n I i^,';f!^f,'2?,',T.X,Qf;, P,f^!r!f.oRNjA....sAN. DIEGO _ ii^''t'Wl||iiiii!J!'' liiSllliillinniiiiiliiili!- 3 1822 00283 0156 MiHII. '!l^W^'■^\\ul'^l\■il I I!' il'S:ii!Hi!i!hlil!li'il!l'iin!i 5 !':!i Slill iiiiiillillii/iiilli m mm mmm- li)'!:i:li;iii!ii;!-! J i ( II I tll I bL'illi: .iiiii ...I. ill iiilM"n !l I Jt/l|i|H(i!|l|l I !H ! .1 II I I II 'i!l!ljli!''i itil I i!ii !hi'i!ii!!tili!!| R!U.!.li . Ill WWmuk LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA 3 1822 00283 0156 presented to the UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO by Adm. & Mrs. S.F. Patten F^ASTELS PAUL BOl liGET PASTELS WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. ROBAUDI PARIS SOCIETE DES BEAUX ARTS 1.1 xi:.Mnori!<; ki'Ition Limited to ( )ne Thousand Copies for Englaml and America Numbt'r__J O'^ . (;l\i)vs iiauvp:v >, PASTELS GLADYS HARVEY TOLD BY CLAUDE LARCHER People talk a great deal of democracy in these days of hurry, or, as a misanthrope of my acquaint- ance used to say, of toppling headlong to destruc- tion. I do not, however, believe that our manners have become so levelling as lovers of established forms are fond of repeating. I doubt, for example, whether a real duchess — there are still some left — at the present day displays less haughtiness than did her greatgrandmother of a hundred and odd years ago. The Faubourg St. Germain, whatever scoffers may think, still exists. It is only rather more of a " noble faubourg " than formerly, owing to reaction. Among the women who compose its 3 4 PASTELS society, many a one who lives on a second floor in the Rue de Varenne, and dresses quite simply, like one belonging to the middle class, for lack of money, displays a pride equal to that of La Grande Mademoiselle in treating as upstarts queens of fashion and the ^lite of Paris. Even that elegance, the commonness of which is proclaimed in the say- ing, " To-day everybody dresses well," remains also a privilege. In fact, at whatever point of view we place ourselves, of matter or manner, of principle or decoration, the pretended confusion of classes, ordinarily the object of dithyrambics, or of the satires of moralists, appear as such only to superficial eyes. The aristocracy of titles, and that of manners — they are distinct — remain shut against intruders, as securely, if not more so, than in the last century, when a simple talent for con- versation permitted a Rivarol or a Chamfort to dine with the finest gentlemen ; when the Prince de Ligne entertained the adventurer Casanova ; when the great lords spent, as a prelude to the night of the Fourth of August, other nights of impurely lev- elling license. It is only just to say that democracy has, in a measure, made up for the forced inequal- ity of names in the past, by establishing a real GLADYS HARVEY 6 political inequality for the benefit of those who are self-made men, and upon whom she bestows all the functions of state. Also that she has multiplied and placed within the reach of all men and women an approach to luxury, elegance, and fashionable life, which creates an illusion — from a distance. This semblance has its symbol and principal means of action in those fashionable establish- ments from which a woman emerges dressed as by Worth, supplied with stylish furniture, decorated with curious ornaments. But the toilet, the furni- ture, the ornaments are "very nearly but not quite," — and this « not quite " suffices to keep up the difference. This difference between the authentic and the fictitious has never appeared so clearly to me as when I have associated, as I have done at different periods, with the young Parisians in their amuse- ments. I see them this moment before my eyes, arranged, as it were, in a symbolical picture. There is first, at the top, the true man of pleasure, he who actually possesses the hundred and fifty thousand francs a year, which are presupposed by a " fast life," as it is called, or who manages to pro- cure them. This man combines with this fortune 6 PASTELS a name already well known, relations already formed in the world, and that sort of precocious understanding of the art of spending, which helps a young man, if he ruins himself, at least to know why. His place was marked in advance in the cal- endar of two or three grand circles, into which the middle-class snobs take years to force their way. This young man may be, with all this, a strong and mediocre fellow who traverses Paris without losing his footing, or sinking immediately in the ocean of temptations that surround him. Meanwhile he is the king of Paris. It is for him that the enor- mous city works, it is in him that the entire effort of this colossal manufactory of pleasures has its end. If he has adventures in society or the demi- monde, it is with women like himself, with those whose linen and laces represent by themselves a fortune and whose refinement could not be sur- passed at the present day. " First-class ladies," as the ordinary Anglo-Saxon, who is in the habit of labelling everything as if it were merchandise, would remark. Whether this young man drive a phaeton, drawn by his own horses, or employ, for practical reasons, an ordinary hack, you may rest assured that his rooms are as comfortable as those GLADYS HARVEY 7 of a great English lord, and as full of trinkets and flowers as those of a fashionable courtesan; that he eats only at tables served in a princely fashion, and that the slightest baubles belonging to his person attest the most magnificent dissipations. In short, there are many chances that he will ruin himself after the old style, in this positive century, by a whimsical existence that would de- light the shade of old Lauzun, satisfied to follow to the end the old method, and, when about forty, to recover from the female sex, in the shape of a fine dot, all the money he has squandered upon it. Immediately below this man of pleasure of the upper ten, you will find his imitator in a person, almost his like, but who lacks something, I do not know exactly what, in rank or position, in fortune or personal tact. He may be a bourgeois ashamed of being a bourgeois, a timid man who would play the part of a cynic, a stranger undergoing the pro- cess of naturalization in Paris, a creature of rou- tine, who amuses himself as a duty, or simply one of those indefinable maladroits to whom a ridiculous misadventure is bound to occur in a given time. This imitation of the master viveur has his imitation. The latter may be the son of a 8 PASTELS tradesman, for whom the club in the Rue Roy ale is the Ultima Thule, the inaccessible land of the ancient navigators, but who contents himself with the Caf^ de la Paix, in the evening, after leaving the theatre. He certainly attends first-night performances like the others, but without the entree into any of the boxes where the great ladies sit in state. He pays attentions to the highest-priced women on the exchange of gallantry, but he has never been able to bring one out, nor even to arrange any worldly liaison which might be talked about in the clubs as a sort of morganatic marriage. And this imita- tion of an imitation has his own imitation in the rich student who comes from the provinces to get acquainted with high life, and who enters into cor- ruption with as much zeal as people formerly did into their religion. This same student wears the same white collars rigid as marble, the same sort of a hat shining like a sabre, the same coat and the same boots. But his favourite restaurant is on the left bank of the river. There is a something suffusing his person which stamps him as belong- ing to the ' other side of the water.' One feels sure, on looking at him, that he is throwing himself into the Paris of festivities from a furnished apartment GLADYS HARVEY 9 in the Rue des Ecoles. His women friends are imitations of an imitation, daughters of the Boule- vard St. Michel striving to imitate the girls of the Folies-Bergeres, — while above these creatures are kept women, in ascending degrees, from her who upholds the traditions of the lorette, — rooms rented at three thousand francs, and the rest in proportion, — to the courtesan of superior order or disorder, whom obliging friends may present to some visiting foreign prince, without his Highness, accustomed as he is to royal sumptuousness, being shocked by a single detail of toilet or installation. And so it is that social nature, as invincible in her lightest decrees as physical nature, imposes this law of the hierarchy, misunderstood by the doc- trinaires of equality, upon that domain that is most whimsical in appearance, and the most aban- doned to free caprice. Among the spectacles which most greatly delight the curiosity of the moralist, one of the most curious is assuredly the metamorphosis of a per- son in the act of changing from one grade to another. I have often been afforded this spectacle in the person of an old school friend, whom I see again after a separation of a few years, or of a few 10 PASTELS months even. Once in awhile I have been able to follow the diverse stages of this sort of social evo- lution, — if the word is not too imposing for so small a matter, — as in the case of a young man named Louis Servin, whom special circumstances had allowed me to catch young. Twelve years ago, when Louis was about four- teen, I was separated from my family, with very limited means of support, and obliged to utilize, in view of a literary life, the stock of Latin and Greek which remained from my college education. Some private lessons given during the day, and much paper smudged in the evening, — such was my life at that period. Among my pupils, it happened, was Louis Servin. His father, an excellent man, with an almost American activity, had twice made and lost a fortune. He had at last set up a ready- made clothing shop, which, under the simple title, " Au Bon Drap," was the most dangerous rival with which the celebrated " Belle Jardiniere " had to compete. Louis was the only and foolishly spoiled son of this sturdy merchant and his wife, who had great pretensions on the score that her grand- mother was a woman of rank. From this early age, he showed himself to be the GLADYS HARVEY 11 vainest fellow of my acquaintance. He attended the lectures at the College Charlemagne, and he suffered for it — because it was a democratic col- lege. His ej^es sparkled when he spoke of one of his young companions who was following the lec- tures at the College Bonaparte. Now, Servin the elder had his shops on the Rue St. Antoine. This boy was already so strangely given up to instinct- ive meanness, that he learned the floor on which each of his playmates lived, and I never knew him to express any sympathy with a boy who lived higher than the second. The ingenuity of this folly diverted me to such an extent, in the intervals of our Latin reading, that I decided not to lose sight of a subject so well endowed for becoming a first-class snob. As a law student, Louis kept the promise of his boyhood. He was one of the first to import into the beer saloons of the Latin Quarter, the costumes and attitudes of the " mashers," or <■'- gommeux,^' — that was the fashionable term at the time, — whom he had observed at the theatre or the races. For- tune favoured him. His father, of whom he was ashamed, died suddenly, and with the concurrence of his mother, who was as vain as himself, he sold 12 PASTELS the shop. He saw, with rapture, the name of Servin disappear from the glass of the doors, and from the sign ; he already projected the modification of his name by the addition of Figon, the name of his maternal great-grandmother. In the mean- while, he started for Italy, in company with a certain Pauline Marly, who had been at one time the favourite of a great personage. He returned after some months, with his cards engraved with these magic words, Servin de Figon, and I was invited to dine by his mother, who signed her note Th^rese Servin de Figon. This was for Louis the signal for a new life, which he inaugurated by breaking completely with all his old acquaintances, excepting those whom he knew, like myself, to be more or less attached to all kinds of society. This was the period of the box in the front row at the Boulevard, and of home- sick longings for the parquet. In what fashionable bar did he become acquainted with the handsome Marquis de Yardes, and after how many cocktails drunk together did this real " swell " interest him- self in the efforts of the young bourgeois^ en- deavouring to " deservinizc " himself, if we may coin the word ? However it happened, for some GLADYS HARVEY 13 years Servin de Figon, now become S. de Figon, following the usual methods, attached himself to the marquis, as the Scapins of ancient comedy attached themselves to the Leanders, with that persistent flattery which endures all rebuffs, under- takes every servile duty, and triumphs over all repugnance. Philippe de Vardes, in whom easy success had not destroyed his natural good-fellow- ship, went so far as to give his admirer some lessons on dress, as well as some wise advice on the conduct of his social affairs. " He is still young," said he, when he was questioned about S. de Figon, " but in a year or two he will be matured." He spoke of him as he might of his Bordeaux. However, the influence of this amiable patron did not go so far as to open, in favour of his prot^g^, the doors of the paradise of the Rue Royale. The " Servin " was still too recent, and besides, Louis had tried to get ahead too quickly. A few too successful dinners tendered to some bankrupt nobles had drawn upon him secret envy. A last remnant of practical good sense, inherited from the elder Servin, made him realize this error, as well as some others, and he made the resolution henceforth to follow blindly the advice of Vardes. 14 PASTELS Two visits to England, in the company of this indulgent protector, had given him an insight into cosmopolitan life, and now his mother, who had died in her turn, must have turned in her grave for joy. He no longer associated with any but men of title, or millionaires, — and the Prince of Wales knew his name ! However interesting such a specimen of bourgeois vanity may appear to an author, it is quickly known, classified, defined, and labelled. And yet, when my old servant Ferdinand brought me, one July evening two years ago, an English visiting-card on which was simply engraved, Louis de Figon, I did not re- ply by an energetic, « Say I am not at home." On the contrary, I rubbed my hands, and begged him to introduce my unexpected visitor, whom I awaited with the utmost impatience. I ought to add that I had worked hard all day, and when a writer has ten hours of sprightly copy in his brain and at his finger-tips, his intellectual bliss is so complete that it makes him indulgent to the worst bores. But the counterfeit De Figon is not only a bore, but also a catoblepas} For the use of this word I ask 1 A sort of bull found in Africa, which always keeps its head hanging down. GLADYS HARVEY 15 the reader's pardon. I have borrowed it from Flaubert's " Temptation of St, Anthony," where this animal is mentioned as so utterly stupid that it once devoured its own feet without being conscious of it. " His stupidity attracts me," says the her- mit. So, sometimes, one encounters in the world curious puppets, who take their own idiocies so seriously, and with a sincerity so utterly ridiculous, that a sort of indefinable fascination emanates from their folly, as from the catoblepas of the " Tempta- tion." Literature has created a certain number of them, of whom the most remarkable is Joseph Prudhomme. The catoblepas is not simply an ab- surd fellow ; it is necessary that the comic charac- ter should be accompanied in him by a malformation of human nature so absolutely constitutional, that he is the equivalent, in the moral order, of the ter- rible dwarfs upon whom princes in olden times doted. This feeling must correspond in us to that singular taste for ugliness, the decided predomi- nance of which amongst certain races is attested by the art of the Far East. Am I myself affected by it ? Anyhow, the visit of my old pupil, on the summer evening of which I speak, caused me a sincere pleasure ; and I gave the order to admit 16 PASTELS him, with an eager desire to find him as ridiculous as he used to be, which was not disappointed when he entered my study. Brought hither by what mo- tive ? I did not think of asiving myself that. His physique is excellent. Servin de Figon is tall and slight, with a ratlier long nose, a low fore- head, and an inexpressible self-complacency spread over his mouth and checks. One is irresistibly re- minded in his presence of the old saying, '* proud as a jK'acock," and there is an extraordinary similarity of physiognomy between the bird and the man. ( )ii each side of his pointed face, the two ears stand out too conspicuously. A parting in the middle of his head divides his black hair into two shining patches, to which cosmetics have been skilfully applied. Tin' moustache is of a different colour from the liuir, almost red, and its curl attests the daily use of the curling-iron. But what gives, above all, the most astonishing expression of hapjiy vanity to Louis, is a certain fashion he has of carrying his head thrown back, and lowering his eyelids disdainfully, which he afterward slowly raises, while talking and smil- ing at his own words. Such airs would make a newcomer say of this young man : " What a poseur !^^ without noticing, even, that his dress was GLADYS IIAUVEY 17 more tlian afTected. Louis copies his tutor Philii)pe de Vardes with such annoying fidelity, that it must require all the latter'a good nature not to resent this caricature. Philippe is athletic and full-blooded. He wears frock coats and tight-litting jackets to show off his muscles. These same jackets and coats on Louis's tall, slight figure exaggerate its leanness. Philippe, with his highly coloured complexion, can wear bright colours that give Louis's wan face the greenish tints of a premature corpse. The slightly English accent of the marquis is explained by the fact that his mother was Scotch and that he had lived as much in London as in Paris,' while the son of the owner of the '* Bon Drap" never knew anything of the English language cxcejit the terms of the race-course, which he pronounces very badly. And then, tliere are little niannerisms of the niastL'r, which the pu])il uses without ceasing, such as a certain favourit*^ expression, " (yo. est." " Why, you have (juitc a nice place here," he said to me, as he entered, apparently quite aston- ished at not finding his old instructor in a mis- erable garret, and drawing from his {socket a cigarette-case, on wliich a count's coronet began to 18 PASTELS appear : " Will you not take one ? They are ex- cellent cigarettes from Egypt, — Philippe and I import them directly from Cairo. It was Lord " (here followed one of the first names of the peerage) " who gave us the address. You don't know him ? Ah ! he's charming, my dear fellow, charming, and such a swell ! We held a little festival together, the other day, at Philippe's — one wine only for dinner — ChS^- teau Margaux '75. At last, Bob had gone" (here he slowly raised his eyelids, while he thus spoke of this great lord, who would not have had Servin pere to make clothes for his family). " There was in the party Viollas, the cousin of the little Dutacq, that pretty blonde who resembles Lady " (here another souvenir of the peer- age). " Bob asked aloud, with his grand air and accent, ' La petite Dutacq is charming. Who is her lover ? ' ' Monsieur,' interrupted Viollas, < Madame Dutacq is my cousin.' And do you know what Bob replied ? ' I did not ask you that, monsieur, I asked if she had a lover.' Is not that quite the style of the ancien rSgime ? How we laughed ! " It is impossible to reproduce the mimicry of this GLADYS HARVEY 19 conversation, or the profound respect the tones of his voice betrayed, in his daring familiarity in say- ing Philippe and Bob, or the contemptuous manner in which he jerked out the plebeian names of Viol- las and Dutacq, and the imitation of the intona- tions of the marquis in certain passages. I had a moment of pure joy, when I saw my catohlepas imitate himself with such perfection, and exhibit himself before a writer with no coat of arms, in all the reflected glory of the nobility of others. All this, however, did not explain to me his visit, nor the invitation he suddenly threw me, when for the last ten years we had met only with a hand-shake at the theatre, or exchanged a friendly bow in the street. " By the way, are you disengaged this evening ? " he asked ; and on my replying in the affirmative, " Will you dine with me this evening at a restaurant at eight o'clock ? The men will be Tord, Saveuse, and Machault; and the ladies, Christine, Anroux, and Gladys." "What Gladys?" I asked, astonished at this name, which recalled to me one of the most adora- ble young girls I have ever known, — a young English girl from Wales, with royal blue eyes, with 20 PASTELS hair the colour of gold, and a complexion that made Rubens's pink beauties look like brunettes. " What Gladys ? " cried Louis, " why, there is only one, our Gladys, the Creole, she who ruined little Bonnivet ; the one who said so prettily, ' She is a bad loser, my mother-in-law, the duchess, a bad loser ; ' in short, Gladys Harvey — I have been living with her for the last year " (here fresh play with the eyelids). " I got her away from Jose " (here one of the great names of Spain). " You know Jose, who made arrangements for the bull fights at the Hippodrome, and then those horrid ministers refused to permit them. He always said, ' It is not a dog that Gladys keeps, but a pack of hounds.' You must go out, my dear fellow, and see a little of life " (this time the eato- hlepas completely fascinated, thus patronizing me). " Ah ! how many subjects for romances I shall be able to place before you ! You accept ? " And I accepted it, only to regret it deeply, with the astonishing logic characteristic of literary men, while making my way, two hours later, to our rendezvous, a restaurant near the Circus. " It was really too silly of me," I said to myself, " to put on a dress coat at this time of year ! I am not GLADYS HARVEY 21 an accomplished gentleman like Figon, who pre- tends that a dress suit puts him at ease." I crossed the Esplanade des Invalides busy with these thoughts, doing my best to immerse myself in all my ill-humoured Bohemian prejudices, against the pretended fashionable life — and diverted, never- theless, by the carriages that rolled along so lightly. It was one of those evenings in early summer, when there seems to float through the air of Paris an atmosphere of pleasure. The Parisians, men and women, who still remained in the city, were there to amuse themselves. Strangers or provin- cials, chance guests, were here for no other reason. It seemed a truly happy population that wandered through this transparent July twilight. The leaves of the trees, with the bloom off, rather than faded, the burning languor of the atmosphere, the mag- nificence of the sunset behind the slender towers of the Trocadero, or the imposing mass of the Arc de Triomphe, a sort of nonchalance and unbending in the activity of the passers-by, — all contributed to the impression of a city given up to pleasure. This was particularly so in this half exotic quarter, with the lavish display of its private houses and the gaudy ostentation of its architecture. "These 22 PASTELS people are all joyous," thought I, in looking at the passers-by ; " let us try and be as they are." I ac- cordingly endeavoured to picture to myself the table-companions I was about to join. Tor^, first. Albert Tor^, an old beau, more blond than natural, with a red face, and a sort of phantom smile, me- chanically appearing on his old lips, the greatest Anglomaniac among all the French. He is pos- sessed of the deliciously absurd belief that he is irresistible, because he was for fifteen years the recognized "fancy-man" of an English duchess. His posthumous devotion to this great lady, dead and buried some years ago, shows itself in the boldest familiarities with the women whom he meets to-day, and who evidently are unable to repulse a man who was formerly distinguished by Lady . He is another catoblepas, but a melancholy one. Saveuse, the Baron de Saveuse, — there is noth- ing ridiculous about him. He is a nice fellow, al- though rather pronounced, intellectual, and even well informed ; but it would not do to know that his ele- gance subsists upon expedients, and that his friends call him the Statue of Qu^mandeur.^ How much 1 A Qu4mandeur was a sort of parasite, ready to do any- thing for a dinner, and always asking favours of his friends. GLADYS HARVEY 23 will it have cost Louis Servin de Figon to have him at his table ? As for Machault, he is a giant who has no love for anything in this world but fencing, a gladiator in a black coat and white waistcoat, who hurries from fencing match to fencing match and from salon to salon. An excellent man in other respects, but you could not talk with him five minutes without the parry in quart making its appearance. It is he whom I prefer to the others, and I could dine alone with him without being bored ; for if he is a monomaniac of the sword, one must add that he is as brave as the sword itself, and that it has never occurred to him to use his extraordinary talent as justification for an insult. If he is an athlete, it is from pleasure and not from fashion. Ah, well ! the dinner will be tolerable with the men, but how about the women ? Chris- tine Anroux ? I know her only too well. With her hair in simple bands, her frank eyes, her falsely modest expression, she is the type of girl who gives herself the airs of a woman of the world, and in whom one divines a frightful depth of louryeois positivism. This kind comes from the procuress, and will hardly allow you to utter an improper word. At fifty, Christine will have a million and I 24 PASTELS more, she will make an orthodox marriage with some honest blockhead, and play the benevolent lady of the manor in some retreat in the provinces. Nothing is more commonplace than such a crea- ture, and there is nothing, also, that men resist less. And Gladys will be like Christine. Bah ! I will leave soon after dinner. And I thought again : " But why has Louis invited me there, so abruptly, me, Claude Larcher, who have not even the credit of my two poor first plays any longer, and who work on the newspapers, like a poor devil of a literary workman ? Can it be that some woman of rank has praised my last article to him ? " I calumniated the poor boy, as 1 knew from the first words his mistress said to me, on my entrance into the elegant salon of the restaurant where all the other guests were already assembled. I was the last to arrive. This little salon, which the footman had pointed out to me under the poetical name of the " Salon of Roses," opened on a covered terrace around which rustled foliage, fantastically lighted from below. Under the trees of the garden belonging to the restaurant was an orchestra of Hungarian gipsies, who played the airs of their country with that mix- GLADYS HARVEY 25 ture of languor and frenzy which renders that music the most wearisome and the most enervating in the world. In the room the light of candles struggled against the last remnant of day, which was merg- ing into twilight. The chandeliers and candlesticks in which these candles were burning were lost in a wreathing of flowers. Other flowers decorated the table. They revealed the taste of Saveuse, whose searching glance involuntarily took in every detail. Looking at the correct attire of the men and the toilets of the women, Christine all in blue, Gladys all in white, it was impossible to believe oneself on the open territory of the demi-monde. Some fine pearls were wound around their throats ; they wore slightly low-necked dresses, and had a delightfully aristocratic air. Youthful beauty, adorned with refinement, had (as it always will have) so powerful an attraction for my plebeian artist nerves that I at once ceased to philosophize and regret my ready acceptance of the sudden in- vitation from my Lord Figon ; and with the greater alacrity as, no sooner had I been presented, than Gladys said to me, with a slight English accent, and as if she really meant it : "Has your friend told you that I have been 26 PASTELS asking him for at least six months to get you to dine with me ? I was very near being disap- pointed. He did not know that you were in Paris till this morning, but he had to go and call on you this very day. If you had not been disen- gaged, to-night, it would have caused me genuine sorrow." I appeal to wiser men than myself. Who would not have been happy to be questioned thus by a creature with a most caressing air ? Gladys is tall. Her bare arms — she wore on her right arm, and near the shoulder, a knot of black velvet — are beautifully modelled. Her figure is slight, without being too slender, her corsage leads one to expect the bust of a young girl, although she must be close upon her thirtieth year ; just as, by the way in which her robe falls about her, without tournure, one recognizes the supple and agile woman, the famous tennis-player that she is. Her most jealous rivals grant that she is an accom- plished mistress of the art of carrying off a dress well. Her small, supple hands reveal her Creole origin. At this moment these little hands, cov- ered with su^de gloves, were waving a fan of dark plumes, from which escaped a vague and sweet GLADYS HARVEY 27 perfume. This Creole origin is also recognizable in all kinds of graceful personal characteristics. Her mouth is a little too large. Her black eyes, as soon as thej become animated, open a little too widely. "They are cut like almonds," says Gladys, laughingly, " but in the other direction ! " The expression of those eyes, by turns astonished and sad, cunning or dreamy, the quivering nostrils, the trembling smile give her face a mobility of feature which announces the woman of whims and passion. It seems as if there were something of the courtesan of the eighteenth century in Gladys, and not too much of the coldly calculat- ing woman of the brutal and positive age in which we live. This evening she wore a white dress, fas- tened at the hollow of the throat with a sapphire. In her chestnut hair with its golden lights, shim- mered a knot of red ribbons. While she was talk- ing to me, I saw her delicate cheeks grow pink, and the fan flutter nervously in her fingers. For the moment, I experienced a feeling of fatuous self-conceit, for which I was quickly punished, but which made me take my place beside her with very keen pleasure, when Figon gave the signal for us to take our seats at table, with all the ceremoni- 28 PASTELS ousness which marked the least act in his career as a man of fashion. What a strange thing it is to make a duty of what ought to be a pleasure, and to amuse oneself by rule. " Let us see the menu," said Machault, gaily, while the chairs were being arranged, the napkins unfolded, and the sort of silence that always accom- panies the commencement of a dinner came over the guests. "I have two fencing-bouts on my hands," and he made the muscles of his biceps stand out under the thin cloth of his summer coat. " Ah ! I have fought with a left-handed army man. Ah ! the trouble I had ! By Jove ! I wish I could find a foil with which I could strike without being touched myself." He laughed loudly at his joke, then consulted the menu. " Yery good ! That is a sensible dinner," and he read the names of the dishes in a loud voice. " One will be able to eat ; my compliments, Figon." " Make them to the master," said Figon, point- ing to Saveuse. " Mon Dieu ! " replied the latter, " it is so simple. It is necessary, during these months, to discover the animals whose flesh is not dis- turbed by love. The ox is so no longer, and the GLADYS HARVEY 29 young turkey not yet; that is the basis of the menu, and, for the rest, it is enough to have some slight idea, and to talk it over oneself with the chef — " " Could you recommend me one ? " interrupted Christine ; " if I marry, I shall want one." " Good ! " said Gladys, leaning toward me, " she is going to tell you that a prince has asked her hand, and that she hesitates ! And for the other," added she, calling my attention, by a wicked glance, to Tor^, who, placed at her right, was grimacing satanically, " the old fellow is nudg- ing my knees under the table — he is thinking of his duchess. You are a very jolly fellow," cried she to the Anglomaniac, tapping him lightly with her fan, " but the ground is strictly preserved." Then, after some minutes, when the con- versation had become general, she said, question- ingly, " Louis tells me that you know Jacques Molan?" " I knew him well some time since," replied I. " It was to me he dedicated his first romance." " I knew it," she replied. " Ah ! how I loved that book." Her eyes became deep and dreamy. A silence fell between us. I should not be worthy 30 PASTELS of the name of a man of letters, if I had not experienced, if only for a second, a slight sensation of annoyance, like Trissotin,^ when he hears Vadius praised. Although it is several years since Jacques Molan and I have seen each other, except in passing, and we never converse on confi- dential subjects, yet I have always kept a sym- pathetic memory of that friend of old days. I appreciate his talent, although his dolorous man- ner, full of complications and refinements, scarcely satisfies me, now that I have given up what we used to call the neurosis of adjectives. I am ready to write ten articles in order to demonstrate that Jacques excels in combining the most finished study of manners, drawn from nature, with the finest sensibility. Yes, I would sing his praises with all my heart and without betraying my secret opinion of faults of this nature. At the present moment, Jacques has become the most unfeeling and deceitful of men. He restores this sensibility as bald men restore their hair. The desire of money and excitement are the only sincere pas- sions left in this artist, worn out by success as lA bad writer, one of the characters in Moli^re's "Femmes Savantes." GLADYS HAKVET 31 others are exhausted by misery and disaster. There is in all the pages from the pen of this sen- timental romancer an undercurrent of low comedy, which spoils, for me, all his effects of style, and a finicalness that is opposed to all the virility of which I am at present enamoured. The misfortune is, that this clear understanding of Jacques's faults is accompanied in me by a species of discontent that he should have succeeded so well, — of which I feel a little ashamed. Let this be my excuse for not having received the enthusiasm of my pretty friend with pleasure. However, I had at least the good sense to hold my tongue. I watched her dreaming now. The music of the gipsies swelled, more intoxicating in proportion as the musicians became intoxicated in playing. Night had fallen, and the foliage of the trees stood out against a black sky pierced by stars. The guests were chatting gaily, and Saveuse was com- mencing to relate how, that very morning, he had met in the corridors of a large furnished hotel a certain Madame Forget. I have remained innocent on this point. I still cannot comprehend how cer- tain men of pleasure in Paris can so readily dis- honour a woman whose secret they have detected. 32 PASTELS With the aid of habit, I expect to become accus- tomed to it. But Saveuse was speaking : " ' This is very inter- esting,' I said to myself ; and supposing I have dis- covered a scandal ? She, a saint, who will not receive me, under the pretext that I do not respect women ! She had not seen me. I climbed the staircase behind her, and saw her disappear through a door without even knocking ; I looked at the number, I descended and consulted the register of travellers' names. No mention of the said num- ber, of course. My curiosity was so aroused that I waited five full quarters of an hour by the clock, at the door of the hotel. At the end of this time, she reappeared. I saluted her with respect. She bowed to me with dignity. But ten minutes later, whom should I see come out from this same door of the hotel ? Guess — Laurent ! who was so foolish as to blush like a schoolboy, and told me there on the spot, without my asking a question, that he had come to pay a visit to some relatives from the country. And to crown all, that great simpleton Moraines said to me at the club, when some one happened to mention the name of La Forget : ' Do you know that that poor young woman has passed GLADYS HARVEY 33 two hours to-day in a hospital ? She will kill her- self in tending the sick ! ' " "I recognize them there, your women of the world," said Christine. " And I, the men of the world," said Machault, regarding Saveuse with an air of such utter con- tempt, as reconciled me for ever with the brave fencer. The intonation had been so insolent that every one felt chilled. Saveuse smiled as if he had heard nothing, and suddenly Gladys, who had been " in the moon," as Figon termed it, turned toward me again and asked : « Just what sort of a man is Jacques Molan ? " "Good," cried Christine. "Gladys talking lit- erature ! Larcher, ask her to show you her garter. She has had embroidered on it, as a device, the title of the last novel with which she is infatuated. Is it not true, Gladys ? " "Perfectly true," said the latter, laughing. "You see," added she, addressing herself to me, " if you ever wish to paint the demi-monde, you must not take me as a model; I am too poor a cocotte. But it cannot be helped. See what I think about, instead of looking for old men to fleece, or young men." And addressing herself 34 PASTELS to Christine : " What took place on the Bourse to-day?" Christine shrugged her shoulders and smiled an evil smile. " Yes, what sort of a man is Jacques Molan ? " insisted Gladys. " Rather ask me what sort of a man he was," replied I. " I have not seen him five times in the last two years." " One changes so little," said she, with a pretty toss of her head. " Look at Tor^." The old lunatic heard his name and winked his eye. The fact is, that at this moment, the light played over his golden-yellow colouring, and the sort of yellow brilliancy of his hair rendered irre- sistibly comical the ugliness of his old mask-like face. Everything shone in him with grotesque brilliancy : his complexion, reddened by the liba- tions to which he devoted himself without doing anything but utter a monosyllable from time to time, his moist lips, his shirt-front, and the satin facing of his coat. The conversation had resumed its course. Saveuse related a new story, carefully watching Machault, who was quaffing champagne, and at intervals laughing loudly. GLADYS HARVEY 35 Figon lowered and raised his eyelids, as occa- sion demanded with the seriousness that makes him 80 comical. Christine listened to Saveuse, inter- jecting here and there a word. While retailing newspaper phrases on the subject of my old Bohe- mian friend, I kept wondering at the way in which Gladys at intervals put questions to me that showed her to be an assiduous reader of Jacques's romances : " Caur Brisd, " Anciennes Amours," " Blanche comme un Lys," and " Martyre Intime." She knew by heart these works as affected as their titles. This time my envy knew no bounds. Evidently this girl had fallen madly in love with the writer through his works, and she had doubtless only requested Figon to invite me, to arrange for her an interview with the object of her worship. I no longer doubted it when, at dessert, she said, putting her napkin before her, " Oh, how warm I am ! M. Larcher, will you join me for a little while on the balcony ? Ah ! " said she, when we were lean- ing our elbows on the balustrade, among the foli- age, and the laughter of our late companions came to us through the windows, " what a life ! and how stupid they are ! One of my little friends 36 PASTELS always calls me his poor Beauty ! Beauty I do not say, but poor, ah, how true that is ! " She took a rose that she had pinned into her dress at the commencement of the dinner, and began to bite its petals angrily, frowning heavily. Below us, the tables, the white cloths of which we could perceive through the green leaves, still resounded with the clatter of knives and forks. The Hunga- rians continued to play, and Gladys, after having thrown her despoiled rose to the ground, began again, while gently fanning herself : " I told you I was a poor cocotte, and yet I speak to you as in the first act of ' La Dame I ' Is it not out of keeping — a woman costumed by Laferri^re, whom the journals, in speaking of her, call la belle Gladys, who drives in the Bois with her own horses, for whom some one has just paid her last debts, and who is complaining ? And all because I have thought of my adventure with Jacques Molan. Do not look at me with the air of saying to me : ' But why, then, ask of me what sort of man he is ? ' All this adventure took place there," — she touched her forehead with the tip of her fan, — " and there," and she put the same fan against her heart. " I have never seen him, I GLADYS HARVEY 37 have never spoken to him, I have never written to him — and yet it is quite a little romance. Would you like me to tell it to you ? " asked she, giving me a little side glance. It was a little too evident that everything at this junket had been planned with this conversation in view, from the invitation of Figon to her calling me out upon the terrace. But what made me pardon her the artifice of this little arrangement was that she was rather ashamed of it, and that she acknowledged it ingenuously. " Yes," said she, as if replying to my thought, " when I wished to see you, it was partly on that account, but if I had found you satirical, you would have learned nothing. It cannot be helped. I feel that you are kind, and that we shall be friends." I stifled a sigh under the pretext of puffing out the smoke of my cigar. The role of confidant was not at all what I was prepared to play. But the frankness of this girl, the sort of poetry that exhaled from her in these surroundings so opposed to all poetry, the originality of this sentimental confession amid such circumstances, with these revellers close by, the soft night, the mingling of the noise of the diners and of the passing car- 38 PASTELS riages, with the music of the Hungarians, — all contributed to render me amiable for these few minutes, and it was in good faith that I took Gladys's little hand, and pressed it, while saying to her : " I also believe we are going to be friends. Tell me your romance, and do not be afraid. I have never ridiculed any one but myself." "I was twenty," commenced Gladys, collecting herself. I doubted this beginning, too much like a statement learned by heart; but it was not so. Immediately I saw that her recollections crowded on her, and moved her. She saw them before her, and no longer me, and she continued : " I was twenty ; that was days and days ago, — do not pay me compliments, — many days ago. Count eleven times three hundred and sixty-five. I lived in Paris, and I was good, very good. I lived with my older sister Mabel. It is since she died that I have become what I am. How we came to Paris, we two all alone, two unhappy little Creoles, almost little white negresses, that is another romance, that of my life. My father was an English engineer who ended by going to seek his fortune in Chili ; there he met my mother, an octoroon — you see fl GLADYS HARVEY 39 there is not much black blood under these nails," — and she flashed them under the light of my cigar, like the gems in a ring, — " but it is there, all the same. After some ups and downs we lost every- thing. Our parents were dead, and we came here to recover a claim on the French government — my father had worked for you also. Poor father ! Did he have all this misfortune in his life that his favourite daughter should be the Gladys who relates all this to you ? In short, Mabel and I lived as I have told you, and we had not a sou; not so much as that," she insisted, striking her nail against one of her teeth, which glistened brilliantly between her fresh lips. " All our miserable re- sources were exhausted. The claim ? A chimera ! And we lived — how ? To-day I spend sixty thou- sand francs a year, on nothing but these fineries," and she struck her soft skirts with her hand, and put out her foot. " I ask myself why we did not die of cold, of hunger, of lack of clothing. " Just think of it ! Mabel had found a place as saleswoman in a tobacco shop on the boulevards. She did not wish that I should accept it, — < No ! you are too pretty,' she had said to me, and so I kept our little home. Do not tell it to Figon," 40 PASTELS added she, laughing ; " he would decrease my allow- ance if he knew that these hands " — and she held them up again — " cooked all we ate for two years. We occupied three little rooms in a blind-alley be- hind St. Philippe du Roule. And I worked hard, too, — at what ? At all the little things a woman can do who does not know a trade : I embroidered, I made dresses for dolls, I strung beads, I gave some lessons in English, and also translated some romances, I, Gladys Harvey ! " She pronounced these words as Louis the Fourteenth was accustomed to say, " I, the king." " And with it all, I had time to adorn myself. I have never been as pretty as I was then in a certain dress, which I had cut and made myself. I see it now, all blue, and it was spoiled by wearing it once, because I put it on one Sunday afternoon in the spring when we were going out. The rain overtook us in the Bois de Boulogne, and Mabel and I had no money with us to pay for a shelter in one of the caf^s in that quarter. When I pass in my coupd along this drive, and remember my despair, do you believe that I regret that honest poverty, and our tete-a-tete dinners on Sundays ? Every other week Mabel had a day off, and it was then, in our little dining-room, we had a feast that GLADYS HARVEY 41 must have pleased our good angels: two rush chairs, a table of white wood, which we covered with a napkin, and we remained hours talking comfortably together, and feeling ourselves so near each other, in this great city, the murmur of which recalled to us the noise of the sea, over there — could we say, in our country, since of it there remained no longer for us anything but such sad memories ? " Yes, those were happy hours, but they were too few. I was too much alone. It is that which ruined me, and then, you see, with all my airs of laughing at everything, that I assume so often, there is no one more of a dreamer than I or a greater ' flat,' — a word you may not love, perhaps, but it is so true ! I have always had a verdant corner in my heart, and in that verdant corner a daisy, which I have passed hours in pulling apart leaf by leaf, like the little girls : he loves me a little, passionately, not at all. Ah, well ! Jacques Molan was my first daisy. " This is how it came about. I told you that I had made some translations of English novels. This work had made me familiar with a reading- room in the Rue du Faubourg, St. Honor^, from 42 PASTELS which I had taken nearly three hundred volumes of the Tauchnitz collection. And I devoured these stories, where they drink cups of tea in each chapter, where there is an old gentleman who always utters the same pleasantry with the same contortion of the face, where the young girl and the young man get married in the end, after having loved each other properly, like a good boy and girl, through three volumes ! And I tasted that as I did the toast which I buttered for myself, in imita- tion of these heroines, for my breakfast. Judge now of the effect which was bound to be produced on a poor little sentimental English girl, who had never opened a French book, by the reading of this ' Cceur Bris^,' of which we were speaking just now. Why did I ask for this romance rather than another ? Perhaps because of its title, and then I am a fatalist, you see. It was ordained that this should be my first folly. For the reading of this book certainly was one. T commenced it at two o'clock in the afternoon, on returning from my errands. At night I was still reading it, having forgotten that I had to prepare the dinner and to finish the household arrangements, and that I was the sister of Mabel, the daughter of the unhappy GLADYS HARVEY 43 Harvey, the inventor, and all the rest. I had be- come the characters in the book. Do you remem- ber the letter of the deserted wife, written before her death ? ' My beauty has faded away in weep- ing for you, while you have had no pity either on it or me, my sweet executioner.' How often I read and reread this letter, bathed in tears. To-day, now that I have lived and understand what took place in me at that period, I cannot better explain my intense emotion than by saying that I was thunderstruck by this book, as I have seen other women by the tones of a voice, or by a look. You smile ? Ah, you writers, however vain you may be, you will never be sufficiently so. If you knew what one of your books may possibly be- come to a child of twenty, who has seen nothing, and who loves you through your phrases ! Yes, who loves you. But why should you believe it ? There are so many inquisitive or lying women, who play at these sentiments with you, to get an auto- graph, or to be able to say they know you." " Poor us ! " interrupted I, " but the woman who enters into epistolary relations with an author, there is but one of her, always but one ! Your Jacques and I were very proud, at one period, of 44 PASTELS. an unknown with whom we kept up a regular cor- respondence. How very awkward it was when we showed each other our letters, and discovered that it was the same handwriting and the same person ! " " That is the reason," replied Gladys, " why I never wrote to Jacques. I had a presentiment of that. I have no vanity but in being very womanly, with a little of that mechanical cleverness of the heart, which causes us to be accused of cunning, when we are only subtle. But I read and reread this novel, as I told you, and, at each reading, my interest in the author of this adorable book grew, until it became a veritable obsession. What a deli- cate soul he must have, I thought, to describe suf- fering as he does. Was the story related in this book his own ? Was he the ' sweet executioner ' whom the victim blessed while dying, because he abandoned her ? Had he been loved thus even unto death ; and then at last, repenting, had he hung this romance on the cross of a dead woman, like a crown of half-withered roses ? Or had con- fidences received, a correspondence discovered, a private diary, permitted him to discover the secret martyr, of whom he had made himself the poet? GLADYS HARVEY 45 For as to admitting it that was a work of imagi- nation, I would not allow it, and I painted my romancer after the likeness of mj wishes. He must be young, pale, with Llue eyes, and a slight air of unhappiness. You laugh now. You would have laughed more if you could have seen me before the shop-window of a dealer in photographs in the Rue de Rivoli, the day I found his picture there. I had to turn back three times before dar- ing to enter the shop to buy it, — this photograph which resembled, by a happy chance, the ideal I had made of him in advance, at least enough for the spell of my imagination not to be broken. At this same period they published a biography of him, with a caricature. I could have beaten the man who had deformed that face, with which I had become as madly in love as with the book. How could I help it ? It is the negro blood ; there is something of the slave in me, and when I have loved, it has always brought out all the black in me. And I have sometimes placed my affection worse than on that occasion. " In reading his biography, a fantastic project outlined itself in my head. I told you I was too much alone. I talked too much with myself, and 46 PASTELS I always gave myself very foolish advice. The brochure stated that my great man lived a part of the year at Velizy, a village near Chaville, and that he had there just the little house described in ' Coeur Bris^ ; ' I learned also from this biog- raphy that he was not married. If he had been, I should no longer have thought of him, I swear to you. I was so innocent, as the song says, that I understood hardly anything, just as in the song again, except that Jacques Molan would never love a poor girl like me, who lived on the sixth floor, and wore wretched dresses worth two pence. Ah ! if I were only one of those ladies whom he described in his book ! And that is how I came to conceive my grand idea : to economize, cent by cent, franc by franc, until I could dress myself as prettily as some of the elegant women I had seen passing in the Champs Elys^es, in their car- riages, and then to present myself to Jacques Molan under an assumed name, as a young woman who had come to ask his advice. Where would this freak lead me ? I did not know. I did not question myself about it. I pulled the petals from the daisy, that was all. He will love me a little — passionately — not at all — and I stopped always GLADYS HARVEY 47 on the petal, he will love me, without knowing anything except that this word, associated with the idea of this man, who was, however, unknown, represented to me something infinitely sweet, pure, and tender. I would see him once, then perhaps again, and even once again. I would announce myself as married, so that he should not try to learn my real name. Was I not the little English woman of the romance which I was translating ? However, I would tell him my first name. I was ingenuously proud of its being so unusual, as I was of my hair, for its great length, as long as this," and she stretched her arm down its full length. " In short, this was a romance, born of a romance, of which I breathed not a word to the discreet Mabel, as you may readily believe, and which I was carrying on successfully, in what a manner, and by what great efforts of economy ! To what ruses was I driven to conceal the small articles of adornment, which I had to procure one by one, from the small patent leather shoes and the black silk stockings to the hat, without men- tioning the dress ! It took me ten months — ten months, you understand — to amass enough for my disguise as a lady. Ten months, during which 48 PASTELS I multiplied my hours of work, discovering new- occupations, breaking into my sleeping hours to do a double amount of translating ; in short, one of those girhsh follies of which we are after- ward astonished at having been capable. We say to ourselves aloud : ' How silly I have been ! ' and in a low voice, ' What a pity ! ' " This was such a true shaft, given with such a pretty accent of tender irony, that I looked at this strange girl with an admiration as to which she could hardly be mistaken. She would not have been a woman if she had not taken a few minutes to enjoy this effect she had produced on me. Then, opening her eyes a little, raising her eye- brows, and frowning slightly as if discouraged, she continued : " It was a most adorable afternoon in June that I set out on my expedition. I had waited two weeks, after every detail of my toilet was complete, from superstition. I wished for some presage of success in my undertaking, in the blue of the sky, the green of the trees, and the bright sunlight on this day. Can you picture me getting out of the train at Chaville, and walking along under the branches, and by the pools, after having asked my GLADYS HARVEY 49 way of a child who was passing? Birds were singing all along the road, the flowers blooming in the grass, and I met two pairs of lovers, who were wandering in the shade of the young trees. I knew nothing, not even if Jacques was at Vdlizy, nor even where the house was, nor if he lived alone, but I knew that I was very pretty in my gray dress, my light hat, and my little shoes, and that I should please him if I met him, and I had no doubt about this meeting. You are going to say that I am rather too much a negress, in spite of my pale skin. At this period I believed in my luck — my luck ! Yes, I believed in it as I did in my twenty years, my desire, and so many chimeras. When I was very little, over there, in America, we lived on the borders of the ocean. The boat-sails which the fishermen of that country hoisted, were tinted red. Each morning, I placed myself at the window and counted all these sails on the sea, making luminous points on the blue of the waves. To each, I attached a hope. This one represented some gift that might come to me during the day, another an excursion on which I should be taken. To-day, I have no more luminous points on my horizon than there are red- 50 PASTELS tinted sails on this sky. They are all gone. But on that glorious summer afternoon when I traversed the woods of Chaville, that which danced before my eyes was so luminous ! At the same time that I hoped, I felt so afraid, — a foolish timidity, as foolish as my errand, made my legs tremble under me. I was not sure, when once I arrived, of remembering one of the sentences I had prepared to recite to my great man. Yet I went on until I perceived, at tlie end of a walk, the clock of the parish church, and red-tiled roofs. This was Vdlizy. A i)as8cr-by showed me tlie house of M. Jacques Molan. I had arrived. " I do not know if 1 shall live to be very old, and I hope not. Gladys Harvey a box-keej)er in a theatre, or Gladys Harvey, with a small income, among cats, dogs, and in a tiannel wrapper, or Gladys Harvey playing the devout in the country, — none of these prosjKJcta attract me. We ought to die young, women of our sort. I consider that a part of the profession, just as much as knowinir how to dress, and jest with the heart filled with grief. " But at whatever age I go, and even if I am des- tined to become as decrepit as the old women of GLADYS HARVEY 51 the Petits M(5nage8,' 1 am sure that I shall never forget tliat villa half hidden in ivy, the line of rose- bushes in the little garden iu front of it, and myself at the gate, looking through the grating without daring to ring, in my beautiful dress, in which I was at the same time pretty and ill at ease, coquet- tish and awkward. It was of these rose-trees that he had written in the celebrated letter of my dear romance. You remember it? 'Shall they ami I, my roses and my beauty, wither, ray love, with- out your having inhaled our fragrance ? ' And then, when she says : ' I have come again into our house, where I suffer the pangs of regret. But, I love it, this suffering, for it is regret which gives a form to happiness.' " These phrases of the heroine of ' Cutnir Brisd' rang tlirough my head as I stood there, scarcely breathing, and almost mad from emotion. What was going to come of my beautiful dream ? What would he to whom I came to bring so fresh, so tender an admiration, say to me ? At last I had strength to draw the chain of the bell, and a gardener almost immediately appeared, wearing a great straw hat. ' M. Jacques Molan?' 'He is * Baby -bouses. 52 PASTELS in Paris, and M. Alfred also,' replied the man. What Alfred? Without doubt a friend. I in- sisted : ' And do you think he will return this afternoon ? ' 'I know nothing about it,' said the gardener ; ' I will go and ask madame.' And at the door of this house which I had just regarded as a sanctuary, I saw a rather tall, pretty woman, with her blond hair done up at the back of her head in a slovenly manner, in a white morning gown, and with a watering-pot in her hand. The gardener spoke to her. She stared at me. I could not hear her words, but what did it matter to me ? And what did it matter that the man came and told me that M. Molan would return about five o'clock ? How foolish I had been ! He lived with a mistress, evidently, and that was the only thing of which I had not thought. Mon Dieu ! how I wept in the train on my return ! I spoiled my dress by it ; it was so delicate ! A thing too delicate to last, like my beautiful romance ! " " And you have never written to Jacques, you have never tried to see him again ? " " Never," said she, " and by reason of this superstition of which I have told you. The game was played, and lost! And then, what use in GLADYS HARVEY 63 writing to him, as he was not free ? Ah ! that woman I had seen for a minute, with her vulgar mouth, and her bold eyes, no, that was not the companion of whom I had dreamed for the author of ' Coeur Bris^.' But since he lived with her, he loved her. How could I believe him capable of living with a woman without love ? And that love separated us more widely than distance, more than our social conditions, more than his reputa- tion and my poverty. Besides, I had not much time for sorrow over my abortive romance. My sister became very ill. She died. I met some one whom it would have been better for me to have never known. My fortune changed ; I took a lover, and I became what you know. Do not believe that in the course of adventures of my later existence, I have forgotten that strange first love, which resembled nothing I have felt since. I continued to read all that Jacques wrote. I had friends who knew him, who spoke of him before me, saying good or evil of him, while as for me, I held my tongue. I did not even state my impres- sion of his new books. For him, and for his writings, I have always had that feeling of shame, which makes us avoid pronouncing the name of the 54 PASTELS person too well beloved, before any one whom we could not make understand the reason of our loving. Besides, what could be the result of a meeting between a man such as he, and the woman I have become ? I am somewhat of an artist in everything, in memories as well as the rest, and I did not want to spoil my poor little dream by transforming it into a vulgar intrigue of gallantry. No, I have never met Jacques, and, if I have a desire in this world, it is that I may never meet him ! " She had pronounced these last words with such evident emotion that I stood silent, without answer- ing her. While we were talking, the tables in the garden had gradually been left unoccupied. The music of the Hungarians had ceased, and without doubt our friends had begun to discover that the dinner wanted the gaiety of Gladys to animate it, for Figon appeared at the door of the terrace with that half-constrained smile of the jealous lover who does not wish to avow his jealousy. " Will you come in ? " said he, tapping on the glass. " I am coming immediately," said Gladys, " in GLADYS HARVEY 65 just five minutes. You understand," she added, fanning herself in a nervous fashion, while applause greeted the news that Figon took back, that we were going to reappear, " I must go and ply my trade. But I have a great favour to ask of you." " If it is possible, it is done," said I, in parody of the celebrated saying ; " if it is impossible — " " Do not joke," she interrupted, vehemently, "you will make me regret having spoken. Par- don," and she looked at me with a sort of coaxing submission, " I think a little more of this than I ought. I have told you that I have been coquettish in my feeling for Jacques. I do not wish that this sentiment should be entirely lost. Your friend has his sad moments, his dark hours ; I have read it only too plainly in his books. He does not believe in women. He must have met one very bad one. Ah, well ! I wish that some day, but a day when he has no desire to laugh, you would tell him that he has been loved without his knowing it, and how ; and that she who loved him will never tell him her- self because she is a poor Gladys Harvey. Only swear to me that you will not tell him my name." " I give you my word of honour," I said. " Ah ! how good you are," said she, and with a 56 PASTELS gesture of infinite grace, in which reappeared with- out doubt the black blood that ran in her veins, she seized my hand, and before I could evade the caress, which happily no one saw, she kissed it. But she immediately fled from the terrace, and entered the restaurant, where Machault, more excited by drink than usual, was standing up, his coat off, his power- ful muscles showing under his linen shirt, and call- ing out to Christine Anroux, while pointing out a chair : " Come, sit down, and don't be afraid. Fifty louis that I carry you twice in succession around the room at arm's length. Who takes the bet ? " " Never ! never ! " cried Christine, putting the table between her and the athlete. " He has drunk two bottles of champagne all by himself, and I do not know how many glasses of brandy. I care for my face ; it is my fortune." " Brandy ? whiskey ? " asked the Anglomaniac Tor^, holding out to me the two flagons. He had remained alone at the table, while Saveuse and Figon stood laughing at the discussion between Christine and Machault. " I am not afraid," cried Gladys, " give me the place, Christine." She sat down on the chair near the Hercules, GLADYS HARVEY 57 who, steadying himself on his legs, and very red, seized one of the bars of the chair. " Are you ready ? " asked he. « All right," said Gladys. " One, two," said the giant, " three," and he held the chair straight before him with the young woman upon it gaily throwing kisses at us, like a rider in the circus. And when he had set her down, amidst applause, she said to me in a low voice, and with a sad smile : " You see perfectly that you must not mention my name to Jacques." Poor Beauty ! — as she had told me one of her lovers called her, — when I went home, somewhat disturbed by the brandy and whiskey so dear to Tore, I tried in vain to persuade myself that she had, to use Christine Anroux's expression, " made me climb a tree," a tree in blossom, but none the less a tree made up of lies and mystification. If it was a comedy, she had played it divinely, and with such an accent of sincerity ! But her natural charm, her evidently spontaneous gestures, her look and her smile confirmed me in the idea, that, for once, I must admit as true a woman's confidence, — I, who have passed my life in distrusting those 58 PASTELS which I most passionately wished to believe. In a word, I found an ironical charm in not doubting Gladys's recital too much. There is for a misanthrope a special delight in discovering the most delicate sentiment in a crea- ture, and this delight is quite the reverse of the joy we feel in discovering an ignoble quality in one of those women of proud profiles, ideal attitudes, and highly contemptuous speech, of whom there are so many in the world. However, I doubted this tale the more, the further I got from the corner where it had been told to me. It was not so much the promise made to Figon's mistress as this very doubt which made me, when I met Jacques Molan, six or seven months after the dinner in the Champs Elysees, tell him of the dis- creet and romantic love of which he had been the object. I wished to know if Gladys had ever given this same commission to others, if she had not written to him, and what not. " That is singular," said Jacques to me, " I remember perfectly, at V^lizy, about 1876 or '77 — I was there with Pacant and his mistress, Sidonie, the blonde ; didn't you know her ? She GLADYS IIARYEY 59 and my servant spoke to me of a very elegant woman who called to see me, one afternoon when I was out. I hope that you are going to give me her name and address," added he, laughing. " I will go and see her at once." " I have given my word of honour not to give her name," I replied, shaking my head. What Jacques had just told me assured me of Gladys's veracity, at least on one point, and was the finish- ing touch in rendering this girl so interesting in my eyes that I should have counted myself the basest of men, if I had betrayed her confidence. " You won't speak ? " he persisted. " And do you imagine it was for any other reason than to have me come to see her, that she told you this pretty romance ? Come, when Goncourt has founded his academy, I will make him give you le grand prix Croheur^ if there is one." This miserable pun was all that came to him as inspiration from this sweet and sad adventure I had just related to him ; then he immediately commenced to give me a detailed account of his last flirtation with a rich and titled lady. Poor Beauty, I said, in thinking of Gladys. Poor dupe, 1 1, e. first prize for being easily taken in. 60 PASTELS I ought without doubt to have said in thinking of myself. But in spite of that, even if she had played a part to me, I should still say just the same : Poor Beauty ! Paris, February^ 1888. MADAME BRESSUIRE ^ '1:. \- 1 , MADAME BRESSUIRE FRAGMEXTS FROM THE DIARY OF FRANCOIS VERNANTES Alfred de Musset has written some celebrated lines upon the rapidity with which everything is forgotten in Paris. I once again felt the cruel justice of the verses of the poet, when present this summer, with fourteen others, at the anniversary mass, a year after his death, of a man whom I had loved very dearly, — Francois Vernantes, But has not some wise man said, "The most dead deaths are the best ? " I have a special reason for not forget- ting Yernantes. He left me by his will a whole boxful of his papers. I found among them pro- jected novels, badly sketched, a thousand mediocre verses, notes of his travels, of no great value, and some curious fragments from his private diary. 63 64 PASTELS Fran9ois Vernantes was one of those incomplete personalities, like Amiel, in whom superior qual- ities were combined with strange insufficiencies. When I knew him, four years after the war, he was living a perfectly idle life. He was about thirty-five years old. The revolution of the 4th of September had surprised him in the Council of State, where he occupied the position of a first- class auditor. He had believed it his duty, after the war, not to ask for his post again, from reasons of delicacy, and he passed his days lamenting the emptiness of his life. " Write," I said to him, when I found him too melancholy, lying on the divan in his bachelor quarters in the Rue Murillo. He replied, " I will try," but he did not. In fact, I have since acquired the conviction that his inca- pacity to act arose from the hypertrophy of a very peculiar power : the imagination of the life within. He saw himself live and feel with such acuteness, that it sufficed him. His action was entirely within himself, and the excess of personal analy- sis absorbed all his vigour. Chance had put him into the position for which Nature intended him. This man, thin and slender, with a handsome face, at the same time firm and dreamy, and ex- MADAME BEESSUIEE 65 tremely clear in outline, in which two pale blue eyes opened upon a complexion mottled with yel- low from liver complaint, in all his characteristics showed a nameless something which betrays a feminine education. He had lost his father when very young, and death had separated him from his mother only a few months before I knew him. Perhaps if he had grown up in a less mild atmos- phere, and at an early age had encountered the brutalities of life, he would have become less sensi- tive, less impressionable, more capable of will- power. Perhaps, again, his little fortune — twenty thou- sand francs income — may have been a reason for idleness. Perhaps, lastly, he had also exhausted his energies in a sort of sentimental libertinism which rendered him during his earlier youth a sort of lady-killer. However, his papers all reveal an aptitude for close observation, which might, with- out doubt, have with a little effort become a talent. His last days were embittered by a sharp attack of hypochondria, attributable to his physical condi- tion, and to a disappointment of which I have found an account among his notes. 66 PASTELS To tell the truth, Vernantes did not keep a con- tinuous journal. Sometimes he would go six months without writing, then he would expose for himself, and to the chance of the pen, a great piece of his soul. It was thus that the story of the disappoint- ment of which I speak is distributed into two long fragments, placed side by side, although the first is dated from Florence in March, 1879, and the second was written in Paris during the winter of 1881. It seemed to me, however, that these fragments, together, made a whole, somewhat like a complete representation of the evolution of a heart, and I here give these pages. They may afford some interest to readers who have been attracted, if only once, by the problem of the influence of the imagination over the life and death of our senti- ments. FIRST FRAGMENT Florence, March, 1879. What a strange machine is the human soul, and how little are we assured of inward peace ! At noon I could have sworn that I should pass this evening as I have passed all my evenings during the MADAME BKESSUIRE 67 last two weeks : either driving in an open carriage along the Via dei Colli, in view of that Florentine landscape which is so distinctly outlined under the moonlight, or in an armchair at the theatre, watching the Italian actors perform a piece adapted from the Gymnase or the Vaudeville. There is nothing more significant for one who desires to seize the differences in national char- acters. The wind has changed, M. Vernantes, and here you are seated at your table in your temporary lodgings, engaged in writing, under the light of a borrowed lamp, and in this journal neglected for months. There has not been invented a better way of seeing a little more clearly into one's heart, and it is terribly dark in mine at this minute. Great effects are produced by trifling causes. If I had not learned, long since, to take myself as I am, instead of forcing myself to be as others, I should be ashamed of being, at forty-one years of age, this unstable compound, this changeable mix- ture, to which a mere nothing is sufficient to give a new tint. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. I came out of the Accademia, where I had looked for the twentieth time at the "Last 68 PASTELS Judgment" by Fra Angelico — the master who approaches most nearly my idea of a painter who is but little tied down to forms — and that circle of angels and young monks, on a carpet of supernatural flowers. I had followed the pave- ments at haphazard, looked at the St. George in the Or' San Michele and the Andromeda in the Piazza della Signoria. Through all my being cir- culated a light, imponderable something I know not how to describe, which is caused by a long vision of beauty. I tasted with delight the pleas- ure of having put off my ego^ — that ego dressed in modern style, having a social state, a past, and a future, — to throw myself entirely into those images upon which my eyes had just been feeding. I followed the pavement of the Via Tornabuoni. A spring shower, which had threatened since morn- ing, burst almost immediately. Without umbrella, and ten minutes from my hotel, I went into Vieus- seux's reading-room to avoid the rain, while the flower-sellers hastily rolled their little carts, filled with narcissi, violets, and roses, under the gate- ways. I had expected to wait five minutes. The rain kept falling. To kill time, I dropped upon one of the divans in the reading-room, and me- MADAME BRESSUIRE 69 chanically picked up a French paper, whicli lay there, fastened to its wooden roller. For how many days, in my strange indifference to all but the sensation of the present moment, had I not done any such reading ? And here, between the mention of a fashionable ball and the announce- ment of a new romance, was an account of the burial of Count Adolphe Bressuire. Thirty-seven years old, grandson of the former minister of the emperor, married fourteen months before. It is certainly the man I knew. Eve Rose is a widow ! That was enough to make my pulse rise to fever- heat in a moment, I who believed so thoroughly that I had forgotten her. I was distracted by the mere idea to the point of childishly seeing if I could find the news confirmed in a second paper, and then in a third. The rain ceased. I went out and watched the sluggish flow of the Arno, and a second thought surged up in me. " What if she loves me still ! If she loves me ? " Did she ever love me ? What did I really know of the heart of this inexplicable child ? And all the old torment recommenced — so intense that, to deaden it, I had recourse to the old 70 PASTELS remedy, that useless scribbling of the memoran- dum of my dead life, since it is only with a pen in hand that I can relieve my inward uneasiness. A singular anomaly, which has made of me a half- writer, as everything in my life has contributed to make of my poor person a half some one or some- thing. Half a woman, for I have my mother's dis- ordered nerves ; half a man of action, for I started out, in my youth, on a political career ; half an aristocrat, for with my plebeian name and modest fortune, I have always floated on the edge of high life ; even half a happy man, for, upon the whole, my affairs of sentiment have not been too unhappy, and I have known many half-happinesses. I really believed, three years ago, when I commenced to love Eve Rose, that for once I possessed an entire joy. There stands before me now, like a living being, the exact hour when this feeling was born. I should be able, after a little search, to name the date, and give the day, especially the nature of the day. I see again the tint of the sky, of a cold, pale blue, which spread out, that afternoon in Decem- ber, over the Rue de Berry. It was Monday, the MADAME BRESSUIRE 71 reception-day of her whom I had known as the beautiful Madame Nieul, when we were both of us twenty-five years of age. How many times had I crossed the court of that house, numbered 25 A, how many times given my overcoat to the footman, in the antechamber, and crossed the grand salon to reach the mistress of the house, who was usually to be found in a sort of vast conservatory- salon, separated from the first by a wrought-iron grating, adorned with golden foliage ? The reckoning is easy, I have known the Nieuls since 1865. I have dined with them, since then, about four times each season. Let us say that I have called upon them twice as many times. And then how many times have I met Madame Nieul elsewhere ? I saw her at the De Jardes', at the Durand-Bailleuls', at the Schoerbecks', at the Gourdidges', at the Le Bugues'. How many even- ings, devoted to mere nothings, does the simple writing of the syllables of these names evoke in my memory ! How many afternoons, like that December afternoon in 1876, consecrated to the insipid drudgery of paying visits ! And with all that, how many times had I perceived Eve Rose, without taking note of her otherwise than for the 72 PASTELS singularity of her name, which had seemed to me the height of pretension ? If this young girl had roused any emotion in me, it had been that of pity, although she lived in an atmosphere of refined opulence. Yes, I pitied her for being taken so young into society, and with that excessive eager- ness which Madame Nieul showed in conforming to all the usual rites of fashionable life. Her widow- hood had in no way diminished this eagerness. To pay and receive visits, to sit at solemn state dinners, either at her own house or her friends', never to miss a ball, or an exhibition, or a play that was in fashion, — in a word, to be always in evidence was still, four years ago, the only occupa- tion of this woman with the appearance of a goddess. The fact was that, with her great brown eyes, so large and calm, with her commanding stature, with her magnificent shoulders and arms, with her still youthful figure, every time she went out was an occasion of triumph for her, even when she was approaching her fortieth year. Besides, she was irreproachable ; it could not have been otherwise with that impassive splendour of expression which disconcerted desire. One could as easily have im- MADAME BRESSUIKE 73 agined one Juno putting a veil upon another, and slipping into a cab, to hasten to a clandestine rendezvous. With that, extravagant as an actress, which she might easily have become, for she sang divinely. Yes, this woman had all possible rea- sons for loving the world, and she loved it, as a poet loves his verses, a chemist his laboratory, and a jockey his horse. It was for her the first and last form of happiness, and, without any attempt at concealment, she had brought up her daughter in her tastes. I had seen Eve Rose, when quite little, dancing at all the children's balls at which I had gone to take a glance. I had met her in the Bois, her blond hair dishevelled under the little felt hat, seated gracefully on her pony, as soon as she was old enough to hold her- self in the saddle. On this day, before her twen- tieth year, her name was mentioned in all the journals giving accounts of fashionable life. They began to call her, in the accounts given of evening entertainments, "the very charming Mile. Nieul," after a prevailing fashion. Two fashionable paint- ers had already exhibited her portrait. Why, then, be surprised that I had never thought of her except to say, " Poor girl ! " And I had classed 74 PASTELS her, once for all, in the group of creatures whom I hate the most, — after these worldly children, — I am speaking of those young persons whose soul fades in the withering fire of conversations of the salon, before they have fully developed ; of those virgins, in fact, who have divined all the compro- mises of conscience, and still keep the face of an angel ; those cold calculators, with the smile of an inffSnue, who marry to have two horses more in their stable than the friend who married the evening before. In growing old, I have become terribly young myself, and as naive as a roman- tic cherub. But here I am a long way from my entrance into the salon in the Rue de Berry. What was I going to do there, since neither Eve Rose nor her mother were to my taste, and what a foolish idea it was not to live as one liked, when one had an independent fortune, and suffered cruelly from the character of others ? Yes, but to live as one likes, one must never have been dependent on a woman, and for four long years I had been the humble slave of a mis- tress, foolishly enough picked up at the watering- place, Carlsbad, and kept in Paris : of that pretty and silly — my faith, I have no right to mention her MADAME BRESSUIRE 75 name even here ; and as she was one of the friends of Madame Nieul, I had been obliged to resign my- self to going very often to the Rue de Berry. Then, as we had broken off relations six months ago, I owed it to her to be more devoted than ever to the duties of society, which had been, until now, the happy occasions of bringing us together. Happy ? After all the miseries which this woman had made me experience, how can I write this word in reference to her? I was her first love. At least, I believed it at the time, and this belief only riveted my chain more tightly. It seemed to me that I owed more to her than to any other woman, and I attributed this feeling to a delicacy of conscience, although I was attached to her, without doubt, by that villainous vanity of the sex, which is the clearest of all our loves. I let her tyrannize over me, and I literally led the life of a club galley-slave ; for she united extreme jealousy with so frenzied a desire for amusement, that I was always obliged to be where she was, and she was always in society. Yes, a chain, one that tortured me cruelly, and yet an unbreakable one, for this fragile creature, with her great black eyes, her waving hair, her mouth softened by a touch of down 76 PASTELS at its smiling corners, was a voluptuous enchantress, so that my liaison with her consisted of dreadful quarrels, of cruel society fatigue-duties, and mo- ments of fiery intoxication. The whole made a sort of diabolical philtre, from which 1 should never have recovered, if she had not taken it into her head to give me a rival, under such conditions as made me doubt my rank on the list of her van- quishers or her victims, and we quarrelled, not without a bitter undercurrent of misanthropy surviving this poignant love. We are so con- structed, we men, that, after having deified a woman for her light manners, when she behaves ill to our advantage, we despise her as soon as she does with our neighbour what she used to do with us. Affecting logic ! I was still gloomy from this rupture at the mo- ment when I entered the grand salon of the H6tel Nieul, for the first time after my return from the country, and the sight of the furniture in this apart- ment gave me that physical sense of a weakness of the heart which always with me accompanies thoughts of the past. Around the grand piano, on the sofas and the easy chairs, along the tapestries which decorated MADAME BRESSUIRE 77 the walls, lingered so many of my recollections ! There was in the corner at the right a painting by Watteau on an easel, representing a picnic of young lords and ladies on the edge of a pond at the fall of day, an adorable symbol of that melancholy in pleasure, in which my mistress formerly revelled. I scarcely dared throw a glance at the canvas in passing. When I found myself in the conservatory, where all the guests were assembled, I was in that state of nervous sensibility that I ordinarily conceal under irony. Everything is to me a wound or a ca- ress. Nothing is more dangerous than to approach, in such moments, a charming woman. There float in your heart as it were rudimentary crystals which are ready to cling around the first flowery branch which may be thrown to them. In the room, talking with Madame Nieul were two of her female friends and three young men, and, standing near the tea-table, Mile. Nieul and Mile, de Jardes. The room the shape of a rotunda, the circular divans covered with old-fashioned stuffs, the combination on the walls of the foliage of plants with the faded tints of other fabrics, the bamboo seats, with their cushions fastened by woven silk cords, the dome of latticed glass, the collation 78 PASTELS already prepared — I knew it all so well, this scene. But what I did not know, or at least what I had never noticed, as I did during the three-quarters of an hour of my visit, was the beauty of Eve Rose. Perhaps I was undergoing, without realizing it, an effect of the law of contrasts. With my imagina- tion full of the remembrance of the face of my old mistress, — that face impassioned to the point of being hard, and for me marked with vice, — was it not inevitable that this sight of the pure face of a young girl should give me a sense of exquisite repose? Notwithstanding my prejudices, this evident innocence charmed me immediately. Eve Rose did not resemble her mother in the opulence of her beauty, for she was of slender figure and delicate features, almost too frail. Her very pronounced blond hair crowned a brow so transparent that it would seem to reveal her thoughts. The oval of the face was slender, the nose slightly curved, but it was by the eyes, and by the smile, that this grace- ful whole obtained the finishing touch to its beauty. These eyes were of a blue gray, the pupils of which at times dilated until the face appeared sombre, then again, they contracted so that the eyeballs were quite pale. I MADAME BRESSUIRE 79 Her smile was one of frank gaiety, the smile of a mouth over which no flame, guilty or allowed, had passed, and which showed quite small teeth, like those of a child ; her ear also was that of a child, in its delicacy. Eve Rose seemed a child still in the contour of her whole person, in her light and nimble way of going backwards and forwards on the tips of her slender feet, which she put out a little too far. To express all in a word, it was Youth itself that I had before me in the act of pouring out tea in the ordinary fashion with her slender fingers, on which not a single ring glittered. We were standing, she, Marie de Jardes, and I, at one extremity of the conservatory, while a lively conversation was going on at the other. Some phrases reached my ears, introduced with " dear madame," and continued by the mention of various places for holiday-making in the country. Names of persons met by the sea or at watering-places between Deauville and St. Moritz, were let off like rockets. Then the an- nouncement of coming marriages, for there are two seasons for weddings, the end of spring and the end of summer, balls and the country being the only places where our prudent society permits young 80 PASTELS people of the two sexes to come together. This gave rise to a true society gossip, trifling, but benevolent, for ill-natured remarks are only retailed amongst intimate friends, and the official conver- sation is a sort of posting up, which can hardly be called spiteful, of the outward acts and manners of every one. It might have been taken down in short- hand and printed right off, under the signature of " Bijoutine," or of " Gant de Saxe," in some gazette of the Boulevard. Ah ! I have felt the heavy ennui of conversations of this sort ! But, when there are in a salon beautiful eyes in which I can interest myself, — and here was I already interested in those of Eve Rose, — I can resign myself to hearing an entire tribe of women of the world talk sentiment or literature. Of what were we talking, Eve Rose, Marie de Jardes, and I, in our separate group round the tea-table, with its Russian glasses set in their cases of engraved silver ? It is one of the singu- larities of my memory that I remember the theme of words less than their accent, and that accent less than the shadow of soul that I have believed I de- tected behind it, as I remember the colour of eyes less than their expression, and the shape of a mouth less than its smile. MADAME BRESSUIRE 81 Eve Rose was teasing me on my contempt for young girls. It was nothing very original. " Do you know," said she, " that it is the first time you have done me the honour of talking with me ? " She was looking at me, her great eyes open, her golden hair turned back on the top of her head, in a manner that suggested a head by Watteau, her figure set off by a dress of some dark colour. Marie de Jardes wore a tightly fitting little coat trimmed with fur, and her fresh little doll-like face was framed in a black silk hood lined with rose coloured silk. They both commenced a chatter, interrupted by mirthful peals of laughter, in which I joined as much as the occupation to which I was at that time devoting myself allowed me. I was amusing myself by looking beyond the clear crystal of the eyes of Eve Rose, and wondering what images lay hidden there. Our souls are composed of those innumerable impressions that old associations have left on them, and in this head, so bewitchingly blond, what did I perceive ? Very far back, the remembrance of promenades in Monceau Park, and the Champs Elys^es, with the feeling already im- pressed that one is a little person of a rare order, something quite different from other little girls. 82 PASTELS Still very far back, remembrances of landscapes, of beautiful seaside nooks, the sparkling of the blue water where one played on the beach, always in some special toilet. Then, a very little nearer, the vision of children's balls, when one is already courted, and coquettish ; still nearer, vague remi- niscences of mysticalness, the kneeling for the first communion in the vapour of incense, and the light of wax candles. Then, confusedly, attendance at various lectures, conventional and false information upon literature and art, and, above all, the instruc- tion that there is no happiness here below but in the existence of a woman of the world, with an h6tel, carriages, fine dresses, and a husband who rides well. In short, the thousand scenes of the life of the world, down to my visits in the salon of her mother. Yes, they were certainly images of this order which were reflected in this soul, through those blue orbs ; but what I felt quite as clearly, or it at least seemed to me so, was that this soul was worth more than these recollections. The mirror was more precious than the reflec- tions. This experience was, indeed, frivolous ; but had not this young girl been born for serious things? Had I not before me, once more, a MADAME BRESSUIRE 83 creature superior to her life, superior even to her feelings ? A gratuitous hypothesis, of which I believed I saw the proof in some of those trifles which we interpret with such learned subtlety when we are prompted thereto by the outward charm of a woman. She laughed, we laughed, — at this man, and that man, but malice, with her, had not a sharp claw. It sufficed to say something a little harsh of the object of her satire, to cause her to immediately discover something to praise in him, and she testified, in such remarks, obser- vation at once kindly and keen. The insinuations habitual to the world had scarcely left a trace on this innocence. I divined it from the mere manner in which she spoke to me of my former mistress. Yet I had too many reasons to believe that our names had been pronounced with smiles, and before Eve Rose, I could have sworn. There was really in her that purity of the young girl which her life ought already to have tarnished, but the simplicity of her being seemed not to have been touched, notwithstanding Paris. Here is what my memory repeats to me as I listen. " You remember, Marie, our retirement in the convent in the Rue de I'Eglise at Versailles, 84 PASTELS when mamma was obliged to travel, and how we believed we should be bored? Only think of it, eight days without once going outside, in the month of May ! There was an immense garden all filled with privet, syringas, and lime-trees, and with an arbour at the extreme end, which Marie named our tomb the first evening. Ah, well ! It was perhaps the best week in our whole life ; don't you think so, Mary ? " and she gave the name its English pronunciation. " We discovered that we had a lot of ideas, — did we not, Marie? — that we had never spoken of to each other. Stay, we had a discussion there on your character." Yes, that was exactly her phrase, which, thus tran- scribed, assumes a coquettish charm ; but there was not one atom of coquetry in her whole being. " And may I know what you said ? " I questioned. She laughed maliciously. " I have not time," said she. " I must be good, and go and offer some tea to Madame de Soleure, who has just come in, or mamma will scold me." Yes, that is all that occurred the first day, and it was sufficient to keep me, as I went out, from casting a single glance at the canvas by Watteau, or at any of the furniture, or even at the great MADAME BKESSUIRE 85 armchair covered with Genoese velvet, against the back of which 1 had leaned so often to talk with my mistress. How I had loved that evil woman seated in that armchair! Her head, which I saw from above and in profile, stood out in its pallor upon the old red of the velvet ; she fanned herself with a fan of curled plumes, and each motion of the fan bore toward me, like a breath from her person, whiffs of white heliotrope, her favourite perfume. All this sentimental sensuality was lost in a sudden alienation. Was I then already in love with Eve Rose Nieul ? No, and yes. No, for at thirty-nine these sudden passions are rare ; and yes, since I found myself invaded by that sort of delicious anguish which a man prematurely old feels in being conscious that his heart beats as in his youth. No, since I went that evening to the theatre, and paid a visit in her box to a demi- mondaine who had formerly greatly pleased me. And yes, for in returning to Rue Murillo on foot, I thought only of the means of seeing again Eve Rose as quickly as possible. Besides, the attrac- tion that this young girl exercised over me was promoted by this fatality, — I understand it now. 86 PASTELS — that she arrived in my life exactly at her hour. I had to endure a crisis. Was she the pretext, or the cause of it? At that moment, I tasted for once the pleasure of being moved, without analyz- ing my emotion ; but in the distance of memory, I can explain so well why I fell just at that spot. My early youth had been given up to a succession of love-affairs, multiplied after a strange fashion. If the Don Juan type still remains so popular in literature, the reason is that it corresponds exactly to a certain species of men, of whom I was one, and who seem to possess a number of souls. I formerly used to jest with myself about what I barbarously called my polypsychism. But in fact, although lacking the success of Don Juan, I possessed his sincere inconstancy, his tender mobility, that dangerous need of feeling all sorts of varied sensations, and consequently of varying without ceasing the pretexts of these sen- sations. Thus, during the fifteen years which followed my twentieth, how many different beings have I known in myself ! There has been in this supple and multiple ego^ a man who loved crea- tures, girls boldly pretty, and impudently gay, with the noisy gaiety of a joy which remained MADAME BRESSUIRE 87 vulgar, in the midst of a momentary, incomplete and adulterated luxury. There has been in it a man of refinement, who adored delicate women, their pallor as of death, the silence about them as of a chamber of a dying woman. There has been a man who loved passionately women dolls, their gewgaws, their petty ideas, their sly coldness, and a man, again, who desired pompous and bedecked women, idols of flesh with languid looks and gigantic physique ; over these caprices the scorch- ing passion of a jealous adulterer had poured its venom. Between debauch and passion, I had, then, arrived at that moment in the existence of the heart, which is only too well known to those who reach their fortieth year without one memory entirely sweet and pure. An innocent child, with- out a past, would not fail to exercise over his imagination the tyranny of Agnes over Arnolphe. And, two months after this visit in December, I was completely in love with Eve Rose, this time without any yes and no about it, like a youth who plucks the forget-me-nots in a meadow. It appears that it is always necessary to have plucked forget- me-nots once in one's life. But it is better to set 88 PASTELS about it before one is forty, and in a different spot than the world of fashion, of sport, and of nothing- ness, in which Madame Nieul lived. Yes, at forty years, — I should soon be that age, and I gave it to myself already by a sort of coquetry, — one can be unhappy even in happi- ness, if one loves a young girl twenty years one's junior ! And, first, at that age, when one has lived as I had done, amid the temptations of Parisian life, the heart is truly a cemetery, but a fabulous cemetery, where the tombs do not keep their dead. They return thither as ghosts to the haunted houses. While I was paying court to Eve Rose, — as much as one is able to court a young girl, — she ven- tured a gesture, she smiled faintly, which by some invincible analogy recalled some one of my former mistresses. I am not able to explain why this reminder suddenly threw me into depths of despair. Perhaps with men fashioned as I am, and always engaged in brooding over their past, there is noth- ing of that past which can be entirely obliterated. I know only too well, for my part, that there is not in ray heart a single scar that is entirely insensible. My old emotions surged up in me MADAME BRESSUIRE 89 in waves, in the presence of this charming child. It is not that I was ashamed of them. 1 am too profoundly a fatalist to attach any meaning to the word remorse, but it made me feel so old beside her! So old, again, during the moments when 1 saw her talking with men ten or fifteen years younger than I. I found myself envying them their fresh looks, their curls thicker than mine, and, above all, that uncertainty of feature, where the age is read more than in the absence of wrinkles. My gallant experiences had taught me clearly that a man's face appears to women at an angle of which we are unable to judge, and I was able to believe that it was just the fatigues of life, as imprinted on my person, that constituted in the eyes of Eve Rose a more touching grace than the unaltered freshness of others. These are the reasonings of a third party. One thinks otherwise when one is himself in question. And then, when I had no phantom to chase away, no jealousy to overcome, it was the turn for scruples. I loved a young girl, and that love could have no other issue than marriage. As soon as this logical necessity forced itself upon me, the respon- sibility of the happiness of this child also presented 90 PASTELS itself to me, and I asked : Whither shall I lead her? At forty, a man has lost the power of persuad- ing himself that he is stronger than life. He doubts this life, because he doubts himself. To guarantee, when taking in hand the future of a young girl, that she shall never regret her confi- dence, — what a terrible contract to sign ! And men hesitate and recoil, but that does not prevent them from loving, or from upsetting their previous habits, or being made happy by a look, or un- happy by indifference. They end by doing as I did, during six months ; they go to see, several times during the week, often several times during the day, a young girl to whom they must not say a word of what they feel, who is guarded by the three hundred eyes of the public, and the two eyes of her mother. And this drama is played amidst the thousand monotonous incidents of the life of society, in such a way that the most ardent emo- tions of the heart are associated with five o'clock teas, or formal dinners. Strange contrast, which would be so droll, if it were not sometimes so cruel ! Strange contrast ! Days revive again in my memory confusedly. MADAME BRESSUIKE 91 It is Monday, her mother's reception-day. I go there only once a fortnight, so as not to let it be said that I am always with the ladies Nieul. I enter the salon, and my heart leaps in my bosom. Every face is alert. A lady in a walking-dress, her muff lying on her knees, holding in one of her gloved hands her cup of tea, white with cream, while making with the other a decisive gesture, lets fall this phrase, which gives me the note of the conversation : " You know, my dear, after that experience, I went back to Worth." Eve Rose listens to their words with both her pretty ears. Shall I only hear the sound of her voice to-day in some phrase that is not simply polite ? And I have come at four o'clock, because that is the moment when her intimate friends have not yet come, and I dread the mockery of these three or four malicious companions. It is a Wednesday, the day Madame Nieul occupies her box at the Opera. I see myself again in the lobby, making my way back to my seat, and here and there saluting acquaintances whom I cannot endure. First this one stops me, then that one. " Have you heard the news ? Machault fights a duel to-morrow." "I have just heard a 92 PASTELS very good story. Colette Rigaud has been ban- tering Claude Larcher ; guess about whom ? " "They have not had any for two months" — this time the ministers are discussed. In the midst of this chattering, how can I keep intact the vision which I am cherishing in the corner of my heart, of the fragile bust of a young girl, leaning toward me, who have taken my place behind her during the five minutes of the entr'acte ? It pained me that she was in a low-necked dress, even while she smiled at me, and waved a little glazed fan painted by Martin, which came to her from her grandmother, and on which was painted a scene of pastoral life. It is a Tuesday. Happily, they give at the Fran9ais this year, as Madame Nieul expresses it, " marriage plays," that is to say, of a character suffi- ciently commonplace for it to be possible to take young ladies to see them. I listen patiently to the prose of the playwright, instead of being seated at my fireside reading a good book where there is some character analysis and style, and all because, in the fourth box to the right, I can see, by turning round, a raised hand holding a small silver opera-glass, before two blue eyes, — the hand and the eyes of Eve Rose. i MADAME BRESSUIRE 93 It is Saturday : the Taravals give a dinner on this day. Madame Taraval is a fool, her husband a knave. I have made myself so agreeable to them, that I find myself invited to their table. At the side of which members of their society shall I find myself ? And what shall I say ? For I must speak, must " be resourceful," if I wish to be invited again. Yes, but Eve Rose may perhaps be there, and in the evening, after having listened in the smoking-room to the vulgar stories of the coarse Seldron, so that my presence among the ladies may not be marked, I shall say to my little friend, as I call her in the silence of my thoughts, a few words in the corner of the salon. Ah ! I wonder that moralists complain of the rarity of love-marriages in French life, when social customs raise, between a young girl and a man, hedges so high, that to simply put aside the branches for a peep at her whom he loves, it is necessary to prick his fingers with such thorns. To-day, when I consider from a distance the trifling facts in this unaffected romance of a man surfeited with the world, I am frightened to see how many of our sweet hours are truly the nails of which Bossuet speaks, which, fixed in the wall at 94 PASTELS regular intervals, appear numerous. Put together, they are not enough to fill the hollow of the hand. And what if, at least, these sweet hours had been hours of complete confidence and free opening of our hearts ? Alas! putting these hours side by side, I have not, perhaps, passed thirty-six of them in talking with Eve Rose, nor have I once been able to show her my feelings or question her on her own. We are to such a degree the victims of the laws of society, when we have lived in it much, and when conduct in accordance with established custom ap- pears to us like a moral token, that I would never have forgiven myself for a declaration, nor this young girl for an avowal or readiness to listen. What I saw of her was her physical and social personality, and of her intimate being only what I could divine, or what I could, perhaps, imagine. To sum up, I suffered less from this than another would perhaps have done, for I have in me a sort of invincible intuition which forces me to judge characters from acts insignificant to the greater number of men, and to neglect those that ordinarily count the most. A look, a gesture, the sound of the voice, MADAME BRESSUIRE 95 assume for me a language, which moves my sym- pathy or my antipathy more than premeditated actions of great importance. Wise or unwise, this mania for interpreting the nothings of life as of the highest importance, has given me some of my most idyllic moments with Eve Rose. Poor idyll, the dumb show of which had only myself for theatre and for witness, for actor and for author ! And yet my infatuation was strong enough to make all the petty annoyances of Parisian society disappear by enchantment. How many times, in this commonplace opera-house, where I was always as bored as an old banker, did I feel as happy as a lieutenant on leave, to be able to observe on the face of Eve Rose the reflection of the emotions which the music excited in her ! I found a proof of her unimpaired simplicity of soul in the fact that she was, in contrast to all young girls brought up as she had been, capable of believing in the spectacle which unfolded itself before her eyes. In her white sicilienne dress, trimmed with knots of pale rose-coloured ribbons, which pleased me greatly, she remained leaning forward without mov- ing, when the passions broke loose in the voices of the singers, and in the thunderings of the orchestra. 96 PASTELS In the boxes to the right and left of hers, the women looked round the house, or chatted over their shoulders with the men standing behind them. By a whimsical transposition of tastes, I, who have never been able to endure the musical drama, loved Eve Rose for loving it, on account of the trait of character which I perceived on this occasion. i How many times, again, when seeing her ingen- uously amused at a ball, when the insipidity of the conversation was aggravated by the suffocating atmosphere, have I been grateful to her for thus giving evidence of that foundation of childishness which I prized so highly in her. Her smile was brilliant with gaiety, her eyes sparkled, she danced as if she were a child of the people, — for the dance itself. Again, to me, she represented youth, that inexpressible, that divine youth, by which I I warmed my melancholy, as in the sun of spring- time. I felt emanating from her, but of the purest order, a magnetism similar to that which certain women throw out, passing to and fro, always in motion, always in good spirits, who seem to parade and, as it were, shake out life from the folds of their skirts. To-day, even, I cannot find any MADAME BRESSUIRE 97 other explanation of the sort of charm which bewitched me. Grown up in a world where no distinguished man was ever to be seen, nor even one who could talk, Eve Rose had not a very intel- ligible idea of things. But her mind preserved something of soundness and good judgment. Her criticisms on the mediocre romances which she read, revealed a sound good sense, a judgment sometimes a little too outspoken and positive for my taste, but always frank. And then, I never discovered in her an atom of worldly malice. She showed such natural confidence in all that was good, and had so intrcnuous a way of acknowledging her offences, when she was guilty of any. Some- times it chanced that I would reprove her in spite of myself, and she would immediately yield to rea- son. I remember that, one day, seeing Madame Durand-Bailleul enter a drawing-room, she said to me, " M. Le Bugue should not be far off." " Why do you echo unworthy calumnies ? " I interrupted, quickly, and without considering what I was say- ing ; she blushed, and answered, immediately, " I was wrong, I will not do it again." It was from such traits as these that I formed an affecting idea of the depths of her character, and I 98. PASTELS dreamed of what a man whom she loved might make of this virgin soul. What a choice spot in which to sow the most beautiful flowers, and what a pity if life should exercise over her, also, its horrible work of degradation ! But would she love, and did she love me ? Can one ever read in the heart of a young girl that of which this heart itself is not aware ? That she thought of me I was convinced by seeing the joyful manner in which she always received me, and also from the significant smiles of Marie de Jardes, when they were togetlier and I approached their group. But was this anything more than a little feeling of feminine vanity, in a child of eighteen, at seeing a man of my age neglect, for her, better known and more fashionable beauties ? Wherever it was, we found ourselves very soon beside each other. But were these meetings brought about by her, or by myself ? She always told me where she was to pass the evening, when I saw her in the afternoon ; but was not all my con- versation a veiled question on this point? And yet nothing revealed that she suspected the nature of the feeling I cherished for her, until the inevitable I MADAME BRESSUIRE 99 day when a crisis arrived which I had foreseen since the first hour ; then I had always kept this vision away, by a sort of vohintary blindness which resembles the simplicity of the ostrich. Were my attentions the object of remarks addressed to Madame Nieul, or did she herself notice that her daughter seemed too much attached to mc ? Any- how, one evening, in their salon, I found in Eve Rose such a marked change of manner, that I could not hide from myseK its seriousness. Either I had offended her, or her mother had forbidden her to treat me as usual. I felt myself too innocent in my behaviour toward her to hesitate a moment over the cause. Madame Nieul, on her side also, wrapped herself up in an only too significant re- serve. It continued to be so during an entire week, at the end of which, having managed to approach Eve Rose when no one was near her, " Do not talk to me," said she, in a low voice, " I entreat you, if you care for my peace of mind." That was the end. This vague romance of six months was coming to the inevitable conclusion. I must either renounce my intimacy with Eve Rose, or demand her hand in marriage. I hesitated three days, and then I decided upon the latter measure. 100 PASTELS I addressed myself, for this step, to a great friend of the Nieuls, who was at the same time the wife of one of my oldest comrades, Madeleine de Soleure. Certainly I had to overcome a slight repugnance. I had dreamed, for my sentiments, of quite a dif- ferent confidant from this young woman of twenty- five, very pretty, very clever, but the incarnation of the outward and most shocking faults of a too free society. With her blond hair as colourless as that of Eve Rose was golden, with her manners of a great boy in petticoats, her showy toilets, her flirty ways, her gay pranks, Madeleine offended all the delicacies of my present feeling of tenderness. But what redeemed her unpleasant manners, and de- cided me, was a quality she possessed, which is rare in women. She possessed the loyalty of an honour- able man. She was quite capable of laughing loudly at an immodest story, but perfectly incapable of betraying a secret confided to her, of letting a friend be accused without defending her, or of abus- ing the confidence of her husband. Edgard de Soleure had married her in spite of all obstacles, for the mother of Madeleine had been terribly gos- siped about ; but she had educated her daughter, as often happens, in the most rigid manner, and in MADAME BRESSUIRE 101 fact, this home is still one of the best that I know in Paris. One finds there bad taste and good manners. Under her exterior of a thoughtless Parisienne, Madeleine is wonderfully clever at grasping a situa- tion. Her deep blue eyes see far and clearly into it, and on the whole, I knew no one who could give me surer or better counsel, although this did not prevent me from fearing, with a sense of uneasiness, even of pain, the sting of her pleasantries, when I should keep the appointment I had made with her. " Ah," cried she, at my first words, " I would have bet my life upon it. My poor friend, you are embarking in a dangerous affair ! " She was idly stretched on the divan in her boudoir, in a loose white dressing-gown, engaged in smoking cigarettes of tobacco the colour of her hair, which she took from a little Japanese box lacquered with gold. On the same table, by the side of this little box, was a black leathern photograph-frame, which stood upright, exhibiting four photographs of her inti- mate friends, one of which was that of Eve Rose. I was able to see this photograph from where I sat. I looked at it, and the attitude pleased me greatly. The young girl was standing up, her hands clasped 102 PASTELS and hanging down, with that air, at the same time naive and absorbed, with which I was familiar in her graver moments. That alone would have en- couraged me to continue, even if I had not decided to press my resolution to the end. " Then," said I to Madeleine, " you believe that she does not love me ? " " Whether she loves you or whether she does not love you, my dear Yernantes, is all one to you," replied she, " since her mother will never give her to you, never, never. This is between us, is it not ? Do you know how to reckon ? " I made a sign that I did not comprehend her. She continued : " Did you ever by chance ask your- self what Madame Nieul and her daughter spend a year ? I know their tradespeople, and I should reckon their expenses at about five thou- sand francs. They cannot get along with less than 120,000 francs, — you understand me, 120,000 francs. And Nieul died of grief at having re- duced his wife to 60,000 livres income, by his unfortunate speculations on the Bourse. It is just ten years since then. Two multiplications, and one subtraction, and you will see why Madame Nieul will never give you Eve Rose." MADAME BRESSUIEE 103 " But the woman is a fool ! " I cried, overwhelmed by this sudden revelation. " By no means," continued Madame de Soleure, " she is a mother who ruins her daughter, that is all, as so many others ruin their husbands, from sheer vanity. So, then, you have never looked at her and guessed her thirst and frantic eagerness for cutting a brilliant figure, if only from her profile like that of an empress, her haughty mouth, and that implacability that pervades her whole being." And she imitated the look of Madame Nieul as she spoke. " She will not give up the world until she is dead, and as, in order that this life can continue, it is necessary for Eve Rose to make a rich marriage, Eve Eose will make a rich marriage, as true as you see that puff of smoke." And with her pretty mouth she amused herself with puffing the smoke from her cigarette, which floated off in regular little rings ; then, as if in sport, she pur- sued these blue and mobile rings with her finger, and involuntarily I saw in this gesture of my friend a symbol of my life, which has been passed, in truth, in pursuing even lighter mirages, more intangible even than the smoke from Madeleine's cigarette. 104 PASTELS " Yet it is necessary that Eve Rose should consent to all this calculation," I replied, " and it is exactly because of that that I permit my- self not to be of your opinion, and that I think it of great importance for me to know if she loves me." " My friend," said Madeleine, shaking her blond head, " remember what I tell you : there is not a young girl who loves — in Paris, at least, and below the third story. Eve Rose is refined, she is upright and frank, but be assured that, before entering into revolt against her mother, she would hesitate, even if you had a princely home to offer her. And as she will learn from Madame Nieul the existence that awaits her if she marries you, she will not hesitate for more than five minutes. Think of it then ; here is a child who does not understand life without a house near Monceau Park or the Bois de Boulogne, without four or five horses in her stable, without going out every evening in the winter, a box at the Opera, and all that is required for a life of this description. Travelling in summer, a chateau in the autumn, and all the surroundings of elegance, which can only be procured with a fortune, a large fortune. MADAME BRESSUIRE 105 Should her mother die and she add the sum of thirty thousand francs which may be left for her, to your income, she would consider herself poor. Don't shake your head, it is the frightful under side of our sort of life. With a million, my dear, in our world, one has not a sou — " There was a silence between us. I listened to this woman, as a bankrupt listens to the schedule of his debts and assets. She continued : " And would you be happy with her, you whom I know ? You would suffer martyrdom for a single regret that might show itself in her eyes ! Would you not live with the daily anguish of saying to yourself, ' I have deprived her of her life of a woman of fashion, her life of youth and opulence, to tie her — to what ? ' Consider well, M. Fran- cois Vernantes, that you, a former auditor, and very well thought of in society, are among what I call bachelors of the first class. You marry, and if your wife has no more fortune than has Mile. Nicul, all is changed in an instant. You are a rich bachelor. You become the head of a straitened household. You lose at once the greater half of your acquaintance." And she kept on talking, talking continually, 106 PASTELS and, in proportion as she talked, I felt myself taken possession of by that terrible sense of the impossible, which has always and everywhere stopped me on the brink of the realization of my most cherished desires. I perceived that I was tempting an experience most terrible for me, that of discovering what there was in the depths of the heart of Eve Rose, and a frightful timid- ity took possession of me at the mere idea. " And then," thought I, when I had returned home after this conversation, " have I really enough confidence in my feelings to take the respon- sibility of a marriage accomplished under such conditions ? " But what good is it to recall all the deep-seated reasons of my renunciation ? They all lay in that malady of the will from which I have suffered so much. That same evening, after hours of an agony of indecision, I wrote to Madeleine de Soleure that I yielded to her arguments, and five days after I quitted Paris. Will there ever be found a tender moralist such as I could have wished to be, if I had had the power of writing for any other purpose than to relieve my soul, who will give the anxious, the uncertain, MADAME BRESSUIRE 107 and those who are tormented like myself, an ex- planation of the fluctuations and the contrasts of their character ? After this sudden reversal of my resolutions, determined by the arguments of Madame de Soleure, and also by my own powerlessness to struggle, to make up my mind, in short, to live, what did simple prudence dictate ? That at least I must go away without seeing Eve Rose again, since I was going away in order to avoid her. Yet I wished once more to enter the house in the Rue de Berry, before quitting the city where I was leaving her — for an- other, and for whom ? My heart, incompetent in action, has always been ingenious in these refine- ments of inward torture. I found the mother and daughter in that round conservatory where an infinity of happy dreams had been mine this winter. As they had just lost a distant relative, they were both of them in black toilets, and while I was talking to Madame Nieul, explaining to her my projected travels, Eve Rose leaned over her tapestry-frame, making her needle fly with a rapidity that seemed to me feverish. When I rose, her eyes were fixed on me. She was, at that moment, white as the paper upon which I write 108 PASTELS these lines. Ah ! that pale face, a prey to an emo- tion which may have been only a very tender pity, how it has pursued me for a long time with its look ! How many times have I divined a mute reproach, for which I shall never be able to justify myself, in the trembling of her little hand in mine ! And how many hours have I spent in telling the beads of useless regrets, of phrases like, " If I had only spoken," or, " What if she loved me ? " The announcement of this marriage with Adolphe Bres- suire, particularly, caused me the deepest pain. Then this mortal weakness resolved itself into tender indifference. 1 so thoroughly believed I had forgotten it all. There were between us long months of travel, the sensation of the irreparable, the monotony of my life ; and behold, a line in a journal has opened the wound that had been closed. A wound ? No — since Eve Rose is free, why suffer longer ? Does not destiny seem to hold out to me a second time the card I so regretted not having played ? What folly ! And it was to calm myself that I com- menced to write all these pages, and to put my sick nerves to sleep. An injection of morphine would have been decidedly better. MADAME BRESSUIRE 109 SECOND FRAGMENT Paris, Nov., 1881, iii gloomy weather. "What can one do on an afternoon of pouring rain, when one is suffering from the liver, and has taken a dislike to the sight of the human face ? Read books ? I know by heart all of mine. And what would they teach me ? In all literatures there are not fifty pages that are necessary. The others are works of art, — one might almost say an exercise of patience, good for interesting those of the profession. A man with a past is more difficult to please. Write letters that I owe ? It is a long time since my inner nihilism was freed from the miseries of politeness. And in this disorder of my exasperated nerves, of my ruined health, of my aching soul, here I have again been ruminating upon my existence as a cow chews her cud. How bitter was the pasture where I brought my heart to browse ! Somewhat by chance, I turned over the pages of my old journals, and, examining book after book, I came upon one that had not been completely filled ; I read over the recital of 110 PASTELS my sentiments for Eve Rose Nieul, — and burst into laughter. Destiny, since then, has taken upon itself to compose the second chapter of this romance, and the fancy seizes me, since 1 cannot go out, and my door is blocked up, to write this second chapter, as I have the first. I have rolled, then, a little table to the fireside and chosen my pen with care, as if for an important work. This scribbling will divert me for two hours at least. Under these circumstances I recall the words of my teacher in Greek, when I was attending the rhetoric classes at the Lycee Bonaparte. Intermi- nably long, scrupulously dry, astonishingly learned, he made me read Sophocles with him, whilst he smoked frightful cigars, which still give me nausea after all these years, and at the end of the lesson, gazing at me with half-closed eyes, he chuckled : " My dear Yernantcs, this is better than playing billiards." To-day I would not swear that he was right. If only he had said, " as good as," instead of " better." Let us now have the faithful narra- tion of my recollections. I was at Florence in March, at Naples in April, on the lakes in June, at Ragatz, and then at MADAME BRESSUIRE 111 Bayreuth, to hear Wagner's operas, in July and August. I passed September at my house in Picardy. This stay did all the mischief. At forty-one years of age, with a head still full of romance, a man cannot spend a month, with no companion but himself, walking on the banks of a river or among the oaks, without the evil plant of senti- mentalism beginning to flourish again. There is a spot on the banks of the river, where it forms a little bay, the current there is absolutely still : the water spreads out in a sheet so motionless that the entire fa9ade of the house is reflected in it. The country people call this spot " the mirror." I passed, myself, hours and hours in gazing into this mirror; but what I saw there was not my house, it was my life, — a lamentable life, — and what kind of a future ? I have always had a sort of fear of reality, and reality avenged itself by with- drawing itself from my grasp. What did I possess, in fact, to which I might attach myself closely ? What real duty, what deep affection would serve me as a point of support in the years of the last drifting away ? No family, no career, no ambition. Nothing, not even a hobby. The indefinite succes- 112 PASTELS sion of morrows, without hope, stretched out before me. And then I felt a horror of this vision, and I asked myself : " Is it really too late to re- trieve this failure ? " At the bottom of the trans- parent water then appeared a form, the fragile and slender outline of a child scarce twenty years of age, and this child had the blue eyes, golden hair, sensitive lips, and a frank smile — of whom, if not of Eve Rose ? The phantom became more tangible still in my reverie, and I recognized the look of Eve Rose at the time of my farewell visit. A voice rose insinuating and caressing, to tell me that ahe was free, and asking why, then, I did not venture, now that she was dependent only on herself, what I had so bitterly regretted not having ventured before. I ought to have distrusted this project. It appeared at the same time so reasonable and so sweet. It is the double charac- ter under which ingenious nature usually betrays us into the greatest follies. But again, why did the good Chance, almost immediately after my return to Paris, make me encounter Madeleine de Soleure, and why did this madcap say to me, in the course of a desultory conversation: "Your ears must have burned yesterday ; I passed an hour MADAME BRESSUIRE 113 talking of you with one of your old lady-loves; can you guess whom ? " '' The list would be too long," replied I, trying to jest, because the image of Eve Rose rose up in my thoughts and made my heart ache. " You have become a fop during your travels," said Madeleine. " You deserve to be left to search in your list, since there is a list. But, as I am a good-natured person, and it is five o'clock, and I am expected at a quarter past, I will tell you the name at once ; it is Eve Rose Bressuire. Go and see her now. She has returned to her mother, and is very much bored." And I went to the hotel in the Rue de Berrv. V It was three o'clock in the afternoon of a beautiful ^1* clear October day, under a sky dappled with light clouds. Behold me, now, before this hStel, of which the carriage entrance, with its heavy door, and its knocker of two twisted serpents, recalls to me so many recollections. I ask if Madame Xieul is at home. The porter recognizes me, and replies that the ladies have not ordered the carriage until five o'clock. The ladies ? My heart shrinks. A few minutes, and I shall see, without doubt, my friend of two years ago. i 114 PASTELS I cross the grand salon. The immovable aspect of the room has not changed. The Watteau, on the easel draped with antique velvet, still evokes, by the side of the piano, the vision of an evening landscape, with melancholy lovers. The footman pushes open before me the leaves of the wrought iron gate, over which, as formerly, the vine twines its golden foliage. There are two persons in the conservatory where the green foliage still, as of old, unites its sombre tints with the softly faded tones of the fabrics, and these two persons are Madame Nieul and her daughter. Eve Rose is seated before her em- broidery-frame ; that attitude, that black toilet, those beautiful blond curls, those tender blue eyes, that sudden pallor, is it two years or is it two days since I was here ? Only the surprise of the two ladies marks the length of time elapsed since my last visit, — but so graciously. " This is very good of you," says Madame Nieul, " not to have forgotten the way to our house ! We believed that you had entirely forgotten us." " I have been too far away, madame, and I learned of the grief that has come to you, too late to express my sympathy at the same time with your other friends." II MADAME BKESSUIRE 115 I pronounce this sentence, as hypocritical as it is, without significance, and bow toward Eve Rose, who in response bends her pretty head. How many lies were there in the first words we thus exchanged after months and months of ab- sence ? Ah ! those who curse the deceits of common worldly politenesses are ingrates. These subterfuges, which deceive no one, alone render possible the bridging over of a false situation — liive that in which we found ourselves at that moment. Had we not, all three of us, in the bottom of our hearts, a note of interrogation, which must not allow itself to be detected on the tip of our tongue ? The more indifferent of the two was certainly Madame Nieul, who had never taken a sufficiently keen interest in my movements to ask herself seriously what had been the cause of my absence, or what the cause of my return. But Eve Rose knew too well that I had loved her, — even the most innocent of young girls make no mistakes on such points. Why did I go away ? Why had I just returned? Had my feelings undergone a change ? All these questions passed through her clear eyes, while I watched her movements in order to judge more exactly the degree of her 116 PASTELS welcome. Meanwhile, we talked, and our conver- sation ranged from the details of my travels to details concerning several of our mutual friends. But I was present at this talk rather than taking part in it, my soul filled with a double felicity. And first, from the attention with which Eve Rose listened to my lightest words, I recognized that I had not become a stranger to her. If I had contented myself with this discovery, I should not have been the imaginative creature I have always been. No, I undertook to interpret this evident attention, and a whole poem built itself up in my head, of which I dreamed myself the hero. By a childish fatuity, for which I have paid dearly, I divined in Eve Rose's marriage a romance of melancholy. She had loved me and I had been far away ; her mother had been present and importunate. This was why the poor child showed herself so ingenuously moved at seeing me once again, contrary to all expectation. Two or three indications sufficed to make me put faith in this hypothesis. The hope of happiness finds us so credulous, even after a hundred proofs to the con- trary ! And then, what made me happy in this first visit, even to intoxication, was not so much MADAME BRESSUIRE 117 this suddenly fabricated chimera, as a very strange phenomenon of inward hallucination. The complete identity of surroundings, joined to the identity of toilet and attitude, carried me back two years in such an irresistible fashion, the time that had passed since then was suppressed at one swoop. I knew well that events, almost tragic in their seri- ousness, had taken place during those two years. I knew this as one is conscious of the existence of another, with an uncertain consciousness, almost stripped of reality. The thread of my passion for Eve Rose was joined again to the mesh just at the place where the shears of destiny had cut it off. Thus I found myself, on returning home after this first visit, exactly in the same state of mind as before the interview with Madeleine dc Soleure, before even the coldness that Eve Rose had been ordered to assume. But this coldness had given place to sincere emotion ; no one had any longer the right to give orders to my little friend, but she had been able to say to me on my leaving, and in her mother's presence : " You know that I am always at home before four o'clock." It was not, then, too late for me to reconstruct my miserable life. — 118 PASTELS Ah, happiness ! happiness ! How I believed that this mocking bird was this time going to build his nest in the corner of my window ! This impression of the revival of my old-time dream was strong enough to last with undimin- ished intensity for a fortnight, and without my seeing Eve Rose again more than twice : once, at her mother's house, and the second time, at Madame de Soleure's, where I had recommenced to show myself outside the oflicial hours. Yes, it was only after two weeks of a chimera, complaisantly and passionately cherished, that I thought of reflecting and reasoning upon the cir- cumstances in wliich the game of my destiny was being played over again. A sentence of Madeleine's sufTiccd to raise these reflections. At her house I had met Eve Rose ; then, when the latter had left, " And when are you going to entrust me with your suit?" said Madame de Soleurc, in her bold and vigorous manner of putting questions. " This time," added she, half closing her eyes in a mali- cious and crafty manner, " I advise you to risk the chances." After years I have not become accustomed to such modes of speecli, and I remember that I MADAME BRESbUIKE 11 'J found them particularly disagreeable to me at this moment. All my heart was quivering, and Made- leine continued, " I should be astonished if you got a refusal." And, as if she were talking to herself tlioughtlessly, she added : " Madame Bressuire must have fully 120,000 francs income, now!" Without doubt, this phrase, thrown out inciden- tally by the laughing lips of this woman, at the same time so honourable and so positive, above all so friendly, responded to a thought that had noth- ing in it insulting to me. It was a reply to the objections raised by her, and admitted by me, in the interview which had decided my departure, — and a reply of which it appeared improbable that I should not have thought. Improbable or not, the fact is that I had not thought of it. Thus the words of Madeleine struck me unexpectedly, and I felt that indefinable im- pression, which the mere thought of being sus- pected of a base calculation inflicts upon us. I had an immediate vision, and clear as could be, that on the announcement of my marriage with Eve Rose, the world would formulate the reflection which Madeleine had just thrown out, but with an entirely different intention. Alas I the opinion of the world 120 PASTELS was not to disturb mc long; but an invincible association of ideas surged up in the train of this first annoyance, and reminded me of what I had forgotten for two weeks, in mj extraordinary state of retrospective illusion : that Eve Rose had been, that she still was, Madame Bressuire. Madame Bressuire ? Had I not been accustomed to her bearing this name for months and months ? Did people tell me anything new, when they told mc that she possessed tlie fortune belonging to this name ? She had for herself the lands and the revenues of Adolphc de Bressuire, my colleague in the Cbuncil of- State ; she dressed herself with this money ; she lived on it ; she would bring it with her when she married again, if she ever did. There was something in that to interest a notary, but not mc. Yes : but words can, according to the secret disposition of the heart, assume a mean- ing, delicate, indifferent, or murderous ; and the four syllables, " Madame Bressuire," had just caused me a sort of grief, of which I only clearly understood the nature when I once more found myself in Eve Rose's presence. Instead of ex- periencing that fulness of sweet emotion which had been the charm of my reentrance into her life. MADAME BRESSUIEE 121 I fell into what I call my analytical state. I no longer vibrated, I reasoned. I no longer gave my- self up, I examined. In returning again to Eve Rose, I had not asked myself if she was exactly such as I had known and loved her. I asked my- self this question now. It was the first time that I had seen her without her mother ; and this touch of intimacy, which ought to have pleased me, did not please me at all, because it was one little proof more that Mile. Nieul had given place to Madame Brcssuire. Her beauty, on this particular day, was, however, more pleasing than usual. Her blue eyes were shining with an unaccustomed brilliancy, the rose of her checks was enlivened by a slight glow. Through all her person ran an animation, almost a restless- ness, which I ascribed to the turn our conversation had taken. Everything that she said to me, although showing great discretion and keenness, contained a question about my life since I left her, — whether she asked me, in a childlike manner, " Do you find the type of Italian beauty pleases you ? " or, becoming serious, questioned me on my ideas : " Do you believe that one can love twice ? But love, with you men, is only a play. They tell 122 PASTELS me that, among yourselves, in the smoking-room, or at the club, you are dreadful ! " Then, with a burst of mockery, and yet at the same time a look of secret anguish in her pretty eyes, " Ah ! " said she, "how I should like to read a complete confession by one of you, but by some one who is good. You, for instance, M. Yernantes. Made- leine de Soleure declares that you are so roman- tic ! " and she smiled. What did twenty or more similar phrases reveal, if not a desire half coquet- tish, but quite innocently coquettish, of penetrating farther in a close acquaintance with my inner life ? And was it not a frightful injustice on my part to say to myself, as I did almost immediately, that this conversation was not in the tone of our former banter ? Eve Rose had now something less constrained in the sound of her voice, and an assurance in her thoughts and a curiosity in her glance which revealed the beginnings of knowledge of char- acters and passions. In short, with all the arch finesse of her entire person, she was really a young woman whom I had every reason to consider exquisite, if it is true that men are guided in their preferences by MADAME BRESSUIRE 123 vanity ; for, evidently, all the discreet manoeuvres of Eve Rose betrayed a delicate desire to please me. Ah, well I as if some malicious demon had taken upon himself the task of spoiling this happy hour for me, everything that ought to have made me appreciate more strongly the charms of my little friend of former days had no other effect than that of suddenly and completely bewildering my heart. Instead of expanding, I felt myself sud- denly contracting. A word is enough to explain this strange phenomenon of a sudden indisposi- tion : she was no longer exactly the being that I had loved. When she put out her left hand in talking with me, I saw the glimmer of the pale gold of her wedding-ring. Her hand was not less fine, or nervous, or white than formerly. Yet this gold ring sufficed to make it no longer the same hand ; it was the symbol of her whole person, in my eyes, and this evidence tore from my heart one of those little crystals, each one of which, as Stendhal teaches us, is a hope of happiness. Alas ! a drop of the purest of my blood fell with the little crystal ! The proverb says that misfortunes never come singly, and this proverb is perfectly true, at least. 124 PASTELS in the world of those who are infinitely little in sen- timent. In a wounded soul, a trifle causes a wound. As we were talking in this fashion, Eve Rose and I, the gate turned on its hinges, and into the con- servatory there entered — who ? Marie de Jardes, the friend of former days ; she recognized me, she smiled. " Mademoiselle," said I, saluting her, and this time both smiled. " Madame, if you please," amended Eve Rose. " Miss Mary is no longer Miss Mary, although she is still Mary," she added, embracing her. " Our name is Madame la Yicomtesse de Fondettes de St. Remy. I believe, my dear, that he has returned even more savage than he ever was." This last phrase, uttered with softness, and, above all, that simple " he," spread balm upon the wound that the fall of the little crystal had made in my heart. I had once more the feeling, seated between these two friends, that the happy days of our old intimacy were to return, the more so as the quite new countess regarded me with the same eyes, half compassionately, half mocking, — those hazel-coloured eyes, almost too small for her plump white face. But no. While the two friends were MADAME BRESSUIRE 125 chatting, I began once more to feel that time had done its work, and that Marie was no longer Mile. de Jardes, just as Eve Rose was no longer Mile. Nieul. Madame de Fondettes was consulting the confi- dante of her humbler and more exalted life as to her still incomplete establishment ; she was about to make preparations for a reception. " I have not had time to think of mine," said Eve Rose, and I remembered having heard from Madeleine de Soleure, that, in fact, since the death of her husband, carried off in a few days by typhoid fever, she had refused to set foot again in their little hotel in the Rue de Tilsitt ; and she continued, addressing herself to me : " We had not been settled for three months. There were still workmen in the lower rooms. You can guess whether I had the heart to go round the shops, and choose knick-knacks. But I know all about that, now, dear Mary. Would you like me to go shopping with you ? I have two or three good addresses of dealers in the Marais." Was there a syllable, a single one, at which to take exception, in this conversation which I can still hear, uttered in a fresh young voice ? Cer- 126 PASTELS tainly not, for any ordinary person, but I had known Adolphe de Brcssuire, — the late Bressuire, as his name is inscribed in the register of deaths, — and, all of a sudden, he ceased to be the " late " Bressuire for me. 1 remembered that, at the time when we were both auditors in the palace on the Quai d'Orsay, he had already a most unusual knowledge of furnishings such as fashion employs to-day. He was one of the very first to seek out embroideries of old stoles, Japanese ornaments, all that bric-a-brac that transforms a corner of a 1)om- \% doir into a museum. There had been in Bressuire a t