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<Hich of the auctioneer and appraiser, and also 
 
 an artistic judgment. Our comrades often confided 
 
 to him the care of fitting up an elegant house for 
 
 them, and he always lent himself to this work with 
 
 joyful alacrity. It amused him to drape a portiere, 
 
 to beautify the appearance of a room. If he had 
 
 tried to impart his taste in decoration to his young 
 
 wife, from the first months of their marriage, what 
 
 was there surprising in that ? She was His Wife, 
 
 the being by the side of whom he was preparing to 
 
 })ass his life. He had wished to fashion this being 
 
 after his own ideas. What more natural ? Yes, 
 
 but what more natural, also, than that my suffering 
 
 I
 
 MADAME BRESSUIRE 127 
 
 should be aroused in the presence of this light trace 
 of the intiuence of another over her whom 1 had 
 loved, at a time when she had nothing pronounced 
 in her charming character ? Had not this inliuence, 
 even though beneficial, something in it of the touch 
 of the spoiler ? And one more little crystal was 
 torn from the hidden bough of my affection. 
 
 " What I " I said to myself, as I departed from 
 the Hotel Nieul, " could I be jealous of Bressuire ? " 
 This sort of feeling by no means resembled the 
 ordinary habits of my heart. Those who are 
 jealous of a woman's past, prove that they do not 
 know the very foundation of feminine natures, — 
 that sincerity in the facile succession of pleasures 
 and pains, thanks to which a woman can, without 
 lying, say to her tenth lover, " I have never loved 
 but you." Yes, without lying, for she has never 
 loved exactly in that way. I had been too similar 
 to women in the singular inconstancy of my amor- 
 ous fancy, during my first youth, to think otherwise 
 than they do on this delicate point. Therefore I 
 had no difficulty, on examining my impression more 
 deeply, in recognizing that I was not jealous of 
 Bressuire. If the bare idea of the existence of my 
 old comrade threw me into a fever, it was because
 
 128 PASTELS 
 
 this idea fatally inflicted a comparison between the 
 Eve Rose whom I formerly visited and her whom 
 I saw now, going and coming in her widow's weeds. 
 What I had loved in the first was that absolute 
 ignorance, that penumbra of soul, that mysterious 
 incompleteness which is comprehended in the sim- 
 ple term, a young girl. When and how had I 
 commenced to fall in love with her ? The very 
 day after my rupture with the most depraved of 
 my mistresses, and because the contrast had been 
 so complete between this sweet virginal child and 
 the guilty visions of my last love-affair. And what 
 food had nourished this love, if not the initiation, at 
 least in a dream, into the naive and truthful world 
 of her innocent thoughts ? When I had returned, 
 what sudden cause had determined a return of my 
 old love, if not the similarity of the circumstances 
 of the past, and those in which I found Eve Rose ? 
 
 She was there, near her mother, in the same 
 dress, before her embroidery-frame, and with the 
 same look. 
 
 It was as if the adorable phantom of my purest 
 feeling had awaited me in this spot since my de- 
 parture, and now I had to find that it was, in 
 reality, a phantom, nothing more, the vain and
 
 MADAME BRESSUIRE 129 
 
 empty image of a creature who was only a part of 
 the past. 
 
 I smile with pity when I think how small — 
 the more severe would say, how puerile — were the 
 scenes that followed, and precipitated what I call 
 this decrystallization. But why ? this love, which 
 was born among chimeras, ought to die also among 
 chimeras. " "Whoever is a wolf should act like 
 a wolf," as the saying is. Nature, in exaggerating 
 in me the sense of interior life, has condemned me 
 to enjoy and suffer from the ideas of things more 
 even than from the things themselves. How strug- 
 gle against a necessity of the intellectual organiza- 
 tion ? Without doubt, also, I was "an impotent of 
 happiness," as Madeleine de Soleure said, in odd 
 but expressive terms, when I confided to her the 
 phases of agony that my feelings for Eve Rose 
 quickly passed through. But why continue ? And 
 what can I do but wait for time to cure me of this 
 wound, as of others — that which cures all com- 
 plaints, even that of living ? 
 
 There was, on one of the tables of the conserva- 
 tory, where Eve Rose continued to receive me, a 
 portrait of Bressuire placed in an engraved silver 
 frame. A monogram in enamel, E. R. B., sur-
 
 130 PASTELS 
 
 mounted with the coronet of a countess, marked 
 this frame. Instinctively, and at each of my visits, 
 I could not help looking at this photograph, as if 
 to better fix in my memory these features I had 
 known so well, and for so many years. He was 
 slightly old and worn, the Bressuire with whom I 
 had so often walked under the arcades of the 
 inner court, in the palace of the Council of State, 
 to-day in ruins — like my youth I 
 
 I was able, in analyzing this portrait, to divine 
 the feelings that had passed through the head 
 of my former colleague, when he sat for this 
 photograph. There was, in this profile, an air of 
 being watched, something careful, decorous, almost 
 serious, which carried me back, by an invincible 
 induction, to the days when Bressuire was the 
 betrothed of Eve Rose. 
 
 "With his worn finesse, his slight baldness, the 
 slight prominence of his lower lij), this man 
 appeared to me as if he had been there, living, 
 in this little corner of the world which must have 
 been perfumed in those days by the flowers of the 
 bouquets sent by him. 
 
 Gestures, habitual in him, recurred to my mem- 
 ory ; one, for instance, passing over his blond
 
 MADAME BRESSUIRE 131 
 
 moustache his fine, slender hand with its two 
 rings, one of massive gold, the other set with 
 a sapphire and two diamonds ; or, again, raising 
 his open hand, and moving it gently, just on a 
 level with his eyes. This was in him a sign of the 
 greatest admiration, whether for the sharp practice 
 of a man, the beauty of a woman, or the price of a 
 curio. This little gesture had a history of its 
 own. It had been, at the time of our entrance 
 into the council, the practice of a Southerner, our 
 comrade. Bressuire had made fun of it so much, 
 by imitating it, that he ended, as is often the 
 case, by contracting the habit. 
 
 Two or three times I observed that Eve Rose 
 had a similar gesture, and such trifles sufficed to 
 strengthen my feeling of strange repulsion. There 
 are, in the simple fact of living for days and days 
 with another being, fatalities of imitation which 
 colour our thoughts with the thoughts of that 
 being, our accent with his accent, our looks with 
 his looks, our physiology with his physiology. It 
 is sometimes only an imperceptible, imponderable 
 atom of influence, but I found, or I imagined I 
 found, again that atom in the person of the widow 
 of Count Bressuire. And then the slightest words
 
 132 PASTELS 
 
 became a pretext for this disaggregation of my 
 ideal, which was taking place in me, — to lead me 
 to lose this last hope of repairing my life. 
 
 Some trifling details stand out distinctly among 
 twenty others. It was one of my days of gay con- 
 versation. I had related, I do not remember what 
 anecdote to Eve Rose ; she burst into peals of 
 laughter, and said, "That is like ' Niniche.'" I 
 immediately remembered that this play had been 
 pei-forraed the day after her marriage, and I saw 
 her concealed in a box with Bressuire, whose first 
 care, according to my knowledge of him, must 
 have been to make his wife lead the existence of a 
 gay woman, taking her about to little theatres and 
 private rooms. I saw her, with her astonished 
 eyes, and her half-ashamed smile of the emanci- 
 pated schoolgirl. How many adorable inno- 
 cencies, for which I loved her, had been driven 
 away thus, in these theatres, while she took, with 
 the tip of the gilded tongs, a glacd fruit from 
 the box resting on the edge of her loge, while the 
 actor of the day threw out equivocal couplets across 
 the footlights, the hahituSs of the orchestra seats 
 applauded, and Bressuire commented in his wife's 
 ear on the text and the song. Perhaps, however.
 
 MADAME BKESSUIRE 133 
 
 my sick sensibilities suffer less from these half- 
 tarnishing images, than from other images, which 
 were quite to the credit of this same Bressuire. 
 
 This took place during another visit. We had 
 just spoken of works of art and of Rembrandt, 
 apropos of the pictures by this painter which are 
 in the Louvre. Eve Rose said, " For myself, I 
 prefer the portraits in the National Gallery in 
 London." She had spent her honeymoon in Eng- 
 land, where her mother had relatives. I knew 
 it, and could imagine her over there, seated by 
 the side of Bressuire in one of those two-wheeled 
 carriages, where the coachman is perched up 
 behind. It is so comfortable there, for a Ions: 
 talk, while the horse trots over the wooden pave- 
 ment, and the enormous city stretches out under 
 the blue mist, and the exoticism of all things 
 heightens the sense of intimacy in the narrow 
 cab. And immediately the vast square where the 
 museum stands rose in my memory. I saw 
 the staircase, the double door, the halls on the 
 walls of which were hung some of the pictures 
 I loved the best, these portraits of Rembrandt, 
 and the triptych by Perugino, with the great arch- 
 angel on the panel at the left, with its celestial
 
 134 PASTELS 
 
 sweetness. Bressuire, who was a great connoisseur, 
 had certainly showed these picture to Eve Rose, — 
 these and many others. He had roused in her 
 emotions for art of which she had been ignorant. 
 He had had the first fruits of her astonished and 
 charmed reveries in the presence of beauty. I 
 remembered so well how her education as a Parisian 
 girl had left her perfectly incapable of distinguish- 
 ing a Titian from a Botticelli ! Ah ! these first 
 emotions of the soul of a woman born for the culti- 
 vation of all that is noble, in the presence of the 
 masterpieces of genius, how I envied him who is 
 dead both the awakening and the sight of it : he is 
 dead, but his mind has in a certain sense marked 
 that other mind indelibly. And mechanically, I 
 repeated some lines by the poet Sully Prudhomme, to 
 an absent bride. They had pleased me much, in the 
 days when I had loved Eve Rose as a little girl : 
 
 " Tu t'assi^ras, I'^t^, bien loin, dans la campagne, 
 En robe claire, an bord de I'eau. 
 Qii'il est doux d'eniporter sa nouvelle compagne 
 Tout seul dans un pays nouveau 1 " ^ 
 
 i"Thou wilt sit, in light dress, beside the water, this 
 summer, far away in the country. How sweet it is to lead 
 away one's new companion, all alone, to a new land ! "
 
 MADAME BRESSUIRE 135 
 
 How many undefined emotions may exist in the 
 melody of a single strophe ! 
 
 This inner work of my thoughts in process of 
 decomposing my love, bit by bit, did not go on 
 without Eve Rose discovering that phenomena 
 were occurring in me which were inexplicable to 
 her. I paid her visits, and met her often enough 
 for her to divine that, between each of these inter- 
 views, something in me had become displaced. 
 Sometimes I scarcely spoke to her ; or I affected 
 in my talk a tone of banter which made me suffer 
 myself ; or I was, on the contrary, more attentive 
 than ever, when near her. Without the slightest 
 preconsideration, I behaved exactly as if I were 
 following a plan to make her love me. But no ; 
 I was simply obeying the changes of my inner 
 being, the going and coming in my imagination 
 of so many murderous ideas. 
 
 She bore with my fits of impatience, and re- 
 ceived my attentions with that evenness of temper, 
 which seemed as if it would never leave her. At 
 times a look of sadness passed through her beauti- 
 ful eyes, and, at other times, astonishment. In 
 proportion as I penetrated more into her char- 
 acter, I recognized that her principal faculty was
 
 136 PASTELS 
 
 a deep love of equipoise, which was bound to lead 
 her to accept with serenity all the circumstances 
 in which destiny might place her. She could not 
 understand revolt. It was exactly this adorable 
 trait in her nature which did me most evil. I 
 understood that her marriage to Bressuire had 
 certainly been accomplished without a struggle, 
 and also that during that year of common life, she 
 had not been unhappy. If she had preserved a 
 tender remembrance of me, that tenderness had 
 not been destined to end in nostalgia. To Eve 
 Rose the impossible had never been the object 
 of desire, and as she always saw the best side of 
 anything, she had certainly recognized and appre- 
 ciated the good qualities in her husband. Ah, 
 well ! it is frightful to see with what viper-like 
 ease egotism glides in among our most delicate 
 sentiments. After having, at the time of my first 
 departure, sacrificed my hope of love to the hopes 
 of the happiness of Eve Rose, I was irritated to 
 the point of anger, at the thought that, in her mar- 
 riage, she had not met with unhappiness. Similarly, 
 after having loved her in society, and perhaps be- 
 cause her young beauty moved naturally in a scene 
 of tender elegance, I could not pardon her for 
 
 I
 
 MADAME BRESSUIRE 137 
 
 pleasing herself in those relations which this 
 society permits. I was angry with her for having 
 married a man of her world, as I was angry with 
 her for receiving those she did receive, whom she 
 had formerly met in the company of her husband. 
 In a word, I had arrived, after four months of 
 misery, at that point where not a single crystal 
 was attached to the inward branch. After having 
 sought for a thousand reasons, one by one, for 
 loving her less, I finished by not being able to 
 discover a single one for loving her. 
 
 My pride finds a miserable consolation in the 
 thought that in my last visit at the H6tel Nieul, 
 my atrocious ill-temper at least had the appearance 
 of reason, 
 
 I found there that frightful St. Luc, with his 
 elephantine form, his coarse smile, his get-up like 
 that of an English coachman, who owes to the 
 scandal of his first gallant adventure an excellent 
 position in society. 
 
 He was seated in one of the two rocking-chairs 
 in the conservatory, his hat placed on the carpet, 
 and he tapped the ground with the end of his cane 
 regularly, as if to balance himself. He might have 
 sat in this vulgar fashion in the apartment of a
 
 138 PASTELS 
 
 cocotte, and his conversation was no better than his 
 manner. It was a succession of " shady " stories, 
 as they say in the slang of to-day, half of them 
 meaningless, the other half scandalous ; and Eve 
 Rose listened smilingly, while engaged upon some 
 bit of charity work. 
 
 Some brown worsted trailed over the little table 
 in front of her, and the balancing of St. Luc's rock- 
 ing-chair made this table tremble at intervals, for 
 they were near each other, as he went on talking : 
 
 " The grand Marquis ," — it was the sur- 
 name of one of his rivals in fashionable life, — " The 
 
 grand Marquis will not last long. He has 
 
 been on beam-ends for the last six months. He is 
 selling his stud now. When I saw him set up house 
 with the little D'Asti — you remember, madame, it 
 was in the presence of our poor Adolphe that I said 
 to you, ' Another one making a mess of it.' After all, 
 like father, like son — you know who is his father ? " 
 Eve Rose looked at him with astonishment. " Why, 
 it is an old story, as old as old Asti. 
 
 " His mamma led a very gay life formerly, very 
 gay indeed, you understand. In short, the mar- 
 quis is the natural son of the gambler of gamblers, 
 D'Armand Lam^, he who touched me for twenty- 
 
 I
 
 MADAME BRESSUIRE 139 
 
 five louis, at the club, when I was a very young 
 man." And he went on and on, inexhaustible, like 
 all fools and evil speakers ; and I looked so surly 
 at all this talk, that he perceived it, and with a 
 naughty-boy familiarity, which he always knows 
 how to assume, " I leave you now, madame," said 
 he ; " your friend Yernantes makes me afraid with 
 his severe eyes. You will not send your seconds 
 to me," he added, addressing me, " if I repeat to 
 you the remark which a pretty woman made about 
 you the other day ? ' He is Don Quixote, a pupil 
 of Schopenhauer.' Ask her name of Madame de 
 Bressuire, she was there," and he left us. To think 
 that I have seen him at his mother's house, in his 
 uniform of the College of St. Barbe, during his 
 school holidays, and that he is responsible for the 
 ruin of one of the most charming women I have 
 ever known ! 
 
 " You need not seek very far," said Eve Rose, 
 when we were alone. " It was our Mary who 
 uttered this innocent piece of mischief ; but do you 
 know what our Mary declares ? That you are angry 
 with us. Is it true ? " 
 
 Her voice had grown softer as she talked to me. 
 She had pushed away the table with her work, and
 
 140 PASTELS 
 
 rested her elbows on her knees. She held her chin 
 against her clasped hands, and looked at me with 
 her wonderfully clear and innocent blue eyes. No, 
 decidedly, there was not one crystal left on the 
 little branch, for I felt nothing but annoyance at 
 this friendly question, and I replied to her ; " Angry 
 with you, no, but about you, sometimes. When I 
 find, installed with you, coarse imbeciles like St. 
 Luc, I confess that I fall into one of my misan- 
 thropic moods." 
 
 " However," replied she with a slight quiver in 
 her voice, " I must accept my world." And then, 
 suddenly, with childlike refractoriness, " St. Luc 
 does not bore me more than another : he is a good 
 fellow, he is lively, and then he is not sulky." 
 
 She laughed as she uttered these last words. 
 Evidently, she desired that this little explanation 
 should pass as a joke ; and that irritated me more. 
 Poor Eve Rose ! With this character, I should 
 decidedly have made an odious husband. 
 
 I assumed my most disagreeable accent in reply- 
 ing : " It is because I am more proud for you than 
 you are for yourself." 
 
 The tone of this phrase was without doubt very 
 harsh, for a look of grief came into Eve Rose's
 
 MADAME BKESSUIKE 141 
 
 eyes, and she said simply, "You pain me, very, 
 very much," as she took up her wool and crochet 
 ■work. Her eyes shone, and her cheeks were burn- 
 ing. She was evidently divided between a fit of 
 anger at my injustice, and, perhaps, a desire to 
 weep. And all this left me frightfully unmoved. 
 I did not say to myself that I had no right to tor- 
 ment this charming being, nor that this evident 
 emotion attested anything but indifference. We 
 remained together thus for several minutes without 
 speaking. I felt insensibly springing up within me 
 that inexplicable spitefulness of man, which urges 
 him to make others suffer, when he suffers. I had 
 at least the delicacy to be ashamed of myself. I 
 rose. 
 
 " When shall I see you again ? " said she. 
 
 " When I am more sociable," I replied to her, — 
 and I have not been there since. Why should I 
 once more demonstrate to myself, how amiable she 
 is, and how incapable I am of loving her ? 
 
 On the portion of the page left blank, Yernantes 
 had nervously scribbled a dozen times, Madame 
 Bressuire, and on the leaf facing it he had pinned, 
 doubtless a year later, the announcement of the
 
 142 PASTELS 
 
 marriage of the Countess Bressuire with M. de 
 Jardes, — the cousin or the brother of Marie ? 
 Perhaps if Eve Rose had read these pages, she 
 would have come to the anniversary mass for this 
 poor fellow, who had given her, after all, the best of 
 which his worn-out soul was capable, — his dreams. 
 NSria, June^ 1884-
 
 THE COUNTESS DE CANDALE
 
 i

 
 THE COUNTESS DE CANDALE 
 
 In the little salon of a private h8tel in the Rue 
 de Tilsitt, not far from the Arc de Triomphe, two 
 women were seated. One was busily engaged 
 crocheting, with a light tortoise-shell needle, a 
 covering of gray wool, destined for a work of 
 charity ; the other was pulling out the threads 
 of some fringe which was fastened by pins to a 
 narrow embroidery-frame, covered with green 
 cloth. 
 
 The January night enveloped Paris with that 
 vast silence of snow which renders warmer and 
 more comfortable an abode such as this, where the 
 fire spreads a gentle heat, where the lamps throw 
 a soft light over the delicately tinted curtains, 
 where the carpets and the hangings deaden the 
 slightest noise, where the kettle sings peacefully 
 over the little blue flame of the lamp, while the 
 cups, the slices of lemon, and the iced cakes wait 
 upon the porcelain tray. 
 
 145
 
 146 PASTELS 
 
 The two women who thus worked and chatted 
 in the intimacy of this little salon, and at this 
 hour, bore, and still bear, names equally celebrated 
 in the annals of military France. One was called 
 Madame la Dachesse d'Arcole, and the other 
 Madame la Comtesse de Candale. As is not 
 always the case, these two sisters were friends, and 
 adored each other as much as they lacked resem- 
 blance to each other. The duchess was tall, with a 
 pale complexion, black eyes with an expression of 
 tranquil gaiety, and Italian features, she owed to 
 her mother, who was a Branciforte of Milan. The 
 countess was short and fragile, with blonde hair, 
 and eyes of a clear blue, which became at the 
 slightest emotion fixed and hard, and something in 
 her profile might have suggested a bird of prey, if 
 an almost ideal purity in all her features had not 
 counteracted its sharp characteristics. 
 
 The two sisters' maiden name was Candale ; 
 they belonged to the younger branch of this house, 
 rendered famous by the grand marshal Louis de 
 Candale, the favourite of Henry the second, the 
 companion of Fran9ois de Guise, the friend and 
 rival of Montluc. What more formidable name 
 could be borne than that of this man who termi- 
 
 1
 
 THE COUNTESS DE CANDALE 147 
 
 nated, in the ferocities of religious wars, an exist- 
 ence rendered illustrious by his great exploits in 
 foreign warfare. History cannot make up its 
 mind, when thinking of him, whether to admire or 
 to detest, whether to weave a crown for him or to 
 place him in the pillory. 
 
 At twenty years of age, Louis de Candale was 
 left for dead at Pavia, after having nearly saved 
 King Francis the First; at sixty years he had 
 hanged, all at once, six hundred and forty Hugue- 
 nots, at Jonzac, in Saintonge. In 1529, when 
 scarcely cured of his wounds, he was commissioned 
 to carry a secret message from the King of France 
 to the Sultan Soliman. He traversed Europe in 
 spite of unheard of dangers, and being as good a di- 
 plomatist as he was a soldier, it was due to him 
 that the Turks undertook this year their march on 
 Vienna, which forced Charles the Fifth to sign the 
 Peace of Cambray. Nearly half a century later, this 
 same hero, passing on horseback with his soldiers 
 along a road in Guyenne, heard Protestants singing 
 psalms in a barn, which served them as a church. 
 He barricaded it and wanted to be the first to set 
 it on fire, with his old hands that had so nobly 
 served his country.
 
 148 PASTELS 
 
 And it was this savage Marshal de Candale, this 
 hangman, this burner, this executioner, who had 
 commanded the charge at C^risoles, defended ^letz 
 with the great Guise, and entered Calais at the 
 head of the army of deliverance I 
 
 At the time of St. Bartholomew, this terrible 
 man was still more terrible. After the assassina- 
 tion of his dear Francois de Guise, he knew no 
 pity. Easily recognized by his loss of an eye, and 
 a frightful scar which cut his face in two, he was 
 engaged in the work of slaughter all the night 
 without resting, terrifying even his companions in 
 fanaticism. Then he withdrew into a monastery on 
 the frontier of France and that Italy where he had 
 so fiercely fought, and where he died like a saint. 
 
 In the little salon of the modern hotel, which the 
 heir of this formidable ancestor, the present Count 
 Louis de Candale, had had constructed after the 
 English style, with a modern staircase, and all the 
 minutest comforts, souvenirs of the marshal were 
 spread about on all sides. They attested the fact 
 that in this young woman of thirty years, whose 
 favourite spot this corner was, there existed an im- 
 passioned reverence for this tragic memory. And, 
 as a fact, whilst Antoinette, her elder sister, had
 
 THE COUNTESS DE CANDALE 149 
 
 married a grandson of one of Napoleon's marshals, 
 Dupuj, Duke d'Arcole, one of the richest and most 
 distinguished officers of the young army, Gabrielle, 
 the younger, had decided, at all hazard, to marry 
 her cousin Louis, because the latter was poor, and 
 she had a large fortune. Louis was a large, heavy 
 youth, reputed stupid even in his own set, much 
 more of a German than a Frenchman in his per- 
 sonal appearance and build — a Candale had mar- 
 ried a Wiirtemberg woman during the emigration. 
 He had no lofty ambition, no thought for the fu- 
 ture. Gabrielle, knowing all that, had preferred 
 this man, whom she did not love, to a brother of 
 the Duke d'Arcole, as intelligent, as refined, as 
 Louis was the opposite, simply because the latter 
 was the head of the family, and the representative 
 of the great man. 
 
 In the person of this sorry bridegroom she mar- 
 ried the great man. Her romance was the desire 
 to have a son of this race of heroes, of whom she 
 could make a soldier, — a son of the pure blood of 
 the Candales, capable of making live in the new 
 generation the hero of the past. On this winter 
 evening she spoke again to her sister of this son 
 which had not been born to her.
 
 150 PASTELS 
 
 *' Ah ! " said she, " you do not know how sad I 
 feel when I think that a name like ours is about to 
 disappear for ever ! " and she regarded with in- 
 finite melancholy the bust of the marshal, sculp- 
 tured by Jean Cousin, which stood on a small 
 pedestal at the end of the little salon. It was 
 directly under this bust that the kettle was singing 
 and the tea-tray was placed on the round table, — 
 a symbol of the singular contrasts which this room 
 offered, furnished with all a Parisienne's elegance, 
 and at the same time filled with relics of the great 
 torturer of the sixteenth century. With its lowered 
 eyelids, the furrows in its checks, the cruelty of its 
 mouth, this marble mask made one shiver. One 
 could read there the invincible will, the daily 
 familiarity with danger, the fixed ardour of fanati- 
 cism, the fierce passions of an age of iron ; — and 
 the kettle sang softly by its side. The walls were 
 covered with silken stuffs, hung in modern fashion, 
 and of faded tints, as suits the taste of a period in 
 which the half-exhausted senses can no longer ap- 
 preciate anything but the shade — and then, in a 
 corner of this room, the tone of which delighted 
 the eye, were hung, as trophies, four swords that 
 had belonged to the marshal. His portrait rested
 
 THE COUNTESS DE CANDALE 151 
 
 on a draped easel. It was a small canvas, painted 
 by an unknown Florentine artist, without doubt, 
 after Cerisoles. This portrait showed the marshal 
 at forty years of age, in a cuirass, his head bare, 
 his helmet held by a black servant behind him. 
 He was leaning on his two-handed swoid, and in 
 his blue eyes was the same look as that of the 
 young woman who had placed this portrait in the 
 bright light of a lamp furnished with a reflector. 
 There, near at hand, on the little rosewood desk 
 sheltered by a small screen, in the midst of the 
 baubles which she used in writing, between the 
 copy of the fortnightly Review and the prepared 
 notes of invitation for a formal dinner, she always 
 kept a portfolio which contained the letters of the 
 Queen Catherine de M^dicis written to the great 
 executioner of her notable deeds, the implacable 
 marshal. She handled these ancient letters with 
 her delicate fingers brilliant with sapphires and 
 turquoises. She deciphered the words traced in 
 old-fashioned orthography, which contained instruc- 
 tions for the terrible tasks entrusted to Candale. 
 Her nostrils quivered, the amazon who sleeps in 
 the Parisienne of to-day awoke at the odour of 
 blood and fire, emitted by this cruel and majestic
 
 152 PASTELS 
 
 past, which sparkled for her with the glory of the 
 hero. She revelled in the remembrance that he 
 had been twelve times wounded by arquebuse-shots 
 in the service of the king, had taken part in eight 
 sieges, in fifteen pitched battles, and had made 
 war from his eighteenth year to his sixty-ninth, 
 having quitted the cuirass only for the cassock, 
 and the bivouac for the cell of the monk. 
 
 " Yes," continued the countess, after having 
 contemplated the bust of her ancestor, and pushing 
 away the little green embroidery-frame with a sad 
 air, " I cannot console myself for not having 
 children ! Would you believe it, I have even con- 
 sulted clairvoyants to learn whether a son will 
 ever be born to me ? Ah ! do not laugh at me, 
 Antoinette ; you who are a mother can know 
 nothing of this grief." 
 
 " To begin with, all is not lost," replied the 
 duchess, continuing her work with a half-smile, as 
 of a person who did not wish the conversation 
 to become too serious, " and then, after all, I see a 
 good side in all things. As the times go, the boys 
 of our class no longer have so many chances of 
 success. I love my son, and I am quite proud to 
 have him, but can you not see that he is preparing
 
 THE COUNTESS DE CANDALE 153 
 
 horrible uneasiness for me ? He will be a soldier 
 as his father is, as his grandfather was. He will 
 serve in the field, and I shall feel anew all the 
 anguish that I knew when my husband was in 
 Tongking for two years. Luckily, I have adopted 
 the principle of hoping even against circumstances. 
 Do you remember how, on our starting for a ball, 
 dear mamma used to say to us, ' Amuse your- 
 selves ; you cannot do it younger ' ? Come, tell 
 me, rather, whom you saw at the Rabastens', yes- 
 terday evening." 
 
 " It is that evening which has plunged me into 
 these gloomy ideas," said the other, and she added, 
 almost in a whisper, " I there met Madame 
 Bernard." 
 
 " Poor Gabrielle," said Antoinette, this time 
 seriously, "you are jealous." 
 
 "Yes, I am jealous," replied Gabrielle, with 
 excitement, " but not as you believe, no, not of 
 her. What is it to me that this woman was the 
 mistress of my husband before our marriage, and 
 even since, as our good friends have given me 
 to understand ? Do you imagine I still love my 
 husband ? Ah, when I married him, ten years 
 ago, with my dreams of an enthusiastic young girl.
 
 154 PASTELS 
 
 I knew him to be absorbed in the passion for clubs 
 and sport, to which all gentlemen give themselves 
 up to-day ; I knew him to be ignorant, inactive, 
 devoid of all that I esteem in a man, of all, except 
 bravery. He had fought well in the war, and I 
 said to myself that with a brave man there is 
 always some hope. I felt such an ardour in my 
 heart, I nourished so passionate a reverence for the 
 name that he bore, as we do, — and of which he is 
 now the last representative, that I, too, hoped, in 
 spite of everything. I thought that I should 
 revive in him something, I knew not what, but a 
 nobility, an energy — it is over. I have measured 
 to-day all the fine quality there is in that gloomy 
 nature — nothing, do you hear ? nothing, nothing, 
 nothing. The taste of a coachman for horses, the 
 desire for money for the gaming table, intrigues 
 with this woman and that, provided they do not 
 interfere with his selfishness. If he has loved 
 Madame Bernard, it is because the schemer made 
 her house convenient for him. She is devoured by 
 snobbishness. She was proud of having a Candale 
 for a lover, and made use of him to force open the 
 doors of some salons in our world where she could 
 not have entered alone. So much the worse for
 
 THE COUNTESS DE CANDALE 155 
 
 the Candale, so much the worse for our world, and 
 so much the better for her. Ah ! it is not that 
 which renders the sight of that woman insupporta- 
 ble to me. I despise her too much for her to 
 cause me suffering." 
 
 Two tears trickled from the eyes of the count- 
 ess, as she finished this last sentence. Her sister, 
 who saw them, put down her work and her ball of 
 worsted, in which she had stuck her crochet needle ; 
 then, gently, she went and kneeled before the 
 countess, and embraced her saying : " Little sister, 
 little sister, you are not wise. You are exciting 
 yourself over some foolish idea. See, we are so 
 happy here, all alone by ourselves. We might pass 
 such a delightful evening together. What do you 
 need more ? You have your sister to spoil you, 
 and even the villainous bust of the old marshal to 
 pay your devotions to," added she, laughing right 
 out, in an effort to force a smile from the other. 
 
 But the countess did not smile at this innocent 
 teasing ; she kissed her consoler, and continued : 
 " No, my dear, you know I am not foolish, and you 
 understand me, although you pretend not to, so as 
 to stop me. I am not a woman of these times, 
 that is all. If I did not believe in the supreme
 
 156 PASTELS 
 
 wisdom of God, I should say that he had made a 
 mistake in causing me to be born in an age in 
 which the nobles are no longer noble, but only rich 
 men, whose names sound better than others. This 
 Madame Bernard, of whom we are speaking, has 
 her box at the Opera, like you and me, her h6tel 
 and her horses, as we have. At this hour, she 
 wears a lace robe like yours and mine. She has 
 about her the same commonplace surroundings of 
 gewgaws and plush. But that which she has not, 
 is what you have just called ' that villainous bust,' 
 a hero among her ancestors, and the memory of 
 the Candales, who shed their blood for their king 
 on every battle-field of Europe, — this same blood," 
 added she, showing the blue veins in her delicate 
 hands. " Ah ! I felt long ago that we were of a 
 different race from others, and I vowed to this 
 noble blood of the Candales a devotion, as you have 
 said, a good faith." 
 
 " And you think that Louis has shown a want of 
 that devotion by loving Madame Bernard ? " inter- 
 rupted the duchess, who knew too well her sister's 
 violent outbursts not to make an obstinate struggle 
 against one of these attacks of sensibility, for which 
 the countess subsequently paid by a terrible head-
 
 TUE COUNTESS DE CANDALE 157 
 
 ache. " But the man of the villainous bust, — 
 no, decidedly, he is too ugly for me with his terrible 
 scar — pardon, the sublime marshal made a good 
 many others, — and BrantSme relates of him two 
 or three stories, that are anything but edifiying, 
 of the time before he retired to a mountain to ask 
 pardon for his sins. And then, will you permit me to 
 humbly confess a weakness to you ? Those heroic 
 times when they hanged or burned you for a Yes 
 or a No, and when they shot at you or stabbed you at 
 every street corner were all very fine, but I prefer 
 to live at a time when Madame Bernard sells with 
 duchesses, and when they do not set fire to churches, 
 and burn all who are within, on the ground that they 
 are not worshipping God in a proper fashion." 
 
 " You are wrong again," replied the countess, 
 sadly ; " it is not Madame Bernard who makes me 
 suffer" — and, with an imperceptible effort, she 
 added, — " it is the child." 
 
 " What child ? " demanded the other. 
 
 " The son that Louis has had by this woman," 
 said Madame Candale. 
 
 " At your age I " replied the duchess, with her 
 pretty smile, and shrugging her beautiful shoulders. 
 " You still believe in this tittle-tattle of the world.
 
 158 PASTELS 
 
 in regard to children born in adultery? Why, 
 silly woman, it is only the mother who knows who 
 is her son's father, and she is not going to tell, is 
 she ? Then, who will tell it ? A boastful lover ? 
 A slanderous rival ? As for me, I have resolved 
 to do as the law does, I recognize only one father, 
 and that is the husband. In this way, one has 
 many more chances of being right." 
 
 "You have never seen him, then?" said the 
 countess ; and rising, to detach from the screen 
 which was folded back against the bureau a mini- 
 ature which hung among five or six others, she 
 handed it to her sister. " This is the portrait of 
 Louis's father at six years of age. Do you recog- 
 nize Madame Bernard's little boy ? Are these not 
 the same features, the nose, the mouth, above all, 
 the eyes ? The resemblance has skipped a genera- 
 tion. And what a resemblance ! I adore this 
 miniature simply because the true type of the Can- 
 dales is fixed there. Do you remember how the 
 old count resembled his ancestor when he was fifty 
 years old ? Well, the little Bernard, when I saw 
 him for the first time, was this miniature alive. 
 Ah ! I was not deceived, I remembered how much 
 talk there had been of a liaison between Louis and
 
 THE COUNTESS DE CANDALE 159 
 
 Madame Bernard, and I said to myself at once, it 
 is his son. The same kind friends were careful to 
 inform me afterward, but I had no need of their 
 kindness, I knew it better than they. At first, it 
 saddened me a little. I have always thought that tie 
 so melancholy, in which a little one must grow up, 
 who can never say to his true father, ' My father,' 
 and, for the true father, it must be so heart-break- 
 ing, and so cruel to the mother ! " 
 
 " Bah ! " said the duchess, " the mother forgets 
 him, the true father is only too well pleased to be 
 rid of the child ; the latter knows nothing, nor the 
 false father either, and they live just the same. Life 
 is thus more simple." 
 
 " That depends on the manner of feeling," replied 
 Madame de Candale. " The years passed ; I re- 
 mained without children. The son whom I desired 
 so passionately did not come. It was, however, the 
 fixed desire to which all my thoughts converged. I 
 have always dreamed of it, above all, in this spot, 
 in this sort of little private chapel where I have 
 placed all the relics of our illustrious ancestor and of 
 other Candales who have been worthy of his name. 
 And, through these dreams, a strange sentiment 
 arose in me. Yes, I dreamed of this son so ardently
 
 160 PASTELS 
 
 desired, so much regretted. I saw him in imagina- 
 tion as if he had been there, and always with the 
 features, the gestures, and, above all, the eyes, 
 the turn of the head, of this little boy, whom I 
 believed to be my husband's. Very often the long- 
 ing to see this, child in reality has come over me, 
 as I evoked him in my thoughts. I have gone to 
 the Champs Elysdes, on foot, to the walk where I 
 knew he used to play, and at the time when he 
 went for a walk, to sate my eyes with that resem- 
 blance to those of our family, which was, however, 
 torture to me. He was so beautiful with his ruddy 
 curls, so aristocratic in his slightest movements, in 
 fact, so thoroughly a Candale ! And then I would 
 repeat to myself that he was born Bernard, that he 
 would grow up Bernard, that he would have the 
 education of a Bernard, that he would live Bernard, 
 and would die Bernard. They had stolen him from 
 me, who would have known so well how to bring 
 him up worthy of his ancestry ! 
 
 " I could not have said whether I adored or hated 
 him, the sensations which his presence inflicted on 
 me were at the same time so tender and so cruel. 
 They must have been very strong, as they nearly 
 led me to commit a crime." 
 
 I
 
 THE COUNTESS DE CANDALE 161 
 
 These last words were spoken with such a bitter 
 accent of truth, that the laughing duchess forgot 
 to smile. She did not seek, as she had done just 
 before, to lead her sister back to softer and more 
 rational conversation. She had always felt an 
 involuntary fear of the influence which the story 
 of the old Candale exercised over this soul, ardent 
 in its sentiments almost to mania. She shuddered 
 slightly and answered nothing. There was in the 
 room one of those moments of silence, which 
 Madame d'Arcole had the childish habit of break- 
 ing by one of their Italian mother's phrases : 
 " Nasce un prete" — "a priest is born." But she 
 did not repeat this pleasantry which reminded 
 both of them of their childhood. She felt her 
 heart oppressed, and she waited for the other to 
 continue her recital, which suddenly took the form 
 of a confession. " You remember," the latter con- 
 tinued, " that we passed a fortnight this autumn 
 at the ChS,teau des Gauds, with the Corcieux ? 
 That excellent Laura, like the regular Baroness 
 de la Gaffe that she is, as you call her, had invited 
 the Bernards in the same set with us, and with 
 the Bernards came the child. You, who know me, 
 can guess whether I had not a strong tempta-
 
 162 PASTELS 
 
 tion to strap my trunks and run away. I could 
 not, on account of Louis. I do not believe in 
 half-measures. The day when I say, ' I know all,* 
 I shall leave him, never to see him again. As 
 long as I remain his^ wife, and live with him, I 
 know nothing. What were my tortures during 
 those two weeks, I will not try to tell you. The 
 child is now eleven years old. Have you seen him 
 lately ? No ? I will describe him in a word ; he 
 resembles, and more than ever, the son I have 
 so ardently desired ! I saw him go and come, in 
 the morning and in the evening, proud and brave 
 as a little eagle, pretty as a page, with feet and 
 hands like yours, dear one, and the gross Bernard, 
 that dull money-bags, who lives on the millions 
 his father, the manufacturer, gained for him, and 
 of whom he is base enough to be ashamed, who 
 played the peacock round this flower of the aristoc- 
 racy. ' My son Alfred ! ' He repeated these words 
 with such an air of content, of infatuation, and 
 presumption ! And the mother ? But I prefer 
 not to speak of her; it would make me wicked. 
 Even Louis, who was persuaded of my blindness, 
 spared me none of the little stings that might 
 rouse my envy. When he looked at the little boy,
 
 THE COUNTESS DE CANDALE 163 
 
 an expression passed over his face which revealed 
 to me what I might have done with him, if I had 
 had such a son, to show him, and it caused me 
 much misery, — senseless, without doubt, you will 
 say unworthy, for it was envy after all, but what 
 could I do ? There is one thing certain : I no 
 longer doubted my feeling for this child. I hated 
 him ! I should have liked to see him ill, puny, at 
 least vulgar, and that the execrable surroundings 
 in which he lived should leave their marlis. 
 Ah ! we do not know what a pack of evil instincts 
 we carry in our souls, till an occasion sets them 
 free. One afternoon when it was very warm, like 
 a June day, and all the guests of the chateau were 
 in their rooms, finishing their correspondence, I 
 mounted to the open gallery on the roof, from 
 which there is such an extensive view of the Loire 
 and the country around, and which is at this hour 
 sheltered from the sun by the shadow of a sort of 
 little belfry. I often went there to isolate myself 
 from the others, who did not care to climb so 
 many steps. In going out upon the gallery, ordi- 
 narily deserted, I perceived a human form lying on 
 the parapet. It was Alfred, who had gone there 
 to read, and had fallen asleep, his elbow still rest-
 
 164 PASTELS 
 
 ing on his open book. The parapet is wide, but 
 beneath it is a perpendicular wall of immense 
 height, and, at the bottom, the rock on which the 
 chateau is built. He was sleeping as peacefully 
 as if he were lying in his bed, a sweet and happy 
 sleep. I saw his face in profile, with that resem- 
 blance which I hated so profoundly. Will you 
 believe it ? an atrocious thought took possession 
 of me. At that moment, and while I was listening 
 to his breathing, so calmly regular in the silence 
 ot this solitary place, I reflected that I had only to 
 make a movement, a single little movement, and 
 I would be delivered for ever from the obsession 
 this being caused me, I would be avenged for 
 many sorrows, would never again see these fea- 
 tures whose delicacy gave me such pain, and would 
 save the blood of the Candales from an odious in- 
 termingling. Yes, nothing but a movement. If 
 I pushed the child, he would roll into the gulf 
 open beside him as he lay asleep. Who would 
 know it ? I hated him with such a fierce hatred, 
 and it is so natural to wish to annihilate what one 
 hates ! Ah ! how near I was to doing it ! How 
 near I was to committing murder ! How I felt 
 struggling in me the violent soul of him," and she
 
 THE COUNTESS DE CANDALE 165 
 
 pointed with her finger to the likeness of the 
 marshal. " I was so tempted that I threw my- 
 self on my knees, there, on the stone floor of 
 the gallery, and prayed, for how long a time 
 I know not. Then I rose and walked toward the 
 sleeping child. I awoke him with infinite precau- 
 tion, trembling now lest a false movement might 
 hurl him down below. Poor little one ! As he 
 opened his eyes, he smiled at me, and cried : 
 ' How pale you are ! ' 'I was so afraid for you,' 
 I replied. ' Afraid of what ? ' said he. I showed 
 him the great empty space below the parapet. * I 
 am not afraid of anything,' said he to me, proudly ; 
 and as he took up his book. < What are you read- 
 ing?' I asked him. He held out the volume to 
 me. It was a history of the emperor. ' Do you 
 like it ? ' I asked. ' I love everything that is mili- 
 tary,' said he, with a beautiful look, the look I 
 should have wished my son to have. Then I took 
 him in my arms, and burst into tears. Ah ! his 
 real mother has never embraced him like that ! " 
 
 She ceased. The duchess also had tears in her 
 eyes, and the little kettle continued to sing softly 
 on the table dominated by the bust of the tragic 
 old man.
 
 166 PASTELS 
 
 " Come, my dear," said Madame de Candale, 
 who saw that her recital had overcome her sister, 
 " I must be the one to make you cheerful now. 
 Let us leave my follies and take tea." 
 Gerardmer, October^ 1886.
 
 SENORITA ROSARIO
 
 SENORITA ROSARIO 
 
 I HAPPENED to be travelling in Spain, last sum- 
 mer, and stopped at Cordova to visit the famous 
 cathedral. I can still see myself walking along 
 the Calle del Gran Capitan under a burning sun, 
 and cursing our exacting conscientiousness, which 
 forces us to visit all the monuments set down in 
 the guide-book. 
 
 The heavens spread out like a great sapphire 
 cupola. There was scarcely a line of shadow 
 running along beside the closed houses. Through 
 the open wrought-iron gates I perceived here and 
 there an interior court sheltered from the sun 
 by an awning, with slender columns, and great 
 masses of plants grouped about a fountain. But 
 all the courts were empty at this hour of the siesta, 
 like the streets, where one met only a gray donkey, 
 now and then, ridden after the Arab fashion by a 
 great brute of an Andalusian peasant, with a face 
 the colour of a cigar, who balanced his body over 
 
 169
 
 170 PASTELS 
 
 the back of the beast, his feet held up by two 
 baskets filled with oranges. 
 
 At Seville they have a proverb describing these 
 days of excessive heat which says ; " There are out- 
 side only dogs and Frenchmen." 
 
 I arrived in this fashion at the door of the 
 cathedral, which faced the gateway of the bishop's 
 palace. As they were to celebrate a religious 
 ceremony in the afternoon, a passage had been 
 arranged between the two doors, and on the exte- 
 rior wall of the palace hung some of the tapestries, 
 which form part of the treasures of the cathedral. 
 
 Notwithstanding the glaring light, I stopped to 
 examine them, struck by the contrast of their soft, 
 faded tones, and the intense dazzling whiteness of 
 the wall. And then, one of them, which repre- 
 sented the furious combat between a Moorish 
 prince and a cavalier at the foot of the hill of the 
 Alhambra, was a surprisingly beautiful composi- 
 tion. How many memories it evoked for me, how 
 many legends of that unique moment in history, 
 when Boabdil abandoned Grenada, when Christo- 
 pher Columbus discovered the New World, when 
 Ferdinand and Isabella prepared the future great- 
 ness of the terrible Charles the Fifth! Any
 
 SENORITA ROSARIO 171 
 
 number of images were rising before my eyes, in 
 my fancy, — heroic and sad, tragic and romantic 
 as this history itself, — when I felt a hand fall on 
 my shoulder, and a well-known voice called my 
 name, with a joyous accent of surprise. I turned 
 round and found myself face to face with one of 
 my college friends, who had become one of the 
 intimate comrades of my Paris life, Henri de 
 Y . 
 
 Such meetings occur frequently in travel. They 
 are nearly always intolerable ; in the first place, 
 because of the disturbance they make in one's 
 plans ; next, on account of the intimacy they 
 create between two tourists thus exiled together in 
 a strange city ; and lastly, because they shatter 
 that enchantment of solitude, the one great advan- 
 tage of distant vagabondizings. Yes, if absence in 
 foreign countries had no other merit than that of 
 snatching us from the odious misery of all social 
 relations too prolonged, one's blessings would yet 
 be due to the agencies of railroads and steamboats. 
 
 What can one think, then, of the Parisian whom 
 one runs against on the street of an almost de- 
 serted city, who begins : " Have you heard from 
 Madame ? " and who continues, relating all
 
 172 PASTELS 
 
 this man's losses at the gaming-table, and that 
 one's intrigues, criticizing the last new book, or 
 play. " Paris I stupide sejour ! " I should like 
 to sing, in parody of the celebrated waltz. 
 
 Ah, well ! one knows that, and that in an hour 
 one will send to the devil the troublesome person 
 who could not help it, and yet the first movement is 
 a gesture of sincere joy, for the intruder is, first of 
 all, the living recall of the fatherland, — and 
 one's country is like a mistress whom one loves 
 even while criticizing her, and with whom one is 
 always inclined to be angry, though the mere 
 thought of her, when distant, draws tears. Besides, 
 among all the persons with whom the chances of 
 travel might bring me into connection, Henri de 
 
 V happened to be one of those I could most 
 
 easily tolerate, without too much ill-humour. For 
 me he possesses an incomparable charm. He never 
 speaks of any one but himself, so that he never 
 talks about me. Such men may be tiresome, but 
 they never wound. The naive egotism and child- 
 ish self-conceit of Henri had for a long time that 
 excuse which causes everything to be forgiven in 
 young men as well as in young women, — a face so 
 attractive that the mere sight of him gained one's
 
 SENOKITA KOSARIO 173 
 
 sympathy. He preserved, for ten years, with his 
 tender blue eyes and his blond hair, the appearance 
 of being only twenty-two years of age. He is 
 thirty-five to-day, and is still a handsome fellow, 
 although he is beginning to lose the blond hair 
 above his forehead, which would distress him ter- 
 ribly if he had not awarded himself beforehand a 
 brevet of admiration which will resist even old 
 age. He lives a perfectly idle life, since he be- 
 lieved that he owed it to his father's political past, 
 who was minister under the empire, to abandon 
 his position of third secretary at the Quai d'Orsay. 
 With nothing to do, good looking, rich, and 
 unmarried, he has the game of love in his hands. 
 Thus, women are the objects of Henri's sole occu- 
 pation. In the great comedy of life, his part is to 
 play the lover. The actor Delaunay became on 
 the boards the type of this particular class, which 
 never gives in its resignation. Henri was a lover 
 at twenty, he still is one at thirty-five, and he will 
 be one at seventy, even if he has to dye his 
 moustache, to-day the colour of gold, and stiffen his 
 coat with whalebones, or lace his evening waist- 
 coat in the back. But he is a lover of a special 
 type, one of those for whom it would be necessary
 
 174 PASTELS 
 
 to create the expression, Jocrisses de la Defiance, 
 as a companion to the Jocrisses de I'Amour ^ in the 
 celebrated comedy. 
 
 Henri de V is the young man who does not 
 
 wish to be deceived by women, and he has adopted 
 the plan of never believing a word that one of 
 them says to him, which has led him — singular 
 irony — into being duped quite as often as the 
 simple ones who believe everything. If Henri has 
 met a young man three times at the home of a 
 woman in whom he is himself interested, that is 
 enough ; that young man is the lover of that 
 woman. Should his mistress tell him that during 
 the day she has gone to make such and such calls, 
 he is convinced that she remained at home, and is 
 concealing it from him. If she tells him that she 
 has not left her fireside, he is persuaded that 
 she has been running about all day. Nothing is 
 more laughable than the deception which a touch 
 of truth, duly established, inflicts upon him. He 
 may be in love like any other with sincerity, but 
 he becomes the dupe of the proud desire of not 
 being a dupe. In Paris, I avoid him, although his 
 mania interests me as a case for observation. But 
 1 Jocrisses of Distrust and Jocrisses of Love.
 
 SENORITA ROSARIO 175 
 
 he is too fond of pouring out his confidences, and I 
 have learned from experience that indiscreet per- 
 sons of this kind hold you almost always responsi- 
 ble for their indiscretions. 
 
 Under the porch of the old cathedral it was not 
 possible to think of escaping him ; besides, he had 
 already passed his arm through mine, and drew me 
 within the interior of the vast edifice, deliciously 
 cool on this boiling afternoon. The fifteen hun- 
 dred delicate marble columns of the old mosque, 
 which supported the arches, coloured white and 
 red, stretched out like a forest before us. Henri, 
 who knew the place, having been at Cordova for 
 several days, repulsed the officious guides, and 
 showed me each detail, interrupting himself con- 
 tinually to speak of his own affairs. At the end 
 of ten minutes, I knew that the mosque had been 
 erected in the eighth century by Abd-el-B-ahman, 
 and that he, Henri, was travelling in Spain to 
 forget a faithless mistress ; that several of the 
 innumerable columns came from a temple of Janus, 
 
 and that Laure T (he named her to me, of 
 
 course) had blue eyes, ashen gray hair, and the 
 combined souls of Delilah, Messalina, and several 
 other monsters; that Charles the Fifth had been
 
 176 PASTELS 
 
 furious at the Gothic chapel, barbarously erected 
 by the chapter, in the midst of the beautiful Arab 
 temple, and that Laure persisted in writing letter 
 after letter to call him back. 
 
 " See the play of light in this corner of the 
 church, and how warm the porphyry is to the eye," 
 said he; and, without transition, " Can you explain 
 to me how a woman can stick to a man to such a 
 point without loving him ? " 
 
 " But, suppose, by chance, she did love you ? " 
 replied I. 
 
 " Not a real's worth," said he, shrugging his 
 shoulders. " It would be a terribly long story to 
 tell you. If you only knew how she has lied to 
 me, and lied to me ! But at last I have broken 
 my chain. Ah ! at first it was very hard." 
 
 He entered so heartily into the description of his 
 own griefs, that, this time, he forgot the cathedral, 
 the pillars of jasper and green or violet breccia, 
 the ceiled naves, the capitals of a style at once 
 Corinthian and Arabic. We were walking in this 
 grove of graceful columns, as in a sort of garden 
 of marble vegetation. 
 
 A sacristan was showing the chapels to two 
 Englishmen, and I was listening to Henri tacking
 
 SENORITA ROSARIO 177 
 
 on the story of his past griefs to that of his recent 
 adventure. I had put to him but this one question : 
 
 " And you have not found in Spain some one to 
 console you ? " 
 
 " As if I wanted to ! " replied he, in a serious 
 tone. " Have you been to Cadiz ? " asked he of me. 
 
 « Not yet." 
 
 " Ah ! the coquettish, the delightful city ! " cried 
 he, almost loudly. " Imagine a vast bay, and on 
 the point of the peninsula which shuts it in, a nest 
 of white houses — a white intolerably dazzling. 
 Not a line of verdure, but blue sea here, and blue 
 sea there, a slender tongue of land to attach the 
 city to the mainland, and to support two iron rails 
 for steam-cars, and the heaven above a clearer blue. 
 When I saw it thus, this city, and this fairy white- 
 ness between two gulfs of azure, on a fresh morn- 
 ing in spring, tears of admiration sprang to my 
 eyes. You know these divine tears that one sheds 
 in the presence of a beauty so ravishing that one 
 scarcely dares believe in it. I was to have started 
 for Tangier the same day ; I remained at Cadiz three 
 entire weeks, and I have not yet seen Morocco." 
 
 " Which proves that the daughters of Cadiz are 
 as beautiful as their city," said I.
 
 178 
 
 PASTELS 
 
 " They are so," replied he, " and so slender, so 
 elegant, in these narrow streets, overhung by bal- 
 conies set with glass which are called by the ex- 
 quisite name of ' miradores.' But it was not the 
 beauties of Cadiz that kept me, it was a young girl 
 of Grenada who has lived at Cadiz scarcely two 
 years. She is called Rosario. What a charming 
 custom is that of giving to women the name of 
 Marie, joined to that of their patron saint ! How 
 did I come to know her ? Quite simply. I had 
 a letter of introduction to an American merchant 
 established at Cadiz. I took it to him immediately 
 on my arrival. We passed all the afternoon in 
 searching for the convent where those wonderful 
 last paintings by Murillo are to be seen, as far as 
 the quay of the port, with its strange population of 
 sailors. And, in the evening, after dinner, my 
 host and his wife took me to the Plaza de Mina, 
 and toward the Alameda, you know, that classical 
 promenade which every Spanish city owes it to 
 itself to possess. That of Cadiz, how you would 
 love it, with its palm-trees, and its flowers, and 
 its terraced gardens, at the foot of which throbs 
 the sea, and on that sea, in the distance, the re- 
 volving gleam of the lighthouse, the fixed lights
 
 SENORITA ROSARIO 179 
 
 of the boats, and above the heavens, always blue, 
 even at night, and brilliant with great stars ! It 
 is there, on this promenade, and on the plaza, 
 planted with luxuriant trees, which is close to 
 it, that all the women of the city walk up and 
 down from eight o'clock to midnight. And it was 
 there, that first evening, that T was presented to 
 the Senorita Rosario, and to the senora her 
 mother." 
 
 He ceased, as if overcome by this remembrance, 
 — unless it were the better to admire the mosaics 
 of the Mussulman sanctuary of Mihrab. He began 
 to question me about those of the basilicas of 
 Ravenna, which I had visited two years previously. 
 But he returned very quickly to his favourite sub- 
 ject, that is to say, himself, and continued : 
 
 " If you go to Cadiz, I will give you a letter to my 
 friend, and you will see how divinely beautiful 
 Rosario is. A small and fragile person, with a pale 
 complexion, that warm pallor of the women of this 
 country, lighted up by their white teeth and black 
 eyes. Ah ! the soft velvet of those eyes, so soft 
 that one who merely looks at them feels his heart 
 caressed by something infinitely tender ! She has 
 a foot no larger than this," and he held out his
 
 180 PASTELS 
 
 own nervous, delicate hand. " On her head she 
 wore a mantilla, although it is hardly the fashion 
 now, and in her black hair, on that evening, she 
 had thrust a red carnation. The mother was white 
 with rice powder, also in a mantilla and mittens, 
 her appearance — why should I conceal it from 
 you ? — somewhat like those respectable persons 
 Goya represents. Do you recall the terrible en- 
 graving of the ' Caprices,' which shows a young 
 girl, her fan in her hand, in satin shoes, and with 
 a black robe, which sets off so well the pallor of her 
 flesh? The old woman is pushing her from be- 
 hind, and the painter has inscribed below, ' God 
 forgive her ; ' she was her mother ! " 
 
 " I know nothing of Goya's except his ' Horrors 
 of War,' and I am not very fond of them," replied 
 I. " They are wretchedly designed, wearisome in 
 their ferocity, unintelligible save for a dozen en- 
 gravings, which are of the highest beauty." 
 
 " Possibly," said he, " but the ' Caprices ! ' The 
 < Caprices ! ' An exquisite art ; all the Spanish grace 
 in the exquisitely supple bodies, the small feet, 
 the slender limbs, the faces with great astonished 
 eyes ; all the Spanish picturesqueness in these old 
 vendors of human flesh, and these youths smoking
 
 SENORITA ROSARIO 181 
 
 their cigarettes, at the foot of a tree ; — all the 
 Spanish superstition in these extraordinary nightly 
 revels, to which the dead repair, who lift the stones 
 from their graves. The ' Caprices ! ' just imagine, 
 now, a chimera in the South, a nightmare in the 
 land of the sun. Edgar Poe here, in this light ! 
 Ah, well ! Rosario seemed to have escaped from 
 one of the engravings of this collection, the most 
 graceful, and there is so much that is enchanting, 
 by the side of the terrible ! She did not know a 
 word of French, but she spoke English fairly well, 
 though with a rather harsh and untrained accent, 
 which at once pleased me, and we began to con- 
 verse in that tongue. Have you ever been much 
 in the society of young girls born on this side of the 
 Pyrenees ? No ! Then you cannot understand 
 what constitutes Rosario's special charm, that 
 familiarity without a touch of coquetry, that sim- 
 plicity and frankness in her every word and 
 thought. She is twenty ; she has seen only 
 Grenada, which she left on account of a cruel de- 
 ception, and Cadiz, where she now lives. She had 
 been betrothed, and her lover had betrayed her. It 
 is a history so common here, that most young girls 
 take it lightly, and get engaged three, five, or six
 
 182 PASTELS 
 
 times, without thinking any more of those who had 
 their first vows, than we of our first cigar ; but not 
 so Rosario, who was made ill by it, and who now 
 professed a strange fear of any passionate senti- 
 ment. In spite of that, she breathed forth passion 
 in every feature of her pale and mobile face, — in 
 her lips coloured by her young and pure blood, in 
 the soft down that shadowed the corners of her 
 fresh mouth, in her eyes, above all, in her slightest 
 gestures, and in a something I cannot describe 
 which revealed a creature born for love. I divined 
 a part of what I am telling you the first evening 
 we talked together ; I learned the rest from the 
 person who had presented me to her. Can you 
 comprehend what emotion filled me, at finding in- 
 carnate in this child with the proud smile just the 
 same touch of sorrow I had brought with me from 
 Paris ? I had been deceived, she had been de- 
 ceived. Some one had vowed to love her, without 
 loving her, as had happened to me. What an 
 absurd thing is destiny ! In the place of Laure, 
 that infamous coquette, — you know them, blond 
 cats such as she is, who lie to you, with profiles 
 like that of a Madonna, — why had I not met this 
 girl, simple and true as her sky and her country ?
 
 SENORITA ROSARIO 183 
 
 Of such as her, at least, I felt that I should never 
 have had any doubt." 
 
 " Notwithstanding the mother ? " asked I. 
 
 " But the mother was a saint ! " 
 
 " I understand," replied I ; " a disappointment in 
 a mantilla, and a disappointment in a jacket ; two 
 disappointments added together. Total, a new 
 love." 
 
 " I do not know," replied he, " if my friend told 
 the story of my griefs to her. It is true I had con- 
 fided it to him — What would you have," said he, 
 seeing me smile, " since he will never meet Madame 
 
 T ? One thing is certain, that Rosario pleased 
 
 me infinitely, and also that I was perfectly sure, 
 from the first evening, of never loving her. I gave 
 myself up, therefore, to the attraction I felt for her 
 with that joyful confidence of the imagination which 
 permits one to enjoy the charm of a woman, as 
 you do a beautiful landscape, or a picture, or a 
 flower on its stalk. I lingered at Cadiz with delight. 
 I saw Rosario every day two or three times, in 
 visiting her in the afternoon at her mother's, or at 
 the house of the friend who had presented me to 
 her, before dinner on the promenade, and after 
 dinner on the promenade again.
 
 184 PASTELS 
 
 " How many hours we passed in talking thus to- 
 gether, in the perfume and peace of those trans- 
 parent nights, while the sea beat against the wall 
 that bounded the Alameda, and the breeze stirred 
 the long leaves of the palm-trees, and some unseen 
 guitar player sang a petenera, — one of those An- 
 dalusian songs, where this line comes ever and 
 again, Nifio de mi corazon^ — lad of my heart, — 
 and which prolongs itself in a sad and sweet melody, 
 which recalls the sublime monotony of the desert. 
 Ah ! how certain of those songs affect me ! Four 
 verses, no more : ' For thee I have abandoned my 
 children, — and my mother died mad, — and to-day 
 you desert me, — lad of my heart, — you have not 
 the pardon of God.' You see, merely from reciting 
 these verses to you, I have tears in my eyes. I 
 have passed hours in this way listening to Rosario 
 singing similar songs, and malaguenas and tangos. 
 She has a true and delicate voice, with that slight 
 nasal tone, so Spanish in character, and a frank 
 and simple passion. Have you heard Laure sing 
 in society ? Do you remember her way of holding 
 her head like a vulgar concert-hall singer, with her 
 eyes raised to heaven, that manner of posing, in 
 which all her falsity can be divined ? " While
 
 SENORITA ROSARIO 185 
 
 speaking, he imitated his former mistress admirably, 
 with her affectations, and her attitudes. No other 
 could contradict himself, within five minutes, with 
 such unconsciousness as he. He showed himself 
 under the melancholy aspect of a wounded lover, 
 who basely revenges himself by depreciating the 
 woman he has loved, for his powerlessness to make 
 her love him, and then finer sensations returning 
 to his memory, he continued : 
 
 " The truth, my friend, holy, celestial, truth ! I 
 grasped it in its entirety in the song of Rosario. 
 It happened that., several times, I went with her 
 and the wife of my host, — I call by this name the 
 American merchant who treated me like a brother, 
 — in a sailboat on the vast bay. 
 
 " The great ships were at anchor far from shore. 
 The wind filled the sails, the boat bent before the 
 wind, we sped along over the murmuring water. 
 We could see all that line of little white towns 
 which make a sort of embroidery on this side, from 
 the point of Cadiz to that of Puerto de Santa Maria. 
 Rosario enjoyed as I did the splendour of the hori- 
 zon, the changing tints of the blue water, and the 
 felicity of the light scattered about us, but she 
 enjoyed it in silence. I compared her silence,
 
 186 PASTELS 
 
 mentally, with the exaggerated expressions from 
 which I had suffered so much with Laure, who 
 never had a centime's worth of emotion without 
 recounting it to the value of a hundred thousand 
 francs. Rosario was religious. As it was the 
 month of Marie,^ and as I knew the church where 
 she offered her devotions, I very often concealed 
 myself behind a pillar to watch her as she prayed, 
 kneeling on the flagstones among the other women. 
 They always held their fans in their hands. On 
 the altar was a Madonna, dressed in a brocaded 
 cloak, with a hat trimmed with flowers, and the white 
 faces, with their amber tones, assumed a strange 
 brightness in the half obscurity of lighted candles 
 and amid the black mantillas. Rosario prayed with 
 such pure and sincere ardour. She never suspected 
 that anyone was looking at her. She did not make 
 a parade of her fine sentiments like Laure, who 
 could not hear a mass without giving to me, and 
 to how many others, a recital of her mystical 
 ecstasies, and the detail of her remorse. But again, 
 Rosario was a little savage ; she revelled in bull- 
 fights. We saw them together three times. Would 
 you believe that I forgave her the ferocity of her 
 *May. 
 
 I
 
 SENORITA ROSARIO 187 
 
 applause, when the celebrated Lagartijo, that gladi- 
 ator with a face yellow as wax, killed the beast, as 
 he met it, without moving, with extended sword ? 
 Hold, one more question. Can you explain to me 
 this anomaly, how a man can take such pleasure 
 in the graces of a woman without loving her ? For 
 I did not love her, and all the time I was enjoying 
 the sweetness of her presence, I was thinking only 
 of another." 
 
 " And Rosario, what did she think of you ? " 
 " She ? " said he, blushing, for he is still child- 
 like, in spite of his follies, and he was ashamed of 
 his fatuity. " I perceived, a week ago, that she 
 loved me. No, do not laugh. We had gone in a 
 party to view a procession, and we found ourselves 
 alone, she and I, at one of the windows of the 
 apartment where they had given us hospitality. 
 The end of the street was hung with gay canvas 
 which fluttered in the wind. The balconies of the 
 houses were hung with coloured stuffs, the red 
 and the rose of which contrasted most deliciously 
 with the clear white of the fagades. And, on the 
 ground, upon the carpet stretched for the passage 
 of the statue of the Madonna, were scattered 
 flowers. The Madonna herself appeared decked in
 
 188 PASTELS 
 
 the jewels of the religious women of the city, with 
 enough diamonds and pearls to stock the front of 
 a jeweller's shop. She advanced, perched on a 
 shield, supported by six persons, and followed by 
 a number of negroes dressed in silk stuffs, fringed 
 with gold, and who each carried a music desk full 
 of music. I saw it all, but it was one of my 
 unhappy hours. It was the anniversary of the 
 day, a year ago, when I had learned for the first 
 time that Laure had deceived me. Ah, my 
 friend, if you knew under what conditions and 
 with whom ! My God ! if these women would 
 only choose rivals for us of whom it would not be 
 a disgrace to be jealous ! In short, I was sad as 
 death while the Madonna passed, and the music 
 rose, and incense smoked. And then, when I 
 turned, I saw Rosario, whose presence I had for 
 the time completely forgotten ; her eyes were fixed 
 on me with an expression that alarmed me. A 
 look of passionate anxiety escaped from them. 
 She was paler than usual, and said to me in 
 Spanish, ' You are sad — you still love her then ? * 
 She had been told all, or rather had guessed all. 
 I replied to her question by a pleasantry, and gave 
 as an excuse a headache caused by the intense
 
 SENORITA ROSARIO 189 
 
 heat. Did she believe me or not ? For myself, I 
 was quite overcome by the sudden revelation of the 
 feeling which I had just discovered in my little 
 friend, whom I had known but three weeks. She 
 loved me, or she was on the point of loving me ! 
 I returned to my hotel on leaving this strange, 
 brief scene, calling down on myself terrible re- 
 proaches for the abominable instinct of masculine 
 coquetry which had evidently made me court this 
 child almost without knowing it. You observe I 
 say ' almost.' She loved me, or was on the point 
 of loving me, me who could never love her, never, 
 since I carried in my heart the living image of 
 another. How could I inflict on her all the tor- 
 ments from which I had just suffered so much, 
 and from which she herself was scarcely cured ? 
 How could I play with her at this sad game of 
 sentiment, which consists in treating a soul as 
 little boys treat an insect they have caught ? No, 
 Rosario deserved better than this ; and I myself 
 had need to esteem myself more, perhaps in order 
 to have the right to despise Laure. Anyhow, at 
 four o'clock on the same afternoon, with my 
 trunks strapped, I took the train for Seville, with- 
 out even having said good-bye to my friend the
 
 190 PASTELS 
 
 American merchant. Rosario was on the point of 
 loving me ; I fled from her out of respect for her 
 feeling. Do not laugh at me," repeated he, laying 
 his hand on mj shoulder with a wheedling gesture. 
 
 I did not laugh at him, because he was really 
 sincere, and his scruples had affected me, notwith- 
 standing the ridiculous touch of vanity which 
 marred them. Afterward, I was angry with him 
 for having prevented me from seeing the cathedral 
 at Cordova properly, where doubtless I shall never 
 be again. I am also angry with him for having 
 been the cause of my missing Toledo. On account 
 of him, I pushed on as far as Cadiz. I presented 
 myself to his friend the American. The Senorita 
 Rosario had gone away for a few days. My curi- 
 osity to see her was so great that I wished to await 
 her return. And she did not return at all. The 
 whole plan of my trip had been upset, and I had but 
 ten days to give to Tangiers, and I have never been 
 
 able to learn if Rosario had loved Henri de V 
 
 or not, and, consequently, if the sudden flight and 
 scruples of the latter had been delicacy or conceit 
 — the two, it is true, are so often found together ! 
 
 PariSj Deeember, 1886. 
 
 J
 
 CLAIRE
 
 'I
 
 A 
 
 iLv 
 
 '• h 
 
 n^ 
 
 '::i:^-'.r 
 
 >f.'j^«b»vO'-
 
 CLAIRE 
 
 The writers of modern fiction discovered for 
 themselves a rich, an inexhaustible domain of 
 observation, when they bethought themselves that 
 a special sensibility exists peculiar to each voca- 
 tion in life. 
 
 Thus they have recognized that the man of 
 letters, for example, loves and desires, hates 
 or regrets in a different manner from the trades- 
 man, who in turn is distinguished from the 
 diplomat, the scholar, and the soldier, by the tone 
 of his passions. 
 
 This psychical diversity of social species is, 
 however, far from constituting an absolute law. 
 Unquestionable denials have been given to it by 
 personages famous in different spheres. It will 
 suffice to mention Stendhal, Feydeau, M. Renan, 
 and the divine Pierre Loti, — who have proved 
 that a dragoon, a speculator on change, a professor, 
 and a sailor can traverse the barracks, the green- 
 
 193
 
 194 PASTELS 
 
 room, the College de France, and the steerage of 
 a ship, with an unimpaired originality of sensa- 
 tions. But these are celebrated names and excep- 
 tional individuals. For my part, I have known, 
 since I have done my work as moral botanist 
 conscientiously, a sufficient number of mediocre 
 persons, upon whom their profession did not seem 
 to have the slightest influence. They were pecul- 
 iar souls, whom reality did not affect, any more 
 than iron bites into the diamond. One of the most 
 singular cases it has been my lot to meet is cer- 
 tainly that of Emile M ., one of the companions 
 
 of my childhood, who entered the Ecole Polytech- 
 nique, — he never himself knew why, — became 
 an artillery officer, without knowing the reason 
 for this either, and was, besides, a mediocre math- 
 ematician, and a worse officer. If these lines 
 chance to fall under his eyes in the little country 
 town where he is at this moment, with his mili- 
 tary cap and his diversions, he will pardon me this 
 innocent epigram. It comes to me from two vol- 
 unteers for the service whom I once recommended 
 to him. And I shall say to him, like Marion : 
 
 " But I love you thus." 
 
 This captain with an engaging smile under his
 
 CLAIRE 195 
 
 golden moustache, with eyes of the tenderest blue 
 between their rather wrinkled lids, with a com- 
 plexion still blond and pale notwithstanding ex- 
 posure to the sun, with hands as carefully kept as 
 those of a duchess, this artilleryman, who does not 
 swear, who does not frequent caf^s, who speaks in 
 a low voice, who walks with his head bent, and who 
 still preserves the somewhat affected gestures of 
 his youth; this man goes through life as one 
 who is hypnotized crosses a room. He sees noth- 
 ing but his own thoughts, and, exquisite contrast 
 for an ironical observer, this man, accustomed to 
 all the precision of calculation and command, per- 
 ceives this thought under the vague and floating 
 form of reverie, which the vulgar call poetical, 
 without suspecting that if poets felt and saw in 
 this fashion they would never be able to write a 
 verse. 
 
 To tell the truth, Eraile M was born ro- 
 mantic, as he was born blond, and he has remained, 
 with all his absurdities, to my taste, delightful, 
 with all that word implies. 
 
 It was to him that a woman, married for six 
 years, had confided that she had never belonged to 
 her husband, and the captain had imparted this
 
 196 PASTELS 
 
 confidence to me with tears in his eyes, at the 
 thought that this ideal being had reserved for him 
 such a treasure ! He belonged, it is needless to 
 say, to the sect of Redemptorists, to those who 
 believe in the redemption of girls through love. 
 Like all of his brother rehabilitationists, this re- 
 demption ordinarily consisted, for him, in keeping 
 some creature alone who had formerly lived on a 
 syndicate. He did worse or better, as you choose. 
 He persuaded himself, while very young, that, as 
 the true method of inspiring love was devotion, and 
 the greatest devotion the complete salvation of an 
 existence, one ought to be passionately loved by a 
 girl taken from a brothel. At Metz, where he 
 attended school, he put his system into practice, 
 and wrote mc, on the subject, a letter full of tears, 
 which I have kept as a prodigious monument of 
 false ideas. It was he, also, who at seventeen 
 addressed a letter to a woman in the Latin Quarter 
 — known under the name of Lucie Poupde, on 
 account of her pretty little airs of afifectation, — 
 commencing with this sentence : " I love my sisters 
 better since I have loved you, because they are 
 women like you ! " And the unhappy boy was 
 sincere. It is one of the most amusing mystifica-
 
 CLAIRE 197 
 
 tions of this amusing world, — the supreme comi- 
 cahty of sentimental life, as soon as sentiment 
 becomes destitute of foundation, however perfect its 
 good faith. I ended by no longer laughing at 
 Emile, on ascertaining that he was happy. Women, 
 for him, are divided into two distinct groups : 
 those whom he loves at that particular moment, 
 who are angels, and those whom he has loved, who 
 are demons ; he is, therefore, overjoyed, exalted, 
 intoxicated at possessing an angel, and proud of 
 having left these demons. With all this, — and 
 solve this insoluble enigma of this character if you 
 can, — this lunatic is cunning, and lies — like one 
 of his angels. 
 
 This sentimentalist is a frightfully bad char- 
 acter. I knew him at one period to have four 
 mistresses at the same time, each one of whom 
 believed him to be madly in love with her. In 
 love he was, but with all four. He wept to me 
 over his own perfidy and their affection, without 
 suspecting that each received two or three lovers 
 beside himself. I swore to him that women can 
 seldom be deceived, for they almost always get the 
 start. He would not believe me, and the piquant 
 part of the story was that, when he was once
 
 198 PASTELS 
 
 enlightened in regard to his four victims, he 
 treated them summarily as beggars, with the keen- 
 est indignation. Emile is one of those who ac- 
 knowledge, with gratitude and remorse, the most 
 outrageously improbable paternities. At one time, 
 in a city in the North, where he was lieutenant, 
 he might have been seen in quest of three nurses 
 at the same time, on account of three bantlings to 
 be born, which he declared were his. 
 
 There is another town on the line from Cher- 
 bourg to Paris, where he piously stops when he is 
 on leave, to carry flowers to the grave of a child 
 who died at two years of age, whom he wept with 
 all his heart, and who had a much better right to 
 the title, daughter of the regiment, than the hero- 
 ine of the play of that name. But what of that ? 
 These men are the only ones who have fully 
 enjoyed women, the only ones who have seen them 
 truly. When a woman lies to you, it is nearly 
 always to accommodate facts to the needs of her 
 momentary emotion. That emotion is true and 
 living, and it is the only thing that is of impor- 
 tance. It is easy to reason in this fashion ; prac- 
 tice is more difficult. It is necessary to be endowed 
 like Emile, to have preserved the taste for locks
 
 CLAIRE 199 
 
 of hair carried in lockets, for little perfumed notes, 
 for daisies pulled to pieces, and all the puerile 
 nothings which impress a woman. For women 
 permit themselves to feel perfectly confident if a 
 man truly attaches an infinite value to the least 
 thing that comes from them, and when this man is 
 a soldier, when he clasps the flower and the photo- 
 graph under a braided jacket — transpose the 
 whole, and it is the story of Hercules at the feet of 
 Omphale : and is not their dream nearly always 
 of a Hercules who warbles romances ? 
 
 With his gullibility, or his wisdom, Captain 
 
 Emile M has been always very dear to me, 
 
 first on account of the booted, spurred, and tight- 
 laced paradox which he represents to me, and also 
 because he possesses for life a taste very delicate, 
 very personal, very intense, at a moment in the 
 century when nearly all men of refinement are 
 merely apathetic, one might almost say, impotent. 
 I owe him a pleasure, not common, that of having 
 heard from his mouth the recital of love-affairs I 
 could have wished had been mine : of those sweet 
 and subtle sensations one would have loved to 
 feel, and which one loves to see felt in one's own 
 presence. Ah ! these confidences of another, which
 
 200 PASTELS 
 
 are in accordance with the shade of your heart and 
 which do not displease you in any detail, — such 
 are as rare as passing through hours one would 
 like to live over again ! This unique pleasure 
 Captain Emile afforded me a Week or two ago. I 
 was on a journey, and stopped for twenty-four 
 hours to chat with him, in his place of exile, and 
 we talked, in fact, a great deal. He discussed at 
 length M. Renan's last drama, " L'Abbesse de 
 Jonarre." He had reread the preface during the 
 day, and we discussed the theory maintained by 
 the celebrated philosopher : May not the approach 
 of death be the most powerful of aphrodisiacs ? I 
 myself maintained that this approach, in nine hun- 
 dred and ninety-nine cases in a thousand, has 
 simply the effect of a paralyzing panic. The 
 captain was of the opinion of the writer, and he 
 related to me in corroboration of his opinion one 
 of the recollections of his first campaign. We 
 were strolling up and down after dinner, very late, 
 in a deserted spot dominated by the shadow of 
 a large and ancient church. I could hear the 
 spurs of my friend clanking, and the rattle of his 
 sabre. He seemed to be walking in one of those 
 pretty pictures by Detaille. In the moonlight I 
 
 I
 
 CLAIRE 201 
 
 looked at him, remembering that he had received 
 three balls in his body, under the walls of Paris, 
 and I listened to his sentimentalizing with delight 
 — a delight those will understand who can appre- 
 ciate that adorable phrase of the Prince de Ligne, 
 on the Turkish city taken by assault, — " Where 
 one smelt death burning, and the perfume of 
 roses." 
 
 " Renan is right," he said to me, " at least for 
 men of my class ; for you Adolphes," — this is 
 his great expression of contempt for the analyzers, 
 jeerers, and cavillers of women, — " yes, you others, 
 you never love any one but yourselves, when you 
 do happen to love yourselves ! And at the hour 
 of death your panic is still mere egotism. But 
 we, the lovers, as we have lived, so shall we die. 
 Do you wish a little fact that is Men probant, ^ as 
 your pedant of a master, Henri Boyle, would say ? 
 Behold it ! " added he, striking his chest, which is 
 broad and powerful, as suits an affectionate de- 
 bauch^. " Do you know what was the first effect 
 of the news, when they sent me from Metz to my 
 regiment the day after the declaration of war, in 
 August, 1870 ? It was, to throw me into a sort of 
 
 iVery convincing.
 
 202 
 
 PASTELS 
 
 amorous intoxication which I have never again 
 experienced. From the day when I had to take the 
 field, everything that concerned womanhood was 
 clothed for me in an inexpressible charm, a charm 
 so profound that I arrived at a comprehension 
 of that species of sublime eroticism of the middle 
 ages, which attacked cavaliers sick for love of 
 princesses whom they had never seen, for the dead 
 even, of whom they knew only the name and what 
 legend had told them. You are laughing at me," 
 added he, seeing me smile, " but this phenomenon, 
 this love for the unknown woman, for the invis- 
 ible, for the absent, I felt it then under the influ- 
 ence of the idea of death, and in a manner so com- 
 plete, although so brief ! About the first of that 
 sad month of August, my battery was directed, 
 with several others, to join one of the army corps 
 which was operating in the east. They enjoined 
 upon us to reach by forced marches a little village 
 of Alsace, and in order to do this to cross the wall 
 of the Vosges. The evening of the day when we 
 passed through these enchanting mountains, with 
 their steep declivities and coquettish curves, we 
 were to sleep in a village which appeared to us, 
 from the heights of our last ascent, in a glory of
 
 CLAIRE Z06 
 
 light. It was situated on the borders of a lake, 
 which was itself enclosed in a long valley. The 
 setting sun coloured with rosy light half this lake, 
 while the shadows of the pine-trees threw over the 
 other half, as it were, a bar of gloom. The little 
 village, with its few red-roofed houses grouped 
 about the parish church, was all bathed in a red 
 mist, and all the little streams that interlaced the 
 green meadows of the valley reflected this same 
 rosy tint that covered the heavens, — that heaven 
 which I thought I had so short a time to look 
 upon. At this time my imagination was strongly 
 impressed. 
 
 " A trip in Germany had made me anticipate our 
 disasters with certainty. I believed, besides, in 
 presentiments, and because of a dream, in which I 
 had seen myself wounded, I thought I was destined 
 to die during the campaign. I had in me, then, a 
 depth of melancholy mingled with that singular 
 tenderness of which I spoke. When I perceived 
 that adorable landscape, all rose and black, the 
 sleeping water and the mountains, the thought 
 came to me that I should like to have loved there 
 and to have loved just the woman of that landscape, 
 — one whose beauty, whose sentiments, whose
 
 204 PASTELS 
 
 eyes and voice would harmonize with my emotion 
 at this moment, before this lake, these forests, 
 and this sky. We descended at a quick step ; the 
 cannon rumbled along, the men swore and sang, 
 and I reflected. I reflected that I was twenty-two 
 years old, that I had never had any intrigues 
 but those of the beershops, and the garrison. I 
 was going to pass the night in this hamlet. What 
 if I could only find there this woman of whom I 
 thought, and if she would let me, during these few 
 hours, love her for all my life past and to come ? 
 It is because I have had such thoughts as these 
 more than is reasonable, in the service and else- 
 where, that I shall never be a general." 
 
 He smiled in his turn, and as we passed a cigar- 
 shop still lighted, he entered to take a cigar. 
 
 " Did you notice how the little shop-girl looked 
 at me ? " said he. " For two months she has been 
 waiting for me to make her a declaration, but she 
 has belonged to Raymond, one of my comrades 
 whom I do not like. Are you like me ? I have 
 never been able to take the wife or the mistress of 
 a man who is not congenial to me." 
 
 " If I ever marry," answered I, " I am warned 
 that it will not do to receive you."
 
 CLAIKE 205 
 
 " I believe that you are right," replied he, with 
 that gravity which gives, in his mouth, an appear- 
 ance of naivctd to the most vicious phrases. 
 
 " Meanwhile," I rejoined, " continue your story, 
 which appears to me like an additional chapter of 
 Faublas." 
 
 " Ah ! " said he, " a Faublas very platonic, at 
 which the other, the real one, would have laughed 
 particularly. Well, then, with the cannon rum- 
 bling along, the men swearing and singing, and me 
 dreaming, we arrived at the hamlet. We were 
 many. The lodgings were few and dirty. I com- 
 plained of mine with an ill-temper due, without 
 doubt, to the anger caused me by the contrast 
 between the beautiful rose tones of the landscape, 
 and the hideous face of the countrywoman on 
 whom I was billeted. I raised such an outcry, 
 that at last they offered to place me elsewhere, if 
 I wished, but some distance from this spot, at 
 the house of the Marquise de Noirlys. Just imagine 
 the effect such a name — Claire de Noirlys, one of 
 those names which we do not believe when we 
 meet with them in books — was bound to have 
 upon a man in such a frame of mind as I was. It 
 is true the lady had quitted her chalet that same
 
 206 PASTELS 
 
 morning, fleeing from the probable invasion, as the 
 brave little countryman told me, who had assigned 
 our lodgings in the village. A new disappointment, 
 yet I accepted, — laugh at me if you will, — on 
 account of that name. 
 
 " This chalet where I was to pass the night was 
 situated on the other side of the lake, and as there 
 was a regular square of marshes, the route turned 
 two or three times back upon itself, so that the 
 house, appearing through the trees, seemed to move 
 back against the sky, which had now become a 
 tender gold, almost green. But a band of this 
 delicate gold trailed along the horizon, the waters 
 of the lake had turned an ashen gray, in the heavens 
 a star shone already, and the moon faintly showed 
 itself, a cold, dull moon without rays. I and the 
 two horsemen who accompanied me were guided 
 by a peasant, with the face of a simpleton, who 
 regarded us with an astonishment like that of the 
 cows which were grazing in the meadows. And I 
 asked myself, on seeing how wild and lonely this 
 spot was, what sort of a person could find pleasure 
 in it — without doubt, some old country lady, who 
 had inherited this villa from some eccentric rela- 
 tive and lived there, from avarice, four or five
 
 CLAIRE 207 
 
 months of the year, and the remainder at Epinal 
 or at Nancy. One finds in the hidden corners of 
 France, women who inhabit chateaux worthy of the 
 Sleeping Beauty, and with names that would bring 
 Balzac to his knees; and then it is a devotee 
 occupied with her altar-cloths, her preserves, Peter's 
 pence, and her little dog. It was, then, to satisfy 
 my conscience that I questioned our guide. ' Does 
 Madame de Noirlys live here all the year ? ' said I 
 to him. ' Oh, no ! ' said he ; ' she comes from Paris.' 
 ' Young or old ? ' asked I. ' A good twenty-five 
 or twenty-six years,' said the savage. ' Pretty ? ' I 
 asked. ' A Madonna,' replied the man, raising his 
 hand to his cap. * And her husband ? ' I continued. 
 < He is dead,' he answered. ' Has she children ? ' 
 * Oh, no ! ' replied he. 
 
 "Dm-ing this dialogue, we had come to an 
 avenue of birches, at the end of which the house 
 could be distinctly seen, all white in the twilight, 
 with two terraces on either side, covered and em- 
 bellished with flowers. The gold line in the 
 heavens had disappeared, the moon already shone 
 out more brilliantly. I saw the water shiver in 
 the lake, sombre now, behind the white trunks of 
 the trees. A bird commenced to sing, and my
 
 208 PASTELS 
 
 heart grew heavy with emotion, and tears sprang 
 to my eyes, as if a personal affliction had come upon 
 me. A woman of this name, pretty, a widow, and 
 without children, who had chosen this spot to live 
 in, and she was absent ! It was, then, with singu- 
 lar sadness that I mounted, guided by the steward 
 whom the marquise had left to look after the 
 chalet after her departure, to the balcony covered 
 with climbing plants, and entered the salon, where 
 the domestic begged me to wait while they pre- 
 pared my dinner and arranged my sleeping-room. 
 
 " That salon, — she had been there the night 
 before ! It was a simply furnished apartment, 
 where floated, faintly, that indefinable perfume 
 that one breathes wherever the robe of a young 
 woman who is truly womanly has just rustled. 
 The red tones which dominated the furnishings 
 indicated clearly that the occupant was dark-com- 
 plexioned, dark, like her name, like the lily of 
 sable on a silver field, which composed her coat of 
 arms, as was attested by a bit of tapestry hung 
 against the wall. The furniture was arranged in 
 such a manner as to divide the salon into three 
 parts. I see them, as I am speaking to you, as if 
 I were still the beardless lieutenant who found
 
 CLAIRE 209 
 
 himself there, fallen into a rocking-chair, and who 
 was looking at this room with homesick curiosity. 
 At one of the corners of the fireplace was an arm- 
 chair, behind which was an English folding screen 
 of coloured glass, some low shelves, a lounging 
 chair, and a table covered with balls of wool and 
 crochet-needles. A book lay there open. It was 
 an ' Imitation.' This was the corner for reading, 
 working, or praying. In another corner, another 
 table, behind which was another screen, of crystal, 
 and across which, when the window was open, as at 
 present, one could see the water of the lake gleam- 
 ing blue beyond the foliage. Then, in a sheltered 
 corner, a divan furnished with cushions, under a 
 green plant, — that was the place to dream, — and 
 everywhere flowers that were dying in the vases, and 
 a profusion of trifles revealed a delicate art in com- 
 bining the shades of the least things of life. On 
 the writing-table covered with faded blue, bro- 
 caded with dull red, lay a gold penholder, on the 
 slender handle of which was engraved the name of 
 Claire, a tortoise-shell paper-cutter, almost black, 
 with a monogram in roses, a tiny carved clock, 
 boxes of lacquer, and, on the wall, by the desk, a 
 number of photographs framed in black velvet bor-
 
 210 PASTELS 
 
 dered with silver filigree. A line written below 
 each, in clear and delicate penmanship, gave the 
 date of the death. There was, as it were, the 
 small private cemetery which the young widow 
 wished to have always about her. I found myself 
 in so strange a state of crystallization in regard to 
 the unknown inhabitant of this sheltered nook, 
 that I wished to see in this series of protraits a 
 sign of the fidelity of her affections ; in like man- 
 ner, a sign of charity in the worsteds prepared for 
 work, of melancholy in the divan wrapped in 
 shadow, and an indication of her refined intelli- 
 gence in the little low book-shelves where I dis- 
 covered, by the side of books of devotion, some 
 romances of which I am passionately fond : ' Domi- 
 nique,' that chef-d'oeuvre of Fromentin, ' La Prin- 
 cesse de Cleves,' ' Le Lys dans la Valine,' by 
 Balzac, the ' Reisebilder,' by Henry Heine, the 
 poems of Lamartine, and those of De Vigny. On 
 the walls were five or six engravings after pictures 
 of the early Italian masters, a Perugino among 
 others, of which I shall always see the beautiful 
 angels with metal cuirasses, and the beautiful suf- 
 fering eyes of the Virgin, the raised chins of the 
 two saints. Under this Perugino was a door.
 
 CLAIRE 211 
 
 which I pushed open, with a lighted candle in my 
 hand. I perceived a bed with lace draperies, I 
 breathed an aroma of heliotrope which made my 
 heart grow faint, I so love this penetrating perfume 
 without form. I did not dare advance. It seemed 
 to me that a phantom was there, whose garments 
 rustled, whose breath trembled, whose sanctuary I 
 was on the point of profaning. Ah ! how distinctly 
 I felt the presence of that phantom ! " 
 
 He paused a moment as if lost in these remem- 
 brances. "This," said I to him, to rouse him, 
 " resembles an epigram made by one of our friends 
 upon my first novels : a nomenclature of uphol- 
 sterers, and not of events." 
 
 " There are no events," replied he, with a sad 
 voice ; " only I passed the night in a delirium which 
 I cannot translate for you into words. I did not 
 eat, notwithstanding the good food. I did not sleep. 
 I installed myself on the balcony, whence I watched 
 the fairy-like effect of the moon on the little lake. 
 The mists mounted from the water, as intangible 
 as the image that floated before me, vague and 
 fleeting like the intoxication with which I felt my- 
 self overcome. However senseless this may appear 
 to you, I was in love like a child with the woman
 
 212 
 
 PASTELS 
 
 who lived there, and whose invisible spirit I felt 
 wandering about me, haunting the inmost recesses 
 of this asylum where she came to conceal I did 
 not know what. An inconsolable regret ? A 
 mysterious happiness ? No, I knew nothing of her, 
 except that I was going to war, and that twelve 
 hours previously she had been there. I breathed 
 all her charm as one breathes the fragrance of a 
 garden of roses, in passing along a hedge, without 
 seeing a single flower. I was sure, you understand, 
 sure, that I should have loved her passionately if 
 I had known her, and I should never know her, 
 for war awaited me, the noise of the battle-field, 
 and death. But did I not love her that night as 
 I have never loved one of my mistresses ? And 
 she knew nothing of it, alas ! and she has never 
 known anything of it." 
 
 " But as you were not killed," said I, " why did 
 you not return, the year after, and tell her ? " 
 
 " The year after, I began paying court to Lucie, 
 you remember, who made me so unhappy ? And 
 then, what was the good of seeing a woman who 
 might not have resembled my dream ? " 
 
 For a psychologist enamoured of documents 
 dealing with the spiritual condition of the French
 
 CLAIRE 213 
 
 artillery, — as we say in our modern jargon, — 
 
 Captain Emile M is a detestable example of 
 
 the species. He is, however, drawn from life. But 
 who will believe it, except, perhaps, himself, and 
 some woman who has known him, and who will 
 say to herself with a smile, " He thought himself 
 very clever." Then this woman will remember 
 that she deceived him, but so prettily, and par- 
 doned him, because, after all, he knew how to 
 love. 
 
 Basel, October, 1886.
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS
 
 4
 
 I. 
 
 SIMONE 
 
 A CHKISTMAS STORY 
 
 Eleven o'clock. Outside a night of ice and 
 snow, and gusts of wind and sleet. Within the 
 small hotel occupied by the Count d'EyssSve, near 
 Monceau Park, on this Christmas eve reigned the 
 terrible silence that fills the house of mourning. 
 A dread sorrow of sorrows. At the name of 
 D'Eyssdve there is not a Parisian who does not 
 recall the tragic end of the young countess, who 
 died in the spring, from a fall from her horse. As 
 for myself, I cannot think of her without recalling 
 the first night of the " Princess of Bagdad,*' or 
 without seeing again that adorable young woman, 
 in the front of her box, her chestnut hair parted 
 in two simple bands, her slender face, her delicate 
 pallor, and her brown eyes, which blinked somewhat, 
 owing to a slight near-sightedness, when she did 
 
 217
 
 218 
 
 PASTELS 
 
 not assist her sight with a gold lorgnon, whose 
 chased handle her small fingers handled so grace- 
 fully. She left three orphan children ; two sons, 
 of whom the elder, Pierre, was eleven ; the younger, 
 Armand, ten ; and a little daughter, Simone, who 
 was not yet eight. 
 
 The second floor of the h6tel was given up to 
 the children. The two boys had a room together. 
 The little Simone, the last comer, had a room to 
 herself. And, on this terrible Christmas eve, 
 when the children of the poor were freezing in 
 the streets, this child of luxury, in her warm room 
 where the embers were dying, felt a bitter cold in 
 her heart. The great carpet which covered the 
 floor, the rose and green curtains which sheltered 
 the little bright painted bed, the rosewood chif- 
 fonier, the chest of drawers and small writing- 
 desk, the delicate and coquettish toilet articles 
 scattered over the table, bore witness to the minute 
 luxury in which the countess had wrapped her 
 beloved child. 
 
 It was her pride to hear her friends exclaim, on 
 seeing this room, " Oh, my dear ! we were not 
 spoiled like this at her age." But in spite of all
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 219 
 
 this, Simoiie felt herself unhappy in this warm nest, 
 all alone with her thoughts. She felt that, since 
 the death of her mother, something had changed 
 for her, and that the atmosphere of affection 
 in which she formerly lived had suddenly become 
 chilled. It was not from the death itself that the 
 child suffered. At her age, that terrible word, 
 death, did not represent to her the frightful reality : 
 the hill of Pere Lachaise, a vault among hundreds 
 of others, a coffin in a compartment of this vault, 
 and in that coffin a form for ever still, and which 
 hour by hour was decomposing. Xo ; her dead 
 mother was, to her innocent and childish imagin- 
 ings, a mother flown to heaven, into that vague 
 and distant spot filled with unlimited delights, 
 peopled with angels flying about like those in the 
 engravings in her mass-book, a happy abode where 
 some day she hoped to join her who had disap- 
 peared, of whom she had preserved so young and 
 beautiful a vision. She had not seen her with her 
 eyes closed, her mouth open, livid, and with fore- 
 head covered with blood. 
 
 The first care of the count had been to send 
 away all his children to his mother at Versailles. 
 Some one dressed them in black clothes, and they
 
 220 PASTELS 
 
 asked the reason. They had not been told at first. 
 Thej only understood that some misfortune had 
 overtaken them, from the pity they discovered 
 in all the eyes that regarded them. But the great 
 park where they were taken to play, on those 
 April days, was so green, with its statues and 
 sleeping waters in the artificial lakes ! Then their 
 papa came to join them. " And mamma ? " they all 
 three asked of him. The count embraced them, 
 bursting into tears. His face was so sad, so very 
 sad ! What the little Simone recalled above all 
 was that she had observed, from that day, some- 
 thing which seemed absurd, monstrous, inexplica- 
 ble to her poor childish soul, — that her father no 
 longer loved her as formerly. And that was the 
 reason why, on this night before Christmas, she 
 lay awake, instead of sleeping the peaceful sleep of 
 childhood, like her brothers in their room by the 
 side of hers. 
 
 Her father no longer loved her ! Visions came 
 and went in her little head, but all were summed 
 up in this idea. He no longer loved her, her who 
 had formerly been his favourite child. She saw 
 again the walk in the park at Versailles where she 
 had first received this impression, without being
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 221 
 
 able now, any more than then, to see deeper into 
 the cause of the sudden change in the manner of 
 this man, who formerly could not be with her a 
 quarter of an hour without covering her with 
 caresses. She was walking with Pierre and 
 Armand, all three of them under the charge of 
 Mile. Marie, her governess. Her father suddenly 
 appeared, and she rushed toward him with all her 
 usual impetuosity. Merely from meeting his gaze, 
 merely from a sense of the manner in which he 
 received her kisses, she divined that he was no 
 longer the same to her. An astonishment seized 
 her at first, then a sort of timidity. What had she 
 done wrong that day ? Why did he say, in that 
 tone of voice in which she only heard him speak 
 on the days when she had deserved to be scolded, 
 " Walk with Mademoiselle," while he walked on, 
 holding in turn the hands of Pierre and Armand, 
 but never hers ? 
 
 Since then, he had never spoken to her in 
 any other tone. And in the thousand little details 
 which made up her childish life, there had been 
 a total change which she could not explain, because 
 she felt herself so profoundly, so absolutely inno- 
 cent. In the morning, as soon as she had risen,
 
 222 PASTELS 
 
 she had been accustomed, when her mother was 
 alive, to go at first into her room and then to her 
 father's, and to stay there a long time, to be spoilt. 
 
 It was all over with these visits, all over 
 with the words of endearment, and with the laugh- 
 ter which her slightest words had always brought 
 to the lips of that man whose eyes no longer 
 sought hers. She no longer dared seek his glance, 
 since she had read in it that coldness which chilled 
 her to the bottom of her soul. She did not dare to 
 take his hand and kiss it, since he had abruptly 
 pulled it away, one day, when she had ventured to 
 offer this caress, — that hand that formerly had 
 always been occupied in playing with her curls, or 
 in fondling her cheeks. She multiplied her childish 
 efforts, that Mademoiselle might have no complaints 
 to make, but never a compliment came as recom- 
 pense for her zeal, and it seemed to her that this 
 injustice on her father's part influenced all about 
 her, from her brothers, who treated her so rudely, 
 to Mademoiselle, who lost her temper more quickly. 
 
 And to whom could she complain ? Her grand- 
 mother at Versailles was so infirm, so deaf, and 
 then, she hardly ever saw her. To her father him- 
 self ? In his presence she was paralyzed with a 
 
 I
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 223 
 
 sort of terror she could not overcome. She had 
 a friend formerly, M. d'Aydie, her godfather. He 
 no longer came to the house. She met him some- 
 times in the Champs Elysees ; hut he had only 
 bowed to Mademoiselle, without speaking to them, 
 although she had seen him looking after her for a 
 long time. Why had he also deserted her, since 
 he loved her as before, she knew very well, from 
 the way in which he looked at her ? 
 
 She experienced the distress of a child lost 
 among strangers, and who feels itself neglected and 
 almost hated. She listened to the long moan of 
 the wind, as it passed over the hQtel, died away, 
 and then returned in squalls, to shake the closed 
 shutters, and she asked herself if every one was 
 asleep in the house ? 
 
 For she had formed a great project. This was 
 the night on which the little Jesus would descend 
 to fill with bonbons and playthings the shoes 
 placed beside the fireplace in the schoolroom. 
 Why not ask him to assuage the sorrow from 
 which she suffered so bitterly ? The little Jesus 
 lived in heaven, and some one had told her that 
 her mamma was in heaven also. 
 
 And the idea had come to her to write to her
 
 224 PASTELS 
 
 mother. She would place the letter on her shoe. 
 The little Jesus could not fail to see it, take it, 
 and deliver it. 
 
 She had managed in two or three days to write 
 this letter to her mother, which she had carefully 
 enclosed in an envelope, and with a trembling 
 hand addressed it : " To Mamma in Heaven," but 
 she had not dared to place it on her shoe before 
 Mademoiselle or her brothers. Now all were sleep- 
 ing. No sound came from the door on the right, 
 which was that of Pierre and Armand's room, nor 
 from the left, where Mademoiselle slept. Simone 
 slipped quietly from her little bed. She had con- 
 cealed the letter in the lower drawer of her chif- 
 fonier. She groped her way there to fetch it. 
 How her heart beat, at the thought of stumbling 
 against the furniture. She took very short steps, 
 so as not to become entangled in her long night- 
 dress. She opened the door at the foot of her 
 little bed, the one that opened into the corridor. 
 Just at this moment the wind moaned loudly, and 
 drowned the creaking of her door. She was in 
 the corridor ; two more doors, and she was in the 
 schoolroom. There was a large table in the middle, 
 and a bookcase on the left. She felt along with
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 225 
 
 her free hand ; she touched the marble of the 
 mantelpiece, she stooped ; one little boot, then 
 another — these were her brothers'. She had pre- 
 ferred to use her little silk slipper, because it 
 seemed to her the letter would stay on it better. 
 She put the letter there, on the shoe, so that it 
 could easily be seen, and then the poor little 
 creature returned, trembling, until she slipped 
 back into her bed, feeling its warmth with delight. 
 The wind might sigh loudly, and the snow beat 
 upon the shutters ; she had in her heart once more 
 a ray of hope to warm it. It was not possible 
 that her mother would not protect her ! 
 
 One o'clock in the morning. The window of 
 the private study of the Count d'Eysseve was the 
 only brilliant spot in the night on this dark house 
 front. The count was seated at his fireside ; he 
 also remained thinking instead of sleeping. It 
 was only a year, one single year ago, that he and 
 his wife were together in this same room, finishing 
 the preparations for the children's Christmas gifts. 
 How sad, how heartrending a thing it is, when the 
 remembrance of a dead woman whom we have 
 loved so well is also the recollection of a treason.
 
 226 
 
 PASTELS 
 
 This moaning wind around the hotel, which at 
 last had lulled the little Simone to sleep, filled the 
 soul of this man with a melancholy almost amount- 
 ing to insanity. He saw his wife again, as if she 
 had been there still, with her soft pallor, her brown 
 eyes, and the hesitating smile hovering about her 
 proud lips. What ! behind that face, those eyes, 
 that smile she concealed a horrible secret of adul- 
 tery ? She had a glance so pure, that for his to 
 meet it made him feel himself a better man ; and 
 she was deceiving him. She had been deceiving 
 him for years, — him, who would have considered 
 it a kind of shame to have suspected her. What 
 was there then that was true in the world, since 
 even his Alice had been proved false as others? 
 Ah ! how could he ever console himself, when he 
 remembered that the mouth he had so adored had 
 lied to him ? And how beautiful she was when he 
 had seen her for the first time, a very young girl 
 at a ball, and what a modest grace she had shown ! 
 He had loved her from that first evening. And 
 when he had asked her hand, he was deeply moved, 
 and quite ashamed of the remembrances of his 
 youthful past. And he had married her. What 
 sacred emotions had flooded his heart as they

 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 227 
 
 walked to the altar! A crowd had filled the 
 church. He had seen only this creature, all white 
 in her spotless robes, from whom emanated so 
 penetrating a sweetness that he could scarcely 
 believe his good fortune ! A lie, all a lie, both 
 that purity of her noble face, and that modesty 
 she had always preserved, even in their moments 
 of greatest intimacy ! The count saw once more 
 the intimacy of the conjugal chamber, and on the 
 pillow that head with its innocent look, among 
 the dishevelled ringlets. That another than him- 
 self had played with that luxuriant hair, that 
 another had covered with caresses that ideal face, 
 that other lips than his had pressed her lips, — 
 this was a horrible vision, less horrible, however, 
 than that sensation of a hideous and abominable 
 treachery. Of what mud is a woman's heart made, 
 when such a creature can bring to her husband 
 the look of a Madonna, while every sense is still 
 quivering from the kisses of a clandestine inter- 
 view ? If only she had not had that pure face, he 
 would not have suffered as he was suffering ! But, 
 such a lie, with those beautiful eyes, — those celes- 
 tial eyes, which even at this present moment he 
 could not help loving !
 
 228 
 
 PASTELS 
 
 Days had passed since the count had learned 
 the fatal truth. He had gone out in the morning, 
 on horseback with his wife. He had witnessed, 
 mad with despair, the fatal accident. It was his 
 hands that had given first aid to the dying woman. 
 And the evening after the interment of his idolized 
 wife, when he had gone, a prey to all the agonies 
 of love, to feast on remembrances of her in her room, 
 there, almost immediately, he had stumbled upon 
 the unquestionable, the frightful proof. He had 
 opened one of the drawers where she kept the little 
 trifles most dear to her, and he had found a packet 
 of letters from which he had learned all. She had 
 a lover ! And by whom had she allowed herself 
 to be seduced ? By the man to whom she ought to 
 have been sacred among all other women, by the 
 Marquis d'Aydie, who had been the companion of 
 his youth. 
 
 All — he had learned all at once ; their first 
 struggles, and how D'Aydie had tried to avoid her, 
 and his almost immediate return, and the circum- 
 stances of the criminal weakness of Alice, and her 
 remorse ; then the worst, — the hideous secret of 
 the birth of Simone. 
 
 Yes, that child whom the count had preferred
 
 TUREE LITTLE GIRLS 229 
 
 to all the others, this little girl who had taken 
 such a place in his love, — she was not his own. 
 Stupid, stupid blindness ! Ought he not to have 
 recognized that this fragile and delicate creature 
 was not of his race, nor of that of his two sons, so 
 robust, so like D'Eysseve in their build, while the 
 other ? It was just this delicacy he had cherished 
 in this child, the image of her mother. 
 
 Why, having lied to him for seven years, had 
 not Alice lied to him to the end ? Why had she 
 kept there, near her, her lover's letters ? She must 
 have loved this man, and counted on his trust ! 
 
 At the first moment he had said to himself, 
 " I will kill this traitor." And then he had done 
 nothing, on account of the children. He did not 
 wish that his two sons should have to think some 
 day of their mother as he thought of her. And he 
 had lived. He had contented himself with refus- 
 ing his house and his hand to this felonious friend. 
 He had said to himself, while embracing his sons : 
 "I have sacrificed all for them, even my ven- 
 geance." And he had lived on, tormented by the 
 fixed idea which the little girl, the daughter of that 
 other, roused in him so unceasingly. How many 
 times had he repeated to himself, " Yet the poor
 
 230 PASTELS 
 
 little one is innocent," but still found himself in- 
 capable of pardoning in her the treason of her 
 mother, — that treason which, on this sad and 
 solitary Christmas eve, made this outraged man 
 sob, — as if for the first time he had learned the 
 cruel, never to be forgotten truth. 
 
 The clock struck two. The count had dried his 
 tears. He blushed for them now. The word 
 " coward " rose to his lips. He got up. His brow 
 was even more gloomy than usual. The cruel 
 light of jealousy burned in his eyes. He had just 
 had a physical vision of the deceit, and by an invol- 
 untary association of ideas he thought, as always, 
 of Simone. No, he could never pardon her. 
 
 He had on his table the packages of playthings, 
 which he prepared to carry himself into the school- 
 room, to place them by the side of the shoes the 
 children were sure to have left there for their gifts. 
 It filled him with horror to touch the gifts in- 
 tended for the little girl. It seemed to him that 
 he hated this child with a profound hatred. " And 
 why not ? " he asked himself, stifling the remorse 
 which often pursued him. Besides, had he not 
 had the courage to do for her all that duty de-
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 231 
 
 manded ? What more could his conscience ask of 
 him ? It was with these thoughts that he ascended 
 the stairs, and entered the schoolroom, holding in 
 one hand a light, and in the other numerous little 
 packages. He saw, in the corner of the fireplace, 
 the white spot made by the envelope. He took it 
 up, looked at the address, tore open the envelope, 
 and read : 
 
 " My dear Mamma : — I write to you to show you 
 my beautiful handwriting, and to tell you that I have 
 been very good since you went away. But I do not 
 go any more into the salon. Papa says that little 
 girls ought to stay with Mademoiselle. Made- 
 moiselle is very kind, but Renee, you remember, 
 the beautiful doll that you gave me, bores me, and 
 the other playthings, too. Nothing has amused me 
 since you are no longer here. 
 
 " Armand's curls are cut off, and, as for me, I 
 have a black dress, and a comb, the kind you do 
 not like. 
 
 " Pierre wears long trousers, and he teases me 
 when I cry, but Armand comforts me, and says it 
 is naughty of him. Mademoiselle told me that 
 you are in heaven, and that you are very happy
 
 232 PASTELS 
 
 there. Why did you not take me with you ? I 
 would have been so good ! 
 
 " Since you are in heaven, ask the little Jesus, 
 who can do everything, to make papa love me as 
 he used to do, when you were here. He pushes 
 me away, when I kiss him. Pierre and Armand 
 are always with him after their lessons, while he 
 sends me away to Mademoiselle, where I do not 
 make any noise. I do not dare to look at him, his 
 eyes make me afraid. Yet, I promise you, I have 
 not told any stories. 
 
 " Every evening he comes to kiss my brothers. 
 I hear him close the door, I pretend to sleep, and I 
 wait, clasping my hands so tight, but he does not 
 come, — never any more, and I cry myself to sleep. 
 
 " My mamma, you who love me still, say to the 
 little Jesus that papa does not wish to have me any 
 more, and that I should so like to die ! I embrace 
 you with all my heart, it is very heavy." 
 
 And the child had signed it, " Your little 
 Simone, who loves you so much." 
 
 The count read and reread these lines that filled 
 four pages of paper. What thoughts surged in 
 turns through his head ? Was this feeling that of
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 233 
 
 justice ? There is in all childish grief something 
 so very sad. Poor little beings who have not 
 asked to live ! Was it the tenderness of the old 
 love ? For the child of the woman whom we have 
 passionately loved is that woman over again. 
 
 An hour after having read this childish letter, in 
 which the dear little creature had poured out all 
 her grief, this man was in Simone's room, watching 
 her as she slept. And when the child awoke the 
 next morning, she did not know if she had had a 
 dream, or if he to whom she had given the sweet 
 name of father had really come to kiss her in her 
 bed, with tears, as he used to do. 
 
 And, — mystery above all mysteries, — there is 
 not, this present Christmas, a child more loved 
 than is little Simone by the count ; above all since, 
 after a quarrel at the club, he killed the Marquis 
 d'Aydie in a duel, with a pistol. Worldly critics, 
 who had guessed the secret of the birth of the 
 child, asked themselves why D'Eysseve had deferred 
 his vengeance for so long. What would they say if 
 they knew that the count had only decided on the 
 duel after seeing D'Aydie one day kiss Simone on 
 the Champs Elys^es ? 
 
 Paris, December, 1886.
 
 II. 
 
 LUCIE 
 
 " You here, mon General ? " said I to him ; " no, 
 I did not know you were idyllic to that extent ! " 
 
 The fact is, the contrast appeared singular, even 
 paradoxical, between this terrible man, whom I 
 thus accosted with an exclamation of surprise, and 
 the spot where we met. 
 
 General Gamier was full fifty-four years of age, 
 although exercise had kept his figure slender as 
 that of a sub-lieutenant. He was a sort of leonine 
 athlete, like Kl^ber, whom he resembled, and he 
 always made one think of the superb phrase that 
 Michelet used in describing Kldber. " He had," 
 said he, " so military an appearance, that one be- 
 came brave in looking at him." 
 
 A sabre cut full across his face had given Gar- 
 nier a physiognomy more than warlike ; it was 
 terrible on account of the contrast between the red 
 
 234

 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 235 
 
 line of the scar and a sallow complexion. Twenty 
 years in Africa revealed themselves in this com- 
 plexion, brightened by two steel blue eyes always 
 in motion, like those of a bird of prey. A reflec- 
 tion of steel seemed also to shine upon the hair, 
 now quite white, and closely cut, with which his 
 head was, as it were, helmeted. The long, still 
 blond moustache softened a little this mask of a 
 condottiere of the fifteenth century, set on the body 
 of a giant, with shoulders equal to carrying an ox. 
 The general was celebrated in the army for his 
 herculean strength, which permitted him to renew 
 the exploits of the Marshal de Saxe, and to break 
 in half a five-franc silver piece, as much as for his 
 bravery, equal to Ney's, or his personal eccentrici- 
 ties. 
 
 The former colonel of Zouaves, who twice had 
 escaped, during the war, from German fortresses, 
 made a point, rivalling in that his most brilliant 
 colleague in the cavalry, of never wearing an over- 
 coat. He was accustomed to take only one meal a 
 day, apportioned in accordance with the system of 
 training adopted by English oarsmen, in order not 
 to grow stout. He did not smoke, in order to keep 
 his stomach, " la place dfarineSy^ as he called it,
 
 236 PASTELS 
 
 of the body unimpaired. He was a swordsman 
 capable of holding his own with Camille Provost, 
 the fencing master of the Mirlitons club, that 
 grand artist of fencing. He wielded the single 
 stick with the same superiority, and on the days 
 when he went to take his racquet in the Tuileries 
 Garden Club, it was a regular fete among the ten- 
 nis players, just as it was a fete at the house of 
 Gastine when he amused himself there by making 
 a few patterns on cardboard with bullets. I call 
 him, laughingly, ^'•felis niilitaris" a pleasantry 
 which he does not yet seem to me to clearly under- 
 stand, but for which he forgives me, as he is kind 
 enough to like me, having known me from my 
 early boyhood, through family connections. And 
 he is truly a military animal, endowed by nature 
 and by his inclinations for a life of war, just as the 
 lion — feUs ho — or the tiger — felis tiger — are 
 endowed for hunting in the desert or the jungle. 
 
 And I found him, this hard-featured personage, 
 leaning against a mullion of one of the doorways 
 of the grand salon of the H8tel Werekieff, watch- 
 ing, about four o'clock in the afternoon, a dancing 
 lesson that was being given, by a master in a frock 
 coat, to seven or eight little girls or misses, from
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 237 
 
 ten to sixteen years of age, and as many small boys 
 or lads of the same age. 
 
 Madame Werekieff, who adored her two daugh- 
 ters, Nadine and Louise, — Nadia and Loulia, 
 — of whom one was thirteen and the other fif- 
 teen, had permitted them to use her grand salon 
 as the scene of their polkas and waltzes, on Sun- 
 day, and during the hours when she received. 
 
 She herself received her friends in a smaller 
 salon, by the side of the other, and many of her 
 visitors, attracted by the sound of music, and the 
 desire of soothing their eyes with the fresh young 
 faces, passed into the dancing-hall before leaving the 
 hStel. I had done so ; but that General Gamier 
 should have had the same idea, and that he should 
 enjoy the spectacle of these couples turning to the 
 sound of the piano, and the hand-clappings of the 
 master as he marked time amid the youthful peals 
 of laughter, this entirely disturbed my ideas of this 
 specimen of a modern Montluc, who led the life of 
 an old bachelor, dividing his time between the 
 ministry to which he had been attached for a year 
 past, his two furnished chambers in the Rue 
 Galilee, not too far from the Bois, the fencing 
 school, and the few visits he paid. I knew him to
 
 238 PASTELS 
 
 be intimate with the Count Werekieff, one of the 
 most difficult left-handed fencers in Paris. That, 
 however, did not justify the interest that he seemed 
 to take in this improvised ball, and, while shaking 
 his hand, I ventured to repeat my question, " You 
 here ? " at the risk of drawing upon myself one of 
 the sharp retorts such as he had given in my 
 presence to an indiscreet person who had ques- 
 tioned him about his post during the coming cam- 
 paign : " I shall be employed against the Prussians 
 — there, is that enough for you ? " 
 
 He was less sharp with me, doubtless, because 
 this was not an " affair of service," and in a tone 
 half-surly, half-cordial, he replied : " I am a psy- 
 chologist, too." He gave one of those chuckles 
 which have earned for him the reputation of being 
 a disagreeable fellow ; then, recurring to the sub- 
 ject : " It is the countess's second daughter, the 
 blonde in a red dress, who is dancing with that 
 tall, thin fellow." 
 
 " Yes," said I, « Nadia." 
 
 " She is going on thirteen ? " he asked, and, 
 without waiting for my reply, " and she is already 
 deep in the ways of the world. You see over 
 there, in a corner, that little, chubby, rosy fellow. 
 
 I
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 239 
 
 who is sulking ? Observe what graces she shows 
 her partners, as they dance near him. See that 
 smile ? that air of not knowing that the little 
 fellow is jealous ? Yes, jealous ! Still another 
 turn — there, another smile. Do you know, he had 
 quite a quarrel with her there, near me, a few 
 minutes ago, while I pretended not to listen. He 
 asked her to dance this waltz with him ; and what 
 do you suppose she replied ? ' No, I have taken 
 Edgard for my " flirt " to-day.' If you could have 
 heard that ! The red-cheeked boy is going to cry. 
 Look at his face. And the little beggar is amused 
 — she is amused by it ! " 
 
 The manoeuvres of this childish coquette were, 
 indeed, so comic and so evident, that I commenced 
 to follow little Nadine's waltz with a curiosity equal 
 to the general's. Her little feet, shod in fine patent- 
 leather shoes, turned gracefully, the tresses of her 
 long blond hair waved prettily over her waist, 
 while a belt, drawn in to its last eyelet-hole, gave 
 her an inconceivable slenderness, even for her. 
 She was still a little girl, but so tall in her 
 red dress, with so crafty an expression on her face, 
 rosy from pleasure and exertion, that one could 
 presage exactly the sort of worldling she would be
 
 240 PASTELS 
 
 in a few years. Her sister Loulia and the others 
 appeared dull and heavy by comparison with her, 
 who ended by dancing till the last. The piano- 
 playing went on still, and the master continued to 
 clap his hands, turning around by himself, until, at 
 last, Nadine threw herself, as if overcome by 
 fatigue, into a chair near the one occupied by the 
 little red-haired boy, to whom she commenced to 
 talk, while fanning herself, and showing by her 
 smiles that, after having wounded him by jealousy, 
 she wished to bring him back and prove her 
 power. 
 
 " Is this finished ? " said the general. " Then I 
 am off. I dine in town at half-past seven, and 
 I have to dress. I dine ? A mere form of speech. 
 Are you coming ? " 
 
 A mere form of speech, in truth, for it was one 
 of his whims to leave his home after having taken 
 a repast according to his principles, and to sit 
 at table without touching a dish. But every one 
 receives him, and I, who receive him and admire 
 him in all his ways, followed him out of the ball- 
 room. We entered the antechamber ; he took his 
 cane from the hands of a valet de chambre^ and 
 regarded me contemptuously while I put on my 
 
 il
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 241 
 
 fur overcoat. We reached the street, and he 
 straightened himself in his closely buttoned frock 
 coat, tight as a tunic, without seeming to have 
 a suspicion that, at the close of this cold February 
 day, it was freezing hard. He struck the sidewalk 
 with his foot, which is slender and beautiful, in 
 spite of his height. He placed his hat on the side 
 of his head, as if it were a military cap. He 
 carried himself proudly, but he had a right to. 
 He is so brave, and I love that swaggering manner, 
 which is so thoroughly French. 
 
 He was very silent at first. But I, who knew 
 him so well, saw by his frowning, and his manner 
 of gnawing his moustache, that he wanted to tell 
 me a story. I expected some old tale of the war 
 or of the Commune, his favourite subjects. I was 
 wrong in regard to the nature of the anecdote. 
 But I was right as to his desire to give me one of 
 the stories he was so fond of telling me. I am 
 so good a listener, and, hero though he is, he has 
 still his little corner of vanity. It is not for a 
 writer to scoff at such vanity. 
 
 " Satanic little girl ! " said he, abruptly. " If her 
 father knew how to bring up his children as well 
 as he knows how to parry a lunge. If I were
 
 242 PASTELS 
 
 only her father, — whack ! whack ! she'd soon 
 stop that." He made the motion of whipping a 
 horse with his cane. Garnier is no academician, 
 and he does not mince his gestures or his words. 
 Still, I will do him the justice of saying that the 
 energy of his style does not degenerate into slang, 
 and that he reserves his oaths for the barracks or 
 the battle-field. His terrible face had expressed 
 such strange and extreme anger, while in imagina- 
 tion he corrected poor Nadia Werekieff, that for 
 the moment I found my hero comic, and I said to 
 him : 
 
 " You are too much the general, my dear gen- 
 eral, and all for a childish piece of coquetry." 
 
 " There was no childishness at all," interrupted 
 he, abruptly. " Ah, Monsieur Analyst, you, also, 
 with your ready-made phrases ! Look at me well. 
 I am a tough old fellow, an old soldier, a man 
 whose day has gone by. I know the way in which 
 you speak of us. But, tough old fellow, old soldier, 
 or has-been, I know much more about education 
 than all you pedagogues. I repeat it ; there is no 
 childishness about it. These impressions and 
 these faults of the twelfth, the thirteenth, or even 
 of the fourteenth year — you say they are nothing.
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 243 
 
 yet the whole life is affected by them. It is like 
 the little movement in the railway stations, which 
 switches the train. It is nothing more than that, 
 this movement, but it means the whole journey." 
 
 " That is very true," replied I, amused by his 
 comparison ; and, seeing him excited, I added, to 
 pique him a little, " but you exaggerate." 
 
 " I exaggerate ! " continued he, shrugging his 
 broad shoulders, " and what if I should tell you 
 that while watching, this last hour, that little red- 
 head devoured by jealousy, and that Nadia coquet- 
 ting with her booby of a partner, I saw there before 
 me, reproduced at forty years' distance, the scene 
 which made me become what I am ? There is 
 something that gives a sound slap to your theories 
 of childishness. Childishness ! " and he chuckled 
 again. " Yes," insisted he, " if there is in the 
 army a certain Gamier who has done his duty in 
 Italy, in Mexico, and elsewhere, instead of a 
 Gamier engineer, notary, lawyer, doctor, or what 
 not, the reason is to be found in a story as simple 
 as that which we have just seen and heard." He 
 looked up at the clock of a cab-stand. " I have 
 three-quarters of an hour to walk," said he, " to 
 finish my allowance of exercise for the day.
 
 244 
 
 PASTELS 
 
 Will you walk them with me ? That will re- 
 fresh your muscles, and I will tell you the 
 story." 
 
 " Accepted, mon genSral" replied I ; and, regu- 
 lating my step to his, we descended in the direction 
 of the Arc de Triomphe. 
 
 The winter twilight spread over the heavens. 
 The lamps of the carriages and the gaslights 
 struggled against the rising fog, as I listened to 
 this giant with muscles of steel relating to me, in 
 a voice which grew softer and softer, one of those 
 griefs of childhood, which are like the wounds we 
 inflict on our foreheads or cheeks by falling on the 
 stairs when we are very small. It is true, how- 
 ever, that we carry the scar to the end. 
 
 " Do you know," commenced he, " that I grew 
 up, I who am speaking to you, like one of those 
 little wretches we have just left, on whom is spent 
 two or three times the pay of a colonel, and who 
 have there, to serve them, five or six great lubbers 
 of valets ? And then, they enter into life with 
 luxurious tastes that make them unhappy every- 
 where. They lead the existence of substitutes, 
 which wears out a man more in a few years than 
 ten campaigns. Ah ! when I was a colonel, and
 
 THKEE LITTLE GIRLS 245 
 
 they passed through my hands, these papa's boys ! 
 — Whack ! Whack ! " — another motion of the 
 cane, like that for little Nadia. It is very lucky 
 for the young men of whom he was thinking that 
 the regulations forbid physical correction. And 
 he continued : 
 
 " Let it suffice for you to know that, up to the 
 year 1848, my father had two hundred thousand 
 francs income. He was in business — What ? Do 
 not ask me. I learned Arabic in a year, when I 
 was a young officer. I shall die before under- 
 standing one word about the speculations which 
 ruined my poor father in that fatal year of the 
 revolution. What I know very well, however, is 
 that he paid all that he owed, but at what a price ! 
 It killed him with grief. This catastrophe took 
 but six months for its accomplishment. In Janu- 
 ary we had more than four millions ; in September, 
 my mother was a widow with ten thousand francs 
 income, from a life interest, produced by an old 
 insurance. In October, instead of continuing my 
 education with a tutor, in our sumptuous h^tel in 
 the Eue de la Ville I'Eveque, I entered as a boarder 
 at the Lyc^e of Tours. Some friends of our family 
 had obtained a scholarship for me, in remembrance
 
 246 
 
 PASTELS 
 
 of my maternal grandfather, who died a general at 
 Waterloo. Have you seen his portrait at Ver- 
 sailles, with the hussar smoking his pipe in a cor- 
 ner ? I resemble him, though less robust, I am 
 sure. He could carry four guns, with extended 
 arms, by inserting his fingers in the barrels." He 
 stretched out his hand to represent this feat of 
 strength. " I have never been able to carry 
 more than three," — here a sigh ; then he con- 
 tinued : 
 
 " I was fourteen years old when I set out thus 
 for Tours, my mother going with me to install me 
 in my first barracks. 
 
 " And do you know what made my heart so heavy 
 when I passed over the threshold of the college ? 
 The remembrance of my father ? No. The idea 
 of death offers nothing definite enough at that age 
 to make one really suffer. Regret at losing my 
 liberty, at leaving my mother and sister, my elder 
 by a year, and who vied with each other in spoil- 
 ing me ? You arc wide of the mark. The lycee 
 represented to me comrades, and I had already 
 such vigorous fists that I knew no fear of any one. 
 My mother and my sister had promised to write to 
 me, and then I knew that, by my entering the
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 247 
 
 college on a scholarship, their comfort was pro- 
 portionately increased. But there, — I was in 
 love. You must understand perfectly, notwith- 
 standing my fourteen years scarcely reached, I was 
 stupidly in love, and with a young friend of my 
 sister, who was just my age, and whose name was 
 Lucie. She was exactly the same type as Nadia : 
 blond hair, the colour of wheat, — there is a ro- 
 mance in that, — eyes like cornflowers, — another 
 romance, — and the most graceful suppleness in her 
 every movement. The charm of the young girl, with 
 all the roguishness of the child. Smile, look as if 
 you do not believe it. Yes, I loved her, if to love 
 is to think always of the same person, to execute 
 with delight her countless caprices, to be unhappy 
 when she frowns, happy when she smiles at you, to 
 go when she says to you ' go,' to remain when she 
 bids you ' stay.' In short, one of those sentiments 
 which we consider fresh as a rose, or banal as a 
 cabbage, according as it is a question of ourselves 
 or of our neighbour." 
 
 " I have no difficulty in believing you, my 
 general," replied I ; " the most delicate of our 
 poets has written verses on a similar senti- 
 ment :
 
 248 PASTELS 
 
 "< Vous aviez ITige oil flotte encore 
 La double natte sur le dos — ' " ^ 
 
 " I don't know," said he, cutting short my quo- 
 tation. " Anyhow, there were most heart-rend- 
 ing adieus between Lucie and me, at least on my 
 part, when I had to start for college. Remember 
 that we had been in the habit of seeing each other 
 two or three times a week, and that for years we 
 had played at being little husband and wife ; that 
 we had passed a part of the summer together in the 
 country with her relatives, while her father was 
 putting my father's affairs in order. We had made, 
 in my sister's room, solemn promises not to forget 
 each other. She gave me a medal to bring me good 
 luck, which I fastened to my watch-chain, swearing 
 to wear it always, and then behold me embarked for 
 my lyc^e in the country ! I had to get up at drum- 
 beat, at half-past five, I who had always at home 
 slept till seven in summer, and eight in winter. I 
 learned to wash myself in cold water, in a dormi- 
 tory without a fire, and before a tap of copper from 
 which the water slowly trickled, I who formerly 
 
 1 " You still were of the age when hung 
 The braided tress upon your back." 
 
 I
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 249 
 
 had a valet de chamhre to draw my curtains, light 
 the wood-fire in the grate, and prepare me a warm 
 bath. I had to replace the dainty cookery of a rich 
 man's chef de cuisine with the ordinary fare of the 
 dining-room, served in double-quick time, on marble 
 tables without a napkin, and in dishes as thick as 
 my hand. But I had in my veins a few drops of 
 my grandfather's blood, of that good blood which 
 endured Spain and Russia, and in three days I was 
 so thoroughly acclimatized, that when my mother 
 came to see me during the vacation at All Saints' 
 Day, she found me grown large and filled out. I 
 can see myself still, sitting near her in her room at 
 the hotel where she was stopping. 
 
 " ' My poor child,' and she embraced me, * you 
 are not very unhappy ? ' ' No, mamma.' ' They 
 are all kind to you ? ' * Yes, mamma.' And then 
 she described to me the Rue Neuilly, where she 
 was living. She gave me a minute account of their 
 apartments and of their habits, and said that they 
 had only one servant now, and that she had to think 
 of putting some money aside for my sister, in 
 case of her death. 
 
 " All these things touched me, at least those that 
 I could understand ; but I must own, to my shame.
 
 250 
 
 PASTELS 
 
 that I was much more preoccupied with how to put 
 a certain question. You can imagine what ? 
 
 " I had written to Lucie ; she had replied once, 
 then I had written again, and received no answer. 
 And it was news of Lucie that I wished to ask my 
 mother for. 
 
 " Would you believe it, with this frame," — and 
 he gave a loud " hum-hum ! " — " with this face," — 
 and he turned toward me a sort of leonine muzzle, 
 — "I have always been timid about what I held 
 nearest my heart, and it was not till the second day 
 that I ventured to say to my poor mother, ' And 
 Lucie ? ' while blushes of shame spread over my face. 
 
 " My mother, thanks to Heaven, did not notice it. 
 She had other cares on her mind. 'Lucie?' said 
 she, ' we have hardly seen her at all lately. I 
 think that she is well. We have been so busy with 
 getting settled.' And that was all. My mother 
 left, and I remained alone once more in the old 
 lycee. I wrote one more letter, then once again, 
 still no answer. I racked my brains trying to ex- 
 plain this silence to myself, under shelter of my 
 dictionaries, during the evening study-hour, and, 
 more prosaically, I broke innumerable pen-knife 
 blades in carving the initial s L. H. on my desk. I
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 251 
 
 tried to carve them worthy of her, for I continued 
 to love her as naively as I have since seen con- 
 scripts love their sweethearts. Peasants and chil- 
 dren resemble one another, and, like cattle, 
 ruminate — ruminate — ruminate — without being 
 too conscious of it. What added further to my 
 secret exaltation, was the constant reading, on Sun- 
 day evening, when the week ended, of the mischie- 
 vous romances of Gustave Aymard. I saw myself 
 setting out with Lucie for the pampas, feeding her 
 with the fruits of my hunting expeditions, and a lot 
 of nonsense, not more absurd than that with which 
 you favour the lovers in your books, while my non- 
 sense had the excuse of being lined with true feel- 
 ing, I was sincere in my childish folly. How 
 many men can say as much ? 
 
 " It was decided that I should go to Paris for the 
 first of January, and on the 28th of December, 
 1848, — 1848 and 1888 are quite far apart, and yet 
 it seems but yesterday to me, — I found myself in 
 a cab, about five o'clock in the evening, in weather 
 like this, seated facing my mother and my sister, 
 and so happy to find myself once more sharing their 
 affection. I embraced one, I embraced the other. 
 I laughed, I had tears in my eyes. I told them
 
 252 PASTELS 
 
 that I loved them, and that I had taken the first 
 prize with my theme ; that the usher was spiteful 
 and that we should be very happy to dine all three 
 together ; in fact, I poured out those incoherent 
 words in which the nervous joy of children un- 
 bosoms itself. Mine, alas ! vanished very suddenly, 
 merely on passing the threshold of my mother's 
 lodgings. When I set out for Tours, she was still 
 living in our h8tel. It was there, in these narrow 
 rooms, that, for the first time, I gained, by contrast, 
 the real impression that we were ruined. Some of 
 the furniture which my mother had saved from the 
 wreck contrasted cruelly, by its elegance, with 
 the poverty of the lodgings. Her full-length por- 
 trait and that of my father, which had formerly 
 decorated the panels of our grand salon, here 
 almost touched the carpet with their frames, so low 
 was the ceiling. No more footmen to receive us, 
 but a maid of all work, who was kneeling before 
 the fireplace to light an economical fire of coke in 
 a grate. With a glance I grasped all these details, 
 and I understood ! My heart contracted, and more 
 still when, having questioned my sister on the sub- 
 ject of Lucie, she replied to me with a bitterness 
 which was not natural to her : ' I scarcely see her
 
 THEEE LITTLE GIRLS 253 
 
 now ; we are not fashionable enough for her. She 
 is a heartless girl.' 
 
 " Heartless ? Not fashionable enough ? Do you 
 wish the proof that, notwithstanding my fourteen 
 years, I was truly in love, with all the silly hopes 
 which struggle against evidence ? What my sister 
 had just told me agreed but too well with Lucie's 
 silence. I ought to have guessed, or, at least, had 
 a presentiment that it was all over with this child- 
 ish romance, my first, and, my faith, my last. 
 Since then, I have no longer had the time or the 
 taste to play Hercules at the feet of Omphale, as 
 you say. 
 
 " Well, no ! I would not admit that end, and 
 the day after my arrival I made my way to 
 Lucie's house, a hotel in the Rue Chaptal as beau- 
 tiful as ours had been. I arrived, I rang. The 
 door of the vestibule opened ; I saw a heap of over- 
 coats, I heard music. Without reflecting, I passed 
 into the salon, the door of which the servant 
 opened, and I found myself in the midst of a little 
 costume ball, where were dancing polkas, waltzes, 
 and quadrilles, gay as these we saw just now, 
 about fifty children of my age. Before the brilliant 
 dresses, the gay laughter, the little gliding feet.
 
 254 
 
 PASTELS 
 
 the music of the piano, I stood bewildered, like 
 a night-bird thrown suddenly into a crowd of birds 
 of the day, while I heard Lucie's mother, with that 
 genuine kindness which she always showed toward 
 me, and which puts to flight your nonsense about 
 heredity, say, * You have come just at the right 
 time ! You will dance with the others and remain 
 for supper — Lucie ! ' — and she called her daugh- 
 ter, who, disguised as a shepherdess, had for a 
 partner — I remember it as well as my first battle 
 — a little torero, with a toy bull under his free 
 arm. 
 
 " Lucie approached ; she saw me. I have had 
 several trying sensations in my life — I bear the 
 trace of them," he put his forefinger on the scar 
 which cuts his face — " but the greeting of her 
 whom I had been accustomed to call, to myself, 
 my little wife, the look of her blue eyes, the way 
 in which she gave me the tips of her fingers, and 
 hurried off instantly to continue her waltz, — that 
 was so unexpected, so contrary to all my dreams, 
 and so disdainful also, that I remained nailed to 
 the spot, while the mistress of the house, believing 
 that she had confided me to friendly hands, busied 
 herself in attending to the other guests. There 
 
 ii
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 255 
 
 were among them a number of my old comrades, 
 some of whom recognized me, and bade me good 
 day with the indifference of children absorbed in 
 pleasure. But what mattered it to me? Dum- 
 founded by Lucie's reception, and bewildered by 
 timidity, I still tried to speak to her. As she 
 always danced on the same side, I managed to 
 slip over there, not without stumbling over a 
 number of chairs, and treading on a number of 
 feet. At last, behold me in an angle of a window, 
 lost between two men who were standing there, 
 as you and I were just now, and within an arm's 
 length of Lucie, who was chattering as she fanned 
 herself. I listened. She talked of this and of 
 that, with the torero. Ah I how I should have 
 loved to have him in the court of the lyc^e, and at 
 the ends of my fists ! And in a moment this is 
 just what I heard : ' Who, then, is that ugly little 
 collegian, with whom your mother was speaking 
 a moment ago ? ' I saw the colour come to Lucie's 
 cheeks. She blushed for me, and said, with an 
 awkward air, ' I believe that he is a certain little 
 Garnier.' ' What a guy ! ' said the torero, and 
 Lucie laughed and repeated, ' Yes, what a guy ! ' 
 " At that moment the gentlemen moved, and I
 
 256 PASTELS 
 
 looked at myself in a mirror just in front of me, 
 on the other side of the room. I saw myself with 
 my close-cropped head, my great ears standing out 
 from my head, my chin cut by the black satin 
 collar we wore in military fashion, my body look- 
 ing like a pudding in my tunic, and that schoolboy 
 air, in which there is a little of everything — of 
 the soldier boy and of a colt too high on its legs, 
 of shrewdness and stupidity. I found myself so 
 ugly that my rage against my old friend was 
 drowned in a feeling of shame. If I remained 
 there, I felt that I should weep and cry out, and 
 I escaped, overturning once more chairs and people, 
 my face red as the stripe of my tunic ; and when I 
 found myself in the street, I commenced to sob 
 like a fool. 
 
 " I could not have said exactly, whether what 
 I felt was indignation, jealousy, wounded vanity, 
 or simply betrayed love. Anyhow, as soon as my 
 sobs were suppressed, I took my way back toward 
 the humble lodgings where I had at least hearts 
 true to me. I was stopped on the edge of the 
 sidewalk by a crowd of people who were watching 
 a company of lancers returning from official fatigue 
 duty. I had the good fortune to be pushed against
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 257 
 
 a bench, which I mounted, and from which I could 
 see those superb soldiers file past. You remember 
 them ? I saw their shako with its red plumes, 
 their lance with its guidon, the heads and cruppers 
 of their horses. ' How handsome they are ! ' said 
 a little girl of the people, who stood near me, in an 
 ecstasy of delight. 
 
 " Is it strange, that right there, when I heard 
 this cry of admiration from the little street vaga- 
 bond, almost immediately after having heard the 
 disdainful remarks upon my appearance, uttered 
 by the rich girl, — yes, it was on that spot that 
 I first formed the idea of wearing a similar 
 uniform, and of hearing people say, as I passed, 
 ' How handsome he is ! * Need I confess to you 
 that with this project were mingled the most 
 extravagant hopes of conquering once more the 
 heart of Lucie ? That hope quickly vanished, 
 but the seed that had fallen upon my heart that 
 December afternoon, sprang up, and you know the 
 harvest. Do you now understand why I took such 
 interest in the chatter of little Nadia just now, and 
 why I said to you, ' There is no childishness 
 there?'" 
 
 We were before his door, and I left him, my
 
 258 
 
 PASTELS 
 
 head filled with the only sentimental story which 
 I was ever to hear him tell. In going up the 
 Champs Elys^es in the dusk, which had now quite 
 fallen, I remembered what M^rimee had said of 
 himself : that the first germ of distrust and skepti- 
 cism had been sown in his heart by a sneer of his 
 mother, heard from behind a door ; and, thinking 
 of this sort of dust of sensations which flies about 
 infant hearts, and these thousand invisible grains 
 which may spring up for good or for evil, — as the 
 general had said, — I reflected that it was a very 
 serious thing to have sons and daughters, and that 
 many take this serious thing very lightly. 
 Venice, Mat/, 1888.
 
 i 
 
 I
 
 m. 
 
 ALINE 
 
 ANOTHEK CHRISTMAS STORY 
 
 Although I have scarcely reached that age of 
 which the poet says, in such melancholy fashion, — 
 
 '< Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita," 
 
 I already count almost as many friends under the 
 sod as above it, and, at certain times of the year, 
 when it is a festival on the calendars, on the streets, 
 at family firesides, or in the eyes of the children, 
 there comes to me, with a feeling of great tender- 
 ness, — and with much contrition also, at times, 
 the remembrance of those for whom there can be 
 no more festivals. How can one think of the 
 dead without remorse for not having loved them 
 enough when they were living ? How many faces 
 have appeared to me at such moments ! Some of 
 them fatigued, old, worn by time ; others quite 
 
 259
 
 2G0 
 
 PASTELS 
 
 young, with that freshness and grace inseparable 
 from youth ! Alas ! there is neither youth nor old 
 age in the eternal shadow into which they have all 
 alike disappeared. Then, just as the wanderer 
 through a gallery, after having examined all the 
 pictures, finishes by fixing upon one canvas, on 
 which he concentrates his attention, I finish by 
 choosing, among these phantoms, a form and a 
 remembrance on which I fix my thoughts. This 
 form becomes so palpable, so exact is my remem- 
 brance, that it moves my heart to quicker pulsa- 
 tions. The red blood tinges once more the cheeks 
 for ever decomposed. Those eyes, tliat for years 
 have ceased to see, become bright and observe once 
 more. Lips unclose and tremble. They are going 
 to smile, they are going to speak. Here are hands, 
 shoulders, an outline, a breath, a soul. It is a 
 semi-hallucination, so powerful that I dread these 
 crises of memory on account of the inevitable 
 dreams which haunt my slumbers the following 
 night. But who has not known, on the morrow of 
 an interment, those obscure nightmares, so strangely 
 mingled with delight and terror, in which one sees 
 the dead with the double sensation, that they are 
 really there, alive, before our eyes, — and yet that
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 261 
 
 they are dead ? We talk with them, we press 
 tliem to our hearts, we wander in their society 
 amongst the objects of daily existence, and we 
 recall to mind at the same time the details of their 
 funeral procession, which we have followed, which 
 we have sometimes headed, without comprehending 
 how they are here, when we know they are doivn 
 there. 
 
 I do not know whether all men are equally the 
 victims of this painful reflux of the past upon the 
 present. One must believe not, since so many 
 old people survive, with great light-heartedness, 
 all their companions. My destiny has willed that 
 I, when quite a child, should see many whom I 
 dearly loved depart from me, and I continued to 
 love them only too well, even then. Thus, I have 
 had, since that period where each new day seems 
 a new life, anniversaries only too numerous. And, 
 to take only one of them among so many others, 
 since my tenth year, this day of Christmas, so 
 full of joy for other little boys, represents to me 
 the most melancholy of souvenirs, that of a little 
 girl about my age, who died two days before this 
 festival, and who had been my first friend.
 
 262 
 
 PASTELS 
 
 Even to-day, from which this death dates a 
 quarter of a century back, when I have many other 
 crosses upon which to hang other wreaths in the 
 cemetery of dead affections, I cannot double this 
 bend of the year without seeing, once again. 
 Aline, — that was the name of my little dead 
 friend, — and the old house in the country where 
 we lived together, she on the third floor and I on 
 the second, comes back to me once more, with its 
 garden, and the circle of volcanic mountains which 
 bounded the horizon of all the streets. I can see 
 the colour, almost black, of the lava of which the 
 city is built, the narrow streets, over whose paving- 
 stones sounded the clatter of the wooden sabots of 
 peasants on their way to market, the unfinished 
 cathedral which dominated this sombre village, 
 and other details. On the first floor of our house, 
 a baker who made cracknels in the shape of trefoils, 
 and a blacksmith in whose forge bare arms beat 
 the red iron amidst a shower of sparks ; before our 
 windows the public square, where stood the statue 
 of a general of the first Republic, slaying his 
 enemy, and my little friend Aline in her mourning 
 dress, — she had just lost her mother at the time 
 that her father took up his quarters above us, —
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 263 
 
 and round about her the garden, which was the 
 refuge of our happiest days. 
 
 This garden belonged to the landlady, a pious 
 old lady and an invalid, who never came down 
 into it. We used to see her profile, dignified by 
 two long, white curls, worn in the English fashion, 
 and a white cap with light ribbons, as she sat 
 behind the window-casing of the first floor. One 
 of the panes of this window was of a greener glass, 
 a difference of shade which gave an added touch 
 of age and decay to this face always bent over 
 a book of prayers or some piece of crochet work 
 intended for the poor. Beyond the wall of this 
 garden, which was bounded by others, the moun- 
 tains lifted tlieir mutilated cones or their swelling 
 round tops, and threw into relief the ruined for- 
 tress castles which crowned their summits. I 
 could draw this garden again to the very walks 
 with its borders of boxwood, its gooseberry bushes, 
 packed in straw in the autumn, its pear-trees 
 stretching out like hands along the walls. At the 
 mere thought of it, I recall the perfume of the 
 syringa at the bottom of the garden, under 
 which Aline sat, on one of those last afternoons 
 when she was able to go out, coughing feverishly,
 
 264 PASTELS 
 
 and pale as the flowers on the shrub above 
 her. 
 
 There were also long rows of rose-bushes, tied 
 each to a slender stick, and in the season, on these 
 bushes, some most magnificent roses, with purple 
 hearts, and others with half-closed hearts, which I 
 used to pluck before the time, in order to tear open 
 their still folded petals. " Ah I naughty Claude," 
 Aline would say to me, " you have killed them." 
 Butterflies such as flitted about among these flowers 
 I think I have never seen since, although they 
 were only many coloured red admirals, brimstone- 
 butterflies, swallowtails with wings, furnished with 
 spurs, and peacocks, marked with eyes of blue. I 
 pursued them with the desperate ardour of the 
 huntsman, but Aline never permitted me to pin 
 them, as was my dream ; and when I brought one 
 of these fragile insects to her, she would take 
 it between her fingers to admire the delicacy of its 
 colours, then she would open her hand, and watch 
 its escape in wheeling and irregular flight. 
 
 These were our joys of summer, but we also 
 adored the garden in winter, when the snow effaced 
 the lines of the paths, when, on the walls and on 
 the branches, the night frost suspended real dag-
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 265 
 
 gers of sharp ice, and when we recommenced our 
 great project, never to be realized, of building in 
 this snow a real home, to shelter all three of us, 
 Aline, myself, and — must I confess it ? — a great 
 doll which she had, and which she called by turns 
 "Marie" and "Our Daughter." It was a marvel- 
 lous doll, with blue eyes between real eyelashes, 
 with red cheeks, and blond silken hair, with jointed 
 arms and legs, — in short, an incomparable play- 
 thing, which would have been the source of eternal 
 shame to me, if my comrades at the lyc^e, which I 
 already attended, had suspected its existence. But 
 when Aline was there, what could she not have 
 made me do, so much did I love this sister whom 
 chance had thrown into my neighbourhood ? 
 
 The charm of Aline was in a sort of serious 
 gentleness, which made her a very different child 
 from all those I have known since then. She was 
 small, delicate, even fragile, and, as I have said, 
 too pale, so that it made one's heart ache to 
 remember she had lost her mother from consump- 
 tion. From that period, she showed the precocious 
 gravity of young creatures destined not to live, 
 with that air of being already finished, of being too 
 perfect, which distinguishes them. The restraint
 
 266 PASTELS 
 
 which this little girl of nine years exhibited in her 
 slightest actions, the modesty of her gestures, 
 her orderly care of everything about her, an in- 
 voluntary antipathy she felt for all noisy games, 
 the irreproachable goodness of her conduct, the 
 visible sensitiveness of her whole being — these 
 were all so many qualities which it seems ought to 
 have rendered her odious to a boy such as I was, 
 impetuous, awkward, disobedient, and brutal. It 
 was, however, a contrary effect that was produced 
 on me, and, from the day that I began to be her 
 friend, she acquired over me an influence the more 
 irresistible as I yielded to it as if by instinct. 
 To-day, when I try to reconstruct my childish 
 heart after all these years, I recognize that this 
 innocent little girl, whose light footsteps made no 
 sound on the stone stairway of the old house, was 
 the first to awake in me that reverence for the 
 gentle feminine spirit that the most cruel experi- 
 ences can never entirely tear from the heart. 
 With my other companions there were no esca- 
 pades of which I was not capable, and I had to be 
 severely punished at times for having evaded my 
 nurse's watchfulness in order to carry out a 
 certain number of exploits reserved for the worst
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 267 
 
 little vagabonds in the town : to stand upright on 
 the edge of the fountain which ornamented the 
 Place de la Poterne, and drink of the water pouring 
 out from the copper lion ; to seat myself astride on 
 the iron balustrade of the grand stairway which 
 joined the Boulevard de I'Hopital to an alley con- 
 structed below, and to let myself slide down to it. 
 Naturally I fell into the fountain, and I rolled 
 down the entire stairway. I had been wet, torn, 
 bruised, then severely punished. Ah, well ! I 
 never found myself near Aline during these after- 
 noons of Thursdays and Sundays, when we were 
 allowed to play together, without a new person 
 awakening in the half-savage little boy. I ceased 
 to shout, to leap, to gesticulate, for fear of dis- 
 pleasing this little miniature fairy, whose dainty 
 fingers had never a spot, whose garment had never 
 a rent. They set her before me as a model, and I 
 did not resent it. I obeyed her as naturally as 
 I disobeyed others. I accepted her games, instead 
 of proposing mine. I admired everything about 
 her, from the fineness of her blond hair and her 
 soft voice, to the smallest indications of her 
 wishes ; for example, the care with which she 
 guarded the box-tree hung with cakes, given us on
 
 268 PASTELS 
 
 Palm Sunday, without touching them. I had 
 stripped my own tree that very evening ; hers 
 lasted into the autumn. It is true that, wishing 
 one day to play at dinner with one of these cakes, 
 we were obliged to break it with a stone, it was 
 so dry. But never had one of mine given me so 
 much pleasure. 
 
 When we could no longer play in the great gar- 
 den, — and during the last year we were hardly 
 ever able to go down into it, for my little friend 
 was too feeble, — the place wc loved best was her 
 room, a narrow chamber with a single window 
 which oj)cncd upon the square, and from which we 
 could distinctly sec the plumes in the hat of the 
 bronze general perched on his pedestal of cannons 
 and balls. Have I said that Aline lived alone with 
 her father and a maid, a countrywoman of mine 
 who was called Miette ? The father held a modest 
 position at the prefecture. But the family must 
 have known better days, for the rooms were filled 
 with out-of-date furniture, which attested an old- 
 time elegance, and the floor was completely cov- 
 ered with an old carpet which deadened the sound 
 of footsteps. What made this impression of for-
 
 THREE LITTLE GIKLS 269 
 
 mer days more complete was that Aline and I 
 loved to spread out on this carpet, with its faded 
 tints, various playthings that had belonged to her 
 mother. Without doubt this unfortunate woman 
 had been as careful a child as was her own little 
 daughter, for she must have played, herself, with 
 these toys that we passed thus in review. Almost 
 all bore the stamp of another period, a delicious 
 air of fragile and slightly worn articles. We loved, 
 above all, a collection of personages made of col- 
 oured cardboard, and which were made to stand 
 upright by the aid of a small piece of wood glued 
 to their feet, and which represented, in appropriate 
 surroundings, the inhabitants of a village ; but it 
 was a village where the inhabitants wore the cos- 
 tumes of shepherds and shepherdesses of the old 
 regime. We compared them, with an inexhaust- 
 ible interest, with the peasants who came to sell 
 their potatoes, chickens, peas, and grapes, accord- 
 ing to the season, in the great square, on market- 
 day. 
 
 We also loved some little books, almanacs of 
 bygone years, squeezed into bindings and covers of 
 discoloured silk, and other books with pictures 
 where we looked in astonishment at little boys in
 
 270 PASTELS 
 
 high hats, and coats with monumentally high col- 
 lars, and little girls in furs with hair dressed in 
 Prud'hon style. There were also old-fashioned 
 housekeeping sets with chinaware dimmed by age ; 
 magic lanterns in whose slides we distinguished 
 the uniforms of the soldiers of the emperor. 
 
 The dead mother of my little friend lived again 
 in a picture hanging on the wall, a family group 
 after the old-time fashion, where she was repre- 
 sented as very small, and hugging the head of a 
 sheep. The lowered curtains softened the light. 
 The open fire made a pleasant sound. There was 
 no other clock in this little chamber than the rays 
 of the sun, which, entering through the window, 
 showed dancing particles of dust, and turned, and 
 turned with the flight of day. On the mantelpiece 
 a little barometer, in the shape of a house, was 
 entered and left, in turn, by a Capuchin and a nun. 
 And I should have been perfectly happy if I liad 
 not surprised tears in the eyes of Aline's father, 
 when by chance he came to watch our play, and 
 my companion coughed in that heartrending man- 
 ner which had already vaguely disturbed me, for 
 the first time, under the syringa. 
 
 In thus spreading before me the museum of her
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 271 
 
 antique playthings, Aline displayed a sort of pious 
 grace, turning the leaves of the books with the deli- 
 cacy of a breath, replacing the tissue-paper over the 
 engravings without a crease, more of a fairy than 
 ever, in comparison with the lout I always felt my- 
 self to be when watching her dainty gestures. But 
 we should not have been children if childishness 
 had not been mixed with the poetry of these games, 
 and this childishness was represented by the doll of 
 which 1 have spoken. This child occupied so high 
 a place in Aline's affections that I ended also by 
 looking upon " Marie " as a person of flesh and 
 blood, and by giving myself up in good faith to this 
 comedy which all children of all times have impro- 
 vised, still improvise and ever will, to their great 
 delight. 
 
 When Aline commenced to talk to me of " Marie," 
 saying, " Marie has done this," " Marie will do 
 that," " Marie likes this toilet," " Marie does not 
 like another," it appeared to me perfectly natural, 
 and I helped to prepare the meals of this miracu- 
 lous doll. I set the table for her in the corner of 
 the fireside, which we had chosen for her room. 
 Tiny furniture, much too small for this great doll, 
 adorned her imaginary chamber. It was some old
 
 272 PASTELS 
 
 furniture which had been given long ago to Aline's 
 mother, with quite a little doll, without doubt, for 
 ours, in the midst of this furniture, assumed the 
 proportions of a young giantess. " Marie " pos- 
 sessed only one armchair suited to her size, which 
 I had bought for her, and in which Aline seated 
 her, in paying calls, without our being surprised 
 that it occupied twice the space of the bed. A 
 stupid, everlasting smile played about her porcelain 
 mouth. When she was seated in this armchair, 
 motionless, her hands in her muff, a little velvet 
 toque on her head. Aline, after fondly contemplat- 
 ing her, never failed to remark, " Is she not beau- 
 tiful ? You would think she was going to speak." 
 
 At other times, strangely profound sentences fell 
 from these lips which were accustomed to speak of 
 or to " Marie," sentences such as one does not 
 allow that children can utter, no doubt because the 
 contrast is too great between the customary non- 
 sense of their amusements, and the sadness of cer- 
 tain reflections. Thus, apropos of a bird that 1 
 had lost, I remember that, one day, in this same 
 room, and among these same playthings, we got to 
 talking of death, and that she asked me : 
 
 " Are vou afraid of death ?"
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 273 
 
 " I do not know," I answered. 
 
 " Ah I " said she, " life is so tiresome. It is 
 always the same thing ; one rises, one dresses, one 
 eats, one plays, one goes to bed, and then one has 
 to commence all over again. But when one is 
 dead — " 
 
 " When one is dead, one becomes a skeleton," 
 said I, finishing the sentence over which she had 
 hesitated. 
 
 " No," said she, " one goes to see mamma and 
 the angels." 
 
 I leave these words, with the premature weari- 
 ness and the innocence which they contain, to the 
 philosophers who busy themselves with the psychol- 
 ogy of the child. They have only the merit of 
 being authentic. As for me, I long ago gave up 
 trying to comprehend this mystery among myster- 
 ies, the dawning of an intelligence and of a heart. 
 At what moment commences in us the suffering of 
 thought ? At what second the pain of loving ? 
 Are not the souls of the woman and of the man 
 already complete, in the astonishment which the 
 inexplicable separation from the dead mother 
 inflicts on her orphan child, and in the passionate
 
 274 PASTELS 
 
 tenderness which is inspired in a boj of ten by the 
 suffering delicacy of the companion of his games ? 
 Delicate and suffering, — ah I My poor Aline 
 was much more so than my dull, friendly sympathy 
 could })erceive ; and there came a time, in the 
 beginning of the winter that 1 was ten years old, 
 when they no longer permitted me to play with 
 her, in order not to fatigue her, — a week in which 
 she did not leave her bed, — and a day, the day 
 before Christmas, when 1 entered weeping into that 
 chamber, which had been so sweet to me, to look 
 for the last time upon Aline. She was dead, lying 
 on lier bed, over which hung a crucifix, as com- 
 pletely motionless as the doll placed near her, with- 
 out doubt to satisfy sonic last fancy of the sick 
 child, and which watched her from the foot of tlie 
 bed, seated in her great chair. Only the blue eyes 
 of " Marie," those laughing glass eyes, so gay under 
 their black lashes, continued to open and to shine, 
 unlike those other eyes of heavenly azure, which 
 were closed for ever. The cheeks of " Marie," 
 those porcelain cheeks painted with the brightest 
 vermilion, and her rosy mouth preserved still the 
 brightness of youth, while the waxy pallor of Aline's 
 thin cheeks, and the livid violet of her lips, grieved 
 
 (
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 275 
 
 me to contemplate. How did I come to remark 
 this contrast at an hour which drew hot tears to 
 my eyes ? It seems as if children possess such 
 keen activity in their senses that these senses per- 
 form their functions almost by themselves, even 
 when the soul is occupied by the most sincere sor- 
 row. Yes, I can recall having seen that with the 
 same glance of the eye : my dead friend, the doll 
 near her, and, a little further away, Aline's father 
 crouched in an armchair, and even the gesture 
 with which this man clasped his right hand in his 
 left, and the line of brown knitted work on his 
 wrist 
 
 There floated through the chamber the delicate 
 perfume of white lilac. It was the old lady below, 
 whose profile and curls had fascinated Aline and 
 me, who had sent these flowers, so rare in our city, 
 and whose perfume I had never smelt. And when 
 I had remained some minutes motionless, as if 
 stupefied at this spectacle, Miettc, who had taken 
 me in, took me by the hand and said : " Go and 
 say good-bye to her." 
 
 I went up to the little bed and rose on tip-toe ; 
 then in the midst of the perfume of the lilacs, I 
 felt, at one and the same time, on my lips the cold
 
 276 PASTELS 
 
 cheek of the little dead girl, and against my own 
 cheek the supple, as it were living, caress of the 
 curls of her hair, which 1 had disturbed in leaning 
 over her, — and in my heart an inexpressible 
 sadness. 
 
 i 
 
 Months passed, and my parents continued to 
 inhal)it the old house in the old town. Only they 
 thought it right to send me as a boarder to tiio '' 
 
 lycee, without doubt because, since Aline's death, 
 and the loss of her softening influence, I had 
 become an untanial>lo young animal. 1 had a 
 holiday once a month, when 1 had not been too ^ 
 
 unruly, but twice a week, Thursdays and Sundays, 
 we went for a walk, two by two, across the town, 
 but without talking; such were the rules of the 
 schools of those days. 
 
 It often hap|)ened, when we marched along the '* 
 
 boulevard by the side of Uic prefecture, that I met 
 Aline's father, either going to or returning from 
 his otTice. He walked, dressed in black, a little 
 bnit, although he was not forty years old, holding 
 in his hand a cane headed with an ivory knob, ># 
 
 which I rememl>ered well. lie never neglected to 
 look for me in the lonir file of bovs in their sombre
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 277 
 
 tunics, and to bow to me with a sad, gentle 
 smile. 
 
 Ou my side, I never failed, when I had leave out, 
 to visit him. Miette would come to let me in, with 
 complimonta on my looks and my size, and bid me 
 enter a sort of little study, which the widower 
 occupied, and which communicated by a door with 
 the chamber of my little friend. One day, when 
 tiiis door was open, 1 could not restrain a furtive 
 look, and the father, who surprised this glance, 
 said, simjily : 
 
 " Would you like to see her chamber once 
 more ?" 
 
 Wo entered it ; it was in summer. The father 
 opened the closed shutters, and the sun flooded 
 with light this chaml)er of the dead child. The 
 cheerful light envclo|)ed the threadbare carpet over 
 which we had played so often, the bed, now hung 
 with sorgo, where I had seen her, so pale, so sadly 
 motionless, the cupboard where slept the inhabit- 
 ants of the village, and " Marie," the doll, seated 
 in her armchair on the chest of drawers, her blue 
 eyes still open, her mouth still smiling, and in her 
 visiting-dress. 
 
 " You remember how Aline loved this doll ? "
 
 278 PASTELS 
 
 said the father, taking it and showing it to me. 
 " Would you believe it, she asked to have it put in 
 her arms when she was dead, to carry it to heaven, 
 to show to her mamma. Miette wished to bury it 
 with her, but I could not bear to part with a single 
 thing which she had loved." 
 
 Again months passed away — many months. 
 It was the third Christmas since Aline had died, 
 and many changes had taken place. I was a boy 
 of thirteen who had already smoked his first 
 cigarette, — one Thursday, on a holiday, in the 
 garden once so loved l)y Aline, not far from the 
 line of rose-trees where I used to search for the 
 pretty brown and green insects, those golden 
 beetles which sleep in the hearts of beautiful 
 roses. The old lady with the long white curls was 
 still sitting behind the window of the first floor, 
 but the fall of a ladder had broken a hole in the 
 glass of this window, and the green pane had for 
 ever disappeared. 
 
 Miette had also disappeared. I had seen her, 
 one afternoon, at the four o'clock play-hour, arrive 
 at the threshold of the court of the college. She 
 had asked to see me in the parlour, and the worthy
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 279 
 
 creature, with an earthy complexion, — the colour 
 of the dried nuts which she drew from her blue 
 apron, — had brought news which seemed mon- 
 strous to me. The father of Aline was going to 
 be married again. He was to be married to a 
 widow with a little girl of eight. This little girl 
 was to occupy Aline's chamber. Miette related to 
 me how she had taken leave of her master when 
 the marriage had been decided upon. 
 
 " Monsieur is the master," as I said to him, " but 
 I loved madame and mademoiselle too well to see 
 others taivc their places. I am sure that it brings 
 misfortune to pain the dead." 
 
 And Miette related to me, on this same occasion, 
 the story of a widower who, on the eve of being 
 married to a second wife, awoke the night before 
 tlie ceremony, and felt his hand clasped by a hand 
 that was quite cold. 
 
 " It was that of his dead wife," added Miette, — 
 " and he died within a year." 
 
 Miette returned to her native village, and the 
 marriage took place. I had no need for my dear 
 Aline to return in the night to press my hand, to 
 make me take an aversion to her who was thus 
 taking the place of Aline in our house, and in her
 
 280 
 
 PASTELS 
 
 father's heart. It was only natural that this 
 unhappy man should wish to renew his life. But 
 it was only natural, also, that a boy of thirteen 
 should not understand it. I ceased, then, almost 
 entirely, my visits to the floor above ours, and at 
 the approach of this Christmas, which would be 
 the third anniversary of the death of Aline, I 
 believe I had not spoken ten times to the little 
 Emilie, — for so the newcomer was called. 
 
 That poor child, unconscious of the hatred 
 which I had vowed to her, was a stout, simple 
 child, who would have been very glad to have 
 played with me in the garden. 
 
 But the mere idea of this caused me to feel a 
 sort of anger against her, which was augmented by 
 the fact that, since the second month of her 
 intrusion into the house, I had seen in her arms 
 the beloved doll of my old-time friend, that 
 " Marie " who had been her little girl, — our little 
 girl. I recall with what a fit of rage I was seized, 
 when this sacrilegious spectacle forced itself upon 
 my eyes, one Thursday, during a week when I met 
 the father, the new wife, and the little girl. Mon 
 Dieuf how well I can describe to-day the scene 
 that must have been enacted in that household.
 
 THEEE LITTLE GIRLS 281 
 
 The mamma finds this doll in a cupboard, and 
 gives it for some minutes to her little girl. The 
 father enters. He sees the plaything in the arms 
 of the child. His heart aches. He meets the 
 glance of his wife, who spies on his face the trace 
 of that emotion, with that jealousy which second 
 wives always have for the first. The man does 
 not dare to say anything. Yet another wrong has 
 been done to the dead by the living. 
 
 But I, who had forgotten nothing of my de- 
 parted friend, felt a sort of instinctive hatred 
 of the little Emilie at this meeting. I once saw a 
 very savage angora cat of ours, which had lived 
 almost entirely on the roofs, and in the garden, 
 enter at the hour of his repast to find himself 
 face to face with a dog my father had received 
 that very morning. The cat had remained on the 
 window-sill, regarding this unknown intruder, not 
 daring to meet the approach of this ball of black 
 hair, that barked so noisily. For four days we saw 
 the cat thus, motionless, having in his green eyes 
 a sort of anxious stupor. Then he disappeared, 
 never to return. A similar animal wrath rose in 
 me, which alone can justify the villainous trick I 
 played this great girl, who was as clumsy, heavy
 
 282 PASTELS 
 
 and coarse as Aline was pretty and graceful. But 
 no ; it was something better than malice which 
 made me act ; it was a piety, almost ridiculous in 
 its manifestation and yet touching when I think of 
 it, and which I cannot regret. 
 
 It was, then, three years since Aline had died ; 
 but, although it was the anniversary of her death, 
 I hardly thought of it that afternoon. A carpet 
 of snow covered the garden, and one of my com- 
 rades had come to pay me a visit, this Christmas 
 eve, to get ready, in the principal walk, a long 
 slide. It was our favourite amusement, and the 
 winters were so long and so severe in this district, 
 that we learned to excel in it. Behold us, then, 
 under a cloudless sky, my comrade and I, rushing 
 one behind the other, sometimes upright with our 
 feet together, sometimes squatting and on one 
 foot, or with one leg thrown out, and falling head 
 over heels upon each other, shouting and laughing. 
 
 It happened that, when we were nosiest, Emilie 
 returned from her walk. Our exclamations at- 
 tracted her, and we saw her stop a minute under 
 the archway which opened into the garden, accom- 
 panied by her nurse. She held in her arms that 
 doll, the cause of my profound hatred of her. I
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 283 
 
 would not have been the malicious scapegrace 
 I then was, if I had not redoubled my shouts of 
 laughter and sport, giving myself up with greater 
 zest before her eyes to an amusement in which she 
 could not take part. 
 
 The little girl's desire to join in our play became 
 too strong. Suddenly, before her nurse could pre- 
 vent her, she placed her doll against one of the 
 sides of the gate, and darted forward. Her foot 
 slipped on the snow, and she fell. Her nurse 
 came to her rescue. Emilic, quite confused by her 
 fall, and her wet cloak, began to cry. The nurse 
 scolded her, and, taking her by the hand, led her 
 away to change her clothes. 
 
 They disappeared, both of them forgetting the 
 doll, who continued to smile with her red mouth 
 and blue eyes, by the side of the carriage-gate, 
 just as formerly, when Aline left her there to take 
 the air, — as she had also done at the foot of the 
 poor little dead girl's bed. 
 
 How did the idea of stealing this doll, that Aline 
 had loved so devotedly, come suddenly into my 
 mind, when, five minutes before, I had never a 
 thought in my head but the mad joy of sliding ?
 
 284 PASTELS 
 
 Another query that I leave to the psychologists 
 of children. Certain it is that the conception and 
 execution of this idea was the work of five minutes. 
 It was one of those sudden and irresistible tempta- 
 tions, of which I can recall several during my 
 school-life ; the sudden spring of the savage on his 
 enemy, or of an animal on its prey. I accom- 
 plished this theft, so suddenly conceived, with the 
 simple cunning which is, in fact, displayed by 
 savages and animals. I took advantage of a 
 moment when my companion turned his back 
 to me, to knock his boots against the trunk of 
 a tree, in order to clear away the snow collected 
 between the heel and the wooden sole. I seized 
 " Marie " from the place where she was lying, and 
 running to the upper end of our slide, I threw her 
 into an open shed which was close by, at the risk 
 of breaking her pretty porcelain face upon the 
 pieces of wood stored inside the place. I saw her 
 roll over the sticks of wood into a wheelbarrow 
 pushed up near the wood-pile. 
 
 As I threw her, I had uttered a cry loud enough 
 to cover the noise of any object knocking against 
 the wood, and my comrade could have divined 
 nothing of the culpable action I had just com-
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 285 
 
 mitted. And we were again sliding and romping, 
 more and more noisily, when Erailie's nurse reap- 
 peared once more in the archway. She looked to 
 the right and then to the left. She showed great 
 astonishment, looking once more to the left and 
 right, then under the archway, and into the garden 
 itself. 
 
 " You have not seen Miss Emilie's doll ? " she 
 questioned. 
 
 Fortunately for me, she put the question to my 
 playfellow, who replied with that good faith of 
 innocence, so difficult for certain children to simu- 
 late : 
 
 « A doll ? why, no ! " 
 
 " She told me she left it here when she wanted 
 to slide," said the nurse, 
 
 " It is not possible," replied the other ; " we 
 have not left this place a minute, have we ? " in- 
 sisted he, addressing himself to me. 
 
 " Not a minute," replied I, approaching. I must 
 have been very red, but we had been running and 
 the air was very keen. 
 
 " This is very strange," replied the nurse. 
 " Where can she have left it ? Ah, she will 
 get a good scolding for it."
 
 286 PASTELS 
 
 I was not naturally spiteful, but the idea that 
 Emilie, besides the grief of losing her doll, would 
 have to listen to a severe lecture, far from causing 
 me the slightest remorse, filled me with delicious 
 joy. This joy would have been complete, if I had 
 not been obliged to ask myself, in returning to our 
 apartment, what I could do to prevent " Marie's " 
 ever being found again. This preoccupation lasted 
 all the evening, and through the night. Neither 
 the traditional goose stuffed with chestnuts, nor 
 the Christmas-tree prepared at the house of my 
 friend, who had come to play with me in the after- 
 noon, nor the present I received, nor the late return 
 through the streets of the town, white under the 
 moonlight, with a fairy-like whiteness of snow, nor 
 the plan for a skating expedition the next day, to 
 a frozen pond ; in a word, nothing succeeded in 
 diverting my thoughts from this fixed idea. " If 
 only the doll has not been discovered this evening ! 
 If only it is not found in the morning ! " 
 
 It was above all when I was in my bed that this 
 anxiety became painful even to physical suffering. 
 All the sensations of repugnance which the second 
 marriage of Aline's father had caused me began to 
 revive, mingled with the tender feelings which I
 
 THKEE LITTLE GIRLS 287 
 
 felt for her. Her chamber, to-day profaned by the 
 intrusion of another, rose before my eyes, as I had 
 known it. The species of hallucination of which I 
 spoke, in commencing this recital of my most 
 remote friendship of childhood, recurred with 
 extraordinary force. My little friend reappeared, 
 her smiles, her pallor, her delicate gestures, and all 
 the old articles of which she had been the vigilant 
 and gentle guardian. In the same flash of recol- 
 lection I saw the other in possession of the bed 
 where Aline had yielded up her soul, handling with 
 her nasty dirty fingers the bindings of faded silk, 
 soiling with her shoes, with their turned over 
 heels, — for I had remarked that in her, — the 
 carpet on which we used to arrange the dainties 
 for our little dinners, robbing Aline ; for, to my 
 child's heart, it was a theft, — this possession of 
 the playthings of my little dead friend. Dead ! I 
 repeated this word mechanically to myself, and I 
 saw the tomb, once so fresh with flowers, now 
 scarcely cared for, when I had visited it on the 1st 
 of November of this same year ; its kneeling plaster 
 angel was broken, and no one had replaced the 
 missing hands. I was too pious at this period not 
 to be certain that the departed was living in
 
 288 PASTELS 
 
 heaven, as she had said, with her mother, and other 
 angels, real angels there, who carried lilies in 
 imperishable fingers of pure light. Yet, my im- 
 agination pictured this frail little creature, lying 
 in the earth, as I had seen her for that last time on 
 her bed, when I had said adieu to her in that room 
 perfumed by white lilacs. A horrible feeling of 
 solitude wounded my soul. I remembered the 
 wish the child had expressed, the desire of carry- 
 ing her "child" with her down yonder. Ah! 
 would that I could go to the cemetery with the 
 doll that I had stolen, give some money to the 
 grave-digger, and that " Marie " might rest near 
 Aline, — for ever. 
 
 The next morning, about ten o'clock, if any one 
 had come into the deserted garden, and to its most 
 remote corner, he would have seen, at the foot of 
 the syringa, now black and bare, a young lad in a 
 collegian's tunic, hastily digging a hole in the earth 
 with a spade. A canopy of fog hung heavily over 
 the town, a black fog, in which the red sun flickered 
 like a ball of fire, eaten away by shadows. The 
 snow covered the roofs, in the distance. In the 
 house, without doubt, all were engaged with the
 
 THREE LITTLE GIRLS 289 
 
 preparations for dinner. Many persons were at 
 high mass. With his awkward foot the boy 
 pressed upon the spade, then he carefully deposited 
 the brown earth in a pile, that the damage done by 
 his work might be less noticeable. He sometimes 
 searched the threatening heavens, for the promise 
 of a fresh fall of snow, which would still better 
 efface all traces of his work. Near the boy, the 
 form of a very small child was extended, but at the 
 first look one would have recognized that this form 
 was simply a doll, wearing a toque, her hands in a 
 tiny muff hung from her neck. This doll seemed 
 formerly to have been elegant, but was now very 
 badly cared for, to judge from the rents in her 
 robe, the nudity of one foot, deprived of its shoe, 
 and the scratches on her china face. An immovable 
 smile, however, floated on her still red lips, and in 
 her glass eyes. And now slowly, softly, from the 
 dark vault of heaven, stars of snow began to fall. 
 The young lad looked up anew at the sky with 
 singular joy. The hole was large enough now, 
 almost as deep as his arm. He took the doll, and 
 with a childish gesture pressed on her cold porce- 
 lain cheek a kiss, another on her blond and silken 
 curls, then laid her body carefully to rest in the
 
 290 PASTELS 
 
 earth, as if it had been the remains of a being who 
 had once possessed a soul. He then commenced to 
 fill in the grave with guilty haste. 
 
 A window on the second floor of the house 
 opened, back there at the end of the garden. A 
 voice called " Claude ! " and added, " you must 
 come in." 
 
 " Here I am," called the boy, placing the spade 
 by the wall ; and with his tunic already quite white 
 with snow, he ran joyfully in the direction of the 
 voice that called him. 
 
 " What have you been doing ? " said the same 
 voice from the window. 
 
 " I have been making a fine slide for to-morrow," 
 replied he, and it was a lie, on top of a theft. And 
 yet, though he confessed some days later, with all 
 the scruples of a precocious fervour, the young lad 
 never, never could repent of having stolen, to bury 
 thus, that Christmas morning, under the peaceful 
 snow, the child with blue eyes, red cheeks, and 
 blond hair, of his first friend. 
 
 Paris, December, 1888.
 
 AN UNKNOWN
 
 vf-fiuk^^^
 
 AN UNKNOWN 
 
 I HAD dined that evening at a restaurant, in 
 company with a dozen artists and writers, — you 
 know, one of those monthly dinners of which Paris 
 counts a great number. This had been a charm- 
 ing dinner, with hearty spirit, and anecdotes free 
 from spite. When men of talent are thus assem- 
 bled and their vanities consent to disarm, nothing 
 is more exquisite than the conversation, especially 
 if the company does not include too many note- 
 takers, odious executioners of all intimacy. A 
 play of Shakespeare's, recently adapted for the 
 Od^on, and which turns upon the complete resem- 
 blance between two persons, had led us to speak of 
 this phenomenon, at times so surprising as to be 
 fantastic : the identity of physiognomies between 
 two beings who have never seen each other, who 
 have no ties of blood, and who yet are absolutely 
 alike, seemingly one being, going and coming under 
 similar forms, with the same character, and some- 
 times with the same destiny. 
 
 293
 
 294 PASTELS 
 
 The dinner had been prolonged to a late hour, 
 and toward midnight I found myself returning 
 toward the Faubourg St. Germain, where I live, 
 with one of my colleagues, to-day, alas ! confined 
 in an insane asylum, and who even then disturbed 
 my sympathy by the peculiarity of his manners. 
 What good would there be in printing his name 
 here, and dwelling on a misfortune which the 
 newspapers have already discussed too freely ? I 
 had remarked, during the dinner, that our conver- 
 sation had passionately interested and unnerved 
 him at the same time. He had kept silence, and 
 his face, worn by twenty-five years of literary life, 
 all thin and careworn, appeared to me more shriv- 
 elled still as we walked side by side. I teased 
 him about it, in a friendly fashion, in my usual 
 way. I had for him that peculiar affection which 
 an author feels for a critic by whom he has been 
 once perfectly comprehended. 
 
 Was it the visible sympathy of this raillery, or 
 perhaps the outcome of his suppressed emotions ? 
 However that may be, as we walked between the 
 Rue de la Paix and de Bellechasse, through the 
 deserted Place VendSme, then in the solitary Rue 
 des Tuileries, and, lastly, along the strange ruins
 
 AN UNKNOWN 295 
 
 of the Cour des Comptes,^ lighted by a cold, white, 
 winter moon, he also related to me a storj of a 
 resemblance. 
 
 It impressed me very much at the time, perhaps 
 on account of the emotion of the speaker, in such 
 contrast to his ordinary manner of bantering irony. 
 Mon Dieu ! how the days come and go ! I find in 
 my diary, at the head of this confidence, tran- 
 scribed that same evening, the date November 25, 
 1883. It is not four years since ! Of the ten of 
 us who dined together, two are dead, and he who 
 spoke to me that night, with a muffled accent, 
 almost trembling with concealed tears, would it 
 not have been better if he also had passed away, 
 instead of surviving as he is ? 
 
 " You saw truly," said he to me, " that this 
 conversation saddened me immeasurably. It re- 
 called a love-affair — can I call it a love-affair ? 
 in short, an emotion too intimate to put on the 
 table there, between bottles of liqueurs, cups of 
 coffee, and boxes of cigars. Ah, my friend," and 
 he pressed my arm fervently, " if you love, and are 
 loved, yes, believe me, I who am fifteen years older 
 than you and gray haired, never, never, refuse a 
 1 Auditing office.
 
 296 PASTELS 
 
 rendezvous to the woman you love, and who loves 
 you ; wherever she asks you to meet her, and when, 
 to do it, you must leave work, and duty, and 
 family, and no matter what, go there, hasten there, 
 even to the neglect of all your actual life. Under- 
 stand me well : one can recover all, make all 
 anew, position, fortune, friendships ; there is noth- 
 ing one cannot repair, with energy and a little good 
 fortune ; but a true rendezvous of love, where can 
 one ever recover it, when one has missed it ? 
 
 " You remember," continued he, more calmly, 
 " that I was in Venice two years ago ? 
 
 " Yes, for you wrote to me there for information 
 about the Cima of San Georgio in Bragora, and I did 
 not reply to you. You believed me, without doubt, 
 to be a prey to that soft and gentle dreaminess which 
 floats in the air of that city, where one hears no other 
 sound than the plash of the water under the oars, 
 and the clatter over the pavements of the heelless 
 shoes of the women, and a little music in the 
 centre of that marvellous square, framed by 
 arcades. I was dreaming, in fact, at Venice, but 
 not as you imagined. I had other phantoms to 
 evoke, on the tremulous lagoons, than those of the 
 women of Palnia, and the seigneurs of Bonifazio.
 
 AN UNKNOWN 297 
 
 Only you could not know it, neither you nor any 
 one. You would have needed to know my life, 
 and the secret of my first youth. What I went to 
 seek in Venice in 1381 was a souvenir of 1860. 
 You were at school then, in the seventh or eighth 
 grade, were you not ? And I, I was twenty-five, 
 and already held an oar in the galley in which you 
 will still be rowing when 1 shall be at rest for 
 ever. I was already the man whom you know, 
 and I had as great an aversion to my profession of 
 writer then as it inspires in me at this day, but 
 the accident of a first success, gained at the thea- 
 tre at an age when one timidly deposits manu- 
 scripts with the doorkeepers, had decided my 
 career. 
 
 " "What a singular and paradoxical personage is 
 Chance ! There are some whom he overwhelms 
 with favours at the end, after having tortured them 
 throughout their whole life : with me, it was the 
 contrary. At the same time that I saw my little 
 play put upon the boards of the FranQais with 
 applause, I met a unique mistress, the only one 
 who has left in my heart that touch of infinite 
 sweetness that should at least outlive our kisses. 
 But no, what usually survives is disgust and
 
 298 PASTELS 
 
 hatred. All my loves have been, since then, 
 simply fearful agonies about a sex. They have 
 done me harm, as I have done evil to them. My 
 mistresses have betrayed me, and I have ill-treated 
 them. But this one, the one of my twenty-fifth 
 year ! See, now, I cannot even pronounce her 
 name. I should burst into tears before you, like a 
 fool. She was a woman scarcely any older than I, 
 slender, with a soft, tender pallor, and brown eyes, 
 whose glance, when I think of it, still makes me 
 warm in a hidden corner of my heart. She loved 
 me. Why ? For what ? Ah ! novelist of analysis 
 that you are, I will answer you like your dear 
 Hamlet. Ask why this moon shines, why the stars 
 are in the blue above, why there is a thought in 
 your brain, a life for man, and a life for things, 
 but never ask why one loves. One loves because 
 one loves, and it means putting oneself on one's 
 knees before a heart that knows how to love as 
 before the one revelation of God there is in the 
 world." 
 
 I looked at him, while he was speaking, with a 
 curiosity that he divined rather than saw, for, with- 
 out looking at me, he replied : 
 
 " Pardon this sentimental outburst of mine ; I
 
 AN UNKNOWN 299 
 
 return to facts. I had met my mistress under cir- 
 cumstances of which I will spare you the details. 
 It would pain me to relate them, and they do not 
 belong to the story. 1 will only tell you that the 
 woman was married, and that chance had spared 
 me the odious torture of knowing the husband, 
 which leads a lover into the worst jealousy, or to 
 lowering and degrading intimacies. She was a 
 Parisienne, and belonged to that rich middle class, 
 in which household duties do not absorb a woman's 
 existence. 
 
 " I can give you an idea of her delicacy of mind, 
 by telling you that she never sought to attract me 
 to her house, and an idea of her passion from the 
 simple fact that she found, during the eighteen 
 months that we loved each other, an hour each day 
 to give me, sometimes in the morning, sometimes 
 in the afternoon, sometimes in the evening. 
 
 " Whatever the weather, and whatever the 
 obstacles in the way of this daily absence, I saw 
 her arrive at the appointed moment with her face 
 lighted by tenderness, and with eyes whose every 
 look gave me her entire heart. When I found her 
 growing pale, and her cheeks thinner, her eyes too 
 large, and with a cough that filled me with fear,
 
 300 PASTELS 
 
 she closed my mouth with her hand, that had fever 
 in its veins, and said, 'I see you so little, and 
 I love you so much ; that is all my illness.' And 
 we said no more, because we both of us knew that 
 she could not go away with me, on account of her 
 mother, who had only this one daughter in the 
 world, and whom it would have killed. In this 
 silence I felt that this creature belonged absolutely 
 to me, and I to her. I cannot explain in words to 
 you the sort of overflow of emotion which en- 
 veloped us, and in which we were both drowned. 
 And then she spoke, that I might not fall in 
 a deep gulf of sadness, in a voice that came from 
 the inmost recesses of her heart. No, one ought 
 not to love and to be loved thus. One can no 
 longer endure life ! 
 
 " This existence of divine felicity was interrupted 
 by one of those simple events that one ought 
 always to expect. Have you observed that human 
 prudence always foresees everything but the most 
 simple events, — the only ones that happen ? My 
 mistress caught cold leaving a ball ; she was 
 obliged to go to bed, and the physicians ordered 
 for her a stay in a warmer climate. 
 
 It was arranged that she should go with her
 
 AN UNKNOWN 301 
 
 husband to Italy. It was a cruel separation of 
 three months. However, we made our adieus with 
 good courage, although our correspondence was 
 more difficult than our passion could have wished ; 
 but we were so sure of each other ! I had such pro- 
 found faith in that tender heart, and she knew so 
 well my love ! And then we both subdued our 
 sadness from pity, the one for the other. She left, 
 and as she had come to me every day, so she found 
 the means of writing to me each day also, telling 
 me about her journey from Genoa to Pisa, then to 
 Rome, then to Naples, always seeking to make of 
 these travels something that should bring her 
 nearer still to me. She knew nothing of the 
 history of art, except the slight elements taught 
 in a young girls' school, but to please me, she did 
 her utmost to see in each city what my feelings as 
 a modern writer, roused by constant visits to the 
 Louvre, would have appreciated, 
 
 " All her letters thus had the charm of artistic 
 impressions with which her thoughts associated 
 me without ceasing, and all were imbued with a 
 tender solicitude for my work, begging me to show 
 her, by the completion of a book upon which I was 
 then busily engaged, that she exercised over me
 
 302 PASTELS 
 
 a happy influence. How sweet and beneficial they 
 were to me, — those letters ! They came in the 
 morning. My housekeeper brought me my mail, 
 and merely from the touch, on top of the news- 
 papers, and among the other missives, I recognized 
 the little square envelope, whose delicate perfume 
 accompanied me throughout the day ; for in the 
 scrupulousness of my amorous devotion, I carried 
 each letter about with me till a new one had come 
 to take its place. It was such an intimate and 
 profound joy to go in this fashion to my daily task. 
 I mounted the stairway to the directors of the 
 theatre, I seated myself in the editorial offices, I 
 entered into the cafes witli my fellow journalists. 
 What mattered to me the meannQ^ses of my pro- 
 fession, the epigrams of conversation, the asperities 
 of rivalries ? My letter and my dear secret were 
 with me ! 
 
 " You who pretend to know the human heart, 
 explain to me how I was able, attached thus to 
 this woman by the most tender fibres of my heart, 
 yes, how I was al»le to refuse to do the only thing 
 she had asked, not for me, but for herself, and in 
 a letter dated, in fact, from Venice ? She was 
 to return to France in a fortnight, and as her hus-
 
 AN UNKNOWN 303 
 
 band had left her to return a little in advance, she 
 wrote me a letter as passionate and foolish as the 
 others had been caressing and tender, a letter in 
 which, with phrases as burning as love could find 
 in its frenzy, she conjured me to leave everything, 
 to hasten to her, and give her a few days of com- 
 plete felicity in this city in which she adored, as 
 she told me, the infinite silence and deathlike 
 torpor. She explained to me exactly where I 
 should stay, and how I should see her ; that she 
 went about all day in a gondola, while her maid 
 remained at the hotel ; that I need not fear to 
 compromise her, and that she would be waiting 
 for me in the course of the forty-eight hours that 
 must elapse after the receipt of these pages. Yes, 
 explain to me how, sitting at my table, reading and 
 re-reading this letter, so unreasonable, but so full 
 of love, I was able to find in my reflections means 
 of resisting that impulse of the heart that urged 
 me to take the first train that left, to go there, to 
 throw myself at her feet and say, ' You asked me 
 to come ; here I am.' 
 
 " I had work to do, it is true, a little romance 
 in course of publication in a journal, but what of 
 that ? If I had suddenly fallen ill, the newspaper
 
 304 PASTELS 
 
 would have been obliged to content itself with the 
 rough sketch I had jotted down, and which I copied 
 later as the needs of the paper required. My purse 
 was not well filled, but what of that? If I had 
 lost money at play, I could easily have found 
 means to borrow more money than I should need 
 for this journey. Whatever she pretended, it cer- 
 tainly was not prudent for me to join her thus, 
 and we might have reason to repent it, but what of 
 that? Did she not run even greater risk every 
 time she came to pay me a visit in my little apart- 
 ment on the fourth floor, all decked with flowers 
 to receive her ? And yet it was this abject mixture 
 of prudence, of economy, and of reason, which 
 gained the victory over the desire of satisfying her 
 whim. ' She is going to return,' I said to myself. 
 ' It is too foolish,' and I replied to her in this 
 fashion, multiplying the tender assurances of my 
 fidelity, and explaining to her the difficulties of 
 my departure ; begging her to hasten her return, 
 but, in short, opposing a no to that passionate 
 desire of having me there, that she had shown 
 me. 
 
 " I remember — When this reply was sent I was 
 filled with remorse. I apprehended complaints and
 
 AN UNKNOWN 305 
 
 reproaches from her. This showed but a feeble 
 comprehension of that soul created for the sublime 
 in love, as the minds of certain men are created for 
 the sublime in ideas. She wrote to me that I was 
 right, and she returned. But, what she had con- 
 cealed from me, and what I learned when she reap- 
 peared once more in my chamber, and I held her 
 in my arms, was that her journey, instead of hav- 
 ing cured her, had hastened her end. She returned 
 to me a dying woman. Ah I I can still feel the 
 trembling of her moist hands on my face, the last 
 visit she had strength to pay to me, and I hear her 
 voice saying to me, ' Mon Dieu ! mon Dieu ! you 
 could not know, it is not your fault. Why did you 
 refuse me that last happiness ? ' 
 
 " Can you understand now," continued he, after 
 a silence, " the sort of melancholy with which I was 
 seized when I arrived in Venice, twenty years after 
 the death of that woman, who had loved me too well, 
 as she told me then, since she has rendered me for 
 ever incapable of being made happy by another love ? 
 I knew well I should find that melancholy, there 
 on the borders of that lagoon where she had 
 dreamed of wandering with me, but I thought my- 
 seK stronger against it on account of these twenty
 
 306 PASTELS 
 
 years. Think of it, twenty years of copy and of 
 boulevards ! We must believe that everything can 
 be cured, except the regret of having been loved 
 like that and being so no longer, for as I approached 
 that city from which she had made her heartrend- 
 ing dying appeal without my having comprehended 
 it, I commenced to be the prey of a species of inner 
 hallucination, which represented to me, till it caused 
 anguish, the feelings I should have had if I had 
 taken this route twenty years earlier. The train 
 sped along the narrow band of earth lapped by 
 water on both sides. This sombre water trembled 
 in the twilight, while the azure sky deepened at 
 the zenith, and the golden line made by the setting 
 sun extended along the edge of the horizon. How 
 gloomy, to me, was this dying away of the light ! 
 How sweet it had been, if I had thought that in a 
 few hours I should be near my only love ! I had 
 vowed to myself, that I might not plunge the knife 
 afresh into my old wound, not to stay at the hotel 
 where she had stayed. It was, however, the name 
 of that hotel I called out to the gondolier, on leav- 
 ing the train, from an instinct of passion stronger 
 than my good sense. And when I was installed in 
 this hotel, perhaps, — who knows ? — in that cham-
 
 AN UNKNOWN" 307 
 
 ber from which she had written that letter making 
 an appointment of rendezvous ; when I went to the 
 window and looked out on that divine landscape 
 with its silent water, mute clock-towers, sombre 
 heavens, and big stars, it seemed to me that time 
 had been suppressed, that my heart of former days 
 began to beat once more within me, that I had 
 never ceased to love that being so sweet and ten- 
 der, that I had come to the rendezvous, that she 
 would open the closed door, that the ardent wish, 
 flung out to me in presence of this same horizon, 
 had not been in vain. One remains young enough 
 to regret, even when one has become too old to 
 hope! 
 
 " It was fated that, just at this spot, I should en- 
 counter that resemblance of which I wished alone 
 to tell you. Then, I abandoned myself to my 
 recollections ! I had been, then, for several days 
 in that Venice so favourable to memory, because 
 she is herself but a memory, driving away and re- 
 calling in turn the image of the dead one who had 
 dreamed of being loved there, and of being loved 
 by me. You believe, perhaps, that in such a state 
 of mind I refrained from all relations capable of 
 breaking the sort of retrospective enchantment with
 
 308 PASTELS 
 
 which my past enveloped me. That would show a 
 poor acquaintance with the double character I have 
 always been, that you are, that all we miserable 
 writers are, who habituate ourselves so easily to 
 living in one fashion and thinking in another. 
 I used to come and go along the quays overhanging 
 the green water of the canals, along the narrow 
 alleys between the rows of houses, over the marble 
 stairways of the little arched bridges, across the 
 paved courts, where in the centre rose the sculp- 
 tured basin of a fountain with its chains, in short, 
 through all the fairy environment of which my 
 mistress had enjoyed the old-time charm. I thought 
 of her, and I carried my letters of introduction, 
 and I paid visits. Why ? Yes, why. Monsieur 
 Psychologist ? 
 
 " It was in the course of one of these visits, 
 made, according to the Venetian custom, in the 
 evening, after nine o'clock, that this extraordinary 
 resemblance came to give my sentimental halluci- 
 nation, as it were, a visible form, a body. A 
 woman entered the salon where I was, pretty 
 rather than ugly, but without anything which 
 could indicate to me, at the first glance, the emo- 
 tion with which she was to strike me. She had
 
 AN UNKNOWN 309 
 
 neither the delicate pallor nor the thin and suffer- 
 ing mouth, nor the tender eyes, those soft eyes 
 always so full of tenderness, of her I had so dearly 
 loved ; at most, she was slim, as she had been, 
 with that delicate and aristocratic profile which 
 I had so constantly evoked during the last few 
 days. But I only thought of it at the moment 
 when the newcomer began to speak. At the first 
 words she uttered, I shivered. At the second 
 phrase my heart began to beat, as if witchcraft 
 had suddenly restored to me my friend of former 
 days. It was the same voice, the same, but to an 
 extent that I cannot describe to you ; the tone, the 
 accent, the habit of speaking in a singsong manner, 
 at intervals, with an accent slightly suppressed, and 
 a little hollow. Shutting my eyes and listening to 
 her speech, I could have believed that the dead 
 woman was there, in the room, talking. I cannot 
 explain to you the revolution that that voice, that 
 ghost of a voice, if I may call it so, caused in my 
 heart. I should have liked to ask this young 
 woman to pronounce certain phrases, those that 
 vibrated yet in my memory, that ' J.A, mon Dieu ! ' 
 sighed out in our last interview, with the poor 
 thin hands straying over my face.
 
 310 PASTELS 
 
 " The unknown, who was soon no longer so to 
 me, for we were introduced to each other, carried 
 on a perfectly insignificant society conversation. 
 She was an Austrian countess, who was in Venice, 
 as I understood, for a season's pleasure, and in 
 the same hotel with me. This last detail was the 
 indirect cause of throwing me into a nervous state 
 bordering upon insanity. As I showed fear of not 
 being able to find my way back across the network 
 of streets, and was asking some one to get a gon- 
 dola for me, the young countess offered me a place 
 in hers, which I accepted. I know my age, and 
 I will not say, like our friend, the most foolish 
 of old beaux of this period, ' The women of to-day 
 are so cold, that you can take them home at mid- 
 night, in a cab, without anything happening.* 
 
 " If you have not been in Venice in the spring, 
 you cannot conceive the charm of the night on the 
 lagoon. The inanimate softness of the things 
 about you, the gliding of the gondola over the 
 sombre and yielding water, the masses of silent 
 palaces, the mysterious depths of the heavens, the 
 passing by turns through the clear moonlight and 
 the shadow, the calls of the boatmen at the angles 
 of the canals, — all conspire to envelope you in
 
 AN UNKNOWN 311 
 
 fancies which the air, at once warm and fresh, 
 renders almost real. The gondola glided along, 
 and through the open window of the dark little 
 cabin I saw the water, the palaces and the sky, 
 and I listened to my companion speaking. Her 
 voice — the voice of that other, of my adored phan- 
 tom — resounded through the silence of this sort of 
 floating coflin. I replied to her just often enough 
 to keep her from silence, and my mistress of old 
 made herself present to me through that voice. 
 I felt myself, with a mixture of delight and terror, 
 taking leave of myself, the real and living man 
 that I was, to become the man of former times. 
 No, she was not dead ! It was she who was speak- 
 ing to me in that voice only too well known. She 
 was going to say to me one of those phrases which 
 always made my heart fall to the ground, as I had 
 written to her one day, one of those sentences 
 which placed upon my soul, as I said to her again, 
 as it were, an invisible mouth. How well I under- 
 stood why she had called me here to have me to 
 herself, and to belong to me entirely, in the midst 
 of this enchanted calmness of all life. No, I had 
 not refused her this supreme happiness. No, I 
 had come, I had left all, to hear this voice say
 
 312 PASTELS 
 
 a ' thank you,' sweet as this night, fresh as the 
 murmur of this water, infinite as this heaven ! 
 And while I thus lost all idea of the hour, and 
 the woman with whom I found myself, this woman, 
 after some minutes of silence, in reply, without 
 doubt, to a thought that had just risen within her, 
 pronounced in that same voice, — you understand, 
 with that same voice, and with that same accent, 
 — the same words, * Ah, mon Dieu ! ' " 
 
 " And after that ? " said I. 
 
 " There is no after that," replied he, drily, as 
 if my question had suddenly broken the train of his 
 recollections. " She was thinking, without doubt, 
 of some purchase she had not made, or some letter 
 delayed. We arrived before the hotel, we disem- 
 barked, and I saw advancing to meet her a young 
 man who appeared to have been waiting for her in 
 the hall, with some uneasiness. It was her hus- 
 band, to whom she presented me, and whom she 
 loved, I knew by her accent in speaking to him. 
 At this moment the identity of the two voices 
 was so complete, and at the same time the circum- 
 stances which had permitted me a flash of illusion 
 were so changed, that my dream had a sudden 
 and final awakening. The reality appeared to me.
 
 AN UNKNOWN 313 
 
 my absurdity, my solitude. What a night I 
 passed, in weeping over the hours that I might 
 have had before her death with the only woman 
 1 had ever loved, or who had loved me ! But 
 what use m trying to make another comprehend 
 this ? No one comprehends another, since I did 
 not understand even her ! " 
 
 He said good-bye to me brusquely, and I did not 
 try to detain him. I watched him as he went 
 away, his figure slightly bent, down the deserted 
 Rue de Varenne, — and to-day I ask myself 
 whether his insanity, in removing from him the 
 misery of his physical and moral decadence, has 
 not permitted him to live again in imagination 
 with this woman of love for whom he could not 
 be cured. Would not that be better than writing 
 a thousandth review, or a twenty-fifth romance ? 
 
 f^enice, May, 1887.
 
 ANOTHER UNKNOWN
 
 ANOTHER UNKNOWN 
 
 The last word of this little romance, surmised, 
 guessed, rather than observed, perhaps created 
 through my fancy for melancholy dreaming, — 
 shall I ever know it? And what does it matter 
 to me ? It happens, however, that I sometimes 
 think more of it than even of the past events of 
 my own life, especially when the weather is gloomy, 
 as now, and when it is autumn both within and 
 without us, in the heaven above, as well as in that 
 inmost heaven of fancy which has its azure as the 
 other — and its clouds as well. I see once again, 
 as distinctly as if it happened yesterday, the first 
 of three meetings, which served as a subject for 
 my imagination. 
 
 I was on my way to Germany, where I wished 
 to hear a series of Richard Wagner's operas ; I was 
 not pressed for time, and I decided to make my 
 journey by short stages. My first halting-place 
 was Nancy. I wished to see Delacroix's picture 
 
 317
 
 318 PASTELS 
 
 representing the death of the T^meraire. The 
 picture was quickly seen, and the museum as well, 
 and I crossed the pretty square, ornamented with 
 gilded iron gratings, with its palaces, its fountains, 
 its statue, its happy silence, to enter the green gar- 
 den at the end of it, and which, at the close of this 
 warm afternoon, formed an oasis of delicious fresh- 
 ness. This little corner of the park was nearly 
 empty of promcnaders, but even if a compact 
 crowd had been squeezed under the great trees, 
 and along the green lawns, I should not the less 
 have remarked, I believe, the two persons whom 
 I remember at this present hour with that painful 
 interest which as a rule only attaches itself to 
 familiar faces. These two faces, one especially, 
 have they not passed, and repassed, a hundred 
 times in my reveries ? 
 
 Of these two persons whom I met in one of the 
 walks of this peaceful garden, one was a woman, 
 and the other a young man. The woman was a 
 brunette, delicate and graceful, with one of those 
 travelling costumes which attest, at the first glance, 
 the social status of her who thus possesses the 
 secret of being beautiful, even in the mirror of a 
 country inn, — whatever Alfred de Musset may
 
 ANOTHER UNKNOWN 319 
 
 have said about it. There is an art of refined 
 simplicity, which the grande dame alone will know 
 how to practise as long as there shall be grandes 
 dames and bourgeoises^ — that is to say, always. 
 
 This lady wore a costume of checked English 
 cloth, with a sort of little vest that scarcely out- 
 lined her figure, and a toque of the same shade 
 rested on the compact masses of her dark hair. 
 Her straight collar, her long cravat, her embroid- 
 ered gloves, her slender shoes of patent leather, 
 gave her a slightly masculine air, which suited her 
 the more admirably, as an essentially feminine 
 charm emanated from her eyes, and her smile. 
 Ah, these beautiful eyes, and they were in them- 
 selves the most passionate, the most mysterious of 
 romances ! They were the eyes of a loving woman, 
 which, in spite of myself, made me follow the two 
 promenaders, or rather, her. Ah ! those living 
 eyes, of which I cannot recall the colour — I only 
 saw their expression ! They were bathed in a 
 felicity which radiated over all her face, and ended 
 by betraying itself in a smile of divine softness, by 
 an abandonment of all her being in her manner of 
 walking. 
 
 She leaned on the arm of her companion, and
 
 320 PASTELS 
 
 one felt that each movement that they made in 
 unison communicated to her a tender emotion. 
 She was no longer a very young woman, and 
 although her beauty was untouched by time, the 
 expression alone of her features sufficed to show a 
 difference of nearly ten years between her and him 
 she seemed to love so tenderly, and he must have 
 been already twenty-five years of age. He was 
 himself pleasant to look at, slender, slightly pale, 
 and seemed grateful for being the object of such 
 affection. His gestures were gentle, his eyes re- 
 sponded to her eyes, and his smile to the smile 
 of his friend. They walked, and I followed them, 
 seeking to divine what mysterious rendezvous had 
 led them into this provincial garden. They evi- 
 dently belonged to the class of people in comfort- 
 able circumstances, an opulent and superior life. 
 They were not married : the difference in their 
 ages indicated that too clearly. From the tone of 
 her voice, heard at intervals, I should readily have 
 taken her for an Englishwoman, but how can one 
 judge of a woman of that age, when she belongs to 
 that European society which so completely oblit- 
 erates the most extreme differences of race ? 
 
 They walked continuously, hastening, retarding
 
 ANOTHER UNKNOWN 321 
 
 their steps, absorbed in their conversation, and 
 never regarding the innocent spy who followed 
 them, and who, suiting his step to theirs, assimi- 
 lated in thought a whole existence of clandestine 
 delights, envying the young man the sentiment he 
 inspired, and, still more, the woman the feeling 
 she experienced. Who has not known this last 
 envy, — perhaps the only one entirely noble, that 
 of an emotion so profound that one judges oneself 
 incapable of feeling it to this degree ? . . . 
 
 Four years had passed away, since then, four 
 years, during which I had studied human faces, 
 and participated in the inner life of many souls, a 
 prey to that strange curiosity as to the feelings of 
 others, which increases rather than diminishes 
 with time. This particular evening, I happened to 
 be in Paris, seated in one of the orchestra stalls of 
 a variety theatre, and during the entr'acte, I 
 examined the crowded hall with my glass. They 
 were giving the fiftieth representation of an ope- 
 retta in vogue, and my eyes did not meet, in this 
 summer audience, a single face to which I could 
 assign a name, or a character. And, suddenly, my 
 glass fell upon a front box, in which were a man and
 
 322 PASTELS 
 
 woman alone, — the man aged about fifty years, 
 heavy, stout, with a brutal face ; but the woman, — 
 where, then, had I seen that profile, leaning now on 
 a gloved hand ? Where those beautiful eyes ? 
 Where that mass of hair ? But the black hair had 
 become white in places, a bruised look was in the 
 eyes, the noble profile bore the impress of long 
 endured anxiety, and the bitter mouth was no more 
 to expand in a smile of felicity, as formerly, when 
 the green garden of the old city heard the footsteps 
 of the loving woman and her beloved. Yes, it was 
 truly she, and in spite of the ravages of years, in 
 spite of the expression of weariness imprinted on 
 all her features, I recognized, under the close hat, 
 the face of the woman I had followed with such de- 
 lighted looks under her travelling toque, the same 
 tint as her dress. 
 
 With whom, then, was she in this small theatre, 
 where she would have come two months earlier, if 
 she had been a Parisienne ? No more than I had 
 hesitated the other time to believe she was walking 
 with her lover, did I hesitate this time to believe 
 that she was with her husband. I examined this 
 man with a singular curiosity and without irony, — 
 I have never been able to appreciate the comic side
 
 ANOTHER UNKNOWN 323 
 
 of adultery. If it was his wife, it was certainly a 
 woman whose presence left him perfectly calm and 
 indifferent. With his two elbows on the red edge 
 of his box, his body fitting well in his frock coat, 
 he also stared about the hall, through his opera- 
 glass, from time to time, made some observation, 
 then, throwing himself back in his armchair, he 
 yawned, without troubling himself to put his large, 
 coarse hand over his mouth. 
 
 As no one visited their box during the intervals, 
 I felt more convinced that they were strangers, and 
 as this woman was so sad, as she seemed so lifeless, 
 so utterly joyless, she whom I had seen delighted 
 and radiant, I involuntarily thought of the young 
 man whom she had appeared to love so passion- 
 ately. Where was he ? What was he doing ? 
 Was he dead, absent, unfaithful ? Had there fallen 
 between them the inevitable separation of the tomb 
 or that of the will, more cruelly inevitable ? No, 
 it was not she who had been the first to give him 
 up. She had not, alas ! either the age or the 
 soul of the unfaithful. Her eyes lied marvellously 
 if she were not faithful and true, and I com- 
 menced once more to retrace the romance formerly 
 sketched by my fancy. I followed it out to the
 
 324 PASTELS 
 
 last chapters, those of the rupture, in which 
 all that made the joy of the heart becomes mar- 
 tyrdom, I divined that frightful period where the 
 mistress hopes and despairs by turn, where the 
 lover can neither confess nor conceal the change 
 in his affections. Benjamin Constant based 
 " Adolphe " upon the story of one of these 
 agonies. The Ellenore of his terrible romance 
 has two happinesses in her despair: she is free to 
 give herself up to her despair, and she is able to 
 die of it, while the Ellenores of the world continue 
 to live, and must dress, go out, go to balls, to 
 the theatre, pay visits, — with their demon in their 
 hearts. 
 
 Observation has its happy and unhappy chances, 
 more often happy, for he who goes always with 
 his eyes open gathers all sorts of details, for the 
 most part invisible to the majority of passers 
 through life, so similar to the passers in the 
 streets, in their indifference and their lack of 
 curiosity. How many hours have I lost, seated 
 at a table in a restaurant, ensconced in a corner 
 of a train, on foot on the sidewalks of a street, 
 in fact, anywhere the human animal allows it-
 
 ANOTHER UNKNOWN 325 
 
 self to be seen, how many hours have I lost in 
 deciphering, to the best of my ability, the character 
 and the destiny of creatures of whom I knew 
 nothing, except the flow of blood to their cheeks, 
 the expression of their lips in smiling, and of 
 their eyelids in winking, the sound of their voices, 
 their gestures, their costumes ? Lost ? Sometimes,' 
 yes, sometimes, no; and, to a certainty, I was' 
 inspired by my good genius, when, three months 
 ago, instead of wacching the sea, I began to prome- 
 nade the decks of the packet-boat that runs be- 
 tween Boulogne and Folkestone. 
 
 The calm sea was of a divine blue, that dark and 
 tender blue which it wears on fine days, and which 
 contrasts with that other tender, but too clear, blue 
 of the sky. I was on my way to England, and 
 already the deck of this boat procured me a fore- 
 taste of the London stations, thanks to the singu- 
 larity of toilets, thanks to the purple complexions 
 of some among the passengers. How many glasses 
 of port must certain of her Britannic Majesty's 
 subjects have consumed, to acquire that fiery red, 
 spread over the entire face. It was exactly by the' 
 side of one of these gentlemen, who resemble a liv- 
 ing and moving statue of apoplexy, that my eye fell
 
 326 PASTELS 
 
 upon, and recognized at the first glance, the young 
 man of the park at Nancy, the former friend of the 
 unhappy stranger whom I had seen at the theatre 
 the other evening. He had scarcely changed. His 
 moustache was a little thicker. He preserved the 
 same elegance of manner and attitude, but the eyes, 
 the beautiful tender eyes of the promenader in the 
 green garden were no longer there to envelope him 
 in their continuous caress. 
 
 A woman, however, was standing near him, 
 young, blond, and pretty, but with that prettiness 
 belonging to youth, beneath which was already 
 visible the future plainness and hardness of a mask- 
 like face. Her eyes were blue, but if blue eyes 
 are the most affectionate, they can also be the cold- 
 est, and hers were icy. The luminous waves of 
 intense emotion would never warm those eyes. For 
 the moment, the eyes and the young woman re- 
 mained insensible to the attentions of the young 
 man, who, visibly, was very much smitten with his 
 companion. He spoke to her with an anxiety to 
 please which scarcely induced her to turn toward 
 him and answer carelessly with thin lips, destined 
 to be some day so dry and pinched. Was she his 
 mistress ? Was she his wife ? I inclined to the
 
 ANOTHER UNKNOWN 327 
 
 latter hypothesis, on account of the air of perfect 
 respectability which emanated from her whole per- 
 son, evidently gowned by a fashionable dressmaker, 
 but without any of that personal atmosphere which 
 the other, the promenader of Nancy, possessed even 
 in her slightest gestures. It was of her, in short, 
 that I was thinking, and I saw on the unknown 
 young man's face a fleeting sadness, a touch of re- 
 gret and melancholy. I knew perfectly, although 
 I could not tell his name, or his story, or even his 
 country, that he had been loved, and that he was 
 loved no longer. But he never seemed to suspect 
 that he had known happier hours. After all, if he 
 loved, as he seemed to do, this cold and pretty 
 child, was he not happier near her, than he had 
 been near that other, who had loved him more than 
 he loved her ? And it is of this latter that I can- 
 not help dreaming, on these cloudy afternoons, 
 when the year is dying. Ah, how I wish I might 
 meet her yet once again, and receive from her a 
 confidence which she has doubtless never been able 
 to make, and which I would receive with such ten- 
 der emotion, with a pity almost religious ! But 
 this confidence I shall never receive, and I shall 
 long continue to feel myself the unknown friend of
 
 328 
 
 PASTELS 
 
 a sorrow that I could have understood, and perhaps 
 have consoled, the unknown friend of an unknown 
 friend, who will never know it. 
 Paris ^ November, 1885. 
 
 THE KND.
 
 L'SRARYFACIL/Ty 
 
 ^A 000 933 478
 
 'iiiilliiiiil