
her that the house of Moliére is to the other
theatres what a great shop like the Louvre or
the Bon Marché is to one belonging to a small
retailer.”
I am not quite sure I am reproducing these
phrases in their right order. But on looking at
them I am very sure of their tenor, and more
so still of the mind which inspired them, as well
as the phrases which followed. Poor Madam
Favier was so simple as to be sometimes almost
common, and so trusting as to be almost loquacious.
Her mind was a very solid and sensible
one and that of a woman who had retained her
good sense through her ruin. This phenomenon
is rarer even than sentiment in an actress. Usually
these sudden falls from the Olympus of opulence
have as a result a moral bewilderment which last
for the rest of life. Ruined people seem to lose
with their money every faculty of adaptation to
the narrow circle of activity in which their social
downfall imprisons them. It is particularly so
when their wealth has only been an episode between
two periods of poverty.
This alternation of situations is like a phantasmagoria
in which judgment is warped. To have
withstood such a shock Madam Favier must have
been absolutely, as her youthful smile, her fresh
cheeks, and the harmonious lines of her face showed
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her to be, a simple creature tranquil in her positivism,
and quite the opposite of this girl whose future
she foresaw as she would have foreseen the future
of a son who had joined the army. Her steps
from the Conservatoire to the Odeòn, Vaudeville
and Comédie Française were fixed in this good
woman’s mind with a regularity which was the
more astonishing because her education had been
such as to make her think of another type of destiny
for a woman. How had such a revolution been
accomplished in her mind? Is it necessary to
explain that there are certain natures whose
primordial instinct is to model themselves on
circumstances, just as the instinct of others is to
struggle and rebel against them? The latter case
was that of the poor Blue Duchess. This essential
difference between their two characters had prevented
any real intimacy between the two women.
They had not and could not have real intercourse.
I realized this only too well when after ten minutes
conversation with her mother, I saw Camille enter
with a pale face and eyes red from weeping, for her
trouble was so obvious, and yet her mother never
even, suspected it!
“It is your turn to try on now, mother,” she
said. “We will wait for you. M. la Croix has
a few minutes to spare us I am sure.” But when
the good lady had shut the door she said
“Have you seen Jacques?”
“I called on him this morning,” I replied.
“Then you know that I am aware of everything?”
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“I know you wrote to Fomberteau,” I replied
evasively.
“You know, too, your friend’s answer, when
I asked for an explanation of his deception? He
has sent you to find out for him what impression
his infamous note has produced upon me? Now,
confess that is so, it will be more straightforward.”
“Why do you judge me to be like that, mademoiselle?”
I said, displaying grief which she could see
was sincere, for she looked at me in astonishment,
while even I was surprised at my own words:
“You were more just to me. You understand
that sometimes silence is neither an approbation
nor a complicity. It is true that Jacques did not
conceal his sorry scheme nor his note from me. I
did not hide from him what I thought of his harshness,
and if I come here it is of my own accord, under
the impulse of a sympathy which I admit I have
no right to feel. We have only been friends for
twenty-four hours and yet I feel that sympathy.
You spoke to me with such a noble outpouring
of the heart, with such touching confidence that
henceforth, I thought, we cannot be strangers.
I felt that you were unhappy and I came to you
simply and naturally. If it was an indiscretion
you have thoroughly punished me for it.”
“Forgive me,” she said in different tones with
an altered look as she stretched out her little burning
hand to me. “I am suffering and that makes
me unjust. I, too, though I hardly know you, feel
too keen a sympathy for you to doubt yours.
But this note from Jacques has wounded me and
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he really has gone too far. He knows that I love
him and he thinks he can do as he pleases with
me. He is mistaken. He does not know where
he is hurting me by playing with my heart in the
way he is doing!”
“Do not be enraged at what is only a burst of
anger in him,” I said, full of apprehension. “You
wrote to Fomberteau. For the moment Jacques
was wounded. He wrote most unkindly to you,
but I am sure he regrets it by this time.”
“He?” she cried with a nasty laugh. “If
you are saying what you think, you hardly know
him. That which causes me the most pain, please
understand me, is not what he has done to me,
though that makes me suffer cruelly, it is what he
pretends to himself to be from the idea I had of
him. I put him so high, so high! I saw in him
a being apart from others, some one rare, as rare
as his talent! Yet I find him like the lovers of all
my theatre companions, the worst of their lovers,
those who have not even the courage of their
infidelities and conceal them by girlish untruths,
those to whom the love given to them is nothing
more than vanity, a woman’s sentiment to be put in
the button-hole like a flower. But come, my passion
blinds me no longer. That rends me, and he, who
is so intelligent, does not even suspect the nature
of my suffering. Don’t you think that I guessed
that creature Madam de Bonnivet invited him to
supper last evening, or else to see her home, or
worse still? We know what fashionable women
are when they once begin. We have about us
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the same men as they do, and they tell us their
stories. They are sometimes haughty wretches;
and Jacques accepted her invitation because she
has a house, horses, pictures, dresses by Worth,
50,000 franc necklaces, and 30,000 franc furs.
But I, too, some day when I like, will have luxury
since that is what pleases this great writer with
the soul of a snob. I have only to accept Tournade
as my lover, the big fellow with a face like a
coachman whom you saw in my dressing-room,
and I shall have a house as good as Madam Bonnivet’s
barrack, diamonds, dresses by Worth,
carriages and horses. I will have them, I will
have them, and he shall know it. He will be the
man who has turned me into a kept woman, a
courtesan, and I will tell him so and shout it after
him. Do you think I dare not?”
“No, you will not dare,” I replied; “even to say
it raises a feeling of disgust in you.”
“No,” she replied in a dull voice, “you must
not think me better than I really am. There are
days when that glittering life tempts me. I have
been rich, you see. Up to the age of twelve or
thirteen I was surrounded by all the luxuries it
was possible for a father making 100,000 francs a
year on the Stock Exchange to give his only
daughter. Ah well, at times I miss that luxury.
The mediocrity of this drab, vulgar and commonplace
existence disgusts and oppresses me. When
I am waiting for a tram with a waterproof and
overshoes to save a cab fare of 35 sous, I sometimes
get impatient, and those tempting words, 'If you
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liked,’ come into my mind. Ah! when I have
a soul full of happiness, when I can think that I
love and am loved, that I am realizing and carrying
out the romance of my youth, that Jacques clings
to me as I do to him, and that I shall remain
mingled in his life and work, then it is an intoxication
to answer myself: 'If I liked? But I do
not like.’ I smile at my beloved poverty because
it is my beloved chimera. But when I have
terrible evidence, as I did to-day, that I am the
dupe of a mirage, that this man has no more heart
than the wood of this furniture”—and she struck
with her clenched fist the table upon which she
was leaning while she talked to me—“then I make
a different reply to the temptation. 'If I liked?’
I repeat and I reply: 'It is true, and I am very
foolish not to like!’ I shall not always be so.”
“You will always be so,” I said as I took her
hand again, “because this foolishness simply consists
in having what you believe Jacques has not,
I mean a heart. But then he has one of a sort,”
I added, “and you will be of that opinion this
evening or to-morrow morning.”
“You do not know me,” she replied with a
frown upon her pretty forehead and a tremor of
hatred around her fine mouth, which had become
bitter again. “He will have to humble himself
and wait days and days for his pardon. Yesterday
you only saw me as the weak and amorous woman.
There is another side to my character, the bad
side. You will find it out. There is another
characteristic, too, pride; but don’t be any the less
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my friend,” she went on, introducing a subtle
touch of melancholy into her anger. The grace
of this sudden change of front brought the shadow
of a sad smile to her face. She wiped away with
her handkerchief two large tears, and added with
a shrug of the shoulders in a childish tone which
contrasted graciously, too, with the tragic discourse
which had just preceded it: “I hear
mother coming back. I don’t want her to see that
I have been crying. As I am ashamed of lying to
her, let us do so thoroughly.”
What a conversation this was for a man to hear
who, as I, since the previous evening, had
been invaded by the most passionate interests,
and by an emotion so keen that it was real love!
During the hours of that afternoon of confidences
I could do nothing but ask myself: “Was she
sincere? Would it be possible for despair to make
her take that horrible course?” I could see in
my mind that fat Tournade, and the gleam of the
eyes of that horrible being standing out from his
red face. I discerned now on reflection a will I
had not realized on the previous evening, that of
the rich and patient rake who is weary of play
and fastens himself upon a particular woman. At
the same time I could see Jacques Molan as I had
left him that morning, and his look when he had
spoken of his scheme for a rupture. But it was
impossible that he could suspect the responsibility
he was incurring. I tried to demonstrate to
myself that there was more affectation than real
perversity in his nature as a literary man and that
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it was inoffensive. It is always childish for a
man to make such a parade of himself, even when,
as in his case, it was diplomatic and calculated.
Was he not better than his attitudes and paradoxes?
Who knows? In telling him simply and frankly
my impression of the evil he could do this poor
girl, should I not touch in him a chord of remorse?
There is, however, a sentimental honour, a probity,
trivial but strictly accurate, in affairs of the heart, as
there is professional honour and probity in money
matters. How many people anarchists in theory
recognize in practice this pecuniary probity!
They preach the suppression of inheritance, and
they would not rob you of a farthing in a business
transaction. Why had not Jacques too a fund
of scruples and probity in the presence of an
obviously bad action to be committed or not?
This reasoning resulted, after weighing the pros
and cons, after resolving to speak to him and then
proving to myself the ridiculousness of doing so, in
my once more, about six o’clock, crossing the
threshold of his house in the Place Delaborde, only
to discover that Molan was not there. I went to
dinner hoping to meet him as I had done the previous
evening; I did not do so. Seeing the impossibility
of meeting him, I wanted at least to have
another talk with the woman who had been the
cause of my fruitless search, the seductive Camille
Favier, whose frail silhouette, blue eyes and emotional
smile, pursued me with an obsession much
more irresistible than my pity justified. That
was the pretext I found as I made my way to
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the Vaudeville. I reached the theatre even before
the end of the first act. My weakness inflicted
upon me a feeling of shame, which made me hesitate
about entering. I can see myself now walking
round the entrance, first of all looking at the staircase
leading to the theatre and then at the stage
door in the Chaussée d’Antin. At last I made
up my mind to enter by the latter door, and as I
did so the audience were coming out in the
interval. I ran up against Jacques himself.
“Are you going to see Camille?” he asked with
a heartiness through which I discerned malice, and
I believe I blushed as I replied—
“No, I am running after you.”
“You have come to plead her cause, I am sure,”
he said as he took my arm. “I know you had
a talk with her this afternoon and even defended
me. I thank you, for it would have been quite
legitimate for you to try and profit by the situation.
Only you are an honourable man. The cause is
won and we are so reconciled, your friend and I,
that to-morrow she is coming to visit me in my
'Abode of Love,’ as your friend Larcher calls it.”
“What of Madam de Bonnivet?” I asked him,
surprised at this unexpected change of front.
“Madam de Bonnivet is nothing but a simpleton,
a woman of the world in all her horror. She kept
the appointment at Pére Lachaise. She came
there with the intention of making me climb to
the top of the yew trees between which we walked.
She played the coquette there more coldly than
in her own drawing-room. As I don’t like to be
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laughed at, we separated after what was almost a
quarrel.”
“So Camille benefits by the desire rejected by
the other woman?” I interrupted. “That is
what is called a 'transfer’ in the money market.”
“No, not that,” he said as he shook his head.
“A man’s heart is more complicated than that.
After seeing Madam de Bonnivet to her carriage,
for she had the audacity, or if you prefer it, the
precaution, to come to the rendezvous in her
private carriage, I told her in English the astonishing
phrase Lord Herbert Bohun used to Madam
Éthorel when he had the audacity to make a
declaration to her on his second visit, and which
is the finest example of insolence and fatuity I
know! 'You know I shan’t give you another
chance.’ I raised my hat too tranquilly for the
fool to think I was sincere. But I was. I lit a
cigar, reaching the Boulevard on foot with a
quickness which surprised even myself. I made
the discovery that not only I did not love this
woman, but that she really displeased me. With
her a visit to my bachelor’s apartments, the usual
theatre of my pleasures, would have been a sport
which flattered my vanity without a doubt, but
still an unpleasant job. She is, then, quaint and
pretentious. Then the image of the other one
came into my mind, and this infidelity which I
had almost committed against her made her seem
adorable by comparison, so adorable that I at
once went into a café to write to my pretty Camille
a letter of reconciliation. I would have given my
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author’s fees for that evening for Queen Anne to
have seen me, for without a doubt she believed I
was in some corner shedding the tears of wounded
love and humiliated vanity. That would be like
me, would it not?”
“Did Mademoiselle Favier answer your note?”
I asked.
“A six-page letter which is a masterpiece, just
like everything she writes to me—five and a half
pages to tell me she would never forgive me, and
the last half-page to forgive me. It is a classic!
But where are you going? I believe you were
going to see her.”
“I repeat that I was looking for you,” I replied.
“I have found you, but what I had to tell you
you have found out. You are doing her justice
and have done so to the other one. Your lover’s
quarrel is over. You are reconciled and happy.
There is nothing left for me to do but bless you.”
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.pb
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER V
.sp 2
.dc 0.0 0.7
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
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was 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,
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and 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
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matters 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
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upon 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
.pn +1
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of 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
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by 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
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of 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
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smile 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
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my 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
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not 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.
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What 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.
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Directly 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.
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“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 manœuvring 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;
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that 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
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are 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.
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“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 naïveté with
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which 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,
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.bn 133.png
and 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
.pn +1
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hypnotized 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
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passion, 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
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embarrassment. 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?
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How 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
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the 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
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spangled 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
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I 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’ manœuvre. 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
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Biblical 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
.pn +1
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francs, 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
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along 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
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provoke 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,
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warn 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
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overworked 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
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people, 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,
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I 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?”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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Here 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 naïve 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
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as 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 François I, where
he lived, with this sinister warning.
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.pb
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER VI
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.7
“Ah! did he work the infallible pistol trick
on you?” Jacques said with a burst of
his loudest laughter when we met the following day.
“That is very good. He looked you in the face
to make you understand that if you court Madam
de Bonnivet, you run the risk of getting in your
head one of the bullets with which the husband
every day salutes the sheet-iron man at the range.
He did better with me. He took me to see the
targets.”
This conversation took place at the breakfast-table,
for Jacques had called on the following morning
as soon as his four pages were finished to ask
for the classic egg and cutlet, a thing he had never
done before. This curious haste proved to me how
interested he was in the success of his manœuvre
in diplomatic gallantry. I had not received him
very cordially.
“Tricks like that are not very attractive,” I
said to him; “you force me to accept an invitation
to dinner which is odious to me, on purpose to
meet you there, and then you do not turn up.”
“But you must admit that it was very jolly!”
he replied in such a gay tone that I had not the
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heart to be angry any more. After he had very
minutely questioned me as to the diverse attitudes
of different persons, concluding with the ridiculous
warning of Senneterre the Jealous, he said seriously—
“You noticed nothing in particular then, even
you who know how to see? Yes, you painters do
not understand, but you know how to see. Nothing
in the intercourse of Machault and Queen Anne, for
instance?”
“Stop,” I replied; “certainly when he warned
me that Senneterre had met you, Machault gave
me a singular look. Why do you ask me that?
Is he paying court to her too?”
“I think, if she has already risked a false step,
it is with Machault.”
“With Machault?” I cried. “With Machault,
the drunken colossus, the gladiator in black, the
fencing machine, while she herself is such a fine
woman, though a little too angular for my taste,
and so aristocratic? It is not possible. The
other day, too, you told me that you thought she
was true to her husband.”
“Ah, my dear fellow!” he said with a nod,
“you do not know that when one wishes to find
out of whom an ideal woman, a siren, a madonna, an
angel, is the mistress, one must first think of the
most vulgar person of her own circle. There has
been a good deal of gossip about her, I know, and
she knows that I know. I have not concealed the
fact from her. Consequently, the presence of
Machault last evening was designed to produce
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upon me exactly the same effect which I produced
upon her by my absence. I took the initiative, and
I was right. Besides,” he added with almost
hateful acrimony in his voice, “one of two things,
either she has already had lovers and she is a jade.
In that case I should be the greatest of fools if I
did not have her in my turn. Or else she has not
had lovers and is a coquette who will not make me
go the same way as the others.”
“If you are not wasting your time,” I replied to
him, “I shall be very surprised. I studied her
yesterday, and as you admit the eagle eyes of our
profession, let me tell you that I have diagnosed in
her the signs of the most complete absence of temperament,
which are a little throat, small hips, skin
without down, thin lips, the lower one receding a
little, hard and lean nostrils, and metallic voice.
I would wager that she has no palate, and that she
does not know what she eats or drinks. She is a
creature all intellect without a shadow of sensuality.”
“But these cold women have just as many
intrigues as the others!” he interrupted. “You
do not know that class then? They give themselves,
not to surrender themselves, but to take
others. When it is necessary for them to grip a
lover tightly, a lover they need, they do so with
their person the more easily since the pleasure of it
is a matter of indifference to them. They know
that possession detaches some men and attaches
others. It is simply a question of persuading them
that one is of the kind who become attached
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in this way, when one is not. Then, too, there are
cold women who are hunters, and then! Sometimes
I place Madam de Bonnivet in the first group,
sometimes in the second. I do not pretend to
solve the riddle of this sphinx. But failing the
answer to the riddle of this sphinx, I will have the
sphinx in person, or my name is not Jacques
Molan. Then, as you have helped me and are just,
you shall have a reward. You will no longer
reproach me with that dinner in the Rue des
Écuries d’Artois. You shall be paid for your
unpleasant task. What time is it? Half-past
one. Prepare to see in ten minutes Mademoiselle
Camille Favier herself enter with her respectable
mother to arrange about the portrait. Is not that
good of me? But I have been better still, and I
have not told her where you dined yesterday.”
He had hardly told me of this visit, so disturbing
to me, in his joking way, when the servant said
that two ladies were waiting for me in the studio.
God! how my heart beat when I was about to
enter the presence of the woman I had sworn to
avoid! How my heart beats even now at my
vivid and precise recollection of this meeting long
ago! I believe that I can see the two of them,
mother and daughter, in the crude light of that
bright January day which filled, by means of the
large glass bay, the studio with a cold pale light.
Madam Favier, more placid and smiling than ever,
walked from canvas to canvas, looking at them
with her great laughing eyes. She would suddenly
ask me what was the net cost of a picture, and what
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did it fetch, with as much simplicity as if it were
a question of a dress or a curio. Camille sat down
opposite a copy of “L’Allégorie du Printemps,”
which I had made in Florence so lovingly. In the
long and supple dancers of the divine Sandro, who
lent with tender grace their blonde and dreamy
though bitter faces, the little Blue Duchess could
recognize her sisters. She did not see them, absorbed
as she was in a memory, the nature of which
I could easily guess, seeing that she had not acted
the previous evening, and had found a way to
spend that free evening with Jacques, thanks to a
complaisant cousin. It hurt me to detect around
her tender, almost blood-shot eyes a pearly halo of
lassitude, and on her mouth tremors which told
of happiness. But what made me feel worse still
was that Jacques, directly he came in, copied
the photographs I had used to make my dream-picture
of her—that chimerical picture of my week
of folly, which happily I had put aside and well
concealed; and at the moment Camille was greeting
me with a slightly embarrassed smile, he displayed
those instructive pictures and said maliciously—
“You can see, mademoiselle, that if Vincent
has not been to see you again as he promised, he
has not forgotten you.”
“It was to better prepare the studies for my
future picture,” I stammered. “The great painter
Lenbach does so.”
“Who contradicted you?” Molan went on
even more maliciously.
.pn +1
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“Oh! you have not picked out the best ones,”
the mother interrupted as she showed her daughter
the photograph I loved best. “You see,” she said,
“that in spite of your prohibition, this picture which
is such a bad likeness of you is still being sold.
Come, now, is it anything like her? I ask you to
decide the point, M. La Croix.”
“I was three years younger,” Camille said,
“and he did not know me then.” Taking the
photograph she looked at it in her turn. Then
putting it by the side of her face so that I could see
the model and the portrait at the same time, she
asked me: “Have I changed very much?”
Poor little Blue Duchess, the sincere lover of
the least loving of my friends, romantic child
stranded by an ironical caprice of fate in the profession
most fatal to mystery, silence and solitude,
when the pretty, delicate flowers of your woman’s
soul needed a warm atmosphere of protective
intimacy, say, did you suspect my emotion when
I looked at your face, paled by the pleasures of
the previous evening, smiling at me thus by the
side of another face, the face of the innocent child
you were once, when I might have loved you as my
betrothed wife? No, certainly you did not. For
you were good; and if you had guessed what I
suffered, you would not have imposed upon me
this useless ordeal. You would not on that visit
have arranged with me the details of that series of
sittings which began the following day and were
for me a strange and sorrowful Calvary! Yes,
however, perhaps you did guess, for there was sadness
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and pity in your smile—sorrow for yourself
and pity for me. You saw so clearly from that
moment that I bore an affection for you which was
too quickly awakened to be the reasonable and
simple friendship of a comrade! You saw it
without wishing to admit it, for love is an egoist.
Yours had need of being related, to be encouraged
in its hopes, comforted in its doubts, and pitied in
its grief. Who would have rendered you the
service of lending himself as a complaisant echo
of your passion like I did? If it cost me my rest
for weeks and weeks; if on your departure from
my studio after each sitting, just as after your
first visit, I remained for hours struggling against
the bitterness of which I have not yet emptied my
heart, you did not wish to know, and I had not the
strength to condemn you to do so. After all, you
made me feel, as Jacques used to say, and there will
come a time perhaps when, passing my memories
in review, I shall bless you for the tears I shed,
sometimes as if I were no more than eighteen, on
your account, who did not see them. Had you seen
them, you would have refused to believe in them,
to preserve the right to initiate me into the inner
tragedy in which you then lived, and which by a
counter stroke, alas! was not spared me.
If I allowed these impressions to go on, I should
fill the pages with groans like this, and never reach
the tragedy itself, or rather the tragic comedy,
in which I played the part of the ancient Chorus,
the ineffectual witness of catastrophies, who deplored
them without preventing them. Let us
.pn +1
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employ the only remedy for this useless elegy.
Let us note the little facts clearly. I have mentioned
that this visit of mother and daughter had
as its object the arrangement of a series of sittings.
I have also mentioned that the first of these sittings
was placed for the following day.
On the following day Camille arrived, not
accompanied by her mother, but alone. It was
so almost always during the four weeks which this
painting lasted, but during the whole of this time
the work did not succeed in interesting the artist
in me, for my attention was too much absorbed by
the adorable child’s confidences, confidences which
were ceaselessly interrupted, repeated and prolonged
by the interruptions till the details were
multiplied and complicated to infinity. Yes,
many little facts come into my mind in trying to
recall these private sittings which were always
somewhat bitter to me. This liberty proved to
me how many favourable opportunities her intrigue
with Jacques had obtained. Too many little
scenes recur to me, and too many multiple and
over-lapping impressions which my memory is
apt to confuse. It is like a tangled skein of thread
I am trying in vain to unravel. Let us see if I can
reduce them to some kind of order in classifying
them.
These recollections, which are so numerous and
so similar that they become mixed, are distributed,
when I reflect, into three distinct groups; and
these groups mark the stages of this purely moral
drama, in which Camille, Jacques and Madam de
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Bonnivet were engaged, in its progress to a real
and terrible drama. When I reflect again, it was
the difference between these three groups of emotions
which justified me in not making a success
of this portrait. Had I been an artist who was
an imperturbable master of execution, in place of
being what I am, half an amateur, always uncertain,
and a sort of “Adolphe” of the brush, all intention
and touches, all scratching out and alteration, I
should not have been able to execute a unique
canvas under such conditions. It was not a woman
I had before me during these too long and too short
sittings, it was three women.
One after the other I will resuscitate these three
women, I will make them pose before my eyes,
according to the taste of my memory, as if the
irreparable, and such an irreparable, were not
between us! One after the other they come back
to sit in this studio where I am writing these lines.
One after the other I listen to them telling me,
the first her joy, the second her sorrow, and the
third the fury of her jealousy and the fever of her
indignation; and yet to-day I do not know before
which of the three women, and during which of
the three periods I suffered the most, my suffering
being the greater because I was obliged to be
silent; and behind each of the confidences little
Favier gave me, whether she were happy, melancholy,
or angry, I could see the hard silhouette
of the elegant rival, to whose caprices this joy,
sorrow or anger were subordinated. Oh, God!
what punishment for hybrid sentiments, those
.pn +1
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sentiments which have not the courage to go to
the end in the logic of sacrifice or gratification,
I experienced during those sittings! But still I
would like to begin them again. I am writing of
misery again and composing more elegies. Let
me get on with the facts, facts, facts!
The first period, that of joy, was not of long
duration. The scene which marked its culminating
point took place on the fourth of these sittings.
The scene, though a fine expression, merely consisted
of a conversation without any other incident
than Camille’s entry into the studio with a bunch
of roses—large, heavy roses of all shades—some pale
with the dewy pallor of her face, others blonde
and almost of the same golden tint as her beautiful
hair, others as red as her pretty mouth with its
lower lip so tightly rolled, others dark, which
by contrast appeared to light up her bloodless
colour that morning. The question was, which of
these flowers I should choose for her to hold in her
hand. I wished to paint her in an absolute unity
of tone, like Gainsborough’s blue boy. She had
to stand wearing a dress of blue gauze, that of her
part, with blue silk mittens, blue velvet at the neck,
blue ribbons at the sleeves, her feet in blue satin
shoes, with no jewels but sapphires and turquoises
on a ground of peacock blue velvetine, with no
head-dress but the blonde cloud of her fine hair,
with the back of one of her hands resting upon her
supple hip, while she offered a rose with her other
hand.
“It is my youth that I will offer Jacques,” she
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said to me that morning while we studied the pose
together; “my twenty-two years and my happiness.
I am so happy now!”
“You don’t experience any more evil temptations,
then?” I asked.
“Do you remember?” she replied, laughing
and blushing at the same time. “No, I don’t feel
them now. I turned Tournade out of my dressing-room,
and pretty quickly, I can assure you. But
do you know what pleases me most? I never see
that ugly woman now; you remember, Madam de
Bonnivet. She does not come to the theatre, and
the other day Jacques ought to have dined with
her, but he did not go. I am quite sure of that, for
he wrote his letter of excuse in my presence. It
was the evening Bressoré could not act: there was
a change of bill and I was free for the evening.
I wanted so badly to ask him if we could spend it
together, but I did not dare. He suggested it
himself, and now every day I have a fresh proof of
his tenderness. He is coming for me presently to
take me to lunch. Ah! how I love him, how I
love him! How proud I am of loving him!”
What answer could I make to such phrases,
and what could I do but allow her to remain enraptured
by this illusion as she was enraptured by
the scent of the roses which she inhaled, closing
as she did so her clear azure eyes—another note of
blue in the harmony which I sought? What
could I do but suffer in silence at the idea that this
recrudescence of tenderness in the sensual and
complex Molan was, without doubt, a trick. Some
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harshness on the other woman’s part was certainly
the cause of it. Camille took for the marks of
passionate ardour the fever of excitation into which
Madam de Bonnivet had thrown Jacques without
gratifying it. When a woman has, as the
pretty actress so nicely put it, her twenty years of
age and her youth to offer, she cannot guess that
in her arms her lover is thinking of another woman,
and exalting his senses by her image! That morning
I kept silent as to what I knew. To make her
laugh and keep myself from weeping, I told her the
story of a real duchess of the eighteenth century,
who wished to give her miniature to her lover before
he took the field with the troops. She went to the
painter with her eyes so fatigued by the tender folly
of her good-bye that the painter declared he would
not continue the portrait if she did not become
more virtuous, for her beauty had changed so.
“Ah!” the duchess said as she put her arms
round her lover’s neck in the painter’s presence,
“if that is the case, then life is too short to have
one’s portrait painted.”
“Ah! how true what he has just been saying is,
Jacques!” Camille cried as she went to meet
Jacques who came in at that moment. I can see
her now leaning her loving head upon the knave’s
shoulder, the latter being condescending, indulgent,
almost tender, because I was there to assist at this
foolish explosion of affection. This picture is a
very good résumé of the first period which might
be entitled: Camille happy!
Camille sad! That was title of the second
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period which began almost immediately and lasted
much longer. The scene which sums up the period
in my memory is one quite unlike that of the roses,
the scent of which she inhaled with such confident
ecstasy, and that of the kiss she gave Jacques with
such charming shamelessness. This time it was
about the eleventh or twelfth sitting. I had noticed
for some days that my model’s expression had
changed. I had not dared to question her, for
I was just as much afraid to learn that Jacques
treated her well as that he treated her badly. That
morning she was to come at half-past ten, and it
was not ten yet. I was engaged in looking through
a portfolio of drawings after the old Florentine
masters, without succeeding in engrossing myself
in their study. That is what takes the place of
opium with me in my bad moments. Usually
merely looking at these sketches recalls to me the
frescoes of Ghirlandajo, of Benozzo, of Fra Filippo
Lippi, of Signorelli, and many others; I find intact
in me that fervour for the ideal which made me
almost mad in my youth, when I went from little
town to little town, from church to church, and
from cloister to cloister.
In those days a half-effaced silhouette of the
Madonna, hardly visible upon a bit of wall eaten
up by the sun, was enough to make me happy for
an afternoon. The profiles of virgins dreamed by
the old Tuscans, the bent figures of their young
lords in their puffy doublets, the minute horizons
in their vast landscapes, with battlements and
campaniles upon the eminences, roads bordered
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by cypress trees and valleys glistening with running
water—all this charm of primitive art was there
imprisoned in this portfolio of sketches and ready
to emerge from it to charm my fantasy. But my
imagination was elsewhere, occupied with this
problem in æsthetics very far distant from the
frescoes and convents of Pisa or Sienne. “Camille
was very sad again yesterday. Has the absurd
Jacques resumed with the absurd Madam de
Bonnivet?” That was what I was asking myself,
instead of by the help of my sketches revisiting
Italy, dear divine Italy, the land of beauty.
The reply to my question as to the cause of
Camille’s sadness was given me by Molan himself.
I had not had any private conversation with him
since our chance breakfast on the day previous to
the first sitting. I did not expect to see him enter
my studio that morning more than any other
morning, knowing his rule to write four pages before
midday, and the vigour with which this methodical
purveyor of literature conformed to it. So when
his voice disturbed me I was for a moment really
apprehensive. The servant had opened the door
without me hearing him, reclining as I was upon
a divan turning over the portfolio of sketches as
if I were rendered unconscious by my excess of
anxiety. I had no time to form an hypothesis in
my own mind. My unexpected visitor had realized
my astonishment from my face, and he
anticipated my questions by saying—
“Yes, here I am! You did not expect me, did
you? Make your mind easy, I am not come to
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inform you that Camille has asphyxiated herself
with a coke fire of the latest fashion, nor that she
has thrown herself into the Seine because of my
bad conduct. By the way, the portrait is not a
bad one. You have made progress, much progress,
with it. But that is not the reason of my visit.
Camille will be here directly, and I want you to tell
her that I dined with you last evening, and that we
did not separate till one o’clock this morning!”
“You have conceived the brilliant idea of involving
me in your lies,” I replied irritably “I thought
I told you the part did not suit me.”
“I know,” he said in a half apologetic tone
obviously destined to wheedle me, “and I understand
your scruples so thoroughly that I have
left you in peace all this time. But matters progress
in the other direction, and if you had
been able to assist me, Bonnivet would no longer
pass under the Arc de Triomphe. Excuse the
pleasantry worthy of the late Paul de Kock. But
this time it is not on my account, but for Camille’s
sake; I want to spare her an unnecessary sorrow.
Have you noticed how sad she has been lately?”
“Yes, and thought it was a sorrow of your
making.”
“You are turning to psychology,” he replied not
without irony. “It is very much out of fashion, I
warn you. But don’t let us exchange epigrams,”
he went on seriously. “The little one will be here
to pose directly, and if I met her we should be lost.
I will put you in possession of the facts in five
minutes. I must first tell you that she is again
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on the track of my flirtation with Queen Anne,
on whom, in parenthesis, you have not called and
left your card. By the way, give me one and I
will leave it for you on my next visit. As the flirtation
is at the moment very accentuated, Camille is
very, very jealous and very distrustful. In short,
yesterday there was the inverse of the other
comedy. You recall the dinner trick, don’t you?
I received about four o’clock two notes, one from
Madam de B—— signifying that ... But the contents
of this note would make you jump if I told
them to you. In reality you are very naïve and still
believe in a woman’s modesty. Confine yourself to
the knowledge that in her husband’s absence—he has
been called into the country to see a sick relative—Queen
Anne had arranged to dine and spend the
evening with me. The other note was from
Camille, to tell me that in the absence of her mother,
who was also called into the country by a sick
relative, knowing that I was disengaged for the
evening, she had arranged for us to dine and
return home together after La Duchesse Curtain.
“So you naturally preferred Madam de B——, and
told Camille that you were dining with me?”
“I have not told you everything,” he said.
“I thought it better to receive the note too late.
For I might have gone out at four o’clock and not
have returned to dinner? She will be here directly.
Be careful not to mention my visit this morning.
Say incidentally, without appearing to intend
to do so, that you had some friends to dinner
yesterday, and that I was among them. She
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believes you. When she reaches home she will
find a wire from 'yours truly’ confirming the story,
and the trick is done, unless Senneterre——”
“What has Senneterre to do with it?” I
asked.
“I told you that he was Queen Anne’s platonic
lover, and you observed it yourself; he is platonic,
and as jealous as if he had the right to be so.
Consequently he detests me. He goes still further
and watches me. The idea has occurred to him
to join hands with Camille. He had the audacity
to ask me, in an off-hand way, to introduce him, and
four or five times afterwards I found him in her
dressing-room. Has she not mentioned it to
you? No. He is quite likely to have told her,
before last evening, as if by accident, that Bonnivet
was leaving Paris with the sole object of letting
her loose at me and of putting a spoke in the wheel
of the carriage in which Queen Anne has at last
consented to ride. Do not be too scandalized,
we have only got as far as the carriage. There
is no question, too, between us of what some
women of the world call so quaintly, 'the little
crime.’ But it is a quarter past ten and I must go.
Drop me a line this afternoon.”
“What about this morning’s four pages?” I
asked as I accompanied him to the door.
“I have given myself a holiday,” he replied;
“my two-act comedy is finished, and if I bring
off this coup I shall give myself quite ten days’ holiday.
What do you think of my luck? How
fortunate that this adventure with Queen Anne
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should have happened this month, between two
periods of work?”
This audacious person was quite right to talk of
his luck. Had he been a moment later in going
out he would have met his poor mistress on my
staircase. Camille, who was usually a little later
than half-past ten in arriving, was this morning
early. The old Breton clock, to whose monotonous
voice I had so long listened in my studio like a
constant and never-heeded warning not to waste
work-time in reverie, made the time twenty-five
minutes past ten. When the charming girl appeared
I could see at a glance that she was again
experiencing an acute crisis of sorrow. Insomnia
had encircled her eyes with bluish rings. Fever
had cracked and dried up her lips, which were
generally so fresh, young and full. A sombre
flame burned in the depths of her eyes. Insomnia
had made her cheeks livid, and with her fingers
she was mechanically twisting a little cambric
handkerchief with red flowers on it from which
her teeth had torn all shape. I had before me
the living image of jealousy and despair. What a
contrast with the victorious smile I had just
seen hovering around the lips and in the eyes of the
man who had caused that pain and thought as
much of it as of his first article! I realized once
more that morning how easily pity leads to lies.
The unhappy creature had hardly taken off her
hat and cloak before I began to chide her in our
usual friendly joking tone.
“I don’t think we shall do any work to-day,”
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I said to her, “little Blue Duchess, and I am much
afraid it will not be for the same motive which
made the other Duchess say, a hundred years ago,
that life is too short to have one’s portrait painted;
but I will say it is too short for the troubles you
are making for yourself. You have been crying,
confess?”
“No,” she replied evasively. “But I did not
close my eyes all night. I did not even go to bed.”
“Jacques will scold you when I tell him of your
conduct, and I warn you that I shall report it.”
“Jacques,” she said, knitting the blonde bar of
her pretty lashes. “He looks after me well, does
Jacques,” and she shrugged her shoulders as she
repeated: “He looks after me well!”
“You are again unjust,” I said with my heart
pierced by remorse at my own tender hypocrisy.
“You ought to have heard him talk about you
last evening after dinner!”
“Last evening?” she replied, raising her head
and her drooping shoulders with a movement
which shamed me. It betrayed such passionate
gratitude. “Did you see Jacques last evening
then?”
“He stopped to dinner,” I said, “and we
separated at an impossible hour after midnight.”
“Is that true?” she asked in an almost raucous
voice; and she supplicatingly said: “Tell me that
it is true and I will believe you. But don’t lie to
me. From you it would be too horrible.” She
seized my hand in hers as she said: “Do not be
offended. I know that you would not lend yourself
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to deceive me and that you are my friend.
I will explain it to you now how I heard that
Bonnivet, you know, the husband of that horrible
woman, was away. Then I got the idea into my
head that they would take advantage of his
absence, Jacques and her, to spend the evening
together; I freed myself by lying to my mother,
the first time I have done so, and I wrote a note
to him asking him to dine with me. I was
well punished for my two lies. He did not reply.
Repeat to me that I was foolish, that he was with
you last evening, not with her. O God! let me
weep. It does me so much good. Oh, thank
God he was not with her, not with her!”
As she talked to me like this every word entered
my conscience like the most cruel reproach.
She then burst into tears, and the tears which
flowed down her thin cheeks were long, abundant
tears which she wiped with her poor little handkerchief
on which the edges of her teeth had left
traces of her nervousness and anguish. I experienced,
as I watched her genuine tears flow, poignant
remorse for my falseness. It was no longer
possible for me to go back on what I had said, and
ninety-nine men out of a hundred in acting as I
had done would have believed that they were
doing right. I myself had enough evidence to
realize that this passage from pity to lies, which
had been so natural to me, constituted a real crime
in the presence of such profound passion. The
heart which loves and suffers has a right to know
the entire truth whatever it may be. The thankful
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smiles which Camille gave me through her tears
were almost physically intolerable to me. Besides,
one does not deceive for long the lucidity of justified
jealousy. Can it be blinded even for a
minute? It is soothed by being misled as regards
the facts. What are facts? When a woman feels
herself to be loved even the most convincing
count for nothing. When a woman feels, as
Camille did, treachery hovering around her in the
atmosphere, illusion is no sooner produced on one
point than lucidity awakens on another. The
person goes on searching in the dark for a proof
which is always forthcoming, very often by a chance
which is all the more grievous as it is not considered.
No. If it were to begin over again at the risk of playing
in my own eyes the obvious part of the cruel
wretch, I would not lend myself to that cowardly
lying charity to which I leant myself that morning.
The only result of it was to render more painful
the scene, to the recital of which I have now
come, the scene which marks the definite entrance
into the third period, that of furious certainty
and exasperated despair.
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.pb
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER VII
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.7
Three more weeks had passed, and the never-ending
picture had undergone so many
touches that it was a little less advanced than
before. It is the certain sign that an artistic
creation will not result: work destroys it instead
of improving it, and it is a proof, too, that we do
not accomplish works worthy of the name, they
are made in us, without effort, without will, almost
unknown to us. The sittings, too, became more
and more irregular. Camille began to rehearse the
piece to follow La Duchesse Blue, and sometimes
from one excuse, sometimes another, one day
because she was fatigued, another because she was
studying her part, she found a way of putting off
half her visits to the studio. When she did sit
it was under very different conditions to the first
sittings. Her tête-à-tête with me had been a
necessity to her at the time of her sweet confidences
and even at the time of her tender uneasy complaints.
A fear came to her now that her jealousy
of her rival would endow her with an acute character
of suspicious inquiry.
Not once during the three weeks, the anxious
expectancy of which I am summarizing here, did
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she come alone to the studio. Sometimes her
mother, sometimes her cousin, sometimes a companion
accompanied her. I should have known
nothing of her but for guessing at her troubles
from the very pronounced alteration in her face
and her increasing nervousness on the one hand,
and for having, on the other hand, three conversations
with Jacques which were very brief but well
calculated to edify me as to the cause of the poor
Blue Duchess’ terrible trouble.
“Don’t talk to me of her,” he said on the first
occasion with angry harshness; “I should be unjust,
for she loves me after all. But what a character
she has! what a character!”
“Ah! so she still continues to play to you her
comedy of the beautiful soul unappreciated,” he
jeered on the second occasion. “Come, don’t let us
talk about her any more.”
On the last occasion he said violently: “As you
are so interested in her, I am going to give you a
commission. If she wants to reach the stage when
I shall not recognize her if I meet her, you can tell
her she is well on the way to it. If I did not need
her for my new comedy I should not do so now.”
On neither of these three occasions had I insisted
on knowing more. His harshness, irony
and violence made me a prey to a very strange
fear. I apprehended with real anguish the moment
when he would say in his own way. “It is all over.
Madam de Bonnivet is my mistress.” Under any
circumstances it is saddening to receive such confidences.
At least I have always felt it so. It is
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so repugnant to me as to almost become painful.
Is it a result of the prudery with which Jacques
reproached me? Is it a persistent prejudice, the
remains of a conventional imposition before the
woman’s modesty, as he also pretended?
I don’t think I am either prude or dupe. I see
rather, in this aversion for certain confessions which
no longer allow any doubt as to certain faults,
first of all an excess of jealousy—why not?—and
then the drawing back before brutal reality which
is in me a malady. Actually it is without a doubt
a relic of respectable and pious youth, and the
evidence that a woman who has been well brought
up, who is married, is a mother, and holds a position,
has degraded herself to the physical filth of
a gallant adventure is intolerable to me. In its
way this apprehension was the more illogical and
foolish as my comrade’s indiscretion had edified me
as regards the flirting and coquetry of which
Madam de Bonnivet was capable. Between
coquetry, even foolishly light, and precision of
the last detail there is an abyss. In conclusion,
if ever Jacques came to pronounce to me that cruel
phrase: “It is all over. Madam de Bonnivet is my
mistress,” I should have to see Camille with that
phrase in my memory, and then the reply to her
questions would become to me a real penance. To
know nothing, on the other hand, was to retain the
right to reply to the poor actress without lying to
her.
This voluntary ignorance did not prevent me
from realizing that the whole of Camille’s drama
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of sentiment was acted on this single point: on the
degree of intimacy established between Molan and
Queen Anne depended the sad remnant of happiness,
the last charity of love which the poor child
still enjoyed. So although I tried not to find out
anything definite as to the result of the intrigue
between Jacques and Madam de Bonnivet, I did
nothing but think of it, multiplying the hypotheses
for and against the latter’s absolute downfall. Alas!
they were almost all for it. How was I to wait
for the revelation which put an end to my uncertainty
in a startling and entirely unexpected way?
It was towards the close of a February afternoon.
Camille had missed three set appointments without
sending me a word of apology. I had spent
several hours, not in my studio, but in a little room
adjoining it which I adorned with the title of
library. I keep there a number of books which a
painter, caring for his art alone, ought not to have.
Why is it that a poet and a novelist, even the most
plastic, can teach an artist who must live by his
eyes and the reproduction of forms? It is true I
was not engaged in reading but in dreaming,
glasses in hand, before the half-burnt fire. The
lamp, which had been brought in by a servant,
lit up half the room. I abandoned myself to
that nervous languor which resolves itself into,
at such an hour, in such a season and such a light, a
half unconscious semi-intoxication. Anything accidental
in us is removed at such times. We seem
to touch the bottom of our fund of sensibility, the
nerve itself of the internal organ through which we
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suffer and enjoy, and the pulp which composes our
being.
I felt in the twilight that I loved Camille as I
imagine one must love after death, if anything
of our poor heart survives in the great mute darkness.
I told myself that I ought to go and see her,
that there was in the excess of my discretion
apparent indifference. I evoked her and spoke to
her, telling her what I had never told her, and what
I should not dare to tell her. It was at the moment,
when this opium of my dream-passion most deeply
engulfed me, that I was snatched with a start
from my dream by the sudden arrival of her who
was its chief character. My servant, whom I had
told that I could see no one, entered the room to
tell me, with an air of embarrassment, that Mademoiselle
Favier was asking for me, that he had
answered her according to his instructions, and that
she had sat down in the anteroom, declaring that
she would not go without seeing me.
“Is she alone?” I asked.
“Quite alone,” he answered with the familiarity
of a bachelor’s servant who has been in the
same situation for twenty years—he saw my father
die and I am quite familiar with him. “I must tell
you though, sir, that she seems to be in great
trouble. She is as white as a sheet; her voice is
changed, broken, and choked. One would think
she cannot talk. It is a great shame, considering
how young and pretty she is!”
“Ah, well, show her in,” I said, “but no one
else, you understand.”
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“Even if M. Molan comes to see you too, sir?”
he inquired.
“Even if M. Molan calls,” I replied.
The good fellow smiled the smile of an accomplice,
which on any other occasion I should have
interpreted as a proof that he had guessed the ill-concealed
secret of my feelings. I did not have
time to reflect upon his greater or less penetration.
Camille was already in the studio, and the image
of despair was before me, a despair verging on
madness. I said to her as I made her sit down:
“Whatever is the matter?” and sat down myself.
She signed to me to ask her no questions, as it was
impossible for her to reply. She put her hand
upon her breast and closed her eyes, as if internal
anguish there in her breast was inflicting upon her
suffering greater than she could bear. For a
moment I thought she was about to expire, so
frightful was the convulsive pallor of her face.
When her eyes opened I could see that no tear moistened
her blue eyes, eyes which were now quite
sombre. The flame of the most savage passion
burned in them. Then in a raucous and almost
bass voice, as if a hand had clutched her throat,
she said to me as she pressed her fingers on her
forehead in bewilderment—
“There is a God, as I have found you. If you
had not been at home I think I should have lost
my reason. Give me your hand, I want to clasp
it, to feel that I am not dreaming, that you are
there, a friend. My sufferings are so great.”
“Yes, a friend,” I replied, trying to calm her,
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“a true friend ready to help you, to listen to you,
to advise you, and to prevent you, too, from giving
way to your fancies.”
“Do not speak like that,” she interrupted, freeing
her hand as she drew back with almost hateful
aversion, “or else I shall think you are in the plot to
lie to me. No. This man deceives you as he has
me. You believe in him as I have done. He would
be ashamed to show himself in his true colours
before the honourable man you are. Listen.”
She seized my arm again and came so near me that
I could feel the feverish heat of her rapid breath.
“Do you know where I, Camille Favier, have come
from; I, the recognized mistress of Jacques? I
have come from a chamber where that wretch,
Madam de Bonnivet, has given herself to him,
where the bed is still in disorder and warm from
their two bodies. Oh, what a hideous thing it
is!”
“Impossible!” I murmured, overwhelmed with
fright at the words I had just listened to and the
tone in which they were spoken. “You have been
the dupe of an anonymous letter or a fancied
resemblance.”
“Listen again,” she went on almost tragically,
and her fingers bit into my flesh, so furious was
their grasp. “For a week I have had no doubt as
to the relations between Jacques and this woman.
Suddenly he had become tender to me with that
tenderness which a mistress never mistakes. He
was humouring me. There was a certain expression
in his eyes when he looked at me. I would
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have liked to snatch away that look to read what
was behind it. Then I found around his eyes that
voluptuous hollow I knew in him too well. I recognized
in his whole being that exhausted languor
which he used to have in the days gone by when we
loved passionately, and he avoided our appointments.
He always had an excuse to change and
postpone them. You see, I am talking to you as I
feel. It is brutal, but what I am telling you is
true, as I have always told the truth to him and
to you. It was I, you understand, who asked for
these appointments, I who did the hunting, while
he refused me and escaped from me. Is any other
proof of a lover’s deception necessary? But this
week I began again to doubt. I received a visit
from this woman’s husband. She had the audacity
to send him to me! He came with Senneterre
to ask me to act at a grand affair they are having
next Monday.”
“I have an invitation to it,” I interrupted,
suddenly recollecting that I had received an
invitation for it. “I was astonished at it,
but I understand now. It was an account of
you.”
“Ah, well! you will not see me there,” she
replied in a tone which froze my heart, it was so
ferocious, “and I have an idea that this function
will not take place.” Then with rising anger she
said: “Now, see how innocent I am still! When
the fool of a husband asked me that, and I said
'yes,’ seeing that Jacques displayed no emotion,
it seemed to me impossible that this woman could
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really be his mistress. I did not believe it of her,
nor did I believe that he was her lover. I knew
she was a famous coquette, and you remember how
I judged him? But this was on her part such
insolent audacity, and on his shameful cowardice!
No. Had you come yourself, even this morning, to
tell me that she was his mistress, I should not have
believed it.”
She was so agonized at what she was preparing
to tell that she had to stop again. Her hands,
which had let go of me again, trembled and her
eyes closed from her excessive suffering.
“And now?” I said to her.
“Now?” She burst into a nervous laugh.
“Now I know of what they are capable, he in
particular. She is a woman of the world who has
lovers. But for him to have done what he has
done! Oh, the wretch, the wicked monster! I
am going mad as I talk to you. But listen, listen,”
she repeated in a frenzy, as if she feared I should
interrupt her story. “To-day at two o’clock
there was to have been a rehearsal of the new
comedy by Dorsenne at the theatre. He is altering
an act and the rehearsal was countermanded.
I did not hear of it till I got to the theatre. For
that reason I found myself about two o’clock in the
Rue de la Chausée d’Antin with the afternoon
before me. I had one or two calls to make in the
neighbourhood. I started, and then some clumsy
person trod on my skirt, tearing a flounce almost
off. Look.” She showed me that a large piece
of the bottom of her skirt was torn. “It happened
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at the top of the Rue de Clichy near the Rue
Nouvelle.”
She had looked at me as she pronounced and
emphasized these last few words, as if they ought
to awaken in me an association of ideas. She
saw that I made no sign. A look of astonishment
passed over her face and she continued—
“Does that name tell you nothing? I thought
that Jacques, who confides in you, would have told
you that as well. Well”—she dropped her voice
still lower, “that is where we have our place of
meeting. When he became my lover, I should so
much have liked to have belonged to him at his own
place, among the objects in the midst of which he
lived, so that at every minute, every second, these
mute witnesses of our happiness would recall me
to his memory! He did not wish it to be so. I
understand the reason to-day; he was already
thinking of the rupture. At that time I believed
everything he told me, and did everything he
asked me to do. He assured me that the rooms
in the Rue Nouvelle had been fitted up by him for
me alone, and that he had put there the old furniture
from the room in which he wrote his early
books: the room he lived in before moving to the
Place Delaborde. How stupid I was! How
stupid I was! But it is abominable to lie to a
poor girl who has only her heart, who surrenders
it entirely as well as her person and would despise
herself for any distrust as if it were a crime! Ah!
it is very easy to deceive any one who surrenders
herself like that.”
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“But are you sure he deceived you?” I asked.
“Am I sure of it? You too—-” she replied in
tones of passionate irony. “Besides, I defy you
to defend him when you hear the whole story.
I was, as I have just told you, near the Rue Nouvelle
with my dress torn. I must add, too, that
in my foolishness I had left all sorts of little things
belonging to me in the rooms there, even needles
and silk. It had been one of my dreams, too, that
this place might become a beloved refuge for both of
us, where Jacques would work at some beautiful
love-drama, written near me and for me, while I
should be there to employ myself—as his wife!
It occurred to me to go there and mend my torn
flounce. I want you to believe me when I swear
to you that there was no idea of spying mixed up
in my plan.”
“I know it,” I replied to her, and to spare her the
details of a confidence which I saw caused her
great physical suffering, I asked her: “And you
found the room in disorder as you told me?”
“It was more terrible,” she said, and then had to
remain silent for a second to gain strength to
continue: “The way in which these apartments
had been selected ought long ago to have told me
that Jacques used them for others as well as me.
They are in a large double house, the rooms face
the street and are far enough from the porter’s
lodge for any one to ascend the staircase without
being seen. What would be the use of all these
precautions if I were the only person to go there?
Am I not free? Am I afraid of any one but
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mother seeing me enter? Then there was the
porter’s glances, his indefinable expression of
politeness and irony, and his servility to Jacques,
all of which would have proved to any one else
that the rooms had been for years in his occupation.
I can see it so clearly while I am talking to you!
I cannot realize how I was so long deceived! But
I am losing myself, ideas keep rushing into my
head. I had got as far as the Rue Nouvelle with
my dress torn. I had no key. Jacques had
never given it to me in spite of my requests.
What another sign, too! I knew that the porter
kept one key so that he and his wife might look
after the place. An inside bolt allowed, when
once a person was inside, of the door being fastened
against any intruder, so that very often
Jacques did not trouble to take the second key
which was kept in one of his drawers, and you
may imagine I went to the porter’s lodge as
little as possible. I preferred, when I followed
Jacques there, to go straight upstairs and ring.
Without these details what happened to me would
be unintelligible to you though it is so simple.
This time I went to the lodge for the key. There
was no one there. The porter and his wife were
probably busy elsewhere, and the last person who
went out had neglected to shut the door. I saw
our key in its usual place and took it without the
least scruple, and making as I did so a little motion
of joy at avoiding the porter. I must repeat—I
swear it to you—that I was absolutely ignorant of
the incident I was about to encounter. I entered
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the rooms with a certain feeling of melancholy,
as you may imagine! It was a fortnight since I
had been there with Jacques. The windows
were closed. The little drawing-room with its
tasteful tapestry and furniture was still the same,
and so was the bedroom with its red furniture.
I found out, on looking in a drawer where I had put
my work-basket with my odds and ends, that it
was no longer there, and I was somewhat astonished.
But there was still a dressing-room and a
little room which we sometimes used as a dining-room.
I thought that perhaps the porter, when
cleaning, had moved the things into the little room
and forgotten to replace them. I looked there,
found the work-basket, and began to mend my
skirt. I took it off to do it more quickly. Suddenly
I seemed to hear the opening of doors. I had
taken the key out of the lock without shooting the
bolt. My first thought was that Jacques was the
unexpected visitor. Had he not told me, and I
had believed him, as usual, that he sometimes
came there to work out of remembrance of me and
to assure himself more solitude? I had not time
to give myself up to the sweet emotion this thought
awakened in my heart. I could recognize two
voices, his and the other woman’s.”
“The voice of Madam de Bonnivet?” I asked
as she remained silent after the last few words,
which were hardly audible. I was as much
moved by her story as she was herself. She bent
her head to signify “yes” and maintained her
silence, so I dare not insist. The tragedy of the
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situation, the facts of which she had placed before
me so simply, crushed me. She went on—
“I cannot describe to you what passed in me
when I heard this woman, who, thinking herself
alone with her lover, was laughing loudly and
talking familiarly to him. I felt a sharp pain, as
if the keen point of a knife had wounded me in
the inmost part of my being, and I began to tremble
in the whole of my body on the chair upon which
I was sitting. But even now at the thought, look
at my hands! I desired to get up, to go to them,
and to drive them away, but I could not. I could
not even cry out. It seemed to me as if my life
suddenly stood still in me. I heard and listened.
It was a pain greater than death, and I really
thought I should die where I sat! But here I am,
and do you know the reason? In that small room
where I stayed like that without moving, after
the first moment of fearful pain had passed, I was
overcome by disgust, by inexpressible repugnance
and horror which was absolutely nauseating.
Without a doubt if I had distinctly heard the words
of this man and woman the need of immediate
vengeance would have been too strong for me;
but the indistinct, confused murmur, consisting of
words I could hear and words I could not hear,
combined with the picture of what I guessed was
taking place on the other side of the wall, besides
the unutterable suffering it caused me, gave me an
impression of something very dirty, very ignoble,
very disgusting, and very abject. There was one
phrase in particular, and such a phrase which
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made me feel that I despised Jacques more than I
loved him, and at the same time—how strange the
heart is!—I could only grasp the idea that if I
entered the room he would think that I came there
to spy upon him. That pride in my feelings ended
by dominating everything else. I remained motionless
in this small room for perhaps an hour.
Then they departed and I went into the room
they had just left. The bed was in disorder, but
the pillows and bedclothes were the same. Ah,”
she groaned, uttering a cry which rent my heart,
and pressing her fingers into her eyes as if to crush
the eyeballs and with them a horrible vision of
other infamous details which she would not, could
not mention then she cried: “Save me from myself,
Vincent. My friend, my only friend, do not
leave me; I believe my head will burst and I shall
go mad! Oh, that bed! that bed! our bed!”
She got up as she said these words, rushed towards
me and buried her head against my shoulder,
seizing me with her hands in an agony of supreme
grief. Her face contracted and turned up in a
spasm of agony, and I had only just time to catch
her. She fell unconscious into my arms.
Without doubt this unconsciousness saved her,
with the help of the torrent of tears which she shed
when she recovered her senses. I saw her reawaken
to life and realize her misery. Her confidences
and the period of unconsciousness which
followed them had moved me so deeply that I
could find nothing to say except those commonplace
words used to comfort a suffering person;
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and there is such difficulty in making use even of
those when one takes into account the legitimate
reasons the person has for suffering. Camille did
not allow me to exhaust myself for long in these
useless consolations.
“I know that you love me,” she said with an
attempt at a broken-hearted smile, which even now
when I think of it makes me ill, “and I know, too,
that you sincerely pity me. But you must let me
weep, you know. With these tears it seems to me
that my folly departs. I would like only one
promise from you, a real man’s promise, your
word of honour that you say 'yes’ to the request
I am going to make you.”
“You believe in my friendship,” I said to her.
“You know that I will obey all your designs,
whatever they may be.”
“That is not sufficient,” she said at my evasive
reply, behind which, seeing her so excited, I had
sheltered a last remnant of prudence. What was
she going to ask me? And she insisted: “It is
your word of honour I want.”
“You have it,” I told her, overcome by the sad
supplication in her dear blue eyes from which the
tears still flowed.
“Thank you,” she said as she pressed my hand,
and she added: “I want to be sure that you will
not say anything to Jacques of what I have told
you?”
“I give you my word of honour,” I replied; “but
you yourself will not be able to tell him.”
“I?” she replied, shaking her head with grim
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pride. “I shall tell him nothing. I do not wish
him to suspect me of spying upon him. I will
quarrel with him without giving a reason. I shall
have courage against my love now from disgust.
I shall only have to recall what I have seen and
heard.”
After her departure my heart-broken pity for
her changed into increasing uneasiness. Was I
to keep my word to the poor girl and not warn
Molan? I knew too well the value of lovers’ oaths
to believe that, after assisting in concealment at
this rendezvous between her lover and her rival,
she would keep to her resolution of a silent rupture
without vengeance. It is in vain for a woman to
try and bear in her heart that sentimental pride,
of which she had given proof in a very unlikely
fashion by remaining in her hiding-place; she is
still a woman, and sooner or later the pressure of
her instinct will overcome her reason and dignity.
If a fresh attack of grief overwhelmed the outraged
mistress, would she not, when a prey to the delirium
of jealousy, write the truth to her rival’s husband?
The look came to my mind which Bonnivet had
given at his table the woman who bore his name
and who was now the mistress of Jacques. How
was it that this coquette, so obviously gaunt, so
profoundly ironical, and so little impulsive, had
given herself thus?
Curiosity to learn the details of this culpable
adventure did not enter into the temptation which
seized me directly Camille had gone to go and see
my friend. At least I could warn him against
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danger and a surprise likely to be tragic. I, however,
resisted this desire, which was almost a need,
of warning him through a point of honour which
I have never yet failed to keep. That is the result
of being the son of a Puritan. My father’s words
always came into my mind at times like this:
“A promise is not to be interpreted but to be kept.”
I have this principle in my blood and marrow. I
cannot recall circumstances when to keep a promise
has cost me such an effort.
To remain faithful to my oath, I forbade myself
going to see Jacques. He came to see me on the
day following the day I had received his mistress’
confidences which were so hard for me to keep.
He had the previous evening been to the theatre
to see Camille. He had not been able to talk to
her because of her mother’s presence. This presence,
which was obviously at the daughter’s desire,
had astonished him a little; then he thought he
noticed in the latter’s eyes and also in her acting
something strange, a sort of unhealthy excitement.
As often happens when a person has not a clear
conscience, this something had sufficed to make him
uneasy. He therefore, had come to the studio
with the vague hope of meeting Camille and the
certain object of making me talk. His epigrams
upon my part as eternal confidant were well justified.
It is true that a very simple pretext offered
an explanation of his visit.
“I have had an invitation sent you for Madam
de Bonnivet’s evening party,” he stated after our
greetings; “you will go, won’t you? Shall we
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dine together that evening? Has Camille told you
that she is acting there?”
“Yes,” I replied, “and I thought the idea was
in somewhat doubtful taste.”
“It was not my idea,” he said with a laugh;
“I am a little afraid of complications, and I avoid
useless ones as much as possible. There are already
too many unavoidable ones. Senneterre and
Bonnivet arranged the party, one advising the
other. They want to know the truth of my courting
Queen Anne. Seeing that Camille is my mistress,
they think that if Madam de Bonnivet is
really her rival, the two women must detest each
other. You follow their reasoning? In that case
Madam de Bonnivet would refuse to have Camille
there and Camille would refuse to go. I should also
decline the invitation to avoid any meeting between
the two women. But I accepted and so did Camille.
Madam de Bonnivet placed no obstacle in the way.
I should like you to have seen the stupor, and
then the joy, first of Senneterre and then of Bonnivet.
Ah! they are observers, analysts, and psychologists,
like Larcher or Dorsenne.” After this
irony he added: “I have not seen Camille for
some days. How is the portrait progressing?”
“You can judge for yourself,” I hastened to
say, only too happy to seize this pretext to avoid his
questions, and I turned to show him the tall canvas
upon which was drawn the slender silhouette of
the Blue Duchess offering her flower—offering her
flower to him who hardly looked at her. Has he
ever given five minutes’ attention to the artistic
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efforts of a comrade? That day at least he had
as an excuse his little inquiry to make, and thus
his critical situation between his two mistresses
rendered urgent. I was not offended when he
continued, without the least gleam of interest
lighting up the glance, almost a wandering one,
which he fixed upon the picture.
“Is she still jealous of Madam de Bonnivet?”
he asked.
“We have hardly mentioned that subject,”
I replied with a blush at my impudent untruth.
“Well, so much the better,” he went on without
insisting. “She would choose her time very badly.
I must tell you that Queen Anne and I have recognized
that we have made a misdeal and have given
up the game. Yes, we are in a state of armed peace.
We have measured our weapons and concluded an
armistice. It was written that I should not seduce
her and that she should not seduce me. We are
good friends now, and I think we shall remain so.
I like it better that way, it is more comfortable.”
He looked at me, as he delivered this speech
in a hesitating way, with a keen perspicacity
before which I did not flinch. If my face expressed
astonishment, it was at his assurance in the
comedy. He no doubt attributed it to my surprise
at his fresh relations with her whom he continued
to call Queen Anne, and whom I knew deserved to
be brutally called Anne the Courtesan. I realize to-day
that in observing this strange discretion about
his triumph he did not yield to a simple prudent
calculation. Without a doubt he was prudent,
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but he also counted on my thinking him sincere, and
putting more energy into destroying my model’s
ever-recurring suspicions. There was, too, in this
discretion succeeding the cynicism of his former
confidences a singular turn in his self-conceit,
which is more obvious now at a distance of time.
I have often noticed in the person whom women
call in their slang “the man who talks” this
anomaly. It is quite apparent. He tells you one
by one, embellishing them where necessary, the
least important preliminaries of an adventure
with a person whose most trifling imprudence
ought to be sacred to him. Then when he sees
that you are quite convinced that he is going to
become that woman’s lover, he defends himself
at the last stage with a defence which compromises
her as much as a positive avowal. This final
silence prevents him from judging himself too
severely. The same vanity which made him talkative
before makes him silent afterwards. Vanity
or remorse, calculation or a last remnant of honour,
whatever was the cause of this sudden interruption
in Jacques’ confidences, it is certain that on
this occasion he did not depart from his correct
attitude of discretion. It made my discretion
seem the less meritorious. But suddenly events
were precipitated with the frightful rapidity of
catastrophies in which discussions and half-confidences
have no place. I should like to narrate
this dénouement, not such as I saw it, but such as
it was told to me. God! if I could reproduce for this
story the natural and violent eloquence with which
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little Favier used to retrace these tragic scenes,
this clumsy narrative would live and become tinted
with passion’s warm tinge. Why did I not at
once put it on paper in the form of notes, these
burning avowals which so long pursued me?
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.pb
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER VIII
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.7
There is always a silent corner in a woman’s
most sincere confession. There was one
in Camille’s. In telling me, with the pauses of
jealousy maddened by its certainty, of the dramatic
discovery at the rooms in the Rue Nouvelle she had
not revealed the whole truth to me. She had already
resolved on an audacious plan for vengeance
even at the time she affirmed that she would not
revenge herself. She confessed to me later that
she was afraid of my advice and reproaches.
Among the phrases audible through the thin
partition which separated her from the bed where
her rival gave herself to their joint lover, she had
seized upon a few words more important to her
than the rest. It was the day and hour of their
next meeting. This slender Madam de Bonnivet,
in whom I had diagnosed signs of the most immovable
coldness—a detail which in parenthesis
Molan later on brutally confirmed—was like most
women of this kind, a seeker after sensations. At
each fresh intrigue those depraved women without
temperaments persist in the hope that this time
they will experience that much-desired ecstasy of
love which has always shunned them.
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I have learned since that it was she who, in spite
of the danger, or rather because of the danger, had
multiplied the meetings each of which risked a
tragic termination. Camille had ascertained the
secret of the real relations between the two lovers
one Tuesday, and on the Friday, three days later,
they were to meet at the same place. Knowing
the exact moment of the appointment a mad
resolution took possession of the suffering mind of
the poor Blue Duchess: to wait for her rival at
the door of the house, to approach her as she got
out of her cab and spit out into her face her hatred
and contempt there on the pavement in the street.
At the thought of the arrogant Madam de Bonnivet
trembling before her like a thief caught in the act,
the outraged actress experienced a tremor of
satisfied revenge. Her vengeance would be more
complete still. The infamous trap into which
Jacques and Madam de Bonnivet had lured her,
the abominable invitation to perform at her rival’s
evening party to reassure the husband, would be
of use to her. Out of prudence and with the
idea of not compromising herself with her husband,
Madam de Bonnivet must give her that evening
in spite of everything. She, Camille, would appear
there! She would see the woman who had stolen
her lover tremble before her gaze, the lover himself
pale with terror lest she should make a scene, and
the fear of the guilty couple was in advance of
those atrocious pleasures which hatred conjures
up in the mind.
The three days which separated her from this
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Friday passed for Camille in increasing expectancy.
I did not see her during that time, for she took a
jealous care in avoiding me, for fear I should derange
her plan. But she told me afterwards that
never since the beginning of her liaison with
Jacques had she felt such a fever of impatience.
She passed the night from Thursday to Friday like
a mad woman, and when she left the Rue de la
Barouillére to go to the Rue Nouvelle, she had
neither slept nor eaten for thirty-six hours. At
half-past three she was on the pavement in front
of the windows of the rooms walking up and down
wrapped in her cloak and unrecognizable through
her double veil, never losing sight of the door
through which her rival must go. There was at
the corner of the Rue de Clichy a cabstand which
she fixed as the boundary of her promenade.
Each time she passed she noticed the clock on
the cabstand. First it was twenty minutes to four,
and more than twenty minutes to wait. Then it
was ten minutes to four, and she had ten minutes
to wait. Four o’clock struck. They were late.
At twenty minutes past four neither Jacques nor
Madam de Bonnivet had appeared. What had
happened?
In face of this delay, the more inexplicable as, in
the case of a woman of position like the one for
whom revenge was watching, her moments of
leisure are few, it seemed obvious to Camille
that the lovers had altered the time and place
of the appointment, and the idea maddened her.
They had seen one another so often since she had
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listened to their caresses and familiarity so close
to her. Who knows? Perhaps the porter had
noticed her when she went out the other day,
although she had taken advantage of a moment
when he was absent from the lodge and talking in
the courtyard to replace the key. Perhaps he had
warned Jacques of the visit!
It was half-past four, and still no one had appeared.
Camille was at last convinced that to
remain longer watching was useless, all the more
since, as happens at this time in a cold February
day, a bitter fog had come down mixed with sleet,
which made her shiver. She cast a desperate
glance at the impenetrable windows with their
closed shutters from which no gleam of light came,
and was preparing to depart, when in searching
the short street with her eyes for the last time she
saw a carriage stop opposite the cabstand and a
face look out of it which gave her one of those
attacks of terror which dissolve the forces of the
body and soul: it was the face of Pierre de
Bonnivet!
Yes, it was indeed the husband of Molan’s
mistress, no longer in his laughable function as
the shy and intimidated husband of a woman of
the world who endured the coquetry of the woman
who bore his name, submitting to it to profit by it.
It was the assassin in his hiding-place, the assassin
in whom jealousy had suddenly awakened the primitive
male, the murderous brute, and whose eyes,
nostrils, mouth announced his desire to kill whatever
happened. He was there scanning the street
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with savage glances. The half turned-up otter-skin
collar of his overcoat gave to his red hair and
high colour a more sinister look, and the bare
ungloved hand with which he lifted the curtain of
the window to enable him to see better seemed
ready to grasp the weapon which should avenge
his honour at once on that pavement, without any
more thought of the world and of scandal than if
Paris were still the primeval forest of 3,000 years
before, where prehistoric men fought with stone
axes for possession of a female clad in skins.
How had the jealous husband discovered the
retreat where Queen Anne and Jacques took shelter
during their brief intrigue? Neither Camille, I,
nor Jacques himself have ever known. An anonymous
letter had informed him; but by whom was it
written? Molan had at his heels a mob of the
envious; Madam de Bonnivet was in the same position,
even without reckoning her more or less disappointed
suitors. Perhaps Bonnivet had simply
recourse to the vulgar but sure method of espionage.
It is quite certain that the porter had been questioned,
and but for the fact that he was a good
fellow, who had been well supplied with theatre
tickets by his lodger, and was proud of the latter’s
fame as an author, the rooms which had seen the
poor Blue Duchess so happy and so miserable in
turn without doubt would have served as the
theatre for a sanguinary dénouement. It was
indeed the desire for a tragic vengeance which
Camille Favier saw upon the face, in the nostrils,
around the mouth, and in the eyes of the man’s
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face she had seen at the carriage window in the dim
light furnished by a gas jet in the darkness, looking
for a proof of his dishonour, and decided upon
immediate vengeance. It is very likely, too, that he
had noticed the young woman. But he had only
met her once off the stage, and the high collar of
her coat, a fur boa wound several times round
her neck, a hat worn over her eyes and a double
veil made Camille into an indecisive figure, a vague
and indistinctive silhouette. Bonnivet without
doubt saw in her, if his fixed plan allowed him to
reason at all, a wanderer of the prostitute class
exercising her miserable trade as the darkness came
on. Then he took no further notice of her.
As for the charming and noble girl who was so
magnanimous by nature that it seemed a pity that
she should have experienced such depraving
adventures, she had no sooner recognized Bonnivet
than her first spite, her furious jealousy, the legitimate
sorrow of her wounded passion and her
appetite for revenge all combined into one feeling.
She realized nothing but the danger Jacques was in,
and the necessity of warning him, not to-morrow,
or that evening, but at once. A few minutes
before she had made up her mind that the lovers
had postponed their appointment till another day.
An idea suddenly pierced her heart like a red-hot
iron; suppose they had only postponed the
appointment till five o’clock? Suppose at that
moment they were preparing to set out for this
street, at the top of which this sinister watcher
was waiting? The thought that, after all, that was
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possible at once transformed itself, as often happens
when the imagination works around the danger to
a person beloved, into a certainty. She could
distinctly see Jacques walking towards this ambuscade.
The resolution to stop him at once without
a second’s delay possessed her with irresistible
force. What could she do but hasten to the Place
Delaborde, where she had a last chance of meeting
Molan? She was afraid she would be noticed by
Bonnivet, or he might hear her voice, if she took
one of the cabs on the rank, so she hurried along
the Rue de Clichy like a mad woman, calling cab
after cab, and feeling, when at last she took her seat
in an empty one, the horrible attack of a fresh
hypothesis which almost made her faint. Supposing
the two lovers had, on the other hand, put forward
the time of their meeting and were in the rooms,
while the husband warned by a paid or gratuitous
spy was waiting for them? Camille could see
them once more in her imagination, with the same
inability to distinguish the possible from the real.
Yes, she could see them, quite sure of their privacy,
taking advantage of the gathering darkness to
emerge arm in arm, and she could see Bonnivet
rush and then.... This unknown conclusion
varied between sudden murder and a terrible duel.
The unfortunate creature had hardly conceived
this second hypothesis, when a tremor shook her
to her very marrow. Her cab had set off at a fast
trot in the direction of the Place Delaborde. What
could she do then? In these instants when not
only seconds, but halves and quarters of a second
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are counted, does real sentiment possess a mysterious
double sight which decides persons with more
certainty than any calculation or reasoning could
do? Or are there, as Jacques Molan loved to say,
destinies protected by singular favour of circumstance,
which have constantly good luck, just as
others constantly have bad luck? Still Camille,
between two possibilities, chose by instinct that
which turned out to be the true one.
At the precise moment that the cab turned into
the Place de la Trinité she directed the driver to
turn back to the Rue Nouvelle. Why? She could
not have told. She stopped the cab and paid her
fare at the top of this street. Her plan was made
and she put it into execution with that courageous
decision which danger sometimes inspires in
souls like hers, passive on their own behalf, but
all flame and energy in defence of their love. She
could see that Bonnivet’s carriage was still in the
same place. Her umbrella up to protect her from
the sleet was sure to hide her face as she walked
bravely along past the carriage and reached the
house, the door of which the jealous husband was
watching. Her doubts were removed, for a
stream of light through the cracks of the shutters
denoted some one’s presence in the rooms. She
went in without hesitation and walked straight
to the porter, who saluted her in an embarrassed
way.
“I can assure you, mademoiselle, that M. Molan
is not here,” he replied when she insisted, after his
first denial.
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“I tell you he is here with a lady,” she replied.
“I saw the light through the windows.” Then
sharply with the inexpressible authority which
emanates from a person really in despair she said:
“Wretch, you will repent for the rest of your life
of not answering me frankly now. Stop,” she
added, taking the astonished porter’s arm and
pulling him out of the lodge. “Look in that
carriage at the corner of the street on the right and
take care you are not seen. You will see some one
watching the house. He is the woman’s husband.
If you want blood here directly when she leaves,
all you have to do is to prevent me going up to
warn them. Good God, what are you afraid of?
Search me if you want to make sure I have no
weapon and would not harm them. My lover deceives
me, I know, but I love him; do you hear?
I love him, and I wish to save him. Cannot you
see that I am not lying to you?”
Dominated by a will stretched to its uttermost,
the man allowed himself to be pulled to the door.
Luck, that blind and inexplicable chance which is
our salvation and destruction in similar crises,
sometimes by the most insignificant of coincidences,
that luck whose constant favour to the audacious
Jacques I mentioned, willed that at the moment
when the porter looked towards the carriage
Bonnivet leaned out a little. The man turned to
Camille Favier with an agitated look.
“I can see him,” he cried; “it is the gentleman
who the day before yesterday asked me some questions
about the occupants of the house. He asked
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me if a M. Molan lived here, and when I replied
'No’ according to orders, he took a pocket-book
from his pocket. 'What do you take me
for?’ I asked him. I ought to have given the
rascal a good hiding. Wait while I go and ask him
if he has authority from the police to watch houses.”
“He will answer you that the street is common
property, which is quite true,” said Camille, whose
coolness had returned with the danger. Was it
the inspiration of love? Was it a vague remembrance
of the usual happenings on the stage?
For our profession acts in us like automatic
mechanism in the confusion of necessity. A plan
formed itself in her imagination in which the
honest porter would take a part, she knew, for
Molan knew the way to make himself liked. “You
will not prevent that man from staying there,”
she went on, “you will only make him think there
is something it is necessary to hide. He will make
no mistake as to what that something is. Before
coming here he must have received positive information.
You want to help me to save your master,
don’t you? Obey me.”
“You are right, mademoiselle,” the porter
answered, changing his tone; “if I go and make
a scene with him he will understand, and if it is his
wife, he has the right not to want to be what he is.
I meant to have warned M. Jacques when he went
upstairs that I had been questioned, but he came
with that lady.”
“I will warn him,” Camille said, “I undertake to
do so. Now go and call a cab, but do not bring it
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into the courtyard, and leave me to act. I swear
I will save him.”
She ran upstairs while the porter called a cab as
she had ordered him. The simple object, if there
must be a drama, of doing everything to prevent
it taking place in his house, had made him as docile
as if Camille had been the owner of the house, that
incarnation of omnipotence to the Paris porter.
When the plucky girl reached the landing before
that door she had opened so many times with
such sweet emotion, she had, in spite of the imminent
danger, a moment’s weakness. The woman
in her in a momentary flash revolted against the
devotion love had suggested in such a rapid, almost
animal, way, just as she would have jumped into
the water to save Jacques if she had seen him
drowning. Alas! she was not saving him alone!
The image of her rival rose in front of her with that
almost unbearable clearness of vision which
accompanies the bitter attacks of the jealousy
which knows it is not mistaken. Vengeance was
there, however, so certain, so complete, so immediate
and impersonal! It was sufficient to allow
events to take their course down the slope upon
which they had started.
When the poor child afterwards told me the
details of this terrible day she did not make herself
better than she really was. She confessed to me
that the temptation was so strong that she had to
act with frenzy and fury to put something irreparable
between herself that moment, so she
began to ring the bell at the door, first of all once,
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then twice, then three times, then ten times, with
that prolonged ring which gives an accent of mad
insistence to the bell. She could see in her mind as
clearly as if she were in the room the two lovers,
attracted by the bell, first laughing at the thought
that it was an inopportune visitor, then exchanging
glances in silence, Madam de Bonnivet in affright,
and Jacques trying to reassure her, as they both
got up. How she would have liked to have shouted
“quick, quick!” Then she began to knock
repeatedly at the door with her clenched fist.
Afterwards she listened. It seemed to her, for
the over-excitement of her anguish doubled the
power of her senses, that she could distinguish
a noise, a creaking of the floor beneath a stealthy
step on the other side of the still closed door;
and applying her mouth to the crack of the door
to make sure of being heard—
“It is I, Jacques,” she cried, “It is I, Camille.
Open the door, I beg of you, your life is in danger.
Open the door, Pierre de Bonnivet is in the street.”
There was no reply. She was silent, listening
once more and asking herself whether she were
mistaken in thinking she heard a footstep. Then
still more maddened, she began again to ring the
bell at the risk of attracting the attention of
some other resident in the house; she knocked at
the door and called out: “Jacques, Jacques, open
the door!” and she repeated: “Pierre de Bonnivet
is below!” There was still no reply. In her
paroxysm of fear a new idea occurred to her. She
went down to the porter, who had come back with
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the cab, and who was now distracted and moaning
in naïve egoism.
“This comes of being too good. If anything
happens we shall get discharged. Where shall we
go then? Where shall we get another place?”
“Give me pencil and paper,” she said, “and
see if the watcher is still there.”
“He is still there,” the porter answered, and
seeing Camille fold the paper on which she had
feverishly scribbled a few lines, “I see,” he
said, “you are going to slip the note under the
door. But that won’t get the lady out. If I had
a row with the fellow, we should both be locked
up, and while explanations were taking place she
could escape and there would be no scandal in
the house.”
“That would be one way,” Camille replied,
though she could not, in spite of the gravity of the
danger, help smiling at the idea of a struggle
between the man of the people and the elegant
sportsman Pierre de Bonnivet; “but I think mine
is the better plan.”
She rushed up the staircase once more, and after
ringing the bell as loudly as before, she slipped
under the door, as the porter had guessed, the
bit of paper on which she had written: “Jacques,
I want to save you. At least believe in the love
you have betrayed. What more can I say?
Open the door. I swear to you that B—— is at
the corner of the street watching for you. If you
look to the right you will see his carriage, and I
swear to you, too, that I will save you.”
.pn +1
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What a note, and how I preserve it, having
obtained it from Jacques himself, as a monument
of harrowing tenderness! It is impossible for
me to transcribe it without shedding tears. The
sublime lover had calculated that sooner or later
Jacques would have to come to the door to go
out. She also told herself that she would stand
against the staircase wall till, after reading her
supplication, he opened the door. With what a
beating heart she watched her white note immediately
disappear! A hand drew it inside. She
could hear the rustle of the paper as the hand
unfolded it and the noise of a window opening.
Jacques was looking into the street, as she had
told him to do, to verify for himself, in spite of
the increasing darkness, the accuracy of the
information contained in the strange missive.
To the poor Duchess, although she had indicated
the method of verification, this proof of distrust
at that moment was really like the probing of a
wound, the most painful spot in a painful wound!
She had no time to think of this fresh humiliation.
The door opened at last and the two lovers were
in the anteroom facing one another: Camille a
prey to her exaltation of sacrifice and martyrdom
so strangely mingled with contempt and almost
hatred; he pale and haggard, and looking untidy
from his hasty toilet.
“Come,” he began in a low voice, “what is it?
You know if you are lying, and have come to make
a scene.”
“Be quiet, wretch!” she replied without
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deigning to lower her voice; “if I were a woman
to make scenes, should I have neglected the
opportunity when you came here with her last
Tuesday at three o’clock? Yes, I was in that room,
there behind the alcove, and I heard everything;
do you understand? everything, I did not come
out and I let you go. There is no question of
that. The husband of that woman is at the
corner of the street watching for you. You looked
out of the window and saw the carriage. I don’t
want him to kill you in spite of what you have
done to me. I love you too well. That is the
reason I am here.”
Molan had watched this strange girl’s face while
she talked. Suspicious though he was, that
being the punishment of men who have lied to
women too often, he realized that Camille was
speaking the truth. Then he made a generous
movement, his first. If he is an egoist, comedian,
and a knave, he does not lack courage. He has
several times, because of slanderous articles, fought
very unnecessarily and very bravely. Perhaps
too, for the idea of playing to the gallery is never
absent from certain minds even in solemn moments,
he was thinking of the report of the drama, if
drama there was, which the newspapers would
publish far and wide. A few words he said to me
later make one think so: “You must admit
that I missed a magnificent advertisement!”
But who can tell what the thought at the back of
his head was, and perhaps after all those words
were only the after-thought of a man of his kind
.pn +1
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to conceal his rare natural outbursts. Still, adjusting
his jacket and taking his hat from a peg
in the anteroom, he answered in a loud voice—
“I believe you and thank you. It is enough.
I know now what I have to do.”
“Do you mean to go down?” she said. “You
are going to meet danger? Will that save you,
answer me, when you go and ask that man—what?
What he is doing there? It would be
sacrificing this woman, and you have no right
to do so. If Bonnivet himself followed you, he
saw a woman enter. If he had you followed, he
knows that a woman is here. He must see a
woman leave with you in a cab and conceal herself.
He must follow the cab and leave this street
clear for her to escape during that time. Ah, well!
you must go out with me. There is a cab waiting.
I have had it fetched. We will get into it; do not
refuse and do not argue. Bonnivet will see us do
so and will follow us in his carriage. He will
expect to surprise you with her; he will surprise
you with me, and you will be saved.” She took
him in her arms unconsciously, then pushed him
violently away from her and went on in a low
voice: “We are almost the same height, go and ask
for her cloak. She will take mine and go five
minutes after us, after she has seen her husband’s
carriage go. Wish her good-bye, and be sure
she does not come to thank me. If I saw her I
might not be able to control myself.”
She took off her long black cloak as she spoke
and handed it to Jacques, who received it without a
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word. Certain women’s sacrifices have a magnificent
simplicity which crushes the man who receives
them. He can only accept them and be ashamed.
Besides there was no time to hesitate. Necessity
was there, implacable and inevitable. Jacques
went into the drawing-room into which the anteroom
opened, while Camille remained standing
against the wall in the outer room. “I had a
knife in my heart,” she told me afterwards, “and
also a savage joy at the idea that I was overwhelming
her by what I was doing; it was a sorrowful
joy. I also loved him again, and I have never
loved him so much as at that moment. I realized
how pleasant it is to die for some one! At the same
time I was obliged to master myself to prevent
entering and insulting this wretch, tearing her
chemise and striking her with my hands. Oh,
God, what moments they were!”
While this miracle of love was taking place in
the commonplace surroundings of this abode of
love, the darkness had come. The street noises
penetrated into this anteroom with a sort of
sinister far-away sound, and the poor actress could
hear a whispering quite close to her, the discussion
taking place in the other room between the traitor
for whom her devotion was meant and the accomplice
in his treachery. At last the door opened
and Jacques reappeared. He had his hat on his
head and his fur collar turned up to conceal half
his face. He had in his hand Madam de Bonnivet’s
astrakhan jacket which Camille put on with a
shudder. It was a little too large for her at the
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.bn 213.png
breast. “I thought she must be more beautiful
than I am in spite of her slender appearance,” she
said to me when telling me of this very feminine
impression, and it was another puncture in her
wound.
“Come,” Jacques went on after a period of
silence. He watched her put on the jacket with
an expression in which appeared the last gleam
of that distrust, the first sign of which had been
the opening of the window after the note to make
sure that Bonnivet was really there. They
descended the staircase without exchanging a
word. At the lodge, while Jacques was telling the
porter to call another cab as soon as the first
had gone, Camille fastened her double veil over
her face and slipped into the cab, hiding her face
with a muff which she showed to Jacques once the
door was shut.
“It is my poor plush muff,” she said jokingly
to make his courage return by this proof of her
coolness. “It does not go very well with this
millionairess’ jacket. But at this distance and
this time in the evening it will not be noticeable.
Look through the window at the back of the cab
and see whether the carriage at the corner of the
street is following us.”
“He is following us,” Jacques said.
“Then you are saved,” she replied. She
pressed his hand passionately, in her clasp allaying
the anxiety of the cruel moments which she had
been through and burst into tears. He could
still find no words to thank her, and to relieve
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his embarrassment he tried, as he had often done
when they were in a cab together, and had had a
quarrel, to put his arm round the young woman’s
waist, draw her towards him and snatch a kiss.
His movement brought back her furious hatred
and jealousy, and repulsing him fiercely she
said—
“No, never, never again.”
“My poor Mila,” he said, calling her by a pet
name he used in moments of passion.
“Don’t call me that,” she interrupted, “the
woman of whom you are talking is dead, you
have killed her.”
“But you love me,” he insisted. “Ah! how
you love me to have done what you did just
now!”
It was her turn to make him no answer. The
cab reached the top of the Rue de Babylone without
the two lovers exchanging any other words than
this question which Camille asked from time to
time: “Are we still being followed?” and Jacques’
reply: “Yes.”
This furious pursuit by the jealous husband
displayed such an evident resolve for vengeance
that the actress and her companion felt again
the anguish they had already experienced—she
when she recognized the face of the watcher at the
window of the stationary carriage, he when the
sound of the bell surprised him in Madam de
Bonnivet’s arms. Would the husband be duped
by the plan Camille had thought out? The fact
of his waiting till their cab stopped to approach
.pn +1
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the two fugitives testified to his uncertainty, or else,
sure of not losing sight of the cab, he preferred to
have an explanation with the man whom he
believed to be his wife’s lover in a more out-of-the-way
place, where he would alight. At last
Camille recognized the church of Saint François
Xavier which reared its two slender towers through
the mist.
“Here is a good place to stop,” she said as she
tapped for the driver to do so. “You will see the
other carriage stop too and Bonnivet get out. He
will rush towards us, and then we shall need all
our coolness. Let me get out first, and if he asks
why we conceal ourselves like this, talk of mother.”
It was one of those rapid scenes, which the
actors themselves, when they recall them, think
they have dreamt, and do not know whether they
have experienced a sensation of tragedy or comedy.
Life is like that, oscillating from one to the other
of these two poles with an instantaneousness
which has never been expressed, I think, by
any writer and never will be. The change is
too sudden. At the moment Camille set foot upon
the pavement at the foot of the church steps, she
saw Pierre de Bonnivet suddenly rise up before
her; he took her arm and suddenly recognized
her.
“Mademoiselle Favier!” he cried. Then he
stopped, quite out of countenance, while Camille
in terror cowered against Molan who had by this
time also got out of the cab, and who, as if surprised
at recognizing the man who had rushed toward
.pn +1
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his mistress, cried in a voice in which there was a
tremor—
“Why, it is M. de Bonnivet!”
“Good gracious, mademoiselle,” Queen Anne’s
husband stammered after a moment’s dead silence,
“I must have seemed very strange to you just
now, but I thought I recognized some one else.”
In his hesitation a sudden, immense and unhoped-for
joy quivered. The jealous husband had a
proof that his suspicions were false. “I thought
I recognized the friend of a friend of mine, and in
Molan the friend himself. You will excuse me,
will you not? What would have been a joke to
her becomes to a person like yourself, whom I
admire so much, and with whom I am so little
acquainted, an unpardonable familiarity.”
“You are quite forgiven,” said Camille with a
laugh, adding with as much presence of mind as
if she had pronounced the phrase on the Vaudeville
stage in the course of an imaginary crisis, instead
of finding herself face to face with a real danger:
“I live quite close here. I asked the famous
author to see me home after rehearsal, and I had
scruples about letting him return alone and on
foot to civilization. I am going to get into my
cab and leave you my cavalier to accompany you,
M. de Bonnivet. Molan will explain to you that a
woman can be an actress and a simple ordinary
woman as well, very simple and very ordinary.
Good-bye, Molan; good-bye, sir.”
She bowed her pretty head coquettishly, enveloping
the two men in her lovely smile, and
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made towards the left side of the church where
the sacristy was, while Jacques said to Bonnivet
putting his finger to his lips—
“Because of her mother, you know.”
“I understand, you bad boy,” the other man
replied with a hearty laugh. He continued to
feel that gaiety of deliverance, so sweet as to be
almost intoxicating, on emerging from a torturing
crisis like the one he had just been through. He
could have kissed where he stood the lover of
his wife, whom he had all day been planning to
kill, and he pushed him into his carriage, which
was splashed with mud right up to the box through
this fierce pursuit across Paris, saying as he did so:
“Where shall I drop you? You know your
Mademoiselle Favier is quite charming, with
such distinction of manner too! She had such
a way, too, of justifying her drive with you! Mind,
I am asking no questions. I will apologize again
to her when she is acting at my house. You
might do so, too, for me, if you don’t mind! A
likeness, you know, and at that hour a mistake
is so easily made.”
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.pb
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER IX
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.7
The emotion experienced by Camille during
this dramatic adventure, suddenly determined
upon, thanks to her presence of mind,
in a theatrical catastrophe, had been so strong
that directly she was out of sight of the two men
she felt like fainting. All she could do was to get
into a cab and drive to the Rue de la Barouillére.
There a real attack of nervous fever prostrated
her and made her go to bed. So it was not from
her that I learned this episode in which she played
a part so naturally, spontaneously, magnanimously,
and generously. It was a noble part which
suited the noble heart revealed by her beautiful
blue eyes, by her proud mouth, and by her well
bred and charming personality! Otherwise, had
she been well enough to get out, on the day following
this dreadful day she would have hastened
to me to complete her sorrowful confidence of
her first surprise by her second confidence of her
heroic sacrifice for her most unworthy lover. But
persons capable of acting as she had acted do not
boast.
It was Molan himself who first told me the details
of these almost incredible scenes—at least those
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he knew, Camille herself having since completed
them. The subtle feline person had two reasons
for making me acquainted with this adventure,
in which he still played a flattering part—current
morality being taken for granted—of a man loved
to distraction by one of the most elegant and
courted women in Paris, and to martyrdom by
one of the prettiest actresses not only in Paris but
in Europe. The first of these two reasons was his
natural fatuity, and the second his interest. He
was afraid that after such an experience the devotion
of the Blue Duchess would shrink from
another ordeal, that of acting a comedy at the
house of the rival she had saved. Now he considered,
not without good reason, that Camille’s
presence at Madam de Bonnivet’s party was the
indispensable conclusion of the scene in the Place
Saint François Xavier. The husband’s suspicions
must have been strongly aroused to have gone
to the extremity of espionage, and there was no
answer to this phrase with which Molan completed
his disclosure.
“As long as Bonnivet does not see these two
women face to face, his suspicion may be again
aroused, and suspicion is like apoplexy, the first
attack can be cured but there is no remedy for
the second.”
His theory was right. But while he retailed
it to me, as a conclusion, my thoughts were only
for the real drama he had just narrated. I can
still hear myself crying, “Oh, the wretches!” When
he described to me Camille in the anteroom of
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the suite of rooms, while Madam de Bonnivet
was listening to her repeated ringing of the bell,
pale with terror, I can realize to-day that this story
of Jacques’ was most indelicate on his part, for he
must needs begin by this phrase. “First of all
I will tell you the whole truth. I am Madam
de Bonnivet’s lover.” I was no longer astonished
at my colleague’s cynicism. When he had
finished, the misery of this adventure overwhelmed
me with sorrow, and there were tears in my voice
when I asked him—
“And after that you want Camille to act at
that woman’s house?”
“She must,” he replied, “and I am relying
upon you to ask her.”
“Upon me,” I cried, “you must be mad.”
“Not a bit,” he went on. “It is very simple.
While listening to you she will only think of the
risk I have run and say 'yes.’ That is the a.
b. c. of jealousy.”
“But if she refuses. You seem to think she
has no malice against you.”
“Not a bit,” he replied with his frightful smile;
“either I am quite ignorant of the human heart,
or else she has never loved me so much, since I
have never treated her so badly.”
“If she does not tell me the story you have
just told me, how am I to turn the conversation?”
“She will tell you; then be the first to begin.
Confess that I have told you in the madness of my
emotion and remorse. It will not be a lie, for
it is a fact that in the cab yesterday while I looked
.pn +1
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at Camille sitting in her corner with fixed gaze
and excited face, I would have given everything
to love her at that moment as she loved me.
Explain that I was not thinking of the other
woman. I called upon the latter to-day. What
a woman, my dear friend, and how the crack
of the whip of danger made her vibrate! I found
her with her husband after breakfast, and he left
us together after a quarter of an hour’s affectionate
talk, which proves that his suspicion is at any
rate a little allayed. That man does not know
how to pretend. Lately he has hardly shaken
hands with me. We did not abuse his complaisance
and we were right, for I met him returning
home, as I was leaving twenty minutes later, to
find out how long my visit had lasted. There
was just time for Anne to give me the two or
three most indispensable items of information.
You admire Camille’s courage, don’t you? But
what will you say to the presence of mind of this
great lady who was indeed risking something,
her life perhaps, her honour without a doubt, her
position and everything which constitutes her
reasons for existence. Do you know where she
went when she was able to escape. She drove
straight to a furrier’s, where she purchased an
astrakhan jacket as like the other one as possible.
She had no money to pay for it and did not like
to leave her name. The idea struck her to go to
her jeweller and borrow the money. She pretended
that she had lost her purse, and then returned
to the furrier’s to pay for her jacket, picked up
.pn +1
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her own carriage, which, she had left at a friend’s
house and ordered to meet her outside the shops
near the Louvre, and reappeared at home dressed
as she was when she went out. These are the
true details. Would you believe them? Her
visit to the jeweller’s and furrier’s moved me very
much. How frightened she must have been at
risking them. Now all she has to do is to tell
her maid a lie to account for the difference of
jackets. A mistake after calling or trying on, that
is all. But every fresh little lie is a new landmark
if the husband pursues his inquiries. This man
would shrink from questioning the servants. That
is what saved us this time. He will have had me
followed, not his wife, but I was imprudent enough
to accompany her to the rooms. My luck makes
me frightened,” he added seriously, after being
silent for a time.
“Yesterday’s discovery has, all the same, not
destroyed Bonnivet’s jealousy, I repeat, since he
returned home during my visit, and if Camille
does not keep her promise his suspicion may be
aroused again.”
“But with this distrust and the knowledge
he possesses of your rooms,” I said, “your appointments
will not be very easy to make.”
“It is for that reason that Madam de Bonnivet
will not fail to keep one now. She is a curious
and bored woman, and her commonplace adventure
with me has at last given her the tremor,” he added
smilingly. “Ah, ah, she is of the same nature as
the divine marquis to some extent. But you
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don’t understand these things at all, my dear
boy. As for the address of the rooms, the fact
that Bonnivet knows it will make no difference.
Having seen me leave there with Camille, he will
never believe me capable of taking the other one
to the Rue Nouvelle.”
“You will go on then without any fear?”
“Yes. I was frightened yesterday when I
heard the ringing and knocking at the door, and
I repeat that I am sometimes afraid of my luck.
It is as stupid as believing in the evil eye, but the
feeling, is stronger than I am.”
“There is no doubt that in Camille,” I replied,
“you have met the only woman in Paris capable
of such an action. If you had even a little bit
of heart, you would spend your life in making
her pardon your infamy.”
“My dear boy,” he interrupted, “then you will
never understand that she only loves me like
that because she understands that I do not love
her. Then,” he added, shrugging his shoulders,
“without doubt it is a question of personality,
I desire the other one and I do not desire Camille.
This explanation of love is not brilliant, and if the
abstractors of quintessence who subtilize upon
the sentiment, like your friend Dorsenne, gave it
in one of their books, they would lose their feminine
clientele, their twenty-five thousand skirts I
call it. I myself am neither an analyst nor a
psychologist, and I maintain that this explanation
is the true one.”
“So he told you everything!” Camille said
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ironically when I saw her the day after this conversation.
I had written to her, to be sure and
not miss her. I found her pale with eyes burning
from insomnia. She was in the little drawing-room
in the Rue de la Barouillére, which always
looked so commonplace, poor and grey, while
its canvas-covered furniture gave it the appearance
of a room prepared for moving. “Did he boast also
of the delicacy with which his wretch of a mistress
thanked me? Here,” and she handed me a
leather case with her monogram upon it, C.F.,
which I had noticed her fingering nervously for
five minutes. I opened the case, which contained,
glistening upon black velvet, a massive gold
bracelet incrested with diamonds. It was one
of those jewels in which the work of the goldsmith
is reduced to a minimum, and of which the brutal
richness makes the present an equivalent of a
cheque or a roll of sovereigns. I looked at the
bracelet, then I looked at Camille with a
look in which she could read my surprise at the
method employed by Madam de Bonnivet to pay
her for her devotion.
“Yes,” the actress went on, and, in a tone of
disgust which made me ill, she repeated: “Yes,
that is the object which came this very evening
with my coat. It is my medal for bravery,”
she sneered. “My first object as soon as I go out
will be to give the wretch a lesson in delicacy!”
“Be content with returning the jewel through
Jacques to her,” I suggested. “A scene would
be too unworthy of you. When a person has
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the whip hand, which you most certainly have, it
is wise to keep it to the end.”
“No,” she proudly said, “there will be no
scene between us. I would not have one. I will
go and sell the bracelet to a jeweller, then I will
go to a church, spend the money in charity,
and Madam de Bonnivet will receive with her
jacket two little pieces of paper—one the jeweller’s
bill, and a note from the priest saying, 'Received
for the poor, from Madam de Bonnivet, so much.’
This infamous adventure will at least have served
to put a fire on a fireless hearth and a loaf of bread
on an empty table.”
“Suppose the husband is there when the
messenger arrives?” I asked.
“She must explain it the best way she can,”
Camille said, and a gleam of cruelty passed into
her blue eyes, which deepened in colour almost
to black. “Do you think I should have moved
my little finger to help her the day before yesterday,
if it had not been necessary to save her to
save Jacques? Ah! that Jacques has not even
called to inquire after me this morning. He
knows, too, that I have not acted for two consecutive
evenings. He knows me and that emotion
makes me ill. Vincent,” she added, taking my
hand in her feverish grasp, “never love. It is
such madness to have a heart in this cruel world.
From Jacques I have not even had a note, two
words upon his card, the little sign of politeness
one owes to a suffering friend.”
“You are not just,” I told her, “he fears to
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face you. It is very natural. He is too conscious
of his faults, and, you see, he has sent me to find
out how you are.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head dolefully,
“he came to see you, because he needed you for
something. Confess to me what it was? From
the first I told you that you do not know how to
lie or scheme. Oh, God! how nice it would be to
love some one like you, not in the way I love you,
as a friend, but in the other way! Come, confess
that you have a commission from Jacques for
me.”
“Well, yes,” I replied after a second’s hesitation.
There was such uprightness in this strange
girl, such a rare nobility of sentiment emanated
from her whole being! To finesse with her
seemed to me a real shame. I therefore gave her,
simply and sadly, Jacques’ message: simply, because
I reckoned, and rightly, too, that the surest
way to influence her was to state the facts without
any phrasing; sadly, because I felt the hardness
of this new demand of Molan’s. I also realized its
necessity. When I had finished, tears came into
her blue eyes.
“So,” she said, with an even more bitter expression
and a disenchanted smile, in which there
was much love, though it was for ever poisoned
by contempt, “he has thought of that, to save
this woman again! He finds that I have not
sacrificed myself enough. Besides, it is logical.
When one has begun, as I did, one must go on to
the end. I will go.” With her forehead crossed
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by a wrinkle of resolution, her eyes hard, and her
mouth ugly, she went on: “Very well, Vincent.
You have repeated his words to me, and I thank
you. That must have cost you something, too!
You owed me that frankness. You promise to
exactly repeat mine to him, do you not? Tell M.
Molan, then, that I will act at Madam de Bonnivet’s
as is arranged. Yes, I will act there, and
no one, you understand, shall suspect with what
feelings. But it is on one condition—tell him that,
too, and if he does not keep it, I will break my
promise: I forbid him, you understand, I forbid
him to write or speak to me from this time onward.
He will talk to me at that woman’s house
just sufficiently to prevent anything being noticed.
That must be all. I shall not know him afterwards,
you understand. After this last act he is
dead to me. Perhaps I shall really die myself,”
she added in a stifled voice, “but it is all over
between us.”
She made a gesture with her hands as of tearing
up an invisible agreement. Her eyes closed for a
moment. Her features contracted with a twitch
of pain, and then this creature, so feminine in
her grace and mobility, assumed a tender look
and a gentle smile as she got up and said to
me—
“Leave me now, friend. Don’t come to see
me again before I let you know. We will finish
the picture later on. I love and esteem you very
much, and feel real sympathy for you. But,”
her voice was stifled as she concluded, “but I
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must forget, all the same, to try and live.” Then
with a proud little inclination of her blonde head
and a courageous shrug of her slender shoulders,
she concluded: “I am not to be pitied. I have
my art left.”
I knew that Camille was incapable of breaking
a promise made with such seriousness as to be
almost solemnity. She had that trait common to
all persons, men or women, who attach great importance
to their feelings: a fastidious scrupulousness
in keeping unwritten agreements, reciprocal
engagements. Therefore I insisted with the greatest
energy upon Jacques conforming strictly to
the condition which the actress had imposed upon
him, and I myself, great though the cost was to
me, had the courage to observe with the greatest
rigour the programme of absence and silence, the wisdom
of which I understood. Around certain moral
fevers, just as around certain physical ones, there
is darkness, suppression of motion, and a total
suspension of life. In spite of my absolute faith
in Camille’s word, I was not without uneasiness
when I repaired a few days later to Madam de
Bonnivet’s party. I knew that the poor Blue
Duchess, if not quite restored to health, was at
least well enough to reappear at the theatre.
When I say that I followed the programme drawn
up by her with the greatest rigour, I must add
that I allowed myself once to go and see her act
without, as I thought, breaking the agreement,
since she did not see me sitting in the pit, and I
had a feeling of relief at seeing that there was no
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difference in her acting. I came to the conclusion
that she had taken to her art again, as she had
said to me, to that cult of the theatre which had
been the naïve enthusiasm of the dreams of her
youth. I hoped that that love which never deceives
would cure the wound made by the other.
But in the carriage which conveyed Jacques and
I to the club, where we again dined together, this
confidence gave place to apprehension, in spite of
my companion’s optimism, he having become once
more a person of an imperturbable assurance,
which seemed born to manœuvre in false situations.
“I am curious,” he said to me, “to know what
she has prepared for her audience of swells. She
has promised the great scene from La Duchesse
Blue with Bressoré, and then a few monologues
and imitations. You don’t know her in that light,
do you? She has like every actor or actress her
monkey side.”
“Imitations!” I repeated. “Fashionable
people are admirable. They no sooner have in
their hands an artist of talent than they become
possessed of a single idea, to degrade that talent
by forcing the possessor to become a plaything for
them. If it is a painter like Miraut, they order
from him portraits with a disgusting want of
expression to put upon bon-bon boxes! If he is
a man of letters like you, they make him write bad
prose and verse at a moment’s notice! If he is a
musician, he has to produce a piece for the piano
at once! In the case of an actress like Camille,
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with ardour, temperament, and passion, they make
a parade of her. Good God, what foolishness it
is! What is going to happen to-night?”
“Would you prefer,” sneered the dramatic
author, to hear the plaints of Iphigenia or of
Esther proclaimed ten paces away from a buffet
laden with foie gras sandwiches, punch, orangeade,
chocolate and iced champagne? On my word of
honour you seem to me admirable! But if you
had the lightest tint of that transcendental irony,
without which life does not present the slightest
savour, you would find it exquisite that my pretty
Blue Duchess has saved the honour, and perhaps
the life, of my adorable Queen Anne, and that
they met face to face—one playing her part as a
fashionable Parisian hostess, respected and worshipped;
the other giving her performance before
an audience of the idle; while I myself am the
third person. My only regret for the beauty of
the situation is that I did not have an appointment
with both during the day. Would you believe
it? Since these happenings I desire Camille
again, and I would retake her if I did not fear to
spoil her masterpiece. Yes, the masterpiece of
her rupture. For she has discovered it; there is
no denying it. If André Mareuil had not laid
down his humorous pen to become a Commissioner
of Police, if he were still writing his Art de
rompre instead of drawing up regulations, I
should submit the case to him. Have you ever
thought of a more divine method of a mistress
ridding herself of her lover and leaving in his mind
.pn +1
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an exquisite memory? That is the ideal end of
love.”
“Try at least to be ashamed of your egoism,”
I interrupted. I realized that he was amusing
himself by making my naïveté display itself, and
that he was joking. But actually the fact that
he was unable to jest on such an occasion angered
me, and I continued, touching his breast as I did
so: “Have you, then, absolutely nothing there
but a ream of paper and a bottle of ink, for the
idea of this love, devotion and sorrow, only to
inspire you with one more paradox instead of
bringing tears from your eyes?”
“One must never judge what is visible,” he
replied with sudden seriousness which contrasted
strangely with his former flippancy. Did he
conceal in an inner fold of his heart, poisoned
though it was with social vanity, commercial calculations
and literary ambitions, a tender corner,
too small to be ever exalted into complete passion,
but sufficiently alive to sometimes bleed, and had
I touched the secret wound? Or was his one of
those complicated natures which keep just enough
sensibility to suffer because they have no more?
These two latter hypothesis are not irreconcilable
in such a complex nature. They would at least
explain the anomaly of a talent for accurate
human observation, being associated with such
implacable hardness of heart and a systematic
and utilitarian depravity of mind. Never had the
astounding contrast between Jacques’ person and
his work struck me as it did in that rapidly moving
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carriage. He was the first to break a silence
which had lasted for a few minutes by saying—he
was without doubt replying to a thought my
reproaches had suggested to him—
“Besides, if it were to begin again, I should
have prevented that party. It is useless. I
don’t know what fresh information Bonnivet has
received, but he is charming to me and his wife.
I found both of them the other day examining
two ornaments their jeweller had just brought.
In parenthesis, what do you think of this conjugal
scene? She was clasping around her neck a necklace
of pearls and looking at herself in the glass, while
her husband said to me—to me!—as she showed
me another one: 'Which one do you prefer?’
She experienced a keen pleasure at this high
comedy scene. I saw that her eyes were shining
like the pearls in the necklace. At what price
had she purchased this renewal of confidence?”
“But,” I said, “did not a scene like this, and
the conclusion you drew from it, make you take
your hat and stick and go away, never to return?”
“You are not, and never will be, intellectual,
my dear boy,” he replied. “Understand that
there is a sort of bitter and ferocious joy in despising
what one desires, just as there is in enjoying
what one hates. That is how Queen Anne holds
me fast, perhaps for a long time, just as I hold her
fast by the attraction of the danger involved. We
have already, since the affair, revisited the rooms in
the Rue Nouvelle; would you believe it? Decidedly
there is no tincture of cantharides like fear?”
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“That is folly,” I cried, “to tempt fate like
that!”
“Quite right,” he said with a shrug of the
shoulders, “but one must live to write. There is
a play in this story, and I will not miss it.”
We reached Madam de Bonnivet’s house, and
found a long string of carriages already in the
street. I was to find a great difference between
the almost familiar reception of the other evening
and my reception now. It seemed as if Jacques
had in those few minutes tried to give a complete
representation of the different phases of character
of this human lighthouse. While we ascended
the carved wooden staircase, with its wealth of
pictures, busts, tapestry, and ancient stuffs, he
whispered to me this last expression, which had
nothing cunning nor dandified about it, but was
simply the childish vanity of the middle-class
gentleman engaged in a love affair—
“You must admit that my friend is not badly
housed?”
I am quite sure that at that moment the carpets
upon which his pumps rested warmed a secret
place in his heart. I am certain that the lustre
on that staircase illuminated the darkest depths
of his snobbish conceit. I am sure that a conqueror’s
pride swelled his chest as he said to himself
in these luxurious surroundings: “I am her lover.”
He had become during the last few weeks too
transparent for this shade of his sensibility to
escape me. Each of his words was like the striking
of a clock, the works of which are in a glass
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case. When the sound strikes the ear one can see
the little cogwheels bite the large ones and the
complicated mechanism at work.
The hall doors had opened, and Jacques and
myself were at once separated. The spectacle,
which this room, vaulted like a chapel and unknown
to me, and the two drawing-rooms opening from
it presented, awakened the painter in me, the man
used to vibrating by a look. In a corner of the
hall a little platform had been erected, which was
empty just then. There were perhaps fifty
women sitting with a like number of men, all in
evening dress, and the women’s jewels sparkled
in their blonde or dark hair and on their naked
shoulders. The entire range of colours was displayed
in these various toilettes, which were
heightened by their contrast with the black coats
and the details which had on my first visit to
this house so displeased me, the too composite
character of the decorations, blended and harmonized
as they were in this light with the aid
of the moving crowd. Fans were waving, eyes
shining, faces were animated by questions and
answers, and Queen Anne, towards whom I went
to pay my respects, really had in her white evening
dress the majestic air of a princess worshipped by
her courtiers.
As I approached her, I thought of the mortal
peril she had been in the other week. There
seemed to me no more trace of it in her pale azure
eyes than there was of jealousy upon Bonnivet’s
beaming face. For the first, and, without doubt,
.pn +1
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the last time in my life, I was supplied with positive
information about a fashionable intrigue. Usually
one does not know the history of these fine gentlemen
and beautiful ladies except from a vague
“they say.” A woman is suspected of having so
and so for a lover, and a man is suspected of
having so and so as his mistress. This suspicion,
which to people of their class is equivalent to certainty,
is not reduced to exactness. The street
and number of the house where they meet is not
known. It is not known under what circumstances
they start for the rendezvous. A door remains
open to doubt, and if not open it is ajar.
As I bowed to Madam de Bonnivet and received
her greeting in the form of an amiable commonplace,
I could see this haughty head on the pillow
in the chamber of adultery, and the terror of her
disturbed features when the continuous ringing
of the bell and the repeated knocking at the door
had warned her of her danger. The contrast was
so sharp that for the first time I understood the
unhealthy attraction which this to some extent
double existence exercises over certain imaginations,
and why women or men who have tasted
these sensations no longer find any relish in others.
Such profound and perilous deception procures
something like an evil intoxication, the pleasure
of a really superior and almost demoniac hypocrisy,
to the man or woman who lie in that fashion. To
this kind of infernal falsehood belonged the phrase
which Madam de Bonnivet used to close our rapid
and uninteresting conversation.
.pn +1
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“There is some one who would not forgive me
for detaining you any longer,” she said, and the
point of her fan indicated a direction which my
glance followed. I saw Camille Favier, whom at
that moment Jacques was approaching. “Go
and speak to her,” she continued, “and tell your
friend Molan that I have a little commission for
him while I think of it.”
I was prepared, on arriving that evening, to
encounter much coolness in this woman, who was
depraved by coldness a coquette through egoism,
and curious even as regards vice through idleness.
I had not even thought the audacity of such a
phrase addressed by her to me who knew everything
possible. In spite of my firm intention not
to allow my impressions to appear, she read my
astonishment in my face. Her half-closed eyes
darted at me the most incisive look which has
ever fathomed the soul of a man to its depths.
Without doubt, regarding her liaison with Molan,
she thought I had only one of those hypotheses,
which I was unable to verify, one of those hypotheses
which grow around those so-called mysteries,
Parisian love affairs, and that I could not
very well conceal my deductions. The acuteness
of her eyes became dulled into indulgent irony,
and I left her to obey the order she had given me,
but in part only. She had obviously calculated,
with her habit of relying upon the evil sentiments
of her intimates, that I should be only too happy
to convey her message to Jacques in Camille’s
presence, to make their quarrel all the worse and
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put my friend in a somewhat false position. She
was to find out that a good fellow of a painter
did not lend himself to this pleasantry. I approached
the two lovers as if the beautiful enemy
of the pretty actress had not entrusted me with
any commission. They were only exchanging,
according to agreement, the most indispensable
polite phrases in a loud voice—
“Have you come to this corner of Bohemia,
then?” Molan said, my presence restoring his
natural assurance to him; “it is quite natural
that you should.”
“Do not boast,” I replied in a tone of banter
with a foundation of truth to it similar to the
one he affected. “It is a long time since you
passed as a man of the world.”
“Big words!” he said still gaily. “I am off.
Don’t talk too much ill of your friend Jacques,
and do not monopolize her too much,” he added,
turning to me; “she must do a little flirting to
be a success with the men.”
He went away with the renewed desire, of
which he had spoken to me, shining in his eyes.
Camille had bowed as he went without speaking,
but with a smile in which I, who knew her so well,
could read so much suffering and disgust. She
fanned herself nervously, while I looked at her
with an emotion which I did not endeavour to
conceal. We were in our out-of-the-way corner
like two outcasts, though our sorrowful tête-à-tête
was very brief! Senneterre was already on his
way towards us from the other end of the hall
.pn +1
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with a young man who had asked to be introduced
to Camille. Those two minutes sufficed for us to
exchange a few phrases which redoubled my impression
of danger. It had continually increased
ever since I had entered the house.
“So you are come,” the actress said, “thank
you;” and in a supplicating tone she added:
“Do not leave me this evening, if you love me a
little.”
“Don’t you feel well?” I asked.
“I have presumed too much upon my strength,”
she replied. “I was quite well up to the moment
I was presented to this woman and heard her
voice. Oh! that voice! Then Jacques came in,
and I felt ill. Look, he is going to her. They
are talking, and are alone. Go and tell him that
he must not trample too much upon my heart.
I am exhausted, and can bear no more.”
She pronounced these last few words hesitatingly,
and forced herself to smile, a convulsive
smile like a nervous tremor. I do not think that
I have ever seen her so beautiful. The absence
of jewels in the midst of these well-dressed women
and the simplicity of her toilette in these luxurious
surroundings gave her something like a tragic
character. I had no time to reply, for the professional
“beater” was there with his stereotyped
phrase—
“Mademoiselle, allow me to present to you my
young friend, Roland de Bréves, one of your most
passionate admirers.”
“With what selections are you going to charm
.pn +1
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us with this evening, mademoiselle?” the young
noodle asked Camille, who was still vibrating with
emotion. “It is rare good fortune to hear you
in society; Madam de Bonnivet will make many
people jealous.”
“Really there is no occasion for it, sir,” Camille
replied, and to correct his impertinence added: “I
shall give a scene from La Duchesse Blue
with Bressoré, and then three or four fragments.
Besides, your curiosity will soon be satisfied, for
I can see Bressoré coming. He was acting this
evening in the new play, but he has got away
early. What luck!”
“What good fortune for us,” her questioner
said, “who will hear you all the sooner!”
“No,” she brutally said, “for me to be able
to go to bed all the sooner.”
She turned her back on the young man, who
was disconcerted by the harshness of this strange
reply, to exchange a few equally amiable words
with another gentleman who greeted her. The
insolence of the phrases she uttered, she who was
usually so gracious, proved quite well that she
was hardly mistress of herself. Of what an outburst
she would be capable if Madam de Bonnivet,
as her attitude towards Jacques at that moment
made me fear, gave too bold a display of coquetry.
My anxiety was suddenly borne to its highest
pitch. I understood that in insisting upon
Camille figuring at this party, the cruel woman
had not only proposed to put her husband’s suspicions
at rest for ever. For that she relied upon
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other weapons. The dominant trait of her implacable
nature was vanity, and this vanity wished
to have the actress at her mercy, to revenge herself
for the two humiliations she could not forget—the
insulting heroism at the rooms, and the return
of the bill for the bracelet with the receipt from
the priest of Saint François Xaviers.
Wounded in her most secret susceptibilities,
she had promised herself that for two or three
hours she would keep her rival, who was then in
her employ, at her house, to inflame her again and
again with the most poignant and powerless
jealousy, and leave herself free to pardon her after
the punishment and forget her, and also the man of
letters whom she had taken from the actress. He
had already ceased to interest her, now that he no
longer represented another women whose happiness
she wished to steal. She would soon give
proof of it, and also that the fop was bragging
when he thought that he had awakened her to
the pleasure of love. In spite of so many and
such disturbing emotions, she had left his arms as
insensible, as far off as ever that total ravishment
by person which metamorphoses a coquette into
a slave and enslaves her to the man who has
initiated her into this complete intoxication. She
acted, however, during this evening as if she had
loved Jacques. The desire of torturing the
woman by whom she had been so strangely saved
and wounded was strong enough in her blasé
heart to equal physical pleasure. I gained this
evidence upon the spot by watching her in the
.pn +1
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distance talking, while I was making my way towards
the spot where she was laughing with
Jacques, though my progress was interrupted at
intervals by Machault, further on by Miraut, and
then by Bonnivet.
The first of the three said to me: “I have not
seen you at the school of arms lately. You
missed the Italian fencer, San Giobbe. He is
really wonderful.”
“You did not tell me the other day,” the second
said, “that you were painting Camille Favier’s
portrait. It is very underhand of you to treat
your old master in that way!”
“Ah well, M. La Croix,” Bonnivet asked, “are
you going to hang anything at the next exhibition?”
I felt inclined to answer the incorrigible fencer:
“It is not a question of assaults, parade and
laughable combats; do you not see that there is
a prospect of a real duel, actual sword thrusts,
and the sacrifice of some one’s life?” To my
dear master I felt inclined to say: “I shall not
make you sell a picture more, shall I? Why play
the part with me of a protector who is interested
in the work of one of his pupils? Spare me this
comedy, and let me try to prevent a catastrophe.”
To the husband I would like to have said: “If
you had watched over your wife more carefully
in the beginning she would not be what she is,
and this drama would not be enacted in your
drawing-room.” In place of those replies, in each
case I uttered a few vain, untruthful words. My
.pn +1
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desire was to reach Jacques soon enough at least
to prevent him being in the vicinity of Madam de
Bonnivet while the acting was going on. Perhaps
I should succeed, as I was only a couple of paces
away from him, when Queen Anne, as if she had
guessed that I was this time bearing a message
from her rival and should deliver it, decided to
call me, and said in a tone of imperceptible raillery—
“Let me present you to the woman in Paris
who knows most about the primitive Italians
about whom you were talking to me the other
evening.”
“Really, sir,” the person to whom I was to be
thus linked, an insupportable blue stocking, whose
name, if my memory does not deceive me, was
Madam de Sermoise, said, “do you admire those
idealist masters who are so little appreciated in
our days of gross realism? But we shall return
to them, and to a noble and lofty art. You have
been to Pisa, of course, to Sienna, to San Gemigorano
and Perugia?”
O sweet little red and golden towns of lovely
green Tuscany, which indent with your towers the
heights of the slopes planted with vines and olives!
O generous artists with whom I lived so long, and
whose visions are to me still my soul’s daily bread!
Pardon me if I blasphemed your memory and
your cult in replying as I did to the odious pedant.
I declared to her that her hostess was making fun
of her. I told her that I was a member of the
grotesquely modern school of art. But my indignation
did not last. Madam de Bonnivet had
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just asked Camille Favier and Bressoré to begin.
She gave the signal for the guests to take their
seats before the space reserved for the two actors
who were to play; and she made Jacques Molan
sit by her side, saying loud enough for me to hear—
“Every honour shall be shown to the author!”
Then followed a few moments of general disturbance
of couches and chairs, the occupation of
the seats by the women, leaving almost all the
men to stand, and the gradual establishment of
silence. In the midst of the last of the whispering
came the sudden sound of the voices of the two
performers, the dialogue, and the discreet applause
of the audience of people of leisure; but I
hardly noticed the details so did my heart beat,
and does still to-day, at the recollection of that
long-past hour.
Knowing as I did the minutest expressions of
Camille’s mobile face, the slightest shades of her
gestures, the most tenuous inflections of her voice,
I had realized from the first words of the scene
that she had lost control of herself. Madam de
Bonnivet had seen it too. She affected, while
bowing her head at the fine points and being the
first to applaud, to lean towards Jacques a little
too far, to speak to him in low tones, and render
him that public homage which was the simple
politeness of an admirer of the fashionable author!
But to Camille, the wronged and desperate mistress,
the insolence of this attitude was too atrocious,
and it was impossible for the actress to bear
it without taking her revenge. I believed at
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first that she would try to humiliate her formidable
rival by her success, so much eloquence and passion
did she display in the short scene she was acting.
After that was ended, when she was asked to
recite one or two pieces, I thought she would
restrict her vengeance to sharing a little of her
success with two of Jacques’ colleagues, of whom
he is jealous, unless she chose these two poems
because in reciting them she was also solacing
her own poor deserted heart. One of these poems
was by René Vincy, and the other was an unpublished
sonnet by Claude Larcher which I had copied
for her. Dear Claude! How beautiful Camille
was while she recited this elegy which had for me
so many moving souvenirs of my dead friend’s
sorrow. She recited one or two other pieces, and
then quickly and in a joking way which reassured
me for a second, she began to give those imitations
which are always ignoble and sometimes vulgar.
The divine Julia Bartet, the suffering and finely
vibrating Tanagra in Antigone, the supple and
poignant Réjane in Germinie Lacerteux, the pathetic
Jane Hading in Sapho, the sprightly Jeanne
Granier and the tragic Marthe Brandés were in
turn the pretext for a mimicry which testified to
a study of the art of these famous artists so profound
as to be almost a science, and to that monkeyish
frolic of which Molan had spoken, till having
announced Sarah Bernhardt in Phédre, a shiver
went through my whole frame.
She began and I suddenly recalled Adrienne
Lecouvreur and the scene in which the actress,
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seeing Maurice de Saxe, whom she loved, flirting
with the Duchess de Bouillon during a drawing-room
performance, recited those same lines of
Racine’s and ended by applying to her in a loud
voice the imprecation of the poet’s incestuous
queen. Had Camille, an actress like Adrienne,
in love, too, like her, like her betrayed under
circumstances which I suddenly realized were
very similar, coolly premeditated the same vengeance?
Or did the excess of her anger inspire
her all at once with this manner of outraging her
unworthy lover and his mistress? I could distinctly
see now upon her face a terrible intention,
and I listened to her with my eyes fixed upon
Jacques as she uttered that admirable line—
.ce
“The heart is full of sighs it has not uttered.”
But her overpowering emotion already prevented
from imitating the accent of the admirable
Sarah. She pronounced in her own way and on
her own behalf the poet’s lines, and advanced to
the edge of the little stage with the denunciatory
gesture which is in Adrienne Lecouvreur. Her
arms were pointed towards Madam de Bonnivet.
She darted at her enemy a look of mad jealousy
as she uttered the irreparable words—
“I know my wickedness Œnone, and am not
one of those bold women who, enjoying in crime
a shameful peace, have learned to keep an unblushing
face.”
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.pb
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER X
.sp 2
.dc 0.0 0.7
I have often seen Adrienne Lecouvreur acted,
since that evening whose events I am recalling,
with a tremor of the heart simply at the
remembrance of the anguish I felt while Camille
was performing this mad action. I have always
noticed that the audience are gripped by this
scene. As regards myself, both before and after
the performance by Camille upon the improvised
stage at Bonnivet’s house, this scene has always
moved me so that I found the action indicated by
the book quite natural—I had the curiosity to
consult it. Adrienne continues to advance towards
the princess, to whom she points with her
finger, remaining some time in this attitude, while
the ladies and gentlemen who have followed her
movements rise as if in affright. It was without
any doubt a similar effect on the audience of terror,
for ever dishonouring to her rival, that the despised
mistress had, in a flash of blind passion,
resolved to produce at the risk of the most terrible
consequences.
I awaited this terrible effect with as frightful a
certainty as if I could see in Camille’s hand a
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loaded weapon pointed at Madam de Bonnivet.
To-day, when my mind goes back to those moments
in which my heart leapt with apprehension, I cannot
help smiling. Every one of the audience without
doubt knew Adrienne Lecouvreur if not like I
did, at least well enough to recall the situation
which was so dramatic as to be easily intelligible.
Every one had trembled at the Théâtre Français
when they saw Sarah Bernhardt or Bartet advance
towards the Princess de Bouillon as Camille advanced
towards Madam de Bonnivet. But, except
those who were directly interested in this scene,
not one of the audience appeared to understand
the young actress’ sinister intention.
No one, I am certain, instituted, between the
scene being enacted before them at that moment
and the one they had seen acted ten or twenty
times at the theatre, a comparison which would
have been a revelation. The actress herself, stupefied
at what she had dared to do and the results,
mechanically continued the tirade as if in a dream.
Automatically, too, the tones of Sarah Bernhardt
came back to her as she concluded. She stopped
amid a most flattering murmur from all sides, the
discreet applause of the fashionable before a
wonderful feat marvellously executed. One could
hear such phrases as: “Very lifelike! Shutting
your eyes you would think you were listening to
Sarah! How gifted the little one is! It is not
given to every one to possess talent like that!”
Madam de Bonnivet, who had been the first to
clap, had got up and gone to Camille, to whom she
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said with a smile, the amiability of which was
her crowning insolence—
“Exquisite, mademoiselle, exquisite. I am
very grateful to you. Was it not exquisite, Molan?
Will you give Mademoiselle Favier your arm and
take her to the buffet?”
Really I am not suspected of sympathy for the
audacious woman whose abominable coquetry
had exasperated the poor actress to the extent
of this astounding insult. But I must do her the
justice to admit that she had really a majestic way
of thus bringing to naught Camille’s justice. I
distinctly heard her voice pronounce the phrase
in spite of the hum of conversation and the noise
of the moving of chairs and couches, and I saw
Camille look at her with a somnambulist’s look, and
also give her arm to Jacques in quite a passive and
subdued way. Her astonishment at daring what
she had dared and at nothing happening had left
her incapable of reply, feeling or thought. She
was like a murderess who had fired at her victim
and seen the bullet rebound from his forehead,
without even inflicting a scratch. She had not,
nor had I, a mind sufficiently disengaged to perceive
in what had taken place a proof among a
thousand that an irreducible difference separates
the life presented upon the stage from the life
which is really lived. She was the victim of an
attack of nerves which first showed itself in this
astonishment, or rather bewilderment, and almost
immediately afterwards by a fit of half convulsive
laughter which wounded me severely.
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I gladly left the spot where she was with Jacques
surrounded by men who knew her and were paying
her compliments. I came across Bonnivet directly.
His forehead was red, its veins swollen, his eyes
were clear and at the same time flaming, and these
things with the tremors through his whole body
suddenly caused the fear I had felt a few minutes
before to return to me. Even if to the rest of the
audience the insult hurled in the fashionable lady’s
face by the actress had passed unnoticed, a circumstance
which was explained by the fact that
they had no notion of Jacques’ position between
his two mistresses, the husband himself had perceived
this insult, and it required all his self-control
to swallow the affront as he had done. He listened,
or pretended to listen, to Senneterre, whose volubility
showed that he, too, had understood the
significance of the scene acted by Camille, and
that he was trembling with fear lest Bonnivet also
understood. The husband was automatically
curling his moustache with his right hand, while
I felt sure he was digging the nails of his left, which
was hidden, into his chest.
I was not the only one to feel that this man
was in a fury, nor to notice his forehead, eyes and
gestures, which displayed the obvious signs, to
a painter, of a formidable moral tempest. I saw
the group of gentlemen near which I was dissolve
to make room for Madam de Bonnivet, who was
approaching her husband. In the same way that a
little while before she had found a smile of supreme
contempt, with which to congratulate Camille
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Favier and reply to the insult of an atrocious
allusion by the insult of an implacable indifference,
now she found a tender and affectionate smile to
reply to her husband’s suddenly aggravated suspicions.
She brought him in her gracious and
affectionate smile an indisputable proof of her
clear conscience. The sensation of her presence
was necessary to this man at the moment and she
had realized this, and also that the physical reality
of her voice, of her look, of her breath, the evidence,
too, of her tranquillity would impose upon her
jealous husband a suggestion of calmness. Serenely
radiant in her sumptuous white toilette, her eyes
clear and gay, a half smile upon her pretty mouth,
and fanning her lovely face with a gentle little
motion which hardly disturbed the golden hair
upon her brow, she walked towards him, hypnotizing
him with her look. I could see at her approach
the unhappy man’s face relax, while Bressoré,
whom I knew, took my arm and whispered in my
ear—
“How smart she is! But, La Croix, as you are
a friend of Favier’s, I hope you will make her
understand that her way of conducting herself this
evening is very bad for me and for all of us! Why
this is a house where we are received like swells,
and yet because she is jealous of the mistress of
the house and Molan, she behaves like a fool and
treats her as Adrienne Lecouvreur did! I saw it
coming and I saw it pass, and now I have not a
dry stitch of clothing on me. It did not strike
home, it is true, but it might have done so. But
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then if the audience did not understand, the husband
and wife did. I tell you this house is closed
to us for the future. They have had their fill of
acting at home by this time. Frankly, put yourself
in their place, it would not do at all, would it?
I am not more straight-laced than most, and I have
my fancies, but I always behave in a gentlemanly
way.”
The comic plaint of the old actor, who was
trembling for his social status, put a note of buffoonery
into the adventure. I soothed the old
man to the best of my ability, assuring him that
he was mistaken, though without hope of convincing
him. What a fine picture he would
have made, with his mobile blue eyes looking out
piercingly from his clean-shaven face, over which
seemed to float an everlasting grimace! He had
so much and such astounding good fortune that
his glance upon the real bad side of life was like
that of a diplomat. His countless mistresses had
so well instructed him in the particulars of Parisian
fashionable and gay life that he was no longer the
dupe of any one or anything. He nodded his
head incredulously at my protests and replied to
me with the inherent familiarity of his profession,
in spite of the principles of breeding he had just
professed with such solemnity.
“You know, my dear fellow, La Croix, I am
a very good boy and I like to try and give pleasure
by appearing to believe what I am told, but I can’t
swallow that!”
Our little conversation had taken us, the actor
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and myself, into a corner of the drawing-room
near the hall door, which was open. I judged
that poor Camille would not be long in leaving,
and that the best thing would be for me to wait
for her outside and speak to her then so that
Bonnivet’s eyes would not be fixed upon us during
our talk. If no unfortunate accident happened
I felt sure that now Queen Anne would arrange
to definitely withdraw from the intrigue. I was
quite sure, too, that Jacques would not be the
one to end the affair. I knew his self-control.
He would not betray himself. I knew that outbursts
like Camille’s are at once followed by prostration,
and I felt sure that she had allowed herself
to be taken to the buffet like a cowed animal.
Senneterre and Bressoré, the other two witnesses
who had understood all the secrets of this scene,
were not the men to let their perspicacity be
apparent. One loved Madam de Bonnivet too
sincerely, the other was too preoccupied in playing
his part as the correct artist. Only I myself was
likely by my nervousness to betray my knowledge.
I therefore glided between two groups towards
the staircase, and as I was doing so felt my hand
seized. It was Molan, who said in a jerky voice—
“Let us leave together. I want to speak to
you.”
“I am going at once,” I replied.
“So am I; the coast is clear, let us be off.”
We went downstairs without exchanging a
word. We put on our coats in silence under the
critical eyes of the footmen. It was not till we
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reached the street that Jacques said to me, while
he clutched my arm with a force which proved
his anger—
“Were you present at the scene? Did you
see what that infamous actress dared to do to
me?”
“I saw that she had her revenge,” I told him.
“Frankly, you well deserved it, both you and
Madam de Bonnivet. But still it had no consequences
and no one perceived her intentions.”
“No one? Did you take Madam de Bonnivet
for a fool, and her husband too? Do you think
he did not see through it all? As Camille knew,
too, his jealous disposition after the risk she had
seen me run, it was infamous, I tell you, it was
abominable. But I will teach her that I am not
to be laughed at like that,” he went on with
increasing violence. As he uttered this threat
he turned back towards the house we had just left,
and I had to hold him back by the arm while I
said—
“Surely you are not going back there to make
a scene?”
“No,” he said, “but I know the driver of the
carriage she uses for her evening engagements,
I engaged him regularly for her. I have always
been so good to her! I will stop her carriage.
I will punish her here in the street. It is her
proper place, and I will tell her so.”
“You will not do that,” I interrupted him
taking up a position in front of him and speaking
in a low voice. Now I was afraid of the curiosity
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of the drivers who were sitting on the boxes of a
long string of carriages.
“I will do it,” he replied, beside himself, and
just at that moment the porter called a carriage
and we heard a name which caused Molan to
burst out into a laugh, that of Camille herself.
“I beg of you,” I said to the madman, “if you
have no regard for Camille think of Madam de
Bonnivet!”
“You are right,” he replied after a short silence,
“I will control myself. But I must speak to her,
I must. I will get into the carriage with her,
that is all.”
“But if she will not allow it?”
“Allow it!” he said with a shrug of the shoulders.
“You shall see.”
A carriage had left the rank while we were
talking, a shabby hired brougham. Its commonness
contrasted strangely with the other vehicles
which were waiting in the long street. The time
this carriage took to enter beneath the archway
and emerge again from it seemed to me interminable.
If my companion allowed himself to be
disrespectful to Camille I had made up my mind
what to do.
At last the carriage reappeared and a woman’s
form was visible through the window, wrapped
in a cloak with a high collar which I recognized
only too well. It was Camille. Jacques called
out to the driver, who recognized him, and was on
the point of pulling up when the window was let
down and we could hear the actress call out:
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“23, Rue Lincoln, don’t you hear me? Do you
take your orders from that gentleman?” Turning
to me she said: “Vincent, if you do not prevent
that individual,” and she pointed to Jacques,
“from trying to get into my carriage I shall call
the police.” The silhouettes of two policemen
appeared quite black in the light of the lamps,
and though the dialogue had been short the sound
of the voices had made some of the men sitting
on the boxes of the other carriages lean forward.
In the face of this threat Jacques dare not turn
the handle of the carriage door on which he had
his hand. He stepped back and the carriage drove
away while Camille’s voice repeated in a tone I
shall never forget—
“23, the Rue Lincoln, as fast as you can
go.”
“Ah, well!” I said to Jacques after a short
silence, as he was standing motionless upon the
pavement.
“Ah, well! She guessed what was waiting
for her,” he replied sharply, “and she fled. Make
your mind easy, the opportunity is only put off,
not lost entirely. But why can she be going to
23, Rue Lincoln?”
“It is an address she gave haphazard,” I said,
“to make you jealous and make you think she
was going to keep an appointment. She will give
another order to her driver as soon as she is round
the corner.”
“Still we can go there and see for ourselves,”
he replied. “If she has already taken a lover
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and allowed herself to play the trick she has done
on me, you must admit that she is a hussy.”
“No,” I replied, “only an unfortunate child
whom you have ill-treated and driven mad. If
she has taken a lover, that will only prove that
she is the victim of one of those despairs which
women have, when everything seems dark. Such
an action sometimes leads to suicide though it has
not done so in her case, for she is too proud.”
We got into a passing cab as we were talking,
and in our turn started off in the direction of the
Rue Lincoln. My only idea now was to find out
whether the unkindness of which she had been a
victim had not projected her into some horrible
calling. The phrases she had uttered to me during
my first visit to her modest abode in the Rue de la
Barouillére, on the temptations of luxury for her
came back to my mind, and I listened to Jacques
the philosopher once more in a sort of stupor.
Libertines of his character never accept, without
the most sincere indignation, the appointment
of a substitute by the mistress they have most
coldly betrayed. Still less do they allow any one
to see their humiliated spite. Jacques had ceased
his complaints in order to converse on ideas, and
he did so with his usual lucidity. It is the gift of
intelligences trained to speculate to work in a
mechanical way through every shock. Molan, I
believe, will dictate copy, and good copy too, in
his death agony!
When our cab reached the Rue Lincoln Jacques
peered out with a more passionate nervousness
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than suited his dandyism to see if there was any
carriage standing in that short street. He saw
the light of two lamps. Our cab approached and
we could see Camille’s carriage standing before a
small house the number of which was 23. The
carriage was empty and the driver had got off the
box to light his pipe at one of the lamps.
“The lady told me not to wait,” he replied to
the question Jacques asked him, accompanied as
it was by a tip of louis just as the heroes of the
old school of romance used to do. My companion’s
anxiety was very great at this reply, though less
than mine. We stood for a minute looking at
one another.
“We will find out,” he said and called to the
driver to stop at the nearest café; “we will consult
the Bulletin, and if that is not successful we
will go to the club and look at the Tout Paris.
We shall then know from whom mademoiselle
seeks consolation, which you must admit she has
done very rapidly and I expect even before her
misfortunes. It is not very flattering for masculine
love, but every time a man has any remorse at
deceiving a woman, he can assert that he is a dupe
and that she had already begun.”
As he said this he jumped from the cab before
it had quite stopped, alighted on the pavement
in the Rue François I, and entered a café the only
occupant of which was a waiter asleep on a seat.
Without waking him Molan picked up the Bulletin
from the counter, the cashier being absent at the
time, and with a hand which trembled a little
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pointed out to me the two following lines: Rue
de Lincoln, 23—Tournade, Louis Ernest, gentleman.
“Was I right?” he said with a grin. He shut
up the Bulletin and put it back on the counter
adding: “You must admit that I deserved better
treatment.”
“I will admit nothing till I am sure of it,” I
replied, so deeply distressed by this fresh happening
that I trembled all over.
“Sure of it?” Molan cried with insolent bitterness.
“Sure of it? What do you want? Perhaps
you would need to see them in the same
bed? Then you would still doubt! But I am
not a member of the sect of the pure-minded, I
believe that Mademoiselle Favier is the mistress
of M. Tournade, and I repeat that in that case the
scene which she made this evening is one of the
most miserable actions of which I have ever heard
tell. I will be revenged. So good-bye.”
He left me after these expressions of hate without
any attempt on my part to detain or calm him.
I felt crushed by an enormous weight of sorrow.
I have never in my sentimental life known that
jealousy which most books describe, that agonizing,
feverish uneasiness about a perfidy which one
suspects without being certain. I have never
loved without confidence. It seems to me that
women ought to be scrupulous of deceiving men
who love them in that fashion. I have discovered
that it is not so. Should I commence to, for
again I should comfort myself in the same way love
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the simple reason that a person cannot see with
his eyes full of tears. In return, if I have never
been jealous in that uneasy and suspicious fashion,
I have experienced that other sorrow which consists
of having in one’s heart something like a
perpetually bleeding open wound, the evidence of
having been deceived. I have known what it is
to suffer for entire nights at the idea of a woman’s
body being given up as a prey to another man’s
luxury. This horrible oppression, this interruption
of the inmost soul, this deadly shudder in the
face of certainty, is, I believe, the worst form of
sentimental disorder, and this suffering I have
just experienced again with some intensity in
reading the name of Tournade in the address book!
Oh, God! how miserable I was when I got back to
my residence on the Boulevard des Invalides after
walking all the way to quiet my nerves! It was
in vain that I told Molan that I was not sure
Camille was the mistress of the cad whose impure
face had been so repulsive to me in her dressing-room
at the Vaudeville, for there was no room in
me for doubt on the subject. It was so simple.
The unhappy child had lost her head. Excess
of anger and sorrow had deranged her, and in a
moment of delirium she had executed that scheme
of revenge which would degrade her for ever.
What am I saying? She had executed the plan!
She was doing so even at the moment on that night
when I saw the stars shining above my head
between the walls of the houses. That hour, these
minutes, those seconds, whose length I felt, and
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whose flight I measured, she also lived and employed.
How?
The sensations with which this idea blasted
me must be, I should think, those of the man condemned
to death and of his friends who love him
during the time which separates his awakening
on his last morning and his execution. He feels a
desire to arrest the passage of time, to even throw
the world, and for the earth to open, houses to
fall, and a miracle to be accomplished. With
what anxiety he then feels that life performs its
functions in us with the implacable accuracy of
a machine! All our moral and physical agonies,
our revolts and surrenders, have no more influence
upon nature than the flutterings of an insect in
the furnace of a locomotive.
“It is over! She is Tournade’s mistress!”
Those frightful words, which I knew to be true,
I pronounced despairingly as I walked along the
Rue François I, over the Invalide’s Bridge, and
then along the Avenue de la Tour Maubourg.
Transcribing them now, even after such a long
period, gives me pain; but it is a dull pain, a tender
melancholy. With it is mingled a thoughtful
pity, like that which I should feel when standing
before Camille’s tomb, instead of the bitter nausea
of anger and disgust which seized me when I first
realized the certainty of the event. Must I have
loved her without knowing it, or at least without
knowing how much, for thinking of her as I did
to be such a penance!
As soon as I reached home, and before going to
.pn +1
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bed, I wished to looked at the two portraits I had
drawn of her: the first of her before she knew
Jacques, the one I concealed so carefully; the
second of the month previous with an unfinished
smile. These two pictures made her so present
to me, and made the defilement which sullied her
at that moment so real, that I recollect in the solitude
of the studio uttering real groans, like those
of an animal with a death rattle in its throat.
My grief relieved itself by such outbursts that
my servant was awakened. I saw with surprise
this good fellow enter the room to ask if I were ill
and needed his services. It was a grotesque
incident which had at least one advantage, it put
an end to this period of semi-madness. I should
smile at this childishness after so many months if,
alas, I did not find in it one more proof of my
personal fatality, a sign of that destiny which has
always refused me the power to fashion events after
my own heart. Idolizing Camille as I did with
such tenderness, ought I not to have told her so
before? Should not I have arranged so that her
first movement, if she desired to raise an impassable
barrier between Jacques and herself, would have
been to come to me? Who knows? I should then
have realized with her the romance of which she
had dreamed and which she had failed to realize
with Molan! I should have shown such cleverness,
such passionate tact, such caressing adoration
in dressing her wound, that perhaps one
day she would have loved me! Ah, it is the sorrow
of “the might have been”!
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How true those lines of the painter poet Rossetti
were of me, and how suitable for my tomb—
.ce 2
“Look in my face, my name is: Might have been!
I am also called: No more, Too late, Fare thee well.”
I spent that night almost without sleep, only in
the morning having a feverish doze during which
I dreamed a strange dream. I seemed to be sitting
at table during a big dinner. I had facing me
Camille dressed in red with her golden hair upon
her bare shoulders. Near her was my unfortunate
friend, Claude Larcher, whom I know is dead, and
whom I knew was dead then at the time I seemed
to see him alive. Although we were at table
Claude was writing. It caused me infinite anguish
to see him writing these lines, holding his pen
in a way I knew only too well. It struck me that
as he were ill such an effort would be fatal. I
wanted to call out to him to stop, but I could not
do so, as I was threatened with her finger by
Camille, in whose eyes I discerned an absolute order
not to say a word. I understood at the same time
that the letter written like this by Claude was
meant for me. It contained advice about Camille,
and I knew it was of such pressing interest that
waiting was a punishment which increased when
the guests rose from the table and I saw Larcher
go away with the letter without giving it to me.
I set out to pursue him through an infinite maze
of winding staircases. To descend them more
quickly I jumped into space and rebounded as
if wings had raised me till I found myself in a
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garden which I recognized as being that of Nohant,
though I had never been there. I observed with
astonishment the beautiful order of the beds, in
which the flowers were planted so as to trace letters,
and in astonishment I read the phrase which
Jacques had used to me: “She had already begun.”
At that moment a burst of laughter made me look
round. I saw Camille with her hair still on her
fine shoulders and very pale in her red dress. She
took to Tournade a note which I knew to be the one
written by Claude. The fat man was lying in bed,
his face still redder than usual, and he smacked
his lips together with the sensuality of a glutton
who has an appetizing dish set before him. It was
then, at the moment when Camille began to unfasten
her dress to get into bed, that the grief
became unbearable. I understood that she was
about to give herself to him for the first time. I
wished to run to her and again the same fearful
immobility entirely paralysed me and I awakened
bathed in perspiration.
No sooner had I awakened from this painful
sleep than an idea took possession of me. Perhaps
this visit to Tournade on the previous evening
had not been followed by a irreparable lapse? Is
it not an every-day occurrence for a woman to
accept an appointment, keep it, and at the last
moment be seized with a feeling of revolt, defend
her person with fury and go away, having protected
herself with an energy as mad as her inconsistent
conduct. Why had I not admitted that hypothesis
the previous evening, and why did I admit it now?
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I had no other reason than this dream. It was
enough to make me get up hastily at eight o’clock
and hurry to the house in the Rue de la Barouillére.
Happily or unhappily, for a little uncertainty at
times means a little hope, at the moment I knocked
at the lodge window to ask if, in spite of the early
hour, Mademoiselle Favier was at home, I saw in
the lodge a servant who had several times accompanied
her to my studio. This woman had opened
the door to me on my first visit. She had been
present at Camille’s birth, as I knew, and was her
confidant. As soon as she caught sight of me she
ran out of the lodge with a haste which redoubled
my fears.
“Ah! M. La Croix,” she said as she pulled me
towards the stairs so as not to be overheard, “have
you come to see mademoiselle?”
“Has she returned?” I cried. Suddenly I
realized by a glance at the servant’s anxious face
that her question was a pious fiction. Camille
had not returned. My exclamation revealed to
my questioner the fact that I knew something, and
she at once began to interrogate me. Her questions
served to inform me.
“Listen, M. La Croix,” she said anxiously, as
she clasped her rough and misshapen servant’s
hands which trembled a little. “If you know
where she is, I ask you in the name of your mother,
go and find her. Since the coachman brought a
message from her last evening that she would not
return, madam has been mad with grief. I never
saw her like it before, not even when we found her
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husband with a bullet in his forehead. She does
nothing but weep and say to me: “I don’t want
ever to see her again. I will turn her out if she
comes back.” She says that; but if Camille returns
I am sure she will forgive her. Do you understand
that, M. La Croix? A child like her, modest and
sweet, who never allowed any one to approach
her! We used to say, madam and I, that she
would marry so well, like that singer who became a
marquise! No, I cannot believe that she has
gone astray! M. La Croix, you who are so good,
tell me what you know. I am not like some people.
I have brought her up since she was little, and it
was on her account that I did not leave madam
when the crash came. But don’t let the porter see
me talking to you for so long. I have already
had some difficulty in explaining why Camille did
not come home last night.”
“Alas!” I replied without obeying her request
to go upstairs, for I feared the mother’s grief too
much, “I know nothing more than you do, and
the proof of that is that I came to inquire after
Mademoiselle Favier, who appeared to me to be
unwell last evening.”
“She is not at your rooms, is she?” the woman
asked struck by my embarrassment. Her suspicion
revealed to me what passionate affection
she bore the little one, as she called Camille. The
mother’s despair and the servant’s distraction
completed the breaking of my heart. Once more I
realized in what an atmosphere of naïve and simple
tenderness the poor Blue Duchess had grown up.
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She had been one of those little girls whose coming
into the world is treated as a festival, and the steps
towards their womanhood are festivals too:
baptism, birthdays, her first sacrament, and her
first long dress—and all that for the object of so
much moving solicitude to end in the defilement of
gallantry! The faithful servant continued like
a naïve echo of my own bitter thoughts: “No,
she cannot be with you or M. Molan, nor with M.
Fomberteau; you are all of you too good fellows
to turn a girl like her into a kept woman. She will
be that now, Camille, Camille, Camille!”
Forgetting her own precautions to prevent the
gossip of the porter, the good woman began to sob.
I calmed her to the best of my ability by swearing
to her that I would make every effort to see Camille
during the day and to tell her the state into which
her mother had been thrown by her departure.
“Make her come back!” was the only answer I
obtained through her tears coupled with this
sublime expression of shameless devotion: “If
she wants to have adventures I will help her as
much as she likes. Tell her so, only let her remain
and live with us!”
The struggle then was over. The drama of
passion and perfidy at which I had assisted for the
last few weeks had reached its logical conclusion.
My dream had lied to me. It was too late to prevent
that adorable child, born with the most rare
and delicate romance in her heart and head, becoming
nothing more than a courtesan. Her pride
itself, that pretty, vibrating pride for which I had
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loved her so, would hate her degradation. When
she emerged from the furious crisis which had sent
her to the bed of a man like Tournade, the contempt
she would feel for herself would vilify her
so in her own eyes and her inner nausea would have
two results equally frightful to imagine: either
she would not bear her life a day longer and kill
herself, or else she would take a sorrowing pride
in incarnating in herself that outrageous type of
luxury and triumphant shamelessness which become
a great actress who is also a great courtesan.
Which of these two solutions should a man prefer
who loved her as I did, first of all with a somewhat
obscure sentiment, but now with one which was very
full of misery and suffering? Both perspectives
seemed so horrible to me that in spite of the promise
I had given the old servant I made a fixed
resolution never to see the unhappy child again,
and a wiser one still of putting into execution a plan
I had long pondered over, ever since, in fact, I had
begun to understand my poor heart: to go away,
and return either to Spain or Italy, to one of those
sunny lands where a soul wounded to death can at
least wrap up its wound in solitude, light and
beauty.
I ordered my astonished servant to pack up at
once for a long absence, and I set to work to classify
studies and then run through guide books, compelling
myself to become absorbed in the hustle
of this unexpected departure. This new and monstrous
fact, the fall of Camille into Tournade’s
arms, had suspended every other thought in my
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mind. I had forgotten Madam de Bonnivet, the
scene of the previous evening, and Molan himself.
It was therefore like a sudden displacement of the
atmosphere, a recall to an abolished reality, when
I saw the latter about half-past two enter the studio.
It was Molan, however, who was the cause of the
moral shipwreck from which I was suffering. He
was the man I ought to curse and hate. I perceived
him, simply recognizing his face, hearing his voice
and touching his hand. He wore his evil expression,
that of his periods of ferocious hardness,
and his supreme excitement was betrayed at least
to any one of experience like myself, by a way
he had of biting his lower lip with his teeth, thus
imperceptibly lengthening his already somewhat
lengthy profile, and the animal hidden in every one
of us—which in his case was the fox—was so cruelly
in evidence that even the friend most hypnotized
by affection could see at those times his real
character. For my own part I experienced, on
discovering in his face the traces of his real nature,
a start of antipathy which inundated me with
rancour. All my sufferings of the last few hours
exploded and I received him with a torrent of
abuse.
“You have come to tell me, have you not,
you who have behaved so badly, that poor Camille
is utterly lost now? I went to her house this morning,
and I learned that she had spent the night
from home. We know where. That is the work
of your egoism. But there will be a reckoning
with you for this infamy; there is justice somewhere.
.pn +1
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It is a crime, do you hear, a crime to play with a
sincere heart and to behave as you have done.”
“Let me alone,” he quickly interrupted with a
shrug of the shoulders. “When a young girl takes
a lover, she will take two, three, four, and the rest.
If Camille had been an honourable creature she
would have said to me when I courted her: 'Will
you marry me? No? Then good-bye.’ She did
not say so. So much the worse for her! Besides,
if I did her a wrong, it seems to me that now we are
quits, mean trick for mean trick, her scene of last
evening was equal to all my infamy!”
“Ah! the scene from Adrienne!” I cried.
“Are you thinking of that to try and quiet your
remorse instead of shedding every tear in your body
over the moral assassination you have committed.
Let us talk of that evening! What painful consequences
can it have which you can put in the
scale to counterbalance a ruined future and a poor
soul defiled forever? Has Bonnivet turned his
wife out? Has he sent his seconds to you? No,
I answer myself, and I will save you the trouble of
comparing the bad five minutes you passed and
deserved with the vertigo which has just seized
and destroyed this poor girl for the whole of her
life; I repeat, and you shall hear, for the whole of
her life.”
“What heat!” he replied with an ironical smile.
“What eloquence! We are engaged in telling
the beautiful truth. Come, you are angry with
yourself for not having the courage to put yourself
forward in Tournade’s place. That is the truth,
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no denials, please. I know the cause of it, poor La
Croix. Hard words are useless between us, you
know that, so let us change our subject of conversation,
shall we?” Then after a short silence
he continued: “I am not annoyed with you, and I
am going to prove it by asking you to do me a
service. Guess whence I have just come?”
“From the house of that hussy, Madam de
Bonnivet, naturally,” I replied. I was quite
determined to end the interview with a quarrel,
and I had used the phrase which I thought most
likely to bring that about quickly. My anger
changed into stupor at hearing him reply to me
with a chuckle—
“Yes, with that hussy, Madam de Bonnivet.
You hate her very much, do you not? You think
I am very infamous to sacrifice Camille for her,
don’t you? Ah, well!” he went on in a singularly
bitter tone which made me realize that something
very new and unexpected had taken place in that
quarter, “I have come to ask you to aid me in
my revenge. That surprises you, does it not?”
“Confess that there is a reason,” I answered him.
“I left you at eleven o’clock last evening, only
thinking of her and indignant with Camille on her
account. Then you treated as a dirty trick the
foolish prank of that poor child because she——”
“I repeat the expression,” he very quickly
interrupted me. Another period of silence
followed. I could see that a combat between most
contradictory sentiments was taking place in him.
What he had to tell me wounded his vanity sorely.
.pn +1
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On the other hand the same vanity desired to
wreak upon Madam de Bonnivet the immediate
vengeance of which he had spoken, and I alone was
able to help him effectively. But this man, who
was usually master of himself, had just been so
completely overwhelmed by an affront, which was
all the harder for him to bear as he was unprepared
for it. His anger was very great, and he went on
in a hissing voice which vibrated with absolute
sincerity: “Yes, a dirty trick. I stand by the
expression, and I am almost happy to have to do
so, for it constitutes a hold over her. Listen,”
he went on, putting his hand on my arm, and pressing
it as he spoke. “I called upon Madam de
Bonnivet directly after lunch to-day. I was
uneasy. It is in vain that we know that women are
like cats, and always fall on their feet, keeping
something in their disposition with which to twist
a husband who loves them round their fingers when
and as often as they please—do you understand
me?—we have to be so very careful! I was
afraid that Bonnivet had made a scene with his
wife after Camille’s escapade last evening. Now
you will admire my foolishness and cease to reproach
me with heartlessness. For once I obeyed
my poor heart and it was a success! So I called
upon her and was received in the small drawing-room,
which you know, by the woman, reclining in
a long chair, clad in a thin dressing-gown. You can
imagine that clad in lace, with just enough light
to give her a shadowy charm like a phantom, she
looked like a picture of the ideal capable of bewitching
.pn +1
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a lover who is about to be dismissed. Listen:
'Have you a headache?’ I asked her. 'I ought
to have one at least,’ she replied, looking at me with
eyes I cannot describe—eyes in which there was
hatred and fury; but at the same time they were
cold and venomous eyes. 'You have the audacity,’
she continued, 'to return here after what took
place yesterday.’ I was so dumbfounded by this
reception that I had no answer ready. She
was making me responsible for the insult Camille
had levelled at her!”
“It is a little severe,” I said, laughing in spite
of myself at this prodigious change of front, and
the sheepish look of the pseudo Don Juan before
this surprising display of feminine malice.
“Between ourselves you well earned it.”
“But listen,” he went on more violently than
ever, “you will chaff me presently, and you will be
right. I thought I had touched this icy soul in
a spot with some feeling in it. I was taken in,
that is all. You cannot imagine what hard, cruel
things she said to me in that quarter of an hour;
and though I very well knew to what risk I was
exposing myself by allowing Camille to act there,
yet I had naturally felt flattered at having my two
mistresses face to face, and at being received there
myself as a man of the world and Camille as a
lady; and though I had conducted myself as a
man of letters while she behaved like a common
actress, yet she dared to make use of words which
indicated that it was a scheme devised between us
to satisfy my vanity and to revenge the insolence
.pn +1
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she had suffered, that it was the last time her door
would be opened to me, and that she had spoken to
her husband—she dared to tell me that—yes, that
she had spoken to him and explained to him this
girl’s ignoble conduct by a boast on my part!
But if you had heard her tone of voice when she
insisted: 'My first vengeance shall be, since it
appears she loves you, to send you back to her,
and she shall see you unhappy, and unhappy
through me; for you shall be, you shall be!’
She laughed her bitter laugh, which you know, and
I, the Jacques Molan you know, listened, so terrified
at the baseness of soul which these phrases
proved, that I did not stop her. I might say if I
posed to you that I amused myself by studying it.
Alas, no! at that moment I was paralysed, I do not
really understand by what. But I was. Can you
imagine Pierre de Bonnivet entering in the midst
of this scene, and the silence which fell upon the
three of us in that little drawing-room? I swear
to you I thought of crying out to that fool of a
husband then: 'You know I have been your wife’s
lover.’ I believe that would have soothed me!
What would have followed? A duel. I should
have survived it, and I should have been revenged
through this woman’s dishonour. But the prejudice
which requires a man to bear everything rather
than to betray a woman who has given herself to
him, even when she deserves it, stopped me. And
so, here I am.”
“But what motive has she obeyed?” I cried,
so astounded by the story that it did not occur to
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me to laugh at the contrast between Jacques’
triumphant attitude of the previous evening and
the piteous confession he had just made in a hesitating
though furious way, being so overwhelmed
that he had told me everything haphazard, this
time without calculation and without posing. It
was the shriek of the wounded animal. “Yes,”
I repeated, “what is her motive? She has been
your mistress. Consequently she must have
thought something of you!”
“Her object was to take me from Camille,” he
interrupted. “That I have always known. Now
that she has succeeded I no longer interest her,
which is quite natural. The spite of outraged self-conceit
has done the rest. For a few minutes I
represented Camille to her and she detested me
with the hatred she bears her. That is also very
natural. She has found a means of satisfying
everything at once: her caution concerning her
husband’s suspicions, which were now very much
aroused; her ferocious hate, and without doubt her
natural fund of brutality by that unlikely rupture.
But I am not turned out just like that. I have a
revenge to take, and I will take it. You will aid
me, and at once.”
“I?” I replied; “how?”
“By going at once to Camille,” he told me, and as
I made a gesture he insisted: “Yes, to Camille.
There is a first night at the Theatre Français for
which I have a box. I wish to attend the performance
with her tête-à-tête, do you understand?
Madam de Bonnivet will be there. I want the
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wretch to see me with little Favier, and I want her
to realize that we are reconciled and happy, for
that will wound her self-conceit. It is the only
place where I can attack her. Ah! she is convinced
that I left her house in tears with my heart
torn, and that I am miserable! She will have
before her fine guinea fowl eyes the proof that she
will no longer be of any more account in our lives,
Camille’s and mine, than that,” and he threw down
a match with which he had just lit his cigarette;
“and she will have to say to herself: 'All the
same, this man has had me.’ For I have had her;
she cannot alter the fact that she has been my
mistress. What a revenge it is even to think that
a woman can never efface that!”
This horrible explosion of evil sentiments had
made the face of Jacques, who not without reason
passed as a handsome man, and who could make
himself so feline, so gentle, and so caressing, quite
sinister. He was hideous at this moment when
he was justifying in a striking way the theories of
poor Claude upon the savage hatred which is at
the root of sexual intercourse. This so-called love,
which has cruelty for its root, has always been so
repulsive to me that it was impossible for me to
pity Jacques, although I felt that he was as unhappy
as it was possible for him to be. Besides,
I could clearly see the absolute uselessness of the
mission which the discarded lover wished me to
undertake. Madam de Bonnivet’s character became
quite clear to me. I realized that even with
his subtle pretensions to trickery my companion
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had been in the hands of this woman what the
most corrupt of writers would always be in the
hands of a really wicked creature who did not
dally with depravity. A child, a poor, little swaggering
imp of vice immediately unmasked and
bound.
This implacable coquette had amused herself by
destroying little Favier’s happiness with the joy
those beings who cannot feel experience in torturing
the sentiments of others! She had seen clearly
into Molan’s heart. She had manœuvred so as
to bury the knife in the vulnerable part and at the
desired moment. She turned him out, after that had
been done, with the only pleasure she could feel—that
of causing suffering. He, the theorist of all
Parisian depravities, had allowed himself to be
cornered at this little execution without any suspicion.
Now he was foaming at the mouth with
impotent rage against the mistress who had played
with him as long as this sport had suited her
despotism, her ennui, and her moral depravity.
But she had not left in his hands a line of her writing,
a portrait—nothing in fact which could bear
witness to their liaison. No. Molan was no
match for her, and had I not been influenced by
other motives I should have refused to undertake
the commission he desired. The only service to
render him was to take him away from any intercourse
with this terrible woman. Besides, again
making use of the unfortunate actress in this affair
would have appeared to me the misery of miseries,
and I told him so. “Be satisfied,” I said, “with
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this revenge, for when you speak of the other
you forget what your relations with Camille are.”
“How?” he said, and he made use of the most
astounding expression his egoism had ever uttered
in my presence: “Since I forgive her that
night with Tournade!”
“But,” I replied, “perhaps she does not forgive
you.”
“Now,” he said, “you have only to go and ask
her to give me a ten minutes’ interview here. You
will see if she will refuse. Do it for me and for
her!”
“No, no,” I gave as my final reply with the
brutality of real indignation, which made him
shrug his shoulders and pick up his hat as he said—
“Very well, I will go and find her myself.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Where she is,” he answered.
“At Tournade’s house?”
“Yes. After all an encounter with that funny
fellow would rest my nerves. Then the Bonnivet
woman will hear of it, and it will be another proof
that I still love Camille. But I shall find a letter
from her at home waiting, asking me to see her.
It is surprising that she has not reappeared this
morning.”
He had again become the Jacques Molan of his
best days, the man of such assurance, of such
imperturbable personal affirmation, from which a
curious authority emanated. Henceforward I
was refractory on my own account. Was it the
same with Camille? Would he not succeed in
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recovering his influence over the poor mistress he
had tormented and vilified? Then what worse
degradation would she have to suffer? That
question which I asked myself when Jacques
had at last gone so overwhelmed me with bitterness
that my desire to go away, to see neither him
nor her and to know no more about them, became
irresistible. I decided to start for Marseilles that
same evening. There I would decide upon my
destination. I spent the rest of the day in making
the necessary arrangements and visiting a few
relatives. From time to time I looked at my watch,
and at the thought that the time of departure
was approaching a hand seemed to clutch my
heart. I felt beforehand the chill of the solitude
which I was about to enter in leaving the city in
which my only love lived and breathed. How
great was my discomfiture when at six o’clock,
just as I was sitting down to dinner, I heard a
carriage stop. The bell rang and then I heard a
voice, that of the person I most desired and at the
same time most feared to see, the voice of Camille
Favier!
“Are you going away?” she asked me when I
went to her in the studio, where I had told the
servant to take her. “I saw your trunks in the
anteroom.”
“Yes,” I said, “I am going for a tour in Italy.”
She had not raised her veil, as if she did not wish
me to see her face. This sign of the shame which
she felt was very pleasant to me. It was a proof,
after so many others, of her natural delicacy, which
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made her lapse into prostitution all the more heart-breaking
to me, and which made her more sadly,
though madly, dear to me.
“When?” she again asked me.
“In an hour and twenty-five minutes if the
train is not late,” I said in a joking tone looking
at the clock, the sound of whose ticking filled the
empty room. For a time we remained silently
listening to this noise of time, the unalterable step of
life which had led us to that moment which would
lead us on to other moments, moments we foresaw
likely to be dishonourable for her and melancholy
for me. Although we had only exchanged those
insignificant words, she saw that I knew everything.
She sat down, leant her forehead on her
hands, and went on—
“So much the worse. I wanted you to take a
message for me to Jacques.”
“What?” I said tremblingly; I anticipated the
horrible confidence. But I added: “If I can be
of service to you by postponing my departure——”
“No,” she said with strange energy. “It is
not worth the trouble. It is better that I should
never see you again. It was to return him this
letter he sent me to-day—see to what address,”
and she held out the envelope on which I could
see the name of Tournade and the Rue Lincoln;
she added in a voice which was less firm: “I wished
to ask him not to write to me nor seek for me again,
either there or elsewhere, as I am no longer free.”
Then followed another period of silence, after
which she got up and offered me her hand, saying—
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“I will send him back the letter myself through
the post. It will be better. Now, Vincent, good-bye,
and a pleasant trip. You will remember
me, will you not, and not judge me too harshly.
Come, give me a kiss, as we shall not see one another
again till God knows when!”
As I pressed my lips upon her cheek I felt through
her veil that it was moist with tears. Not another
word was spoken between us. I could not find
a question to ask her. She did not think of a
plaint to make. Even at the deathbeds of those
I loved most I have never said a good-bye which
has cost me more.
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.pb
.sp 4
.h2
CHAPTER XI
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.7
Yes, it was a sad and rending farewell! I
must, too, have been plunged into the
depths of melancholy in my heart, for as I wrote
the account of it I sprinkled the paper with my
tears; and now I feel that I have hardly the
strength to take up my pen again to add to this
real romance the sinister epilogue, the suggestive
irony of which alone decided me to write these
pages. Twenty-five months and an absence of
that length have not healed my secret wound.
It is still open and bleeding at the recollection
simply of Camille’s cheek moist with those vain
tears beneath my farewell kiss, the first and last
I ever placed on that charming face which was
now profaned for ever. Yet if absence and silence
are the two great remedies for those passions
without hope and desire, one of which my strange
sentiment for this poor girl was, I can do myself
the justice to say that I sincerely practised
them. Those twenty-five months appeared to
me so short, so short when compared with those
few weeks spent in following hour by hour the
fatal march of the deceived mistress towards despair,
and the rest without trying to prevent it.
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But let us run through those two years from
memory, and also to prove that I have not much
to regret in their employment. First of all, that
same evening came my hurried flight to Marseilles,
then the following day I sailed for Tuscany by one
of the boats which call at Bastia eighteen hours
later and then at Leghorn. I have always preferred
this way of entering dear Italy without
halts by the way, besides which this journey did
away with the possibility of telegrams or letters
for at least half a week, from Sunday to Thursday.
Would Camille Favier leave Tournade and resume
her position as Jacques’ mistress or not? Would
the latter follow up his absurd project of a duel
with his new rival? Would he not extend the
folly of his humiliated self-conceit to the length
of having an affair with Pierre de Bonnivet as
well? So weary was I that I no longer wished
to set myself these problems. O God, how weary
I was! In parenthesis, I was very wrong in setting
myself these problems, for to talk like my friend
Claude, who used to quote with such delight a
phrase from Beyle upon the execution of one of his
heroes: “Everything went off simply and
decently.”
I found out that detail afterwards, but much
later. At the time I remained in an uncertainty
which I had the wisdom to prolong. But four
months later, opening by chance a French paper
in a hotel in Perugia, I saw that Mademoiselle
Camille Favier was to replace Mademoiselle Berthe
Vigneau in the chief part of a comedy by Dorsenné;
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that Molan was publishing a collection of his own
plays; that a horse of M. Tournade’s, Butterfly, had
won some big race; that at a very select gathering
at M. de Senneterre’s Madam X——, Madam
Y——, Madam Z——, and Madam de Bonnivet were
noticed. All this news was packed into this one
issue of the paper like raisins in a pudding. It
sufficed to prove to me that this corner of the world,
like all corners of the world, was still itself, and
that there was a reassuring lack of important
events. But on my part, was I not imitating
myself by copying first a part of the fresco of
Spinello Aretino on Saint Ephése, then the Salomé
of Fra Filippo Lippo at Prato, and going on with
a study after the Piero della Francesca by Arezzo?
Then I was preparing to go to Ancona; afterwards
to Brindisi; to visit Athens and Olympia, to
feast with new visions the most sterile and insatiable
of dilettantisms. When I think of that furious
work of vain culture, I repeat to myself another
phrase which Dorsenné was always quoting, the
exclamation of the dying Bolivar so poignant
with lassitude: “Those who have served the Revolution
have ploughed the sea!” Have those who
have served art as I have served it accomplished
more useful work? Then what is it?
Then what? I think that Bonaparte, Talleyrand,
Bernadotte and many others would have smiled
a smile of the most profound contempt for the
dying revolutionary who had caught no treasure
in the great troubled sea of politics, and I have
only to think of the two little scenes which fixed
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the bitter crisis in my memory to smile a no less
contemptuous smile at myself. However, after
my tour in Greece, I returned to prepare for a
longer stay in the Orient, and a visit to Egypt
and Asia Minor in the month of October, to begin
there that series of pictures upon our Lord, conceived
in their natural environment, which would
have been the definitive work of my maturity if
another had not anticipated me.
Chance had prevented me meeting Jacques and
Camille between these two trips. I only know
that the latter was more celebrated than ever
and the former had married. He had decided at
last to pluck the ripe pear, and he had done so under
the wisest conditions. He had married a widow of
about his own age who was very rich and without
children, with sufficient to provide him in his
maturity with a luxurious home without the aid of
his copy. But as he had not deigned to add a
friendly word to the wedding card he sent me I
had not written to him. That absolute suppression
of intercourse between us hardly allowed me to
expect to see him enter, as he did the other day,
my studio, looking a little older, but with as
clear an eye, as satirical a mouth, and as well-dressed
and smart a person as ever. Had we met
on the previous evening he could not have shaken
hands with gayer cordiality, and at once without
waiting to hear my news began—
“You don’t know the pleasure I feel in seeing
you again. When will you come and dine and be
presented to Madam Molan? You shall see that
.pn +1
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I have been lucky in the marriage lottery. I am
sure you will be very pleased with her. She
knows, too, how I like you. Yes, we have not met
lately, but that is no reason for forgetting. What
have you been doing since we had our last chat?
It is two years ago; how time passes! I knew that
you had gone to the Orient. I heard of you
through Laurens, the Consul at Cairo. You see,
I followed your movements from afar. But tell
me,” he went on, after I had replied to him in some
embarrassment. These subtle cordialities after
such indifference still disconcerted me a little.
“Yes, tell me. Have you seen Camille Favier?”
“Me?” I cried, and I felt that I was blushing
under his indulgent, ironical look, “never. Why
do you ask that?”
“Ah, my dear boy,” he said laughing, and this
time with a gay laugh which displayed his white
teeth, which had remained quite sound though he
was forty, “you were born simple and simple you
will remain.”
“I understand you less and less,” I replied
somewhat impatiently.
“Why? She pleased you. You pleased her.
She has had lover after lover since Tournade—Philippe
de Vardes, Machault, Roland de Bréves—every
one, in fact, ending by the little Duke of
Lautrec, who spends 200,000 francs a year on her,
and yet you did not return! It is said,” he continued
with more malice still in his eyes, “that
you will never see her again except under my
chaperonage! Do you recall our last conversation,
.pn +1
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how I asked you to act as my ambassador
to her and you refused? Ah, well, I want you to
undertake another mission to her. Are you going
to refuse again?”
“That depends upon the mission,” I replied
in the same jesting tone.
“Alas! it is quite a literary one,” he went on
gaily. “It is not that I fear my wife’s jealousy.
We are not lovers, she and I. We are associates
for life, and she is intelligent enough to understand
that the infidelities of a man like myself are of no
consequence. But I have in all things a horror
of going back, and particularly in love! Briefly
this is what it is. You remember Madam de
Bonnivet and her jealousy of Camille?”
“Queen Anne!” I interrupted; “do you want
to send me to her too? That would crown
everything.”
“No!” he said, “that is all over, and a very
good thing, too. Do you know that she has been
left a widow. There is a report that she is going
to get married again. But the whole story, Camille’s
jealousy, the scene at my rooms, and the scene in
the drawing-room, were all so well suited to a play
that I have written one. It is a kind of Adrienne
Lecouvreur, but modern. I have read it to a few
friends and they are all of the same opinion, that
it is the best thing I have done. We shall see
whether his accession of wealth has spoiled
Jacques Molan. It is a fact that I swore to write
no more, and this is the only exception I shall make
to that rule. After the age of forty, however
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.bn 287.png
great a genius a man may be, he repeats himself,
then he has outlived his day. When a man cannot
surpass himself it is better for him to be silent.
I dream of an end like Shakespeare and Rossini,
the end of a very little Rossini and an even smaller
Shakespeare. But I have done what I can and
I wish to let my twenty volumes rest. But this
opportunity was too strong for me. The subject
took possession of me, and the play is written.
I repeat it is the last!”
“You have written a play upon that story?”
I interrupted. “What will Madam de Bonnivet
say?”
“That I am not clever,” he said. “With
women of the world it is very simple. You figure
in their drawing-rooms and you are a great man.
You no longer appear there and your plays are
not worth seeing. My wife has already recognized
three of our friends as the principal character in
the play. Besides people like the Bonnivets
are very common now and they will not be recognized
in it.”
“But Camille, whose romance, a sad and true
romance, this adventure was, have you not
thought of what you were doing to her by transporting
her adventure warm with life to the
stage?”
“That is precisely it,” he replied nodding his
head; “it is her life and her personality. She is
the only one who can play the part, and I do not
know how to negotiate with her. She is a strange
creature. She never forgets. Would you believe
.pn +1
.bn 288.png
that three weeks ago she spoke bitterly of me to
one of our mutual friends! If I write to her she
is quite capable of leaving my letter unopened.
Some one must go and suggest the part to her,
some one before whom she has no self-conceit.
I thought of Fomberteau. But we have not been
very friendly since my marriage. He reproached
me with selling myself. What foolishness!
Camille and he have quarrelled, too, over some
article. Oh, she has become a great actress now.
That is the reason I have come to you to ask for
your assistance.”
“Me!” I cried. “You want me to go with your
manuscript and beg that poor girl not only to
forgive you for writing the play, but also on your
behalf to take the part herself! Come, let me
look you straight in the face! But you are not
a fool. You are a man like another. Yet you do
not realize what a monstrous thing you are
proposing to me!”
“Ah, well!” he replied with his usual smile,
which he had already employed to laugh at my
naïveté, “will you undertake simply to convey
our conversation to her as far as your indignant
exit just now? I authorize you to do so. That
does not make you into the accomplice of any
infamy. You are going to see an old friend you
have somewhat neglected. Nothing can be more
natural, can it? You talk of the rain and the
fine weather. My name is mentioned and you
repeat our conversation exactly, beginning like
this: What do you think Jacques dared to ask
.pn +1
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me? You will then see what answer she will
give.”
Was it the continuation of the habitual empire
his vitality had exercised from our college days
over my doubts? Was there concealed within me
a secret desire to see Camille again, a curiosity
to know what the Blue Duchess of two years ago
had become? Did I also feel curious to know her
reply to Jacques’ outrageous proposal? But
whatever the reason, I accepted this mission which
I considered and still consider monstrous. I
called upon Camille, everybody’s Camille, to take
her the horrible words of her old lover. I saw
once more the face I loved so well, but now it was
framed in ignoble luxury which contrasted so cruelly
to my mind with the proud and humble simplicity
of the Rue de la Barouillére! Not one of those
pieces of furniture in those former apartments in
that old street but told of a noble act of her who did
not wish to sell her beauty, or of her mother who
had saved the honour of their name by the heroic
sacrifice of her fortune. There was not a room in
the sumptuous house, that home of infamy where
she lived now in the Avenue de Villiers, like my
fashionable colleagues, which did not tell of one
of her prostitutions.
Was it indeed the woman who, when I last saw
her, had not dared to raise her veil, as if she were
afraid I should see the traces on her pale cheeks
of Tournade’s caresses? Yes, it was the same
woman who now received me laughing in insolent
bravado with not a trace of embarrassment; and
.pn +1
.bn 290.png
she was still beautiful, adorably beautiful, with her
fine and delicate beauty, which I believe would
never have deserted her whatever her surroundings;
but she was now so provoking, so shameless!
Not a word, not a blush, not a falter betrayed that
she felt any emotion at seeing in me the witness
of what must remain to her a perpetual memory.
She lit, while she listened to me, an Egyptian
cigarette of tobacco the colour of her hair, and
smoked it, exhaling the bluish smoke through
her delicate nostrils, with wide open eyes between
her eyelashes which had been slightly eaten away
by the crayon she used. Her mouth looked too
red from the rouge of the night before; her cheeks
were fuller and her throat was larger; and her
more opulent lips were defined by a dressing-gown
which was a costume of blue stuff worked and
embroidered with silver. I began as a matter of
politeness by giving her a brief account of my
travels, my work and my return; then I broached
the real object of my visit, and I conveyed to her
brutally, without evasion, Molan’s proposal.
“Is he cad enough!” she said shrugging her
supple shoulders. “Is he cad enough!” For a
moment I hoped that a nausea of disgust would
prove to me that the old Camille was not dead.
But no, she went on after a brief silence: “If there
is really a fine part for me, tell him to send or bring
me the play. He is so very clever when he is
clever! Have you read the play? Is he satisfied
with it? You know I am really in need of a fine
part. So is he, for since he has become wealthy,
.pn +1
.bn 291.png
he is allowing himself to be forgotten. Between
the two of us I will answer for its success: his prose
is so tender and I interpret it so well!”
Not a vestige of indignation did she feel, that
indignation I had felt at knowing that the sorrowful
romance of her irreparable downfall was profaned!
Hardly a vestige of malice did she show against
Jacques, that malice he himself expected! From
her clear eyes which retained the colour, the
transparent purity, of the days of her innocence,
I now saw her smile at the fine part, as I had seen
Jacques smile on the subject of the play. Then
it was I really understood the reason I should
never be a great artist. For them—for him as I
have always known him, for her as she has become
after her first experience, their entire life, hearts
included, is only an opportunity for producing the
special act they have to produce, the precious
secretion which they make, as the bee does honey,
as the spider does its web, by an instinct blind and
ferocious as all instincts are.
Love, hate, joy and sorrow is the soil to make
the flower of their talent grow, this flower of
delicacy and of passion, for which they do not
hesitate a moment to kill in themselves all real
delicacy and living passion. For a word to speak
on the stage, for a phrase to write in a book, this
woman and this man would sell their father and
their mother—Camille had not even mentioned
hers; they would sell their friend, their child, and
their sweetest memory. I, who have spent my
life in feeling what they express so well, he in black
.pn +1
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and white, she by gestures and in moving accents,
only succeed in paralysing myself with that which
exalts these expressive natures; in exhausting
myself with that which nourishes these souls of
prey. Does destiny then will it that artists, little
or great, be of necessity distributed between the
two classes, those who transcribe marvellously
without feeling the passions which the other class
feels without power to transcribe? Was Jacques
right in saying that his cruelty to Camille by giving
her memories would also give her talent? A fine
part! A good play! Really we do not complain
at remaining obscure and mediocre, if this obscurity
and mediocrity are the condition for real feeling.
Besides we have no choice.
.sp 4
.ce
THE END.
.sp 4
.ce
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH
.pb
.sp 4
.ul
.it Transcriber’s Notes:
.ul indent=1
.it Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.
.it Phrase corrected: “Une Épopée de ce temps” instead \
of “Une Épopée de a temps”
.it Unbalanced quotation marks were left as the author intended.
.it Typographical errors were silently corrected.
.it Spelling was made consistent when a predominant \
form was found in this book; otherwise it was not changed.
.ul indent=2
.it Miraut instead of Mirant.
.ul-
.it Inconsistent accents in French words were corrected and \
regularized.
.ul indent=2
.it Barouillére instead of Barcuellère or Bareuillère.
.it Champmeslé instead of Champmeslè.
.it Bressoré instead of Bressorè.
.it Odéon instead of Odeôn or Odeòn.
.it Théâtre instead of Théatre in names of places.
.it Éthorel instead of Ethorel.
.it Élysées instead of Elysées.
.ul-
.if t
.it Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_); text in \
bold by “equal” signs (=bold=).
.if-
.ul-
.ul-