ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
 
• » • • * • »« 
 
Copyright, iS^^, by Littijf, Brovm. 
 
 Geupa it C? FarCs 
 
. ' ! • ,' Copyright, 1S99, 
 
 By Ljtti-e, Brown, and Company. 
 
 A /I rights reserved. 
 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 
 
FOR 
 
 MY SONS 
 
 WHBN THEY ARE TWENTY YEARS OLD. 
 
 9 
 
V\c\jj\ Zay\^ iMa*"'^ U'.b 
 
 re* 
 
 (I- 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Pack 
 
 Sappho . , . ^ 
 
 Between the Flies and the Footlights: 
 
 I. The Actor at Work 261 
 
 II. Madame d'fipinay's Dream 275 
 
 III. Provincial Circuits 282 
 
 IV. Theatrical Mourning 289 
 
 V. Stage-Setting and Rehearsals 298 
 
 VI. Drunkenness on the Stage 315 
 
 VII. Sixty Years on the Stage 320 
 
 VIII. Diderot's Advice to an Actress 329 
 
 IX. Fanny Kemble after her Memoirs 345 
 
 849303 
 
SAPPHO. 
 
 I. 
 
 " Come, look at me. I like the color of your 
 eyes. What 's your name ? " 
 
 *' Jean." 
 
 *' Just Jean?" 
 
 "Jean Gaussin." 
 
 ** From the South, I can see that. How old are 
 you ? " 
 
 ** Twenty-one." 
 
 "An artist?" 
 
 " No, madame." 
 
 " Ah ! so much the better." 
 
 These brief sentences, almost unintelligible amid 
 the shrieks and laughter and dance music of a 
 masquerade party, were exchanged, one night in 
 June, by a bagpiper and a female fellah in the 
 conservatory of palms and tree-like ferns which 
 formed the background of Dechelette's studio. 
 
 To the Egyptian's searching examination, the 
 piper replied with the ingenuousness of his tender 
 years, the recklessness and the sigh of relief of a 
 Southerner who has been silent for a long while. 
 A stranger to all that throng of painters and sculp- 
 tors, lost sight of immediately after his arrival by 
 
2 Sappho. 
 
 the friend who had brought him, he had been 
 sauntering" about for two hours with his attractive 
 fair face tanned and gilded by the sun, his curly 
 h.^iif ' close atid sh-ort as the sheepskin costume he 
 wore ; and a triumph, which he was far from sus- 
 pecting, arose and whispered around him. 
 
 Dancers jostled him roughly with their shoulders, 
 studio fags laughed and jeered at the bagpipe slung 
 over his shoulder and his mountain costume, heavy 
 and uncomfortable on that summer night. A Jap- 
 anese woman, with eyes suggestive of the faubourg, 
 her high chignon held in place by steel knives, 
 hummed as she ogled him : Ah I qu'il est beaUy 
 qtCil est beau, le postilion ! while a Spanish novia, 
 passing on the arm of an Apache chief, vio- 
 lently thrust her bouquet of white jasmine into his 
 face. 
 
 He failed to understand these advances, ima- 
 gined that he was cutting an exceedingly absurd 
 figure, and took refuge in the cool shadows of the 
 glass gallery, where a divan was placed against the 
 wall under the plants. That woman had come at 
 once, and taken a seat by his side. 
 
 Young, beautiful? He could not have told. 
 From the long sheath of blue woollen stuff, in 
 which her full figure swayed with an undulating 
 motion, emerged two round and shapely arms bare 
 to the shoulder; and her little hands laden with 
 rings, her wide-open gray eyes increased in ap- 
 parent size by the curious iron ornaments hanging 
 from her forehead, formed a harmonious whole. 
 
 An actress without doubt. Many actresses 
 
Sappho. 3 
 
 came to Dechelette's ; and the thought was not 
 calculated to put him at his ease, as persons of 
 that sort had great terror for him. She sat very- 
 near him, with her elbow on her knee, her head 
 resting on her hand, and spoke with grave sweet- 
 ness, with a touch of weariness in her tone. ** From 
 the South, really? And such light hair! That's 
 an extraordinary thing." 
 
 Then she wanted to know how long he had lived 
 in Paris, if the examination for admission to the 
 diplomatic service that he was preparing for was 
 very hard, if he knew many people, and how he 
 came to be at that party at Dechelette's on Rue de 
 Rome, so far from his Latin quarter. 
 
 When he told her the name of the student who 
 had brought him — *' La Gournerie, a relative of 
 the author — no doubt you know him" — the ex- 
 pression of the woman's face changed, suddenly 
 darkened ; but he did not notice, being of the age 
 when eyes shine without seeing. La Gournerie 
 had promised that his cousin would be there, that 
 he would introduce him. 
 
 " I like his verses so much ! I shall be so glad 
 to know him ! " 
 
 She smiled compassionately at his Innocence, 
 with a pretty drawing together of the shoulders, 
 '.and at the same time put aside the light leaves of 
 a bamboo with her hand, and looked into the ball- 
 room, to see if she could not discover his great 
 man. 
 
 The festivity at that moment was as animated 
 and resplendent as the transformation scene of a 
 
4 Sappho. 
 
 fairy spectacle. The studio — the hall rather, for 
 little work was ever done there — extended to the 
 roof, making one enormous room, and its light 
 and airy summer draperies, its shades of fine straw 
 or gauze, its lacquered screens, its multi-colored 
 glassware, and the cluster of yellow roses which 
 embellished the opening of a high Renaissance 
 fireplace, were illuminated by the variegated, 
 bizarre reflections of innumerable Chinese, Persian, 
 Moorish, and Japanese lanterns, some in perforated 
 iron carved like the door of a mosque, others in 
 colored paper shaped like different fruits, others like 
 open fans, flowers, birds, and serpents ; and flashes 
 of electricity, of a bluish tinge, would suddenly 
 pale all those thousands of lights, and cast a frosty 
 gleam, like a ray of moonlight, on the faces and 
 bare shoulders, on all the phantasmagoria of 
 dresses, feathers, spangles, and ribbons, jostling one 
 another in the ball-room, and sitting in tiers on 
 the Dutch staircase, with its massive rail leading to 
 the galleries on the first floor, which were over- 
 topped by the long necks of the double basses, 
 and the frenzied flourishes of the conductor's baton. 
 From his seat the young man saw it all through 
 a network of green branches, of flowering convol- 
 vuli, which blended with the decorations, formed 
 a frame for them, and by an optical illusion, in the 
 constant motion of the dance, threw wreaths of 
 glycine on the silver train of a princess's gown, 
 and placed a head-dress of dracaena leaves above 
 a Pompadour shepherdess's pretty face; and the 
 interest of the spectacle was doubled now for him 
 
Sappho, 5 
 
 by the pleasure of learning from his gypsy the 
 names, all renowned, all well known, which were 
 concealed beneath those fancy costumes, so amus- 
 ing in their variety and oddity. 
 
 That whipper-in, with his short whip slung 
 saltire-wise, was Jadin ; while that shabby country 
 cure's cassock a little farther on disguised old 
 Isabey, who had made himself taller by putting a 
 pack of cards in his buckled shoes. Pere Corot 
 smiled from behind the huge visor of an Invalide's 
 cap. She also pointed out Thomas Couture as 
 a bull-dog, Jundt as a thief-catcher, Cham as a 
 humming-bird. 
 
 Several serious historical costumes, a beplumed 
 Murat, a Prince Eugene, a Charles I., worn by 
 young painters, marked clearly the difference be- 
 tween the two generations of artists; the latest 
 comers serious, cold, with the faces of members 
 of the Bourse prematurely aged by the charac- 
 teristic wrinkles traced by absorbing financial 
 preoccupation; the elders much more boyish, 
 mischievous, noisy and frolicsome. 
 
 Despite his fifty-five years and the palm-leaves 
 of the Institute, the sculptor Caoudal as a hussar 
 in barracks, his bare arms exhibiting his herculean 
 biceps, a painter's palette danghng against his 
 long legs in guise of sabre-tascJie, was dancing a 
 cavalier seiil of the time of the Grande Chaumiere, 
 opposite the musician de Potter, in the costume of 
 a muezzin on a spree, his turban awry, imitating 
 the danse du ventre^ and whining " La Allah, il 
 Allah ! " in a terribly shrill voice. 
 
6 Sappho. 
 
 Those frolicsome celebrities were surrounded 
 by a large circle, the dancers resting meanwhile ; 
 and in the front row stood Dechelette, the master 
 of the house, wrinkling his little eyes, his Kal- 
 muck nose, his grizzly beard, happy in the gayety 
 of the others and highly entertained without seem- 
 ing to be. 
 
 Dechelette, the engineer, a typical figure of 
 artistic Paris ten or twelve years ago, very good- 
 natured, very wealthy, with a taste for art, and that 
 free-and-easy manner, that contempt for public 
 opinion, which result from a life of travel and 
 bachelorhood, had at that time a contract for a 
 railroad from Tauris to Teheran ; and every year, 
 to recuperate after ten months of fatigue, of nights 
 under canvas, of wild gallops across sandy deserts 
 and swamps, he came to Paris to pass the very 
 hot season in that house on Rue de Rome, built 
 from his own plans and furnished like a summer 
 palace, where he got together clever men and 
 pretty girls, calling upon civilization to give him 
 in a few weeks the essence of its most piquant 
 and dehcious products. 
 
 ** Dechelette has arrived." The news spread 
 through the studios as soon as the great linen 
 shades which covered the glass front of the house 
 were seen to rise like a stage-curtain. That meant 
 that the fetes were about to begin, and that they 
 were to have two months of music and merry- 
 making, of dancing and feasting, breaking in upon 
 the silent torpor of Quartier de I'Europe at that 
 season of villas and sea-baths. 
 
Sappho, 7 
 
 Personally D(^chelette took no part in the bac- 
 chanalian festivities that woke the echoes of his 
 studio night and day. That indefatigable rake 
 brought to his pleasures a cold-blooded passion, 
 a glance vague and smiling, as if deadened by 
 hasheesh, but of imperturbable calmness and lu- 
 cidity. An exceedingly loyal friend, giving boun- 
 tifully without counting, he entertained for women 
 the contempt of an Oriental, compounded of in- 
 dulgence and courtesy ; and of those who came 
 there, attracted by his great wealth and the joyous 
 eccentricity of the festivities, not one could boast 
 of having been his mistress more than one day. 
 
 " A good fellow, all the same," added the gypsy, 
 who gave Gaussin this information. Suddenly she 
 interrupted herself, — 
 
 " There 's your poet." 
 
 ''Where?" 
 
 " In front of you, dressed as a village bride- 
 groom." 
 
 The young man uttered an '' Oh ! " of disap- 
 pointment. His poet! That fat, shiny, perspir- 
 ing man, performing awkward antics in the false 
 collar with two points and the flowered waistcoat 
 of Jeannot. The despairing, piercing shrieks of 
 the Livre de l Amour came to his mind, the book 
 that he never read without a quickening of the 
 pulse; and instinctively he murmured aloud, — 
 
 " Pour animer le marbre orgueilleux de ton corps, 
 O Sapho, j'ai donnd tout le sang de mes veines."i 
 
 * To give life to the haughty marble of thy body, 
 O Sappho, I have given all the best blood in my veins. 
 
8 Sappho. 
 
 She turned quickly, jangling her barbarian or- 
 naments. 
 
 ** What's that you say?" 
 
 They were lines written by La Gournerie; he 
 was surprised that she did not know them. 
 
 "I don't like poetry," she said shortly; and she 
 remained standing, with a frown on her face, watch- 
 ing the dancing and nervously toying with the 
 beautiful lilac clusters hanging before her. Then, 
 with an effort, as if forcing herself to a painful deci- 
 sion, she said " Good-night," and disappeared. 
 
 The poor piper was dumfounded. " What *s the 
 matter with her? What did I say to her?" He 
 cudgelled his brains, but could think of nothing, 
 except that he would do well to go to bed. He 
 picked up his bagpipes with a melancholy air, and 
 returned to the ball-room, less annoyed by the 
 gypsy's departure than by the thought that he 
 must pass through all that crowd to reach the 
 door. 
 
 The consciousness of his own obscurity among 
 so many celebrities made him still more timid. 
 They were no longer dancing, except a few couples 
 here and there clinging desperately to the last 
 strains of a dying waltz; among them Caoudal, 
 superb and gigantic, with head erect, whirling 
 around with a little knitting-woman in his red 
 arms, her hair flying in the wind. 
 
 Through the great window at the rear, which 
 was wide open, entered puffs of early morning air 
 with the white light of dawn, rustling the leaves of 
 the palms, prostrating the flames of the candles as 
 
Sappho, 9 
 
 if to extinguish them. A paper lantern took fire, 
 bobeches burst, and all around the room the ser- 
 vants were arranging small round tables as on the 
 terraces of cafes. At Dechelette's the guests al- 
 ways supped thus, by fours and fives ; and at that 
 moment congenial spirits were seeking one another 
 and forming groups. 
 
 There were shouts and fierce calls, the ^^ Pil- 
 ouit" of the faubourgs answering the " Yoii you 
 you you!^ in imitation of a rattle, of the girls of 
 the Orient; and conversations in undertones and 
 the voluptuous laughter of women led away with a 
 caress. 
 
 Gaussin was availing himself of the confusion 
 to glide toward the outer door, when his student- 
 friend, dripping with perspiration, his eyes like 
 saucers, a bottle under each arm, stopped him: 
 "Why, where in the deuce were you? I've been 
 looking for you everywhere. I have a table and 
 some girls, little Bachellery from the Bouffes — 
 dressed as a Japanese, you know. She sent me to 
 find you. Come quick ! " and he ran off. 
 
 The piper was thirsty ; then the wild excitement 
 of the ball tempted him, and the pretty face of the 
 little actress, who was making signs to him in the 
 distance. But a sweet grave voice murmured close 
 to his ear, — 
 
 " Don't go there." 
 
 The woman who had just been sitting by him 
 was close beside him now, leading him away; and 
 he followed her unhesitatingly. Why? It was not 
 because of her personal attraction ; he had scarcely 
 
lo Sappho, 
 
 glanced at her, and the other over yonder, who 
 was calling him, adjusting the steel knives in her 
 hair, pleased him much more. But he obeyed a 
 will superior to his own, the headstrong violence 
 of a desire. 
 
 " Do not go there." 
 
 Suddenly they both found themselves on the 
 sidewalk on Rue de Rome. Cabs were waiting in 
 the pale morning light. Street-sweepers, mechan- 
 ics going to their work, glanced at that uproarious 
 revel, overflowing into the street, that couple in 
 fancy dress, a Mardi Gras in midsummer. 
 
 "To your house or mine?" she asked. With- 
 out stopping to consider why, he thought that it 
 would be better to go to his house, and gave his 
 distant address to the driver. During the drive, 
 which was long, they talked little. But she held 
 one of his hands in hers, which he felt were small 
 and cold ; and except for that icy, nervous pres- 
 sure, he might have thought that she was sleeping, 
 as she lay back against the cushion with the waver- 
 ing reflection of the blue curtain on her face. 
 
 The cab stopped on Rue Jacob in front of a 
 students' lodging-house. Four flights of stairs to 
 ascend ; they were long and steep. " Shall I carry 
 you?" he said with a laugh, but in an under- 
 tone, because of the sleeping house. She looked 
 him over with a slow, contemptuous, yet tender 
 glance, — the glance of experience, which gauged 
 his strength and said plainly, *' Poor little fellow ! " 
 
 Thereupon, with a fine outburst of energy, char- 
 acteristic of his age and his southern blood, he 
 
Sappho, 1 1 
 
 seized her and carried her like a child, — for he 
 was a sturdy, strapping youth for all his fair 
 girlish skin, — and he went up the first flight at a 
 breath, exulting in the weight suspended about 
 his neck by two lovely, cool bare arms. 
 
 The second flight was longer, less pleasant. The 
 woman hung more heavily as they ascended. Her 
 iron pendants, which at first caressed him with a 
 pleasant tickling sensation, sank slowly and pain- 
 fully into his flesh. 
 
 At the third flight he panted like a piano-mover ; 
 his breath almost failed him, while she murmured 
 ecstatically, " Oh ! niarni, how nice this is ! how 
 comfortable I am ! " And the last stairs, which 
 he climbed one by one, seemed to him to belong 
 to a giant staircase, whose walls and rail and nar- 
 row windows twisted round and round in an inter- 
 minable spiral. It was no longer a woman he was 
 carrying, but something heavy, ghastly, which 
 suffocated him, and which he was momentarily 
 tempted to drop, to throw down angrily at the 
 risk of crushing her brutally. 
 
 When they reached the narrow landing, "Al- 
 ready ! " she exclaimed, and opened her eyes. He 
 thought, " At last ! " but could not have said it, 
 for he was very pale, and held both hands to his 
 breast, which seemed as if it would burst. 
 
 The ascent of those stairs in the melancholy 
 grayness of the morning was an epitome of their 
 whole history. 
 
12 Sappho. 
 
 IT. 
 
 He kept her two days; then she went away, 
 leaving behind her a memory of soft flesh and fine 
 linen. He knew nothing of her but her name, her 
 address, and these words : " When you want me, 
 call me — I shall always be ready." 
 
 The little card, dainty and perfumed, read : — 
 
 FANNY LEGRAND 
 
 b Rue de V Arcade 
 
 He stuck it in his mirror, between an invitation 
 to the last ball at the Department of Foreign Af- 
 fairs and the fanciful, illuminated programme of 
 Dechelette's evening-party, his only two appear- 
 ances in society of the year ; and the memory of 
 the woman, which hovered for several days around 
 the fireplace in that faint, delicate perfume, faded 
 away with it ; nor was Gaussin, who was a serious, 
 hard-working youth, especially distrustful of the 
 temptations of Paris, conscious of an inclination to 
 renew that amourette of a day. 
 
 The ministerial examination took place in 
 November. He had but three months to prepare 
 for it. After that would come a probationary term 
 of three or four years in the offices of the consular 
 service ; then he would be sent away somewhere, 
 
Sappho, 1 3 
 
 a long distance away. That idea of exile did not 
 alarm him; for a tradition among the Gaussins 
 d'Armandy, an old Avignon family, demanded 
 that the oldest son should follow what is called the 
 career, with the example, the encouragement, and 
 the moral protection of those who had preceded 
 him in it. In the view of that young provincial 
 Paris was simply the first port in a very long 
 voyage, which fact prevented him from forming 
 any serious connection, either by way of love or 
 friendship. 
 
 One evening, a week or two after the D^chelette 
 ball, as Gaussin, having lighted his lamp and 
 arranged his books on the table, was about to 
 begin to work, some one knocked timidly; and 
 when he opened the door, a woman appeared, 
 dressed in a light and fashionable costume. He 
 did not recognize her until she lifted her veil. 
 
 ** You see, it's I. I have come back." 
 
 As she detected the anxious, annoyed glance he 
 cast at the task awaiting him, she added, — 
 
 ** Oh ! I won't disturb you — I know what that 
 is." 
 
 She removed her hat, took up a number of Le 
 Tour de Monde, settled herself in a chair, and did 
 not stir, being apparently absorbed by what she 
 was reading ; but every time that he raised his eyes, 
 he met her glance. 
 
 And in very truth, it required courage for him 
 to refrain from taking her in his arms at once, for 
 she was very tempting and very charming, with 
 her little face with its low forehead, short nose, sen- 
 
14 Sappho, 
 
 sual and kindly lip, and the mature suppleness of 
 her figure in that dress, thoroughly Parisian in its 
 faultless style, and less terrifying to him than her 
 Egyptian costume. 
 
 She left him early the next morning, and re- 
 turned several times during the week, always with 
 the same pallor, the same cold, moist hands, the 
 same voice trembling with emotion. 
 
 '' Oh ! I know perfectly well that I bore you," 
 she would say to him, " that I tire you. I ought 
 to be more proud. Would you believe it? Every 
 morning, when I leave you, I swear that I will not 
 come again ; and then at night it seizes me again 
 like an attack of insanity." 
 
 He gazed at her, amused, surprised, in his scorn 
 of the woman, by that amorous persistence. The 
 women he had known hitherto, met at beer-shops 
 or skating-rinks, and, sometimes young and pretty, 
 left behind them a feeling of disgust with their 
 idiotic laughter, their cooks' hands, and with a 
 certain vulgarity in their instincts and their speech 
 which led him to open the window when they had 
 gone. 1 1n his innocence, he fancied that all women 
 of pleasure were of the same sort. So that he was 
 amazed to find in Fanny a genuine womanly 
 gentleness and reserve, with the superiority over 
 the bourgeois women he was accustomed to meet 
 in his mother's house in the province, due to a 
 smattering of art, a familiarity with all sorts of 
 subjects, which made their conversations varied 
 and interesting. 
 
 And then she was musical, accompanied herself 
 
Sappho. 1 5 
 
 on the piano, and sang, in a somewhat worn and 
 uneven but well-trained voice, romanzas by 
 Chopin or Schumann, provincial ballads, airs of 
 Berri, Bourguignon, or Picardie, of which she had 
 an extensive repertory. 
 
 Gaussin, who was mad over music, that art of 
 indolence and of the open air in which the people 
 of his province take such pleasure, was spurred on 
 by music in his working hours, and found it deli- 
 ciously soothing in his moments of repose. And 
 from Fanny's lips it was especially delightful to 
 him. He was surprised that she was not engaged 
 at any theatre, and learned that she had sung at 
 the Lyrique. " But not for long ; it was too much 
 of a bore." 
 
 There was no suggestion about her of the studied, 
 conventional manners of the stage-performer ; not 
 a shadow of vanity or of falseness. Simply a cer- 
 tain mystery concerning her life away from him, a 
 mystery not divulged even in the hours of passion ; 
 nor did her lover try to solve it, being neither jeal- 
 ous nor inquisitive, allowing her to arrive at the 
 stated time without even looking at the clock, 
 ignorant as yet of the sensation of suspense, of 
 those violent blows of the heart against the breast 
 betokening desire and impatience. 
 
 From time to time, (the weather being very fine 
 that summer, they set out on voyages of discovery 
 among the charming nooks in the outskirts of 
 Paris, with which her acquaintance was most pre- 
 cise and thorough. They formed part of the noisy 
 multitude at some suburban railway station, break- 
 
1 6 Sappho. 
 
 fasted at a cabaret on the edge of a forest or lake, 
 avoiding only certain too frequented spots. One 
 day he suggested that they go to Vaux-de-Cernay, 
 " No, no, not there ; there are too many painters." 
 
 And he remembered that that antipathy of hers 
 for artists had been the beginning of their love. 
 When he asked her the reason for it, she said, — 
 
 " They are crazy, inexplicable creatures, who 
 always tell more than they know. They have 
 done me a great deal of harm." 
 
 " But," he protested, " art is a noble thing. 
 There is nothing like it to embellish, broaden 
 one's views of hfe." 
 
 *' Ah ! my dear, the noble thing is to be simple 
 and upright as you are, to be twenty years old, and 
 to love dearly." 
 
 Twenty years old ! you would have said she was 
 no more than that, to see her so full of life, always 
 ready, laughing at everything, pleased with every- 
 thing. 
 
 One evening they arrived at Saint-Clair in the 
 valley of Chevreuse the night before a holiday, and 
 could find no room. It was late, and they must 
 pass through a league of forest in the dark to reach 
 the next village. At last they were offered an un- 
 occupied cot-bed at the end of a barn in which 
 masons slept. 
 
 " Come on," said she, with a laugh ; *' it will 
 remind me of my days of poverty." 
 
 So she had known poverty ! 
 
 They crept along, feeling their way between the 
 occupied beds in the great roughly whitewashed 
 
Sappho. 1 7 
 
 apartment, where a night light was smoking in a 
 niche in the wall ; and all night long, lying side by- 
 side, they smothered their kisses and their laughter, 
 hstening to the snoring, the groans of weariness of 
 their room-mates, whose cotton caps and heavy 
 working-shoes lay close beside the Parisian girl's 
 silk dress and dainty boots. 
 
 At day-break a wicket opened in the lower part 
 of the great door, a ray of white light touched 
 lightly the bed-cords and the hard earth, while a 
 hoarse voice shouted, " Ohe ! time to get up ! " 
 Then there ensued a slow, painful commotion in 
 the barn, once more in darkness ; yawnings, stretch- 
 ings, hoarse coughs, the depressing sounds of a 
 room full of human beings just aroused from sleep ; 
 and the Limousins went away one by one, heavily 
 and in silence, having no suspicion that they had 
 slept in close proximity to a lovely girl. 
 
 After they had gone, she rose, put on her dress 
 by feeling, and hastily twisted up her hair. "Wait 
 here, I will come back in a moment." She came 
 back in a moment with an enormous armful of 
 wild flowers dripping with dew. *' Now let us 
 go to sleep," she said, scattering over the bed 
 the cool perfume of the early morning blossoms, 
 which revivified the atmosphere about them. 
 And she had never seemed so pretty to him as 
 she did standing in the doorway of that barn, 
 laughing in the morning light, with her light curls 
 flying and her riotous nosegay. 
 
 Another time they breakfasted at Ville d'Avray, 
 beside the pond. An autumn morning enveloped 
 
ig Sappho, 
 
 with mist the placid water and the ruddy foliage 
 of the woods in front of them ; they were alone 
 in the little garden of the restaurant, kissing as 
 they ate their fish. Suddenly, from the rustic 
 paviHon in the branches of the plane-tree at the 
 foot of which their ^table stood, a loud, bantering 
 voice called down to them, ** I say, you people, 
 when do you propose to be done with your billing 
 and cooing?" And the lion's face and red mus- 
 tache of the sculptor Caoudal peered through the 
 opening of the Httle rustic chalet. 
 
 ** I should very much like to come down and 
 breakfast with you. I 'm as bored as an owl here 
 in my tree." 
 
 Fanny did not reply, being visibly annoyed by 
 the meeting; Jean, on the other hand, accepted 
 the suggestion instantly, for he was curious to see 
 the famous artist and flattered to have him at his 
 table. 
 
 Caoudal, very coquettishly attired in what seemed 
 to be a iieglig^ costume, although everything was 
 carefully studied, from the cravat of white crepe 
 de Chine to enhven a complexion seared with 
 wrinkles and pimples, to the jacket fitting tightly 
 to the still slender figure and the sweUing muscles 
 — Caoudal looked older than at Dechelette's ball. 
 
 But what surprised and even embarrassed him 
 a little was the intimate tone which the sculptor 
 adopted with his mistress. He called her Fanny, 
 addressed her in the most familiar way. " You 
 know," he said, as he placed his plate on their 
 table, " I have been a widower for a fortnight. 
 
Sappho, 19 
 
 Maria has gone off with Morateur. I did n't mind 
 it at first. But this morning, when I went to the 
 studio, I found I was as lazy as the deuce. Impos- 
 sible to work. So I left my group and came out 
 to breakfast in the country. It 's a wretched idea 
 when one 's alone. A little more and I should 
 have cried into my stew." 
 
 He glanced at the Provencal, whose wavy beard 
 and curly hair were of the color of the Sauterne in 
 the glasses. 
 
 " Youth 's a fine thing ! No danger of any one 
 leaving him ! And the strangest part of it is that 
 it 's catching. She looks as young as he does." 
 
 ** Saucy creature ! " she exclaimed with a laugh ; 
 and her laughter rang with the fascination that 
 knows no age, the youth of the woman who loves 
 and wishes to be loved. 
 
 " Astonishing ! astonishing ! " muttered Caoudal, 
 scrutinizing them both as he ate, with a contor- 
 tion of melancholy and envy at the corners of 
 his mouth. " I say, Fanny, do you remember 
 a breakfast here — it was a long while ago, 
 damme ! — there was Ezane, Dejoie, the whole 
 crowd, and you fell into the pond. We had 
 dressed you up as a man, with the fish-warden's 
 jacket. It was mightily becoming to you." 
 
 " Don't remember," she replied coldly and 
 truthfully; for such changing, hap-hazard crea- 
 tures never see aught but the present moment 
 of their love. They have no memory of what has 
 gone before, no fear of what may come after. 
 
 Caoudal, on the contrary, his mind dwelling on 
 
20 Sappho. 
 
 the past, punctuated with copious draughts of 
 Sauterne the exploits of his lusty youth, in love 
 and drinking, picnic parties, opera balls, profes- 
 sional achievements, battles, and conquests. But 
 when he turned toward them with the reflection of 
 all the flames he had kindled gleaming in his eyes, 
 he saw that they were not listening to him, but 
 were picking grapes from each other's lips. 
 
 ** How tiresome it must be to listen to what I 'm 
 telling you ! Oh ! yes, I am a terrible bore. 
 Damme ! It 's a beastly thing to be old ! " 
 
 He rose and threw down his napkin. ** Charge 
 the breakfast to me, Pere Langlois," he shouted 
 in the direction of the restaurant. 
 
 He walked sadly away, dragging his feet as if 
 suffering from an incurable disease. For a long 
 while the lovers looked after his tall figure stoop- 
 ing under the golden-hued leaves. 
 
 *' Poor Caoudal ! he certainly is getting heavy," 
 murmured Fanny, in a tone of sweet compassion; 
 and when Gaussin expressed his indignation that 
 Maria, a harlot, a model, could find any amuse- 
 ment in the sufferings of a Caoudal and prefer to 
 the great artist — whom? — Morateur, an obscure 
 painter, of no talent, with nothing in his favor but 
 his youth, she began to laugh, " Oh ! you inno- 
 cent ! you innocent ! " and throwing his head back 
 on her knees with both hands, she buried her face 
 in his eyes and hair as in a bouquet. 
 
 That evening Jean slept for the first time in his 
 mistress's room, after she had tormented him to 
 do it for three months : — 
 
Sappho. 2 1 
 
 " Come, tell me — why you don't want to." 
 ^' I don't know — I don't like the idea." 
 " But I tell you that I am free, that I am alone.'* 
 Assisted by the fatigue of the excursion into the 
 country, she succeeded in enticing him to Rue de 
 I'Arcade, which was quite near the station. On the 
 entresol of a plain, substantial house an old servant 
 in a peasant's cap, with a sullen air, opened the 
 door for them. 
 
 "This is Machaume. Good-evening, Machaume," 
 said Fanny, throwing her arms around her neck. 
 "This is he, you know, my beloved, my king; I 
 have brought him to the house. Light every- 
 thing at once, make the place beautiful." 
 
 Jean was left alone in a very small salon with low- 
 arched windows hung with curtains of the same 
 common blue silk with which the divans and several 
 pieces of lacquered furniture were covered. On the 
 walls were three or four landscapes, which lightened 
 and enlivened the monotony of the hangings ; all 
 of them bore a dedication : " To Fanny Legrand," 
 " To my dear Fanny." 
 
 On the mantel was a half-size copy in marble of 
 Caoudal's Sappho, which is to be found every- 
 where in bronze, and which Gaussin had seen in 
 his father's study in his childhood. By the 
 Hght of the single candle which stood near the 
 base, he detected in that work of art a resem- 
 blance, refined and rejuvenated as it were, to his 
 mistress. The Hues of the profile, the movement 
 of the figure under the drapery, the tapering 
 roundness of the arms wound about the knees, 
 
22 Sappho. 
 
 were familiar, well known to him ; his eye gloated on 
 them with the memory of more tender sensations, 
 
 Fanny, finding him in rapt contemplation before 
 the figure, said to him with an indifferent air: 
 "There is a touch of me in it, isn't there? 
 Caoudal's model looked like me." And she led 
 him forthwith into her bedroom, where Machaume 
 was sulkily laying two covers upon a small table ; 
 all the candles lighted, even those beside the mir- 
 ror in the wardrobe door, a lovely wood fire, 
 bright as a first flame, crackling under the spark- 
 fenders, — the chamber of a woman dressing for 
 a ball. 
 
 " I preferred to sup here," she said with a laugh. 
 
 Never had Jean seen such a daintily furnished 
 room. The Louis XVI. silks, the light musHns 
 of his mother's and sisters' rooms had nothing 
 whatever in common with that downy, fluffy nest 
 where the woodwork was hidden behind delicate 
 satins, where the bed was simply a couch wider 
 than the others, placed at the end of the room on 
 white furs. 
 
 Delicious was that caressing touch of light, of 
 warmth, of blue reflections prolonged in the 
 bevelled mirrors, after their wandering through 
 the fields, the shower they had encountered, the 
 mud of the sunken roads in the fading light. But 
 the one thing that prevented his enjoying that for- 
 tuitous luxury like a true provincial was the ser- 
 vant's ill-humor, the suspicious look with which 
 she eyed him, so noticeably that Fanny dismissed 
 her with a word : *' Leave us, Machaume ; we will 
 
Sappho, 23 
 
 wait on ourselves." And as the woman went out, 
 slamming the door behind her, she added : '* Don't 
 take any notice of her ; she 's angry with me for 
 loving you too well. She says that I am throw- 
 ing away my life. These country people are so 
 greedy ! Her cooking, by the way, is better than 
 she is. Just taste this terrinc of hare." 
 
 She cut the pie, poured out the champagne, 
 forgot to help herself in order to watch him eat, 
 at every movement throwing back to the shoulder 
 the sleeves of an Algerian gandoiiray of soft white 
 wool, which she always wore in the house. She 
 reminded him so of their first meeting at Deche- 
 lette's; and, crowded into the same chair, eating 
 from the same plate, they talked of that evening. 
 
 " Oh ! for my part," said she, " as soon as I saw 
 you come in, I wanted you. I would have liked 
 to seize you, to carry you off at once, so that the 
 others should n't have you. Now tell me what 
 you thought when you saw me?" 
 
 At first she had frightened him; then he had 
 felt full of confidence, perfectly at home with her. 
 '' By the way," said he, " I never asked you why 
 you got angry. Was it on account of those two 
 lines of La Gournerie's? " 
 
 She frowned again, the same frown as at the 
 ball, then said, with a toss of the head, " Non- 
 sense ! let us say no more about it." And with 
 her arms around him, she continued : " The fact 
 is that I was a little bit afraid, myself I tried to 
 escape, to recover myself, but I could n't, and now 
 I never can." 
 
24 Sappho. 
 
 "Oh! never?'* 
 
 " You will see ! " 
 
 He contented himself with answering with the 
 sceptical smile of his years, heedless of the pas- 
 sionate, almost threatening tone in which that 
 " You will see ! " was uttered. The pressure of 
 her arms was so soft, so submissive; he firmly 
 believed that he had only to make a gesture to 
 release himself. 
 
 But why release himself ? He was so comfort- 
 able in the cosseting atmosphere of that voluptu- 
 ous chamber, so dehciously benumbed by that 
 caressing breath upon his drooping eyelids, heavy 
 with sleep, closing upon fleeting visions of golden 
 woods, meadows, dripping mill-wheels, their whole 
 day of love in the country. 
 
 In the morning he was awakened abruptly by 
 Machaume's voice shouting unceremoniously at 
 the foot of the bed ; " He is here ; he wants to 
 speak to you." 
 
 " What 's that ! he wants to speak to me ? So 
 I am no longer in my own house, it seems ! And 
 you allowed him to come in ! " 
 
 In a rage, she leaped out of bed and rushed 
 from the chamber, half naked, her night-dress 
 open. 
 
 *' Don't stir, my dear, I will come back." 
 
 But he did not wait, nor did he feel at ease until 
 he too had risen and was fully dressed, his feet 
 safely in his boots. 
 
 As he was putting on his clothes in the hermeti- 
 cally closed ropm, where the night-light still shone 
 
Sappho, 25 
 
 upon the confusion of the little supper, he heard 
 the sounds of a terrific quarrel, muffled by the 
 hangings of the salon. A man's voice, angry at 
 first, then imploring, its outbursts ending in sobs, 
 in helpless tears, alternated with another voice 
 which he did not recognize at once, it was so 
 harsh and hoarse, laden with hatred and with 
 degrading words, reminding him of a dispute 
 between prostitutes in a beer-shop. 
 
 All that amorous luxuriousness was marred by 
 the incident, besmirched as if the silk were spat- 
 tered with mud ; and the woman, too, was degraded 
 to the level of the others whom he had despised 
 hitherto. 
 
 She returned to the room panting, twisting her 
 dishevelled hair with a graceful gesture : " Is there 
 anything so stupid as a man crying?" Then, 
 seeing that he was up and dressed, she uttered an 
 angry exclamation : " You have gotten up ! — go 
 back to bed — at once. — I say you shall." Then 
 suddenly softened, embracing him with voice and 
 gesture: "No, no! — don't go — you cannot go 
 like this. In the first place, I am sure that you 
 won't come back." 
 
 '* Why, yes, I will. What makes you think 
 so?" 
 
 *' Swear that you 're not angry, that you will 
 come again. Ah ! you see I know you." 
 
 He swore whatever she wanted, but would not 
 return to bed, despite her entreaties, and her re- 
 peated assurances that she was in her own house, 
 perfectly free as to her life and her acts. At last 
 
26 Sappho, 
 
 she seemed to be resigned to allowing him to go, 
 and accompanied him as far as the door, with no 
 trace about her of the female satyr in a frenzy, but 
 very humble, trying to obtain forgiveness. 
 
 A long, cHnging farewell caress detained them 
 in the anteroom. 
 
 "Well, when shall it be?" she asked, her eyes 
 buried in his. He was about to reply, with a false- 
 hood doubtless, in his haste to be gone, when a ring 
 at the door-bell checked him. Machaume came 
 out of her kitchen, but Fanny motioned to her: 
 " No, do not open the door." And they stood 
 there, all three, motionless, without speaking. 
 
 They heard a stifled groan, then the rustling of 
 a letter being pushed under the door, and foot- 
 steps slowly descending the stairs. 
 
 '' Did n't I tell you that I was free? Look ! " 
 
 She handed her lover the letter which she had 
 opened, — a poor, miserable love-letter, very cring- 
 ing, very cowardly, scrawled in haste on a cafe 
 table, in which the poor devil asked forgiveness for 
 his madness of the morning, acknowledged that he 
 had no right over her save such as she chose to 
 accord him, begged her on his knees not to banish 
 him irrevocably, promising to agree to anything, 
 to be resigned to anything — but not to lose her, 
 great God ! not to lose her. 
 
 *' Fancy ! " she said with a wicked laugh ; and 
 that laugh finally closed to her the heart that she 
 sought to win. Jean thought her cruel. He had 
 not learned as yet that the woman who loves has 
 no bowels of compassion save for her love ; that all 
 
Sappho, 27 
 
 her active powers of charity, kindness, pity, devo- 
 tion are absorbed for the benefit of one human 
 being, a single one. 
 
 " You do very wrong to make sport of him. 
 That letter is horribly pathetic and heartrending." 
 And he added in a low voice, holding her hands : 
 " Tell me, why do you turn him away? " 
 
 " I don't want him any more. I don't love him." 
 
 " But he was your lover. He provided this lux- 
 ury in which you live, in which you have always 
 lived, which is necessary to your happiness." 
 
 " My dear," she said in her frank way, "when 
 I did n't know you, I thought this was all very 
 nice. Now it is a bore, a disgrace ; my heart 
 rises against it. Oh ! I know you will tell me 
 that you 're not in earnest about it, that you don't 
 love me. But I make that my business. I will 
 force you to love me, whether you will or no.'* 
 
 He made no reply, agreed to meet her the next 
 day, and made his escape, leaving a few louis for 
 Machaume, the drainings of his student's purse, to 
 pay for the terrine. So far as he was concerned 
 it was all over. What right had he to bring con- 
 fusion into that woman's existence, and what could 
 he offer her in exchange for what she would lose 
 through him? 
 
 He wrote her to that effect the same day, as 
 gently, as sincerely as he could, but without tell- 
 ing her that he had felt that their liaison, that 
 pleasant, attractive caprice, had suffered a violent 
 and fatal blow when he heard, after his night of 
 love, that betrayed lover's sobs alternating with 
 
28 Sappho, 
 
 her own sneering laughter and her laundress's 
 oaths. 
 
 In that tall youth, whose heart was far away 
 from Paris, in the midst of the Provencal moors, 
 there was a touch of the paternal roughness and 
 all the delicacy of feehng, all the nervous tempera- 
 ment of his mother, whom he resembled as closely 
 as a portrait. And to defend him against the al- 
 lurements of pleasure he had in addition the ex- 
 ample of a brother of his father, whose dissipation 
 and wild career had half ruined the family and 
 endangered the honor of the name. 
 
 Uncle Cesaire ! With just those two words and 
 the domestic drama they recalled, one might de- 
 mand from Jean sacrifices much more painful than 
 that of this amourette^ to which he had never at- 
 tached great importance. However, it was harder 
 to break than he had imagined. 
 
 Although formally dismissed, she returned again 
 and again, undiscouraged by his refusals to see 
 her, by the closed door, by his inexorable orders. 
 *' I have no self-esteem," she wrote him. She 
 watched for him to go to the restaurant for his 
 meals, waited for him in front of the cafe where he 
 read the newspapers. And no tears, no scenes. 
 If he were with other men she contented herself 
 with following him, with watching for the moment 
 when he should be alone. 
 
 " Do you want to see me to-night? No? Some 
 other time then." And she would go her way 
 with the gentle resignation of the peddler strapping 
 up his pack, leaving him remorseful for his cruelty 
 
Sappho, 29 
 
 and humiliated by the lie he stammered at every 
 meeting. '* The examination was close at hand — 
 he had no time. After that, later, if she still 
 cared." As a matter of fact, he intended, as soon 
 as he had passed, to take a month's vacation in 
 the South, expecting that she would forget him 
 in that time. 
 
 Unfortunately, when the examination was over, 
 Jean fell sick, — a severe inflammation of the throat, 
 caught in a corridor at the department, which as- 
 sumed serious proportions as the result of neglect. 
 He knew no one in Paris save a few students from 
 his province, whom his engrossing liaison had 
 estranged and scattered. Moreover, under the 
 circumstances, something more than ordinary de- 
 votion was required, and the very first night Fanny 
 Legrand established herself beside his bed and 
 did not leave him for ten days, nursing him tire- 
 lessly, without fear or disgust, as deft as a profes- 
 sional nurse, with affectionate, coaxing ways, and 
 sometimes, in his hours of fever, carrying him 
 back to a serious illness of his childhood, so that 
 he called her his aunt Divonne and said, *' Thank 
 you, Divonne," when he felt Fanny's hands on his 
 burning forehead. 
 
 " It is n't Divonne, it 's I — I am taking care of 
 you." 
 
 She saved him from mercenary nursing, from 
 fires stupidly allowed to go out, from draughts 
 brewed in a concierge's lodge ; and Jean was con- 
 stantly surprised at the activity, the ingenuity, the 
 nimbleness of those indolent, pleasure-loving hands. 
 
30 Sappho. 
 
 At night she slept two hours on the couch, — a 
 boarding house couch, as soft as the plank bed of 
 a police-station. 
 
 " Pray do you never go home, my poor Fanny? " 
 he asked her one day. " I am better now. You 
 must go and set Machaume's mind at rest." 
 
 She began to laugh. A fine time she was hav- 
 ing, was Machaume, and all the house with her. 
 They had sold everything, furniture, clothes, even 
 the bedding. All she had left was the dress on 
 her back, and a little fine linen saved by her maid. 
 Now, if he turned her away, she would be in the 
 gutter. 
 
Sappho. 31 
 
 III. 
 
 "This time I think I have found what we want. 
 Rue d'Amsterdam, opposite the station. Three 
 rooms and a great balcony. If you choose, we 
 will go and look at it when you leave the office. 
 It's high up, fifth floor — but you can carry me. 
 That was so nice, do you remember?" 
 
 Highly amused by the memory, she clung to 
 him, nestled against his neck, seeking the old 
 place, her place. 
 
 Their life had become intolerable in their fur- 
 nished lodgings, with all that the term implies, the 
 chattering of girls in nets and old shoes on the 
 stairways, the paper partitions behind which other 
 households swarmed, the promiscuous mixing up 
 of keys, candlesticks, and boots. Not to her, cer- 
 tainly; with Jean, the roof, the cellar, even the 
 sewer would have made a satisfactory nesting-place 
 for her. But the lover's refinement took offence at 
 certain associations, to which, as a bachelor, he 
 had given no thought. Those one-night households 
 annoyed him, seemed to cast dishonor upon his 
 own establishment, caused him something of the 
 same sadness and disgust caused by the cage of 
 monkeys at the Jardin des Plantes, mimicking all the 
 gestures and expressions of human love. He was 
 tired of the restaurant too, of having to go twice 
 a day for his meals to Boulevard Saint-Michel, a 
 
32 Sappho, 
 
 great room crowded with students, pupils at the 
 Beaux-Arts, painters and architects, who, although 
 they did not know him, had become familiar with 
 his face during the year he had dined there. 
 
 He blushed, as he opened the door, to see all 
 those eyes turned upon Fanny, and entered with the 
 aggressive, embarrassed air characteristic of very 
 young men accompanied by a woman; and he 
 also was afraid of meeting one of the chiefs of his 
 department, or some one from his province. Then 
 there was the question of economy. 
 
 " How expensive this is ! " she would say every 
 time, running over the bill for the dinner, which 
 she carried away with her. '' If we were house- 
 keeping, I could run the house three days for that 
 money." 
 
 ''Well, what's to hinder us?" And they set 
 about finding a suitable place. 
 
 That is the pitfall. Everybody falls into it, the 
 best, the most honorable of men, by virtue of the 
 instinct of neatness, the longing for a '* home, " 
 instilled in them by early education and the genial 
 warmth of the fireside. 
 
 The apartment on Rue d' Amsterdam was rented 
 at once and voted delightful, despite its rooms 
 en enfilade y of which the kitchen and living-room 
 looked out on a damp backyard where odors of 
 dishwater and chlorine arose from an EngHsh 
 tavern, and the bedroom on the sloping, noisy 
 street, shaken day and night by jolting vans and 
 drays, cabs and omnibuses, by the shrill whistles 
 of arriving and departing locomotives, all the up- 
 
Sappho. 33 
 
 roar of the terminus of the Chemin de Fer de 
 rOuest, which displayed its glass roof of the color 
 of muddy water directly opposite. The great ad- 
 vantage of the location was the knowledge that 
 the train was close at hand, and Saint-Cloud, Ville 
 d 'Avray, Saint-Germain, and all the verdure-clad 
 stations on the banks of the Seine almost under 
 their balcony. For they had a balcony, broad and 
 commodious, which retained from the munificence 
 of the former tenants a zinc tent painted to imi- 
 tate striped canvas, dripping wet and melancholy 
 enough under the pattering of the winter rains, but 
 a very pleasant place to dine in summer, in the 
 fresh air, as in a mountain chalet. 
 
 They turned their attention to the matter of 
 furniture. Jean having informed Aunt Divonne, 
 who was the family steward as it were, of his 
 project of keeping house, she sent him the neces- 
 sary money ; and her letter announced at the same 
 time the speedy arrival of a wardrobe, a commode, 
 and a large cane-seated easy-chair taken from the 
 Cliambre dti Vent^ for the behoof of the Parisian. 
 
 That chamber, which he saw in his mind's eye at 
 the end of a corridor at Castelet, always unocupied, 
 the shutters closed and barred, the door secured 
 with a bolt, was exposed by its position to the full 
 fury of the mistral, which made its walls creak like 
 a room in a Hghthouse. It was used as a store- 
 room for old cast-off articles, for what each genera- 
 tion relegated to the past to make room for new 
 purchases. 
 
 1 The Windy Chamber. 
 3 
 
34 Sappho, 
 
 Ah ! if Divonne had known what strange siestas 
 would be taken in the cane-seated chair, what India 
 silk skirts and flounced pantalettes would fill the 
 drawers of the Empire commode ! But Gaussin's 
 remorse on that account was swallowed up in the 
 numberless little delights of the beginning of 
 housekeeping. It was such fun, after the office, 
 between daylight and dark, to set off arm-in-arm 
 on a voyage of discovery, and to visit some street 
 in the faubourg to select a dining-room outfit — the 
 sideboard, the table, and six chairs — or cretonne 
 curtains for the windows and the bed. He would 
 accept anything with his eyes closed; but Fanny 
 scrutinized for two, tried the chairs, experimented 
 with the leaves of the table, showed herself an 
 experienced shopper. 
 
 She knew the shops where they could buy at 
 the cost of manufacture a complete kitchen equip- 
 ment for a small family, the four iron saucepans, 
 the fifth glazed for the morning chocolate; no 
 copper, because it takes too long to clean. Six 
 metal covers with soup spoons, and two dozen 
 plates of English ware, strong and bright-colored, 
 all counted and packed and ready for shipment, 
 like a doll's teaset. For sheets, napkins, toilet 
 and table linen, she knew a dealer, the agent of 
 a great factory at Roubaix, to whom they could 
 pay so much a month; and as she was always 
 watching the shop-windows, on the lookout for 
 bankrupt sales, for the wreckage which Paris con- 
 stantly washes ashore in its scum, she discovered 
 on Boulevard Chchy, at second hand, a magnificent 
 
Sappho, 35 
 
 bed, almost new, and large enough for the ogre's 
 seven young women to sleep in a row. 
 
 He too tried his hand at making purchases as 
 he returned from the office; but he knew nothing 
 about it, could not bear to say no or to leave a 
 shop empty-handed. Going into a second-hand 
 place to buy an old-fashioned oil-cruet which she 
 had described to him, he brought away as a sub- 
 stitute for the article, which was already sold, a 
 salon chandelier with glass pendants, which was 
 quite useless to them, as they had no salon. 
 
 ** We will put it in the veranda," said Fanny, to 
 console him. 
 
 And the pleasure of taking measurements, the 
 discussions as to placing a piece of furniture ; and 
 the shouts, the wild laughter, the arms thrown up 
 in despair, when they discovered that, despite all 
 their precautions, despite the very complete Hst 
 of indispensable purchases, something had been 
 forgotten. 
 
 For instance, the sugar-grater. Fancy their 
 starting to keep house without a sugar-grater ! 
 
 Then, when everything was bought and put in 
 place, the curtains hung, a wick in the new lamp, 
 what a delightful evening was that first one in the 
 new home, the careful scrutiny of the three rooms 
 before going to bed, and how she laughed as she 
 held the hght while he locked the door: "An- 
 other turn ; one more — lock it tight. Let us be 
 sure that we 're at home." 
 
 Thereupon began a new, delightful life. On 
 leaving his work, he returned home at once, long- 
 
36 Sappho. 
 
 ing to be sitting by the fire in his sHppers. And 
 as he splashed through the dark streets, he imag- 
 ined their warm, brightly lighted room, enlivened 
 by its old provincial furniture, at which Fanny 
 turned up her nose at first as rubbish, but which 
 had turned out to be very pretty antique pieces ; 
 especially the wardrobe, a Louis XVI. gem, with 
 its painted panels, representing Proven9al fetes, 
 shepherds in jackets of flowered stuff dancing 
 to the flute and the tambourine. The presence 
 of those antiquated articles, familiar to his eyes in 
 his childhood, reminded him of his father's house 
 and sanctified his new home, whose comforts he 
 was still to enjoy. 
 
 In answer to his ring, Fanny appeared, neatly 
 and coquettishly dressed, *' on deck," as she said. 
 Her dress of black woollen stuff, without ornament, 
 but cut by a fashionable dressmaker's pattern, — 
 the simplicity of a woman who has worn fine rai- 
 ment, — her sleeves rolled up, and a great white 
 apron; for she herself did their cooking, and 
 simply had a charwoman for the heavy work 
 which chaps the hands or injures their shape. 
 
 She was very clever at it, knew a multitude of 
 receipts, dishes of the North and South, as varied 
 as her repertory of popular ballads, which, when 
 the dinner was at an end and the white apron 
 hung behind the closed door of the kitchen, she 
 sang to him in her worn but passionate contralto. 
 
 Below, the street roared, a rushing torrent. The 
 cold rain pattered on the zinc of the veranda; and 
 Gaussin, in his easy-chair, with his feet stretched 
 
Sappho, 37 
 
 out to the fire, watched the windows in the railway 
 station opposite and the clerks stooping to write 
 by the white light of great reflectors. 
 
 He was very comfortable ; he allowed himself 
 to be coddled. In love? no; but grateful for the 
 love with which she enveloped him, for that never- 
 varying affection. How could he have deprived 
 himself so long of that happiness, in the fear — at 
 which he laughed now — of being bewitched, of 
 assuming a yoke? Was not his life more respect- 
 able than when he used to go about recklessly 
 from girl to girl? 
 
 There was no danger for the future. Three 
 years hence, when he went away, the separation 
 would come about naturally, without any shock. 
 Fanny was forewarned ; they talked about it to- 
 gether, as about death, — a distant but inevitable 
 fatality. There remained the great grief of his 
 people at home when they learned that he did 
 not live alone ; the wrath of his father, that man 
 of rigid principles and so quick to act. 
 
 But how could they find out? Jean saw no one 
 in Paris. His father, " the consul," as he was called 
 at home, was detained in Provence the whole year 
 by the superintendence of his very considerable 
 estates, which he cultivated himself, and by his 
 hard battles with the vines. His mother was help- 
 less, could not step or move without assistance, and 
 left to Divonne the management of the house 
 and the care of the two little twin sisters, Marthe 
 and Marie, whose unexpected double birth had 
 taken away her strength and activity forever. As 
 
38 Sappho, 
 
 for Uncle Cesaire, Divonne's husband, he was a 
 great child who was not allowed to travel alone. 
 
 And now Fanny knew the whole family. When 
 he received a letter from Castalet, at the foot of 
 which the httle girls had written a few lines in 
 their big handwriting with their little fingers, she 
 read it over his shoulder, shared his emotion. Of 
 her own previous existence he knew nothing, asked 
 no questions. He had the attractive, unconscious 
 egotism of his years, no jealousy, no anxiety. 
 Full of his own life, he allowed it to overflow, 
 thought aloud, laid bare his heart, while the other 
 remained mute. 
 
 Thus the days and weeks passed in a happy 
 tranquillity disturbed for a moment by a circum- 
 stance which moved them deeply, but in different 
 ways. She thought that she was enceinte^ and told 
 him of it with such dehght that he could not fail 
 to share it. But at heart he was afraid. A child, 
 at his age! What would he do with it? Should 
 he acknowledge it? And what a pledge between 
 himself and that woman, what a complication in 
 future ! 
 
 Suddenly the chain became visible to him, 
 heavy, cold, and riveted about his neck. He did 
 not sleep at night, nor did she ; and, lying side by 
 side in their great bed, they dreamed, open-eyed, 
 a thousand leagues apart. 
 
 Luckily that false alarm was not repeated, and 
 they resumed their peaceful, delightfully secluded 
 life. Then, when the winter had passed and the 
 real sun had returned once more, their Httle abode 
 
Sappho. 39 
 
 became still more charming, enlarged by the bal- 
 cony and the tent. At night they dined there be- 
 neath the sky tinged with green and streaked by 
 the whistling flight of swallows. 
 
 The street sent up its hot puffs and all the sounds 
 of the neighboring houses ; but the slightest breath 
 of fresh air was theirs, and they forgot themselves 
 for hours, hand in hand, conscious of nothing. 
 Jean remembered similar nights on the bank of 
 the Rhone, and dreamed of distant consulates in 
 very warm countries, of a ship's deck, leaving the 
 harbor, where the breeze would have that same 
 long breath which fluttered the curtain of the tent. 
 And when an invisible caress upon his lips mur- 
 mured, "Do you love me?" he always returned 
 from very far away to answer, '' Oh ! yes, I love 
 you." — That is what comes of taking them so 
 young; they have too many things in their heads. 
 
 On the same balcony, separated from them by 
 an iron raihng garlanded with climbing flowers, 
 another couple billed and cooed, M. and Madame 
 Hettema, husband and wife, very vulgar persons, 
 whose kisses resounded like slaps on the face. 
 They were wonderfully well-mated in age, in tastes, 
 in heavy build, and it was touching to hear those 
 two mature lovers singing in low tones, as they 
 leaned on the balustrade, old-fashioned sentimen- 
 tal ditties. 
 
 " Mais je I'entends qui soupire dans Tombre ; 
 C'est un beau reve, ah ! laissez-moi dormir." i 
 
 1 But I hear him sighing in the darkness ; 
 'T is a lovely dream, ah ! let me sleep. 
 
40 Sappho. 
 
 They appealed to Fanny ; she would have liked 
 to know them. Sometimes indeed she and her 
 neighbor exchanged a loving, happy woman's 
 smile over the blackened railing; but the men, as 
 always, were more distant, and they never spoke. 
 
 Jean was returning home from Quai d'Orsay 
 one afternoon when he heard some one call him 
 by name at the corner of Rue Royale. It was a 
 lovely day, bright and warm, and Paris was sun- 
 ning itself at that corner of the boulevard, which 
 has not its equal in the world at sunset on a fine 
 day, about the hour for returning from the Bois. 
 
 *' Sit down here, my handsome youngster, and 
 have something to drink; it rejoices my eyes to 
 look at you." 
 
 Two long arms had seized him and seated him 
 under the awning of a cafe which encroached up- 
 on the sidewalk with its three rows of tables. He 
 made no resistance, flattered to hear the throng of 
 provincials, foreigners, striped jackets and round 
 hats, whispering curiously the name of Caoudal. 
 
 The sculptor, sitting at a table in front of a glass 
 of absinthe, which went well with his military fig- 
 ure and the rosette of an officer of the Legion of 
 Honor, had beside him the engineer Dechelette, 
 who had arrived the day before, always the same, 
 sunburned and yellow, his prominent cheekbones 
 crowding his good-natured Httle eyes, his nostrils 
 greedily sniffing Paris. As soon as the young 
 man was seated, Caoudal pointed to him with 
 comic rage, — 
 
Sappho, 41 
 
 "Isn't that a handsome animal? To think that 
 I was that age once, and that my hair curled like 
 that ! Oh ! youth, youth ! " 
 
 *' Still the same, eh?" said Dechelette, greeting 
 his friend's tirade with a smile. 
 
 " Don't laugh, my dear fellow. All that I have, 
 all that I am, — medals, cross, the Institute, the 
 palsy, — I would give for that hair, that sunlike 
 complexion." 
 
 Then he turned again to Gaussin in his abrupt 
 way. 
 
 "And Sappho, what have you done with her? 
 We never see her now." 
 
 Jean stared at him, failing to understand. 
 
 "Aren't you with her now?" And in face of 
 his evident bewilderment, Caoudal added impa- 
 tiently : '' Sappho, you know — Fanny Legrand — 
 Ville d'Avray." 
 
 " Oh ! that 's all over, a long while ago." 
 
 How came that lie to his lips? From a sort of 
 shame, of disgust, at hearing that name of Sappho 
 appHed to his mistress ; the embarrassment of dis- 
 cussing her with other men ; perhaps, too, a desire 
 to learn things which they would not otherwise 
 have told him. 
 
 " What 's that ? Sappho ? Is she still on earth ? " 
 queried Dechelette absent-mindedly, absorbed by 
 the intoxicating joy of seeing once more the steps 
 of the Madeleine, the flower-market, the long 
 line of the boulevards between two rows of green 
 bouquets. 
 
 " Why, don't you remember her at your house 
 
42 Sappho, 
 
 last year? She was superb in her fellah's tunic. 
 And that autumn morning when I found her break- 
 fasting with this pretty boy at Langlois', you'd 
 have said she was a bride of a fortnight." 
 
 " How old is she, anyway? Since the days when 
 I used to know her — " 
 
 Caoudal raised his head to reckon. " How old? 
 how old? Let me see, she was seventeen in 1853, 
 when she posed for my figure; now it's '73. So 
 figure for yourself." Suddenly his eyes kindled. 
 *' Ah ! if you had seen her twenty years ago — tall, 
 slender, with arching lips and a high forehead. 
 Her arms and shoulders were a little thin still, but 
 that was all right for the rough cast of Sappho. 
 And the woman, the mistress ! — the capacity for 
 pleasure there was in her, the fire in that stone, 
 that harpsichord in which not a note was missing ! 
 * The whole lyre ! ' as La Gournerie used to say." 
 
 Jean, very pale, asked, *' Was he her lover too? " 
 
 *'La Gournerie? I should say so; I suffered 
 enough on that account. Four years we Hved 
 together as husband and wife ; four years I brooded 
 over her and drained myself dry to gratify all her 
 whims, — singing teachers, piano teachers, riding 
 teachers, and God knows what. And when I had 
 cut and smoothed and poHshed her into a fine 
 stone, after picking her up out of the gutter one 
 night in front of the Bal Ragache, that dandified 
 poetaster came and took her from my house, from 
 the hospitable table at which he sat every Sun- 
 day ! " 
 
 He breathed very hard, as if to blow away the 
 
Sappho, 43 
 
 old love-rancor which still vibrated in his voice; 
 then resumed more calmly, — 
 
 " However, his sneaking conduct did him no 
 good. Their three years together were a perfect 
 hell. That poet with his wheedling ways was 
 stingy, ugly, a perfect maniac. You should have 
 seen how they used to decorate each other ! When 
 you went to their house you 'd find her with a 
 patch over her eye, or his face all marked with 
 claws. But the best thing was when he undertook 
 to leave her. She clung to him like the itch, fol- 
 lowed him about, burst in his door, and waited for 
 him, lying across his door-mat. One night in mid- 
 winter she stayed five hours in the street outside 
 La Farcy's, where the whole crowd was. A pitiful 
 thing ! But the elegiac poet remained implacable, 
 and one day he resorted to the police to get rid of 
 her. Ah! he's a fine fellow! And as a fitting 
 conclusion, a final acknowledgment to that lovely 
 girl who had given him the best of her youth, her 
 intelligence, and her flesh, he emptied on her 
 head a volume of spiteful, filthy verse, of impre- 
 cations and lamentations, the Livre de V Amour y 
 his best book." 
 
 Motionless, leaning back in his chair, Gaussin 
 listened, drinking very slowly through a long 
 straw the iced drink in front of him. Surely it 
 was some poison that had been poured into the 
 glass and was freezing him from the heart to the 
 vitals. 
 
 He shivered despite the splendid weather, saw 
 shadows going and coming in a vague mist, a 
 
44 Sappho, 
 
 watering-cart standing in front of the Madeleine, 
 and carriages rolling in both directions over the 
 soft earth, as silently as over a pavement of down. 
 There was no sound in all Paris, nothing save 
 what was said at that table. Now Dechelette was 
 speaking ; he was pouring out the poison. 
 
 " What an atrocious thing such ruptures are ! " 
 And his calm, mocking voice took on a tone of 
 gentleness, of infinite pity. '' You have lived to- 
 gether, slept side by side, mingled your dreams 
 for years. You have said everything, given every- 
 thing to each other. You have adopted each 
 other's habits, ways of acting and speaking, even 
 each other's features. You are united from head 
 to foot. In fact, you are husband and wife ! Then 
 suddenly you tear yourselves apart and separate. 
 How is it done? How does any one muster cour- 
 age to do it? For my part I never could. No; 
 I might be deceived, insulted, besmirched with 
 filth and ridicule, and if the woman should weep 
 and say to me, * Stay ! ' I would n't go. And 
 that 's why, when I take one, I never do it until 
 dark. No to-morrow, as old France used to say 
 — or else marriage. That is final and more 
 decent." 
 
 "No to-morrow — no to-morrow. You say it 
 very glibly. There are women whom a man 
 does n't keep just one night, — the one we 're talk- 
 ing about, for instance." 
 
 " I did n't give her a minute's grace," said 
 Dechelette, with a placid smile which seemed 
 hideous to the poor lover. 
 
Sappho. 45 
 
 " In that case you were not her style, or else — 
 She 's the kind of a girl who clings when she loves. 
 She has a taste for domestic life. By the way, 
 she 's had poor luck in her housekeeping. She sets 
 up with Dejoie, the novelist ; he dies. She goes to 
 Ezano, and he marries. After him came the hand- 
 some Flamant, the engraver, the ex-model — for 
 she has always had a fancy for talent or beauty — 
 and you know her horrible adventure — " 
 
 "What adventure?" asked Gaussin, in a chok- 
 ing voice ; and he began again upon his straw as 
 he listened to the love drama which stirred Paris 
 to its depths a few years ago. 
 
 The engraver was poor, mad over the woman ; 
 and for fear of being abandoned by her, he made 
 counterfeit bank-notes in order to maintain her 
 in luxury. Discovered almost immediately and 
 arrested with his mistress, he was sentenced to ten 
 years' penal servitude, while she escaped with 
 six months' detention at Saint-Lazare, her inno- 
 cence being established. 
 
 And Caoudal reminded D6chelette — who had 
 followed the prosecution — how pretty she was in 
 her little Saint-Lazare cap, and plucky too, not 
 whimpering, and loyal to her man to the end. And 
 her reply to that old greenhorn of a judge, and the 
 kiss she threw to Flamant over the gendarmes* 
 chapeaux, calling to him in a voice to move the 
 very stones : *' Don't be discouraged, m' ami. The 
 happy days will return, we will love each other 
 still ! " That experience had disgusted her a little 
 with housekeeping, all the same. 
 
46 Sappho. 
 
 " After that, starting out in chic society, she 
 took lovers by the month or week, and never an 
 artist. Oh ! she 's a Httle afraid of artists. I 
 beheve I was the only one that she continued to 
 see. From time to time she used to come and 
 smoke a cigarette at the studio. Then I passed 
 months without hearing her name mentioned, until 
 the day I found her breakfasting with this hand- 
 some child and eating grapes out of his mouth. 
 I said to myself, * Ah ! my Sappho is at her old 
 tricks.' " 
 
 Jean could listen to no more. He felt as if he 
 were dying with all the poison he had absorbed. 
 The shivering of a moment before was succeeded 
 by a burning heat which scorched his breast, as- 
 cended to his buzzing head, which seemed on the 
 point of bursting like white-hot sheet-iron. He 
 crossed the street, staggering among the wheels. 
 Drivers shouted at him. What was the matter with 
 them, the imbeciles? 
 
 As he passed the Madeleine flower-market, he 
 was annoyed by the odor of heliotrope, his mis- 
 tress's favorite perfume. He quickened his pace 
 to escape it, and thought aloud, in a heartrending 
 frenzy: " My mistress ! — oh! yes, a fine mess of 
 filth. Sappho, Sappho ! To think that I have 
 lived a year with such a creature ! " He repeated 
 the name fiercely, remembering that he had seen 
 in the newspapers, among other sobriquets of 
 harlots, in the grotesque Almanach de Gotha of 
 gallantry, Sappho, Cora, Caro, Phryne, Jeanne de 
 Poitiers, the Seal. 
 
Sappho. 47 
 
 And with the six letters of her abominable name 
 that woman's whole life passed before his eyes like 
 refuse in a sewer. — Caoudal's studio, the fracases 
 at La Gournerie's, the sentry duty at night in front 
 of brothels or on the poet's door-mat. Then the 
 handsome engraver, the counterfeiting, the assizes, 
 and the little convict's cap that was so becoming to 
 her, and the kiss she threw to her counterfeiter: 
 "Don't be discouraged, m' ami.'' M' ami! the 
 same pet name, the same caress as for him ! What 
 a disgrace ! Ah ! but he proposed to make a clean 
 sweep of those abominations. And still that smell 
 of heliotrope pursued him through a twilight of 
 the same pale lilac as the tiny flower. 
 
 Suddenly he noticed that he was still pacing the 
 market like the deck of a ship. He hurried away 
 to Rue d'Amsterdam without pausing for breath, 
 firmly determined to drive that woman out of 
 doors, to throw her down the stairs without ex- 
 planation, hurling her insulting name at her back. 
 At the door he hesitated, reflected, walked a few 
 steps farther on. She would cry out, sob, howl 
 through the house her whole sidewalk vocabulary, 
 as she did once before on Rue de 1' Arcade. 
 
 Should he write to her ? — yes, that was the idea ; 
 it was much better to write, to settle her account in 
 four words, very savage words. He entered an 
 English tavern, deserted and dismal under the gas 
 which was just being lighted, seated himself at a 
 sticky table near the only customer, a girl with a 
 death's head, who was eating smoked salmon, with- 
 out drinking. He ordered a pint of ale, did not 
 
48 Sappho, 
 
 touch it, and began a letter. But too many words 
 rushed into his head, struggHng to come out all at 
 once, and the thick, clotted ink would write them 
 as slowly as it chose. 
 
 He tore up two or three beginnings, and was 
 going away at last without writing, when a full, 
 greedy mouth at his elbow inquired timidly: 
 "Aren't you drinking? May I?" He made an 
 affirmative sign. The girl pounced upon the pew- 
 ter, and emptied it with a fierce gulp which dis- 
 closed the poverty of the wretched creature, having 
 just enough in her pocket to satisfy her hunger, 
 but not to water it with a little beer. A feehng of 
 compassion stole over him and appeased him, en- 
 lightened him suddenly as to the miseries of a 
 woman's life; and he began to reflect upon and 
 judge his misfortune more humanely. 
 
 After all, she had not lied to him ; and if he 
 knew nothing of her life, it was simply because 
 he had never cared about it. With what could he 
 reproach her? Her time at Saint-Lazare ? But 
 she had been acquitted, and almost borne in 
 triumph when she was discharged. What else 
 was there? Other men before him? Did he not 
 know it? What reason was it for being more 
 disgusted with her, that the names of her lovers 
 were well known, famous, that he might meet 
 them, talk with them, see their pictures in the 
 shop-windows? Should he attribute to her as a 
 crime her having preferred such men? 
 
 And in the depths of his being there sprang to 
 life an unworthy, unavowable pride in sharing her 
 
Sappho. 49 
 
 with those great artists, in saying to himself that 
 they thought her beautiful. At his age one is never 
 sure, one does not know. One loves woman and 
 love ; but eyes and experience are lacking, and the 
 young lover who shows you his mistress's portrait 
 craves a glance, a word of approbation to reassure 
 him. Sappho's face seemed to him embellished, 
 surrounded with a halo, since he knew that she 
 had been sung by La Gournerie, immortalized in 
 marble and bronze by Caoudal. 
 
 But, his fury suddenly resuming possession of 
 him, he left the bench on the outer boulevard 
 upon which he had flung himself in his meditation, 
 amid the cries of children and the gossip of work- 
 men's wives in the dusty June evening; and he 
 began to walk again, to talk aloud, angrily. Very 
 pretty the bronze cast of Sappho, — bronze made 
 for sale, exhibited everywhere, as trite as a barrel- 
 organ tune, as that name Sappho, which, by dint 
 of being bandied about for centuries, has become 
 incrusted with obscene legends concerning her 
 primitive charm, and from being the name of a 
 goddess has become the label of a disease. Great 
 God ! how sickening it all was ! 
 
 He gave vent thus, calm and furious by turns, to 
 that maelstrom of opposing ideas and sentiments. 
 The boulevard became darker and more deserted. 
 There was a stale, acrid odor in the hot air, and 
 he recognized the gateway of the great cemetery 
 whither he had come the preceding year with all 
 the youth of the quarter to attend the dedication 
 of a bust by Caoudal on the tomb of Dejoie, the 
 . 4 
 
50 Sappho, 
 
 novelist of the Latin Quarter and author of Cen- 
 derinette. Dejoie, Caoudal ! How strangely those 
 names sounded in his ears since two hours ago ! 
 And how false and mournful the story of the girl 
 student and her little household seemed to him, 
 now that he knew the pitiful secret beneath it, and 
 had learned from Dechelette the horrible nickname 
 given to those sidewalk marriages ! 
 
 The dark shadows, made darker by the prox- 
 imity of death, terrified him. He retraced his 
 steps, brushing against blouses that prowled about 
 as stealthy and silent as birds of night, and soiled 
 skirts loitering at the doors of brothels whose dirty 
 windows were illuminated by broad shafts of light 
 as from a magic lantern, in which couples passed to 
 and fro and embraced. What time was it? He felt 
 thoroughly exhausted, like a raw recruit at the end 
 of a day's march; and of his benumbing pain, 
 which had descended into his legs, naught re- 
 mained but extreme weariness. Oh ! to go to bed, 
 to sleep. Then, when he awoke, he would say 
 to the woman, coldly, without anger : " Come — I 
 know who you are. It is n't your fault nor mine ; 
 but we cannot live together any longer. Let us 
 part." And in order to avoid her persecution, 
 he would go and embrace his mother and sisters, 
 throw off in the Rhone breezes, in the free and 
 life-giving mistral, the defilement and the terror 
 of his ghastly dream. 
 
 She had gone to bed, tired of waiting, and was 
 sleeping in the bright light of the lamp, a book 
 
Sappho, 5 1 
 
 open on the sheet in front of her. His entrance 
 did not awaken her ; and he stood beside the bed, 
 gazing at her curiously as if she were a new woman, 
 a stranger whom he had found there. 
 
 Lovely, oh ! she was lovely ; arms, throat, shoul- 
 ders of a delicate amber, well formed, without spot 
 or blemish. But on those reddened eyelids — per- 
 haps it was the novel she was reading, perhaps the 
 anxiety, the suspense — on those features relaxed 
 in repose and no longer sustained by the fierce 
 desire of the woman who is resolved to be loved, 
 what weariness, what confessions ! Her age, her 
 history, her excesses, her caprices, her many mar- 
 riages, and Saint-Lazare, the blows, the tears, 
 the terror, all were visible, clearly displayed ; and 
 the violet rings of dissipation and sleepless nights, 
 and the curl of disgust on the drooping lower lip, 
 as worn and fatigued as the curbstone of a well to 
 which the whole village goes to drink, and the 
 inchoate puffing which prepares the flesh for the 
 wrinkles of old age. 
 
 That treachery of sleep, the silence that en- 
 veloped the whole scene, was grand and awful ; it 
 was like a battlefield at night, with all the horrors 
 that one sees and those that one divines from the 
 vague movements of the shadows. 
 
 And suddenly the poor child was seized with an 
 intense, a sufibcating desire to weep. 
 
52 Sappho, 
 
 IV. 
 
 They had finished dinner, the windows were 
 open, and the prolonged whisthng of the swal- 
 lows hailed the fading light. Jean was not speak- 
 ing, but he was on the point of speaking, and of 
 saying the same cruel things which had haunted 
 him and with which he had tormented Fanny since 
 his meeting with Caoudal. She, noticing his down- 
 cast eyes and the air of feigned indifference with 
 which he approached new subjects, divined his 
 purpose and anticipated it. 
 
 '* Come, I know what you 're going to say to 
 me ; spare us both, I beg you ; one gets exhausted 
 at last. As long as all that is dead and gone, as 
 I love only you, as you are the only man in the 
 world to me — " 
 
 " If all that past were dead and gone, as you 
 say," and he looked into the depths of her lovely 
 eyes, of a quivering gray that changed with every 
 new impression, "■ you would not keep the things 
 that remind you of it; yes, up there in the 
 cupboard." 
 
 The gray became a velvety black. 
 
 "You know, then?" 
 
 All that medley of love letters, portraits, those 
 glorious archives of gallantry saved from so many 
 
Sappho, 53 
 
 catastrophes, she must at last make up her mind 
 to destroy ! 
 
 " You will at least believe me afterward ? " 
 
 And as he replied with an incredulous smile of 
 suspicion, she ran to fetch the lacquer casket with 
 the carved iron work, lying among the piles of 
 fine" Hnen, which had puzzled her lover so for 
 some days, 
 
 " Burn them ; tear them up ; they are yours." 
 
 But he did not hurry to turn the httle key, gaz- 
 ing at the cherry-trees with pink pearl fruit, and 
 the flying storks carved on the lid, which he at 
 last broke open without ceremony. Colored paper 
 of all sizes and covered with all kinds of writing, 
 with designs in gilt at the top, old yellow letters 
 broken at the folds, pencil scrawls on leaves from 
 note-books, visiting-cards in heaps, with no sem- 
 blance of order, as in a drawer often searched and 
 tossed about, into which he himself now plunged 
 his trembling hands. 
 
 *' Give them to me. I will burn them before 
 your eyes." 
 
 She spoke feverishly, crouching before the fire- 
 place, a Hghted candle on the floor by her side. 
 
 *' Give them to me." 
 
 But he replied, "No — wait," and added in a 
 lower tone, as if ashamed, " I would like to read 
 them." 
 
 "What for? You will only make yourself still 
 more unhappy." 
 
 She thought solely of his suffering, and not of 
 the indelicacy of thus laying bare the secrets of 
 
54 Sappho, 
 
 passion, the confessions made on the pillow of all 
 those men who had loved her ; and drawing near 
 to him, still on her knees, she read with him, 
 watching him out of the corner of her eye. 
 
 Ten pages, signed La Gournerie, 1861, in a long, 
 feline handwriting, in which the poet, who had 
 been sent to Algeria to prepare an official and at 
 the same time poetical account of the journey of 
 the emperor and empress, gave his mistress a 
 dazzling description of the festivities. 
 
 Algiers, overflowing with swarming thousands, 
 a genuine Bagdad of the Thousand and One 
 Nights; all Africa heaped up around the city, 
 beating at its gates as if it would break them down, 
 like a simoom. Caravans of negroes and camels 
 laden with gum, tents of skins, an odor of human 
 musk hovering over all that monkeyish multitude, 
 camping on the seashore, dancing at night around 
 great fires, making way respectfully every morn- 
 ing for the chiefs from the South, who arrived, 
 like Magian kings, with oriental pomp, discordant 
 music, reed flutes, hoarse little drums, the goum ^ 
 surrounding the tri-colored standard of the Prophet ; 
 and behind, led by negroes, the horses intended as 
 a present to the Emberour, caparisoned in silk and 
 silver, with a jingling of bells and chains at every 
 step. 
 
 The poet's genius made the scene very lifelike 
 and vivid ; the words gleamed on the page, like un- 
 
 1 An Arabian word, used in connection with the French army 
 in Algiers to denote the contingent of troops furnished by each 
 native tribe. 
 
Sappho, 55 
 
 mounted stones which jewellers examine on paper. 
 Truly the woman at whose feet such treasures were 
 cast might well be proud. Surely he must have 
 loved her, for, notwithstanding the interest aroused 
 by the singularity of the festivities, the poet thought 
 only of her, was dying for a sight of her. 
 
 " Oh ! last night I was with you on the great 
 divan at Rue de I'Arcade. You were wild with 
 ecstasy under my caresses ; then I abruptly awoke 
 rolled in a rug on my terrace under the starry sky. 
 The cry of the muezzin ascended from a neighbor- 
 ing minaret, in a clear and limpid outpouring of 
 sounds, voluptuous rather than prayerful, and it 
 seemed to be your voice that I heard as I emerged 
 from my dream." 
 
 What evil power impelled him to continue his 
 reading despite the horrible jealousy that whitened 
 his lips, contracted his hands? Gently, coaxingly, 
 Fanny tried to take the letter from him ; but he 
 read it to the end, and after it another, then an- 
 other, letting them fall one by one with a gesture 
 of contempt and indifference, without looking at 
 the flame in the fireplace feeding on the great 
 poet's impassioned lyrical effusions. And some- 
 times, in the overflow of that passion, exaggerated 
 by the tropical temperature, the lover's poetic 
 flights were sullied by some vile mess-room ob- 
 scenity which would have surprised and scandal- 
 ized the fair readers of the Livre de VAmouVy 
 whose spirituality was as refined and spotless as 
 the Jungfrau's silvery peak. 
 
 To what depths of baseness the heart will stoop ! 
 
56 Sappho, 
 
 Jean dwelt longest upon those passages, those blots 
 upon the page, with no suspicion of the nervous 
 spasm that distorted his features each time. He 
 even had the courage to emit a sneering laugh at 
 this postscript, following a vivid description of a 
 fete at Aissaouas : " I have read my letter over ; 
 there are some things in it that really are not bad ; 
 put it aside for me, I may be able to make some 
 use of it." 
 
 *' A gentleman who threw away no chances ! " 
 he exclaimed as he passed to another letter in the 
 same hand, wherein, in the frigid tone of a man of 
 business, La Gournerie demanded the return of a 
 collection of Arabian ballads and a pair of Turk- 
 ish slippers made of rice-straw. That was the 
 liquidation of their haison. Ah ! he had known 
 how to leave her, he was clever, that fellow ! 
 
 And Jean, without pausing, continued to drain 
 that bog, from which a hot, unhealthy vapor arose. 
 When it grew dark he placed the candle on a table 
 and ran through a multitude of short notes, almost 
 illegible, as if written with a bodkin by fingers 
 which were too large for it, and which, every 
 moment or two, in an outburst of desire or of 
 anger, gashed and tore the paper. The early 
 days of her liaison with Caoudal, assignations, 
 suppers, parties in the country; and altercations, 
 importunate repentance, shrieks, base, degrading 
 billingsgate, abruptly interlarded with amusing, 
 laughable sallies, sobbing reproaches, a revelation 
 of all the great artist's weakness when face to face 
 with separation and desertion. 
 
Sappho, 57 
 
 The fire seized upon it and licked it with long 
 red tongues in which the flesh and blood and tears 
 of a man of genius smoked and crackled ; but what 
 mattered that to Fanny, whose whole heart now 
 belonged to the young lover whom she was watch- 
 ing, whose burning fever scorched her through 
 their clothing? He had found a pen portrait 
 signed Gavarni, with this dedication : " To my 
 friend Fanny Legrand, in an inn at Dampierre, 
 one rainy day." An intelligent, sorrowful face, 
 with hollow eyes, an expression of bitterness and 
 despair. 
 
 *' Who is this?" 
 
 *' Andre Dejoie. I prized it because of the 
 signature." 
 
 He said, ** Keep it, I have no objection ; " but 
 in such a constrained, unhappy tone that she took 
 the sketch, tore it in pieces, and threw it into the 
 fire, while he plunged into the novelist's corre- 
 spondence, a heartrending succession of letters, 
 dated at winter seashore resorts, at watering-places, 
 in which the writer, sent thither for his health, 
 cried out in despair at his mental and physical 
 distress, cudgelling his brain to find an idea at 
 that distance from Paris, and mingled with re- 
 quests for potions and prescriptions, with anxie- 
 ties concerning money or business, advices of the 
 forwarding of proofs, of renewals of notes, and 
 always the same cry of despair and adoration 
 addressed to his Sappho's lovely body, which was 
 prohibited by his physicians. 
 
 ** In God's name, what was the matter with them 
 
58 Sappho, 
 
 all that they were mad after you like that?" mut- 
 tered Jean, distracted but outspoken. 
 
 To him that was the only thought suggested by 
 those despairing letters, avowing the utter up- 
 heaval of one of those glorious existences which 
 young men envy and of which romantic women 
 dream. What was the matter with them all? 
 What did she give them to drink? He experi- 
 enced the horrible agony of a man who, being 
 bound and helpless, should see the woman he 
 loved outraged before his eyes ; and yet he could 
 not make up his mind to empty the box at one 
 stroke, with his eyes closed. 
 
 Now it w^as the turn of the engraver, who, wretch- 
 edly poor and obscure as he was, with no other 
 celebrity than that afforded by the Gazette des 
 Tribtmaux, owed his place in the reliquary solely 
 to the great love she had had for him. Very de- 
 grading were those letters from Mazas, and stupid, 
 clumsy, sentimental, like those of a soldier to his 
 country sweetheart. But beneath the romantic 
 commonplaces one was conscious of an accent 
 of sincerity in his passion, a respect for the 
 woman, a forgetfulness of self which distinguished 
 him from the others ; for instance, when he asked 
 Fanny's pardon for the crime of loving her too 
 dearly, or when, from the waiting-room at the 
 Palais de Justice, immediately after his conviction, 
 he told his mistress of his joy to know that she was 
 acquitted and free. He complained of nothing. 
 Thanks to her, he had had two years of such per- 
 fect, profound happiness with her that the memory 
 
Sappho, 59 
 
 of it would suffice to fill his life with joy, to miti- 
 gate the horror of his lot ; and he ended by asking 
 a favor, — 
 
 " You know that I have a child in the provinces 
 whose mother died a long while ago ; he lives with 
 an old aunt, in such an out-of-the-way corner that 
 they will never hear of my trouble. I have sent 
 them what money I had left, saying that I was go- 
 ing on a long journey, and I rely on you, my dear 
 Nini, to inquire about the poor little fellow from 
 time to time and let me know about him." 
 
 Fanny's interest was demonstrated by another 
 letter, of quite recent date, hardly six months old : 
 " Oh ! you were good to come. How lovely you 
 were ! How sweet you smelt beside my convict's 
 jacket, which made me so ashamed — " 
 
 "So you have continued to see him?" de- 
 manded Jean fiercely, interrupting his reading. 
 
 " At long intervals, as an act of charity." 
 
 " Even since we have been together? " 
 
 " Yes, once, only once, in the visitors' room ; 
 nobody can see them anywhere else." 
 
 " Ah ! you 're a fine girl ! " 
 
 The thought that, notwithstanding their liaison, 
 she had visited that counterfeiter, exasperated him 
 more than all the rest. He was too proud to 
 say so. 
 
 But a package of letters, the last, tied with a 
 blue ribbon and written in a fine, sloping hand, a 
 woman's hand, unchained all his wrath. 
 
 "I change my tunic after the chariot race — 
 come to my dcessing-room." 
 
6o Sappho. 
 
 " No, no — don't read that." 
 
 She threw herself upon him, snatched away the 
 whole package and threw it into the fire ; nor did 
 he understand at first, even when he saw her at 
 his knees, her face flushed by the reflection of the 
 fire and the shame of her confession. 
 
 '' I was young : it was Caoudal, the great fool. 
 I did what he wanted." 
 
 Not till then did he understand, and he turned 
 pale as death. 
 
 "Oh! yes — Sappho — ' the whole lyre.' " And 
 pushing her away with his foot, like an unclean 
 beast, he added : *' Leave me ! Don't touch me ! 
 You make me sick ! " 
 
 Her shriek was drowned by a terrible peal of 
 thunder, very near and prolonged, at the same 
 instant that a vivid flash illumined the room. Fire ! 
 She sprang to her feet in terror, instinctively seized 
 the carafe that stood on the table and emptied it 
 on the mass of papers which had set fire to the 
 winter's soot ; then the watering-pot and the pitch- 
 ers ; and seeing that she was helpless, that the 
 flames were shooting out into the room, she ran 
 to the balcony, crying, '' Fire ! fire ! " 
 
 The Hettemas arrived first, then the concierge 
 and the police. 
 
 " Lower the fire-board ! " they cried ; " go up 
 on the roof! Water ! water ! No, a blanket ! 
 
 They gazed in dismay at their invaded, be- 
 draggled home; and when the alarm was at an 
 end, and the fire extinguished, when the black 
 crowd under the gas-lights in the street below had 
 
Sappho. 6 1 
 
 dispersed, and their neighbors had returned to 
 their own apartment with their minds at ease, the 
 two lovers, left amid that chaos of water, muddy- 
 soot, overturned, drenched furniture, felt sick at 
 heart and cowardly, without strength to renew 
 their quarrel or to put the room in order. Some- 
 thing ominous and degrading had entered their 
 hfe ; and that night, forgetting their former repug- 
 nance, they slept at the lodging-house. 
 
 Fanny's sacrifice was destined to be of no avail. 
 Of those burned, vanished letters, whole passages 
 which he knew by heart haunted the lover's mem- 
 ory, rose to his cheeks in waves of blood, like cer- 
 tain passages in unclean books. And those former 
 lovers of his mistress were almost all famous men. 
 The dead survived; the portraits and names of 
 the living were seen everywhere; people talked 
 of them before him, and every time he had a feel- 
 ing of oppression as of a family tie painfully 
 severed. 
 
 As his trouble sharpened his wits and his eyes, 
 he soon began to detect in Fanny the marks of 
 early influences, and the expressions, the ideas, 
 the habits which she had retained. That fashion 
 of putting out the thumb as if she were shaping, 
 moulding the object of which she was speaking, 
 with a " You can see it from here," belonged to 
 the sculptor. From Dejoie she had borrowed the 
 mania for long words, and the popular ballads of 
 which he had published a collection famous in 
 every corner of France; from La Gourncrie, his 
 
62 Sappho, 
 
 haughty, contemptuous tone and his severe judg- 
 ments concerning modern literature. 
 
 She had assimilated it all, heaping incongruity 
 upon incongruity, by the same phenomenon of 
 stratification which makes it possible to ascertain 
 the age and revolutions of the earth at its different 
 geological periods ; and perhaps she was not so 
 intelligent as she had seemed to him at first. But 
 intelligence was of small consequence ; though she 
 had been the stupidest of women, vulgar, and ten 
 years older than she really was, she would have 
 held him by the power of her past, by that base 
 jealousy which gnawed his vitals ; and he no longer 
 imposed silence upon its irritation or its rancorous, 
 hatred, but burst out on every occasion against 
 one or the other of her lovers. 
 
 There was no sale for Dejoie's novels; any one 
 of them could be bought on the quay for twenty- 
 five centimes. And to think of that old fool of a 
 Caoudal persisting in making love at his age ! 
 " He has n't any teeth, you know ; I watched him 
 at that breakfast at Ville d'Avray. He eats in the 
 front of his mouth, like a goat." His talent was 
 all gone too. What a dead failure his Female 
 Faun was at the last Salon ! '' It was no good." 
 That ** it was no good," was an expression which 
 he got from her, and which she herself retained 
 from her intimacy with the sculptor. When he 
 attacked in that way one of his past rivals, Fanny 
 chimed in with him ; and you should have heard 
 that youngster, ignorant of art, of life, of every- 
 thing, and that superficial girl, who had rubbed 
 
Sappho, 63 
 
 off a little wit in her contact with those famous 
 artists, pass judgment on them from a superior 
 level, and condemn them oracularly. 
 
 But Gaussin's special antipathy was Flamant the 
 engraver. Of him he knew nothing save that he 
 was handsome, as fair of complexion as himself, 
 that she called him " m' ami!' that she went to 
 see him in prison, and that, when he attacked him 
 as he did the others, calling him the " Sentimental 
 Convict," or the " Pretty Recluse," Fanny turned 
 her face away without a word. Erelong he ac- 
 cused his mistress of retaining a fond feeling for 
 that brigand, and she was forced to explain her- 
 self, gently but with decision. 
 
 " You know perfectly well that I no longer love 
 him, Jean, since I love you. I don't go there now, 
 I don't answer his letters ; but you will never make 
 me speak ill of the man who loved me to madness, 
 to crime." At that frank avowal, voicing the best 
 sentiment that she possessed, Jean did not protest, 
 but he was devoured by a jealous hatred, sharp- 
 ened by distrust, which led him to return some- 
 times to Rue d'Amsterdam unexpectedly at 
 midday. " Suppose she had gone to see him ! " 
 He always found her at home, sitting idle in 
 their little apartment, like an Oriental, or else at 
 the piano giving a lesson in singing to their stout 
 neighbor, Madame Hettema. They had formed 
 an intimacy since the night of the fire with those 
 good people, placid and plethoric souls who lived 
 in a perpetual current of fresh air, with doors and 
 windows open. 
 
64 Sappho, 
 
 The husband, a draughtsman at the Artillery 
 Museum, brought his work home with him, and 
 every evening in the week and all day Sunday he 
 could be seen leaning over his great table, in his 
 shirt-sleeves, puffing and perspiring, waving his 
 hands to make the air circulate, with his beard 
 almost to his eyes. His stout wife, sitting beside 
 him in a dressing-sack, also melted with the heat, 
 although she never did anything ; and at intervals 
 they would strike up one of their favorite duets to 
 cool their blood. 
 
 The two households were soon on an intimate 
 footing. About ten in the morning Hettema's 
 loud voice would be heard at the door : ** Are 
 you there, Gaussin?" And as their departments 
 lay in the same direction, they kept each other 
 company. The draughtsman — a heavy, vulgar 
 creature, several rungs lower on the social ladder 
 than his young companion — said but little, talked 
 as thick as if he had as much beard in his mouth 
 as on his cheeks; but you felt that he was an 
 honest fellow, and Jean's moral disorganization 
 needed just such an association. He clung to it 
 especially because of his mistress, who was living 
 in a solitude peopled with memories and regrets, 
 more dangerous, perhaps, than the connections she 
 had voluntarily renounced, and who found in Ma- 
 dame Hettema, constantly engrossed with her 
 man's welfare, with the toothsome surprise she 
 was preparing for his dinner, and with the new air 
 she would sing to him at dessert, a welcome and 
 wholesome acquaintance. 
 
Sappho, 65 
 
 But when the friendship proceeded so far as an 
 exchange of invitations, he had scruples. Those 
 people doubtless believed that they were married, 
 his conscience refused to prolong the deception, 
 and he told Fanny to tell her friend, so that there 
 might be no misunderstanding. That made her 
 laugh heartily. Poor b^be! no one was ever so 
 innocent as he. ** Why, they have never for one 
 moment believed that we were married. And 
 little they care about it ! If you knew where he 
 went to get his wife. All that I ever did was 
 worthy of Saint-Jean in comparison. He married 
 her only so that he might have her all to himself, 
 and the past troubles him very little, you see." 
 
 He could not believe it. An ex-prostitute, that 
 good old soul, with the bright eyes, the childlike 
 smile on her soft, fat face, the drawling provincial- 
 isms, for whom romanzas were never sentimental 
 enough, nor language too distinguished ; and he, 
 the man, so placid, so secure in his amorous well- 
 being ! He watched him as he walked at his side, 
 with his pipe between his teeth, with little sighs 
 of beatitude, while he himself was always deep in 
 thought, devouring himself with impotent rage. 
 
 *' You will get over it, 7n! ami,'' Fanny would 
 say gently in the hours when they told each other 
 everything; and she would soothe him, as affec- 
 tionate and charming as on the first day, but with 
 the addition of a sort of recklessness which Jean 
 could not define. 
 
 It was her freer manner, her fashion of express- 
 ing herself, a consciousness of her own power, 
 
 5 
 
66 ' Sappho, 
 
 strange confidences, for which he did not ask, con- 
 cerning her past Hfe, her dissipation, the wild peaks 
 of her curiosity. She no longer abstained from 
 smoking, rolling in her fingers the everlasting 
 cigarette which shortens the day for women of her 
 sort, and leaving it about on all the furniture ; and 
 in their discussions she put forth the most cynical 
 theories concerning Hfe in general, the infamy of 
 men, the roguery of women. Even the expression 
 of her eyes changed, made heavy by a vapor as of 
 sleeping water through which flashed the lightning 
 of a wanton laugh. 
 
 And the private manifestations of their passion 
 likewise underwent a transformation. Reserved at 
 the outset on account of the youth of her lover, 
 whose first illusion she respected, the woman threw 
 off all restraint after she had seen of her aban- 
 doned past the effect upon that child, when it was 
 suddenly disclosed to him, and the swamp fever she 
 had kindled in his blood. And she gave free rein 
 to the diabolical caresses she had so long held in 
 check, to all the delirious words her clenched teeth 
 had arrested, displayed herself without reserve in 
 all the plenitude of her charms as an amorous, ac- 
 complished courtesan, in all the horrible glory of 
 Sappho. 
 
 Modesty, reserve, of what use were they? Men 
 are all alike, crazy after vice and corruption, — that 
 little fellow, like the rest. To tempt them with 
 what they love is the best way to retain one's hold 
 on them. And all that she knew, all the forms 
 of depravity in pleasure with which she had been 
 
Sappho, 67 
 
 inoculated, Jean learned in his turn, to pass them 
 on' to others. Thus the poison circulates, propa- 
 gates itself, consuming body and soul, like those 
 torches of which the Latin poet speaks, which ran 
 from hand to hand through the circus. 
 
68 Sappho, 
 
 In their bedroom, beside a fine portrait of Fanny 
 by James Tissot, a relic of her pristine splendor, 
 there was a Southern landscape, all in black and 
 white, roughly represented in the sunHght by a 
 country photographer. 
 
 A stony hillside with terraces of vines supported 
 by stone-walls, and higher up, sheltered from the 
 north wind by rows of cypresses and nestling 
 against *a small forest of pines and myrtles on 
 which the sun shone brightly, was the great white 
 house, half farm-house, half chateau, with a broad 
 stoop, Italian roof, escutcheoned doors, and be- 
 yond, the red walls of the Provencal mas, the 
 perches for the peacocks, the crib for the cattle, 
 and the open sheds with ploughshares and har- 
 rows gleaming in their dark depths. The ruins of 
 ancient fortifications, an enormous tower outlined 
 against a cloudless sky, overlooked the whole, with 
 a few roofs and the Roman church tower of 
 Chateauneuf-des-Papes, where the Gaussins d 'Ar- 
 mandy had dwelt for all time. 
 
 The domain of Castelet, vineyard and farm, rich 
 in its vines, which were as famous as those of La 
 Nerte and L' Ermitage, was transmitted from father 
 to son, held in common by all the children, but 
 always worked by the younger son, in accordance 
 
Sappho. 69 
 
 with the family tradition that required the eldest son 
 to enter the consular service. Unluckily nature 
 often interferes with such arrangements ; and if ever 
 there was a human being incapable of managing a 
 farm, of managing anything under heaven, it was 
 Cesaire Gaussin, upon whom that heavy responsi- 
 bility fell when he was twenty-four years of age. 
 
 A libertine, a haunter of village gambling-hells 
 and brothels, Cesaire, or rather Le Fenat, — the 
 good-for-naught, the bad boy, — to give him his 
 youthful sobriquet, was an exaggerated specimen 
 of the incongruous type which appears from time 
 to time in the most austere families, like a sort of 
 safety-valve. 
 
 After a few years of neglect, of idiotic waste, 
 of disastrous games of botcillotte at the clubs of 
 Avignon and Orange, the estate was mortgaged, 
 the reserve cellars drained dry, the growing crops 
 sold in advance ; and one day, on the eve of the 
 final levy, Le Fenat imitated his brother's signa- 
 ture, and drew three drafts payable at the consu- 
 late at Shanghai, feehng assured that he could 
 procure the money to take them up before they 
 matured; but they were presented to the elder 
 brother in due course, with a desperate letter con- 
 fessing the ruin of the family and the forgeries. 
 The consul hastened to Chateauneuf, remedied 
 the desperate condition of affairs by the aid of his 
 savings and his wife's dowry, and, realizing Le 
 Fenat's incapacity, he renounced the " career," 
 although it was opening brilliantly before him, and 
 became a simple vine-grower. 
 
70 Sappho. 
 
 A true Gaussin he, in whom adherence to tra- 
 dition was a mania, alternately violent and calm, 
 like an extinct volcano with a remnant of eruptive 
 power in reserve, threatening at times to break 
 out; hard-working withal, and an exceedingly 
 well-informed agriculturist. Thanks to him, Cas- 
 telet prospered, extended its boundaries to include 
 all the property as far as the Rhone, and, as 
 human chances and mischances never come singly, 
 little Jean made his appearance under the myrtles 
 of the homestead. Meanwhile Le Fenat wandered 
 about the house, crushed under the weight of his 
 wrong-doing, hardly daring to look at his brother, 
 whose contemptuous silence overwhelmed him; 
 he breathed freely only in the fields, hunting or 
 fishing, tiring out his disappointment by trifling 
 tasks, picking snails from the vines, cutting superb 
 canes of myrtle or reed, and breakfasting alone 
 out-of-doors on a brochette of little birds, which he 
 cooked over a fire of olive-branches in the middle 
 of the pasture. Returning at night to dine at his 
 brother's table, he did not speak a word, notwith- 
 standing his sister-in-law's indulgent smile, for she 
 pitied the poor creature and supplied him with 
 pocket-money, unknown to her husband, who dealt 
 sternly with Le Fenat, less on account of his past 
 follies than on account of those still to come ; and 
 in truth, the great catastrophe was no sooner re- 
 paired than the elder Gaussin's pride was subjected 
 to a new test. 
 
 Three times a week, a pretty fisher-girl came to 
 Castelet to sew, — Divonne Abrieu, born in the 
 
Sappho, "J I 
 
 osier-bed on the bank of the Rhone, a genuine 
 river-plant, with a long, undulating stalk. In her 
 Catalan cap of three pieces fitting tightly to her 
 little head, the ribbons thrown back and disclosing 
 the curve of the neck, slightly tanned like the face, 
 down to the delicate snow-white lines of the breast 
 and shoulders, she made one think of some donna 
 of the old courts of love held all around Chateau- 
 neuf, at Courthezon, at Vacqueiras, in the old 
 donjons whose ruins are crumbling away on the 
 hillsides. 
 
 That historical suggestion had nothing to do 
 with Cesaire's love, for he was a simple soul, de- 
 void of imagination, and unread ; but, being short 
 in stature, he liked tall women, and was caught 
 the first day. He was an expert, was Le Fenat, 
 in village intrigues ; a contradance at the ball on 
 Sunday, a present of game, and afterward the 
 meeting in the fields. He found that Divonne 
 did not dance, that she herself brought game 
 to the kitchen, and that, being as strong and firm 
 on her legs as one of the flexible white poplars 
 on the river-bank, she was able to hurl the seducer 
 headlong ten feet away. After that she kept him 
 at a distance with the points of her scissors, which 
 hung at her belt by a steel chain, and drove him 
 mad with love, so that he talked of marrying her 
 and confided in his sister-in-law. She, having 
 known Divonne Abrieu from childhood, and know- 
 ing her to be virtuous and refined, thought in her 
 inmost heart that that mesalliance would perhaps 
 be Le Fenat's salvation; but the consul's pride 
 
72 Sappho, 
 
 rebelled at the idea of a Gaussin d'Armandy marry- 
 ing a peasant : '' If Cesaire does that, I will never 
 see him again." And he kept his word. 
 
 Cesaire married, left Castelet, and went to Hve 
 with his wife's relations on the bank of the Rhone, 
 on a small allowance which his brother made him 
 and which his indulgent sister-in-law carried to 
 him every month. Little Jean accompanied his 
 mother on her visits, taking the keenest delight 
 in the cabin of the Abrieus, a round smoke-be- 
 grimed structure, shaken by the tramontane or 
 the mistral, and supported by a single, vertical 
 timber like a mast. The open doorway formed 
 a frame for the little jetty where the nets lay dry- 
 ing, with the silvery, pearly scales gleaming and 
 sparlding among the meshes; below lay two or 
 three great fishing-boats, tossing and straining at 
 their cables, and the broad joyous river, aglow 
 with light, splashing against its islands in pale 
 green masses. And Jean, when he was very 
 young, acquired there his fondness for long jour- 
 neys, and for the sea which he had never seen. 
 
 Uncle Cesaire's exile lasted two or three years ; 
 it might never have ended except for a momen- 
 tous event in the family, the birth of the two little 
 twins, Marie and Marthe. The mother fell sick as 
 a result of that double birth, and Cesaire and his 
 wife were granted permission to go and see her. 
 The visit was followed by a reconciliation between 
 the two brothers, illogical, instinctive, due to the 
 irresistible power of community of blood ; Cesaire 
 and his wife took up their abode at Castelet, and 
 
Sappho. 73 
 
 as the poor mother was completely disabled by 
 incurable anaemia, soon complicated by rheumatic 
 gout, it fell to Divonne to keep the house, to su- 
 perintend the rearing of the little girls, to take 
 charge of the numerous staff of servants, and 
 to go twice a week to see Jean at his school at 
 Avignon, to say nothing of the nursing of her 
 invalid, who required her constant attention. 
 
 Being a woman of orderly instincts and clear- 
 headed, she made up for her lack of education by 
 her intelligence, her peasant's shrewdness, and the 
 stray bits of learning that had remained in the brain 
 pf Le Fenat, now thoroughly tamed and disci- 
 plined. The consul relied upon her to overlook 
 all the outlay for household expenses, which were 
 very heavy with the increased burdens and the 
 constantly diminishing revenues, sapped at the 
 foot of the vines by the phylloxera. All the out- 
 lying fields suffered, but the home farm was still 
 free from the pest ; and the consul was constantly 
 preoccupied by his endeavors to save the home 
 farm by investigation and experiment. 
 
 This Divonne Abrieu, who clung to her peasant 
 cap and her artisan's steel chain, and performed 
 so modestly her duties as housekeeper and com- 
 panion, kept the family out of financial difficulty 
 in those critical years; the invalid was always 
 supplied with the same costly luxuries ; the little 
 girls were reared beside their mother, like young 
 ladies, and Jean's allowance regularly paid, first 
 at the boarding-school, then at Aix, where he 
 studied law, and finally at Paris, whither he had 
 
74 Sappho, 
 
 gone to finish his course. By what miracles of 
 orderly management, of vigilance, she succeeded 
 in accomplishing so much, they were all as igno- 
 rant as she. But whenever Jean thought of Cas- 
 telet, whenever he raised his eyes to the photograph 
 with its pale tones faded by the hght, the first face 
 that it recalled, the first name that he uttered, was 
 Divonne's, the great-hearted peasant woman who, 
 he felt, was hidden behind the house of his fathers, 
 holding it erect by the force of her will. For some 
 days, however, since he had known what his mis- 
 tress was, he had avoided pronouncing that revered 
 name before her, as well as his mother's and those 
 of all his family ; it even annoyed him to look at 
 the photograph, it was so out of place, so lost, on 
 that wall above Sappho's bed ! 
 
 One day, on returning home to dinner, he was 
 surprised to find three covers laid instead of two, 
 and even more surprised to find Fanny playing 
 cards with a little man whom he did not recognize 
 at first, but who, on turning toward him, displayed 
 the light wild-goat's eyes, the enormous triumphant 
 nose in a sunburned simpering face, the bald pate 
 and the Leaguer's beard of Uncle Cesaire. He 
 answered his nephew's exclamations without put- 
 ting down his cards : — 
 
 '' I make myself at home, you see ; I 'm playing 
 bezique with my niece," 
 
 His niece ! 
 
 And Jean had taken such pains to conceal his 
 liaison from everybody ! That familiarity dis- 
 
Sappho, 75 
 
 pleased him, and the remarks Cesaire made in an 
 undertone while Fanny was busy with the dinner. 
 ** I congratulate you, my boy — such eyes and 
 arms ! a morsel for a king ! " It was much worse 
 when Le Fenat began, at the table, to talk without 
 the slightest reserve of the state of affairs at Cas- 
 telet, of the errand that brought him to Paris. 
 
 The pretended object of his journey was to col- 
 lect a sum of money, eight thousand francs, which 
 he had loaned long ago to his friend Courbebaisse 
 and never expected to see again ; but a letter from 
 a notary had informed him of Courbebaisse's death, 
 pechhe ! and that his eight thousand francs were 
 ready for him at any time. But the real cause, 
 for the money might have been sent to him, *' the 
 real cause is your mother's health, my poor boy. 
 She has failed very rapidly of late, and there are 
 times when her head 's all astray and she forgets 
 everything, even the children's names. The other 
 night, when your father left her room, she asked 
 Divonne who that pleasant gentleman was who 
 came to see her so often. No one but your aunt 
 has noticed this as yet, and she only mentioned it 
 to me to induce me to come to Paris and consult 
 Bouchereau about the poor woman's condition, 
 for he treated her once before." 
 
 " Has there ever been any insanity in the 
 family?" inquired Fanny, with a grave and learned 
 air, her La Gournerie air. 
 
 "Never," said Le Fenat; adding, with a sly 
 smile that extended to his temples, that he had 
 been a little cracked in his youth; "but my in- 
 
76 Sappho. 
 
 sanity was not displeasing to the ladies, and I 
 did n't have to be shut up." 
 
 Jean gazed at them, heartbroken. The grief 
 caused by the sad news was increased by an op- 
 pressive feeling of disgust at hearing that woman 
 talk about his mother, her infirmities and her crit- 
 ical time of life, with the unvarnished language and 
 the experienced air of a matron, while she sat with 
 her elbows on the table, rolling a cigarette. And 
 the other, talkative and indiscreet, threw aside all 
 reserve and told all the family secrets. 
 
 Oh ! the vines — the vines were in a wretched 
 state ! And even the home place itself would not 
 last long; half of the young shoots were de- 
 stroyed already, and they saved the rest only by 
 a miracle, tending each bunch, each grape like 
 sick children, with drugs which cost a lot. The 
 alarming part of it was that the consul persisted 
 in planting new slips, which the worms attacked 
 at once, instead of letting olive-trees and caper- 
 bushes grow at will on all that excellent land, now 
 entirely useless, covered with leprous and withered 
 vines. 
 
 Luckily he, Cesaire, had a few hectares on the 
 bank of the Rhone, which he treated by immer- 
 sion, a magnificent discovery appHcable only on 
 low lands. Already he had been encouraged by 
 an excellent crop, which produced a light wine, 
 not very heady, — " frog's wine," the consul con- 
 temptuously called it — but Le Fenat was obsti- 
 nate too, and with Courbebaisse's eight thousand 
 francs he proposed to buy Piboulette. 
 
Sappho. 77 
 
 "You know, my boy, the little island in the 
 Rhone, below the Abrieus' place ; but this is be- 
 tween ourselves, no one at Castelet must have a 
 suspicion of it." 
 
 " Not even Divonne, uncle ? " queried Fanny, 
 with a smile. 
 
 At his wife's name tears gathered in Le Fenat's 
 eyes. 
 
 " Oh ! Divonne — I never do anything without 
 her. She has faith in my idea too, and would be 
 so happy if her poor Cesaire should repair the 
 fortunes of Castelet after being the beginning of 
 its ruin." 
 
 Jean shuddered ; in God's name, did he propose 
 to confess, to tell the lamentable story of the for- 
 geries? But the Provencal, thinking only of his 
 affection for Divonne, had begun to talk about her, 
 of the happiness she gave him. And she was so 
 lovely too, such a magnificent frame ! 
 
 " Here, my niece, you 're a woman, you ought 
 to be a good judge." 
 
 He took from his wallet and handed her a photo- 
 graph which never left him. 
 
 From Jean's filial tone when he spoke of his 
 aunt, from the peasant woman's maternal advice 
 written in a coarse, slightly tremulous hand, Fanny 
 had imagined her to be like one of the common 
 white-capped village women of Seine-et-Oise, and 
 was speechless with amazement at sight of that 
 pretty face with its pure contour, brightened by the 
 narrow white headgear, that graceful and flexible 
 figure of a woman of thirty-five. 
 
78 Sappho. 
 
 " Very lovely indeed," she said, pursing up her 
 lips and with a strange inflection. 
 
 " And such a frame ! " said the uncle, clinging to 
 his image. 
 
 Then they went out on the balcony. After a 
 day of such extreme heat that the zinc of the 
 veranda still burned one's hand, a fine rain was 
 falling from a stray cloud, cooling the air, pat- 
 tering gayly on the roofs, drenching the sidewalks. 
 Paris laughed merrily under that shower, and the 
 noise of the crowd and the carriages, the uproar 
 ascending from the streets intoxicated the provin- 
 cial, rang in his empty, volatile head like a bell, 
 recalling his youth and a stay of three months in 
 Paris thirty years before, with his friend Courbe- 
 baisse. 
 
 *' Such sport, my children, such high old times ! " 
 And he told how they went to the Prado one 
 Mi-Careme, Courbebaisse as Chicard, and his mis- 
 tress. La Mornas, as a ballad-monger, — a disguise 
 which brought her good luck, as she had become 
 a cafi concert celebrity. He himself, the uncle, 
 moored his boat to a little hussy of the quarter 
 whose name was Pellicule. And he laughed from 
 his mouth to his temples, as merry as a cricket, 
 hummed dance-tunes, and beat time with his arm 
 about his niece's waist. At midnight, when he 
 left them to return to Hotel Cujas, the only hotel 
 he knew in Paris, he sang at the top of his voice 
 on the stairs, threw kisses to his niece, who held 
 the light for him, and shouted to Jean, — 
 
 "• I say, look out for yourself! " 
 
Sappho. 79 
 
 As soon as he had gone, Fanny, upon whose 
 forehead there remained a preoccupied fold, passed 
 hastily into her dressing-room, and through the 
 half-open door, while Jean was preparing for bed, 
 she began in an almost indifferent tone : " I say, 
 your aunt 's very pretty — I am not surprised now 
 that you talked about her so often. You prob- 
 ably gave poor old Le Fenat plenty of cause for 
 jealousy." 
 
 He protested with the utmost indignation. 
 Divonne ! a second mother to him, who used to 
 take care of him and dress him when he was a 
 little child ! She saved him when he was sick, from 
 death ! No, no ! he never had had the slightest 
 temptation to commit such an infamous act. 
 
 " Nonsense ! nonsense ! " retorted the woman's 
 strident voice, with hair-pins between her teeth; 
 " you can't make me believe that with those eyes 
 and the ^vio^ frame that imbecile talked about, his 
 Divonne could ever have remained indifferent be- 
 side a dainty blond with a woman's skin, like you ! 
 We 're all alike, you see, on the banks of the Rhone 
 or anywhere else." 
 
 She said it with conviction, believing that her 
 whole sex was quick to yield to every caprice and 
 conquered by the first desire. He reiterated his 
 denial, but he was disturbed in mind, searching 
 his memory, asking himself if the breath of an 
 innocent caress had ever warned him of any peril 
 whatsoever ; he could remember nothing, but the 
 purity of his affection was sullied, the pure cameo 
 marred with a scratch. 
 
8o Sappho, 
 
 " There ! look — this is the way they arrange the 
 hair in your country." 
 
 Upon her lovely hair, massed in two long bands, 
 she had pinned a handkerchief which made a very 
 good imitation of the catalane, the cap in three 
 pieces worn by the girls of Chateauneuf; and, 
 standing very straight in front of him, in the milk- 
 white folds of her night-dress, with flashing eyes, 
 she asked him, — 
 
 " Do I look like Divonne? " 
 
 Oh ! no, not at all ; she resembled no one but 
 herself, in that little cap which recalled the other, 
 the Saint-Lazare cap, in which she looked so 
 pretty, they said, when she threw her convict a 
 farewell kiss in the courtroom : " Don't be dis- 
 couraged, m' ami ; the happy days will return." 
 
 And that reminiscence affected him so unpleas- 
 antly that, as soon as his mistress was in bed, he 
 hurriedly extinguished the hght, to avoid looking 
 at her. 
 
 Early the next morning the uncle arrived in fine 
 feather, twirling his cane, and called out, ** Oho ! 
 bebes! " in the gamesome, patronizing tone that 
 Courbebaisse used to adopt when he came to look 
 for him in Pellicule's arms. He seemed even more 
 excited than on the previous day : the Hotel Cujas, 
 doubtless, and more than all else, the eight thou- 
 sand francs stowed away in his wallet. The money 
 to purchase Piboulette, to be sure ; but he cer- 
 tainly had the right to abstract a few louis in order 
 to offer his niece a breakfast in the country. 
 
Sappho, 8i 
 
 " How about Bouchereau? " queried his nephew, 
 who could not absent himself from his office two 
 days in succession. It was agreed that they should 
 breakfast on the Champs-Elysees and that the two 
 men should go afterwards to consult the doctor. 
 
 That was not what Le Fenat had dreamed of, — 
 the arrival at Saint-Cloud in great state, with the 
 carriage filled with champagne ; but the breakfast 
 was charming none the less, on the terrace of the 
 restaurant under the shade of the acacias and Jap- 
 anese varnish-trees, with occasional snatches of 
 choruses from a day rehearsal at the neighboring 
 caf<6-concert. C^saire, very talkative, very gallant, 
 aired all his fascinations to dazzle the Parisian. 
 He " slanged " the waiters, complimented the chef 
 on his sauce nieunihe ; and Fanny laughed with 
 a silly, forced heartiness, a private supper-room 
 giggle, which annoyed Gaussin, as did the intimacy 
 established between the uncle and the niece over 
 his head. 
 
 You would have said that they were friends of 
 twenty years' standing. Le Fenat, becoming sen- 
 timental with the wines served at dessert, talked 
 about Castelet, Divonne, and also about his little 
 Jean ; he was happy to know that he was with her, 
 a serious-minded woman who would prevent him 
 from making a fool of himself. And he proceeded 
 to advise her, as if she were a young bride, con- 
 cerning the young man's somewhat morose dispo- 
 sition and the best way to treat him, tapping her 
 arms, with thick tongue and glazed, watery eyes. 
 
 He sobered off at Bouchereau's. Two hours of 
 6 
 
82 Sappho. 
 
 waiting on the first floor on Place Vendome, in 
 those huge salons, high and cold, filled with a silent, 
 afflicted crowd; the hell of pain of which they 
 traversed all the zones in succession, passing from 
 room to room to the doctor's office. 
 
 Bouchereau, with his prodigious memory, re- 
 membered Madame Gaussin very well, having 
 been called to see her in consultation at Castelet 
 ten years before, at the beginning of her illness ; 
 he made them describe its different phases, looked 
 over the former prescriptions, and lost no time in 
 reassuring the two men concerning the symptoms 
 of cerebral disturbance which had developed and 
 which he attributed to the use of certain drugs. 
 While he sat motionless at his desk, with his heavy 
 lashes lowered over his sharp, searching little eyes, 
 writing a long letter to his professional brother at 
 Avignon, the uncle and nephew hstened, holding 
 their breath, to the scratching of that pen, which, 
 so far as they were concerned, drowned all the 
 noises of aristocratic Paris; and suddenly the 
 power of the physician in modern times became 
 manifest to them, the high-priest, the supreme 
 faith, the unconquerable superstition. 
 
 Cesaire left the house, grave and subdued. 
 
 '' I am going back to the hotel to strap my trunk. 
 The air of Paris does n't agree with me, I 'm afraid, 
 my boy ; if I stayed on here I should make a fool 
 of myself I shall take the seven-o'clock train to- 
 night. Make my excuses to my niece, won't 
 you?" 
 
 Jean was careful to say nothing to detain him, 
 
Sappho. ^z 
 
 dreading the results of his childishness, his frivol- 
 ity; and the next morning he was congratulating 
 himself on the knowledge that he was once more 
 under Divonne's wing, when he suddenly appeared, 
 with dejected features and his linen in sad dis- 
 order. 
 
 " Great God ! uncle, what has happened to you ? " 
 
 Collapsing into an arm-chair, voiceless and limp 
 at first, but reviving by slow degrees, the uncle 
 confessed to a meeting with a friend of the Cour- 
 bebaisse time, a too copious dinner, and the loss 
 of the eight thousand francs in a gambling-hell 
 during the night. Nothing left, not a sou ! How 
 could he go home and tell Divonne that? And 
 the purchase of Piboulette. Suddenly attacked 
 with a sort of delirium, the Southerner put his 
 hands over his eyes, stuffed his thumbs into his 
 ears, howled, sobbed, cursed himself without stint, 
 gave vent to his remorse in a general confession 
 covering his whole life. He was the shame and 
 the curse of his family; when individuals of his 
 type appeared in families, their relatives would 
 have the right to destroy them hke wolves. Ex- 
 cept for his brother's generosity, where would he 
 be ? At the galleys with thieves and forgers. 
 
 " Uncle, uncle ! " cried Gaussin, distressed be- 
 yond measure, and trying to stop him. 
 
 But the other, wilfully blind and deaf, took de- 
 light in that public declaration of his crime, which 
 he described in its most trivial details, while Fanny 
 gazed at him in pity blended with admiration. 
 He was a passionate fellow, at all events, just such 
 
84 Sappho. 
 
 a scapegrace as she liked ; and, deeply moved by 
 his predicament, like the good-natured creature 
 she was, she tried to devise some way of assisting 
 him. But what could she do? She had seen no- 
 body for a year, Jean had no connections. Sud- 
 denly a name came to her mind : Dechelette ! 
 He was undoubtedly in Paris at that moment, and 
 he was such a kind-hearted fellow ! 
 
 " But I hardly know him," said Jean. 
 
 ** I will go to him myself." 
 
 *'What! do you mean it?" 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 Their glances met and understood each other. 
 Dechelette also had been her lover, the lover of 
 a night whom she hardly remembered. But he 
 never forgot one ; they were all arranged in order 
 in his head, like the saints on a calendar. 
 
 " If it annoys you," she began, a little embar- 
 rassed. Thereupon Cesaire, who, during that 
 short discussion, had ceased his howHng, be- 
 stowed upon them such a despairing, imploring 
 glance that Jean submitted, consented between 
 his teeth. 
 
 How interminable that hour seemed to both of 
 them, distracted as they were by thoughts which 
 they did not divulge to each other, as they leaned 
 on the balcony rail, waiting for the woman's return. 
 
 ** Does this Dechelette live very far away? " 
 
 "Why, no, on Rue de Rome — only a step," 
 replied Jean fiercely, for he too thought that 
 Fanny was very slow in returning. He tried to 
 comfort himself with the engineer's motto in love : 
 
Sappho. 85 
 
 " No to-morrow," and the scornful tone in which 
 he had heard him speak of Sappho as of an ex- 
 star of the world of gallantry ; but his lover's pride 
 rebelled, and he could almost have wished that 
 Dechelette would still consider her beautiful and 
 desirable. Ah ! why need that crack-brained old 
 Cesaire reopen all his wounds thus ! 
 
 At last Fanny's cape turned the corner of the 
 street. She returned with a beaming face. 
 
 *' It 's all right ; I have the money." 
 
 When the eight thousand francs were spread out 
 before him, the uncle wept with joy, insisted on 
 giving a receipt, on fixing the rate of interest and 
 the date of repayment. 
 
 ''There's no need of it, uncle. I didn't men- 
 tion your name. I am the one to whom the money 
 was loaned, and you owe it to me for as long a 
 time as you please." 
 
 ** Such a service," replied Cesaire, beside him- 
 self with gratitude, " is repaid with a friendship 
 that never ends." And at the station, whither 
 Gaussin accompanied him to make sure that he 
 really took the train, he said with tears in his 
 eyes : " What a woman ! what a treasure ! You 
 must make her happy, I tell you." 
 
 Jean was much depressed by that episode, feel- 
 ing that his chain, already so burdensome, was 
 drawn tighter and tighter, and that two things 
 had become blended which his innate delicacy 
 had always kept separate and distinct : his family 
 and his liaison. Now Cesaire kept the mistress 
 informed about all his labors, his plantations, gave 
 
86 Sappho, 
 
 her all the news of Castelet ; and Fanny criticised 
 the consul's obstinacy in the matter of the vines, 
 talked about his mother's health, irritated Jean with 
 her solicitude or with misplaced advice. Never 
 an allusion to the service she had rendered him. 
 No, indeed, nor to Le Fenat's former experience, 
 that blot on the fair fame of the house of Armandy, 
 which the uncle had laid bare before her. Once 
 only did she use it as a weapon of retort, under 
 the following circumstances. 
 
 They were returning from the theatre, and, as 
 it was raining, they took a cab at a stand on 
 the boulevard. The cab, one of those lumbering 
 affairs which appear only after midnight, was a 
 long while in starting, the man half asleep and 
 the horse shaking his nose-bag. While they were 
 waiting inside the vehicle out of the rain, an old 
 driver, who was tying a new lash on his whip, 
 calmly walked up to the door, his twine between 
 his teeth, and said to Fanny in a cracked voice, 
 reeking with hquor, — 
 
 '' Good-evening. How goes it?" 
 
 "Hallo, is it you?" 
 
 She gave a little start, quickly repressed, and 
 said to her lover in an undertone, " My father ! " 
 
 Her father — that night-prowler in a long ex- 
 livery cape, stained with mud and minus some of 
 its metal buttons, and displaying in the light of 
 the street lamp a bloated face, purple with alcohol, 
 in which Gaussin fancied that he could recognize, 
 in a vulgarized form, Fanny's regular, sensuous 
 profile, her great lustful eyes ! Without paying 
 
Sappho, 87 
 
 any heed to the man who accompanied his daugh- 
 ter, and as if he had not seen him, Pere Legrand 
 proceeded to give her news of the family. '* The 
 old woman 's been at Necker a fortnight ; she 's in 
 a bad way. Go and see her some day; it will 
 cheer her up. As for me, luckily the box-seat 
 holds firm; still a good whip and a good lash. 
 But business ain't very good. If you happened to 
 want a good coachman by the month, that would 
 just suit me. No? All right, then, and good-bye 
 till I see you again." 
 
 They shook hands limply ; the cab started. 
 
 " Well, would you believe it ? " murmured Fanny ; 
 and she began at once to tell him at length about 
 her family, a subject which she had always avoided, 
 ** it was so ghastly, so degrading! " but they knew 
 each other better now ; they had nothing to con- 
 ceal from each other. 
 
 She was born at the Moulin-aux- Anglais, an inn 
 in the suburbs, of that father, an ex-dragoon, who 
 drove the stage from Paris to Chatillon, and of an 
 inn-servant, between two trips to the bar. 
 
 She had never known her mother, who died in 
 giving birth to her; but the proprietors of the 
 house, like honest people, compelled the father 
 to acknowledge his little one and to pay for her 
 nursing. He dared not refuse, for he owed a large 
 sum there ; and when Fanny was four years old, 
 he took her on the stage like a little dog, perched 
 away up under the hood, highly delighted to bowl 
 along the roads, to watch the lights of the lanterns 
 running alongside, the smoking, panting flanks of 
 
88 Sappho. 
 
 the horses, and to fall asleep in the darkness and 
 the wind, listening to the tinkling bells. 
 
 But Pere Legrand soon tired of that essay in 
 paternity; little as it cost, he had to feed and 
 dress the brat. And then, too, she was an em- 
 barrassment to him in the matter of a marriage 
 with a market-gardener's widow upon whose melon- 
 beds and long hnes of cabbages, by which his 
 route lay, he had cast a longing eye. She had 
 at that time a very well-defined conviction that 
 her father intended to destroy her ; that was the 
 drunkard's absorbing idea, to rid himself of the 
 child at any price ; and if the widow herself, good 
 Mere Machaume, had not taken her under her 
 protection — 
 
 " By the way, you knew Machaume," said Fanny. 
 
 "What! that servant I saw at your old apart- 
 ments?" 
 
 " She was my step-mother. She was so kind to 
 me when I was little ; I took her into my service to 
 rescue her from her cur of a husband, who, after 
 using up all her property, beat her and compelled 
 her to wait on a trollop with whom he was Hving. 
 Ah ! poor Machaume, she knows what a hand- 
 some man costs. Well, when she left me, in spite 
 of all I could say to her, she lost no time in taking 
 up with him again, and now here she is at the hos- 
 pital. How fast he goes backward without her, 
 the old rascal ! how dirty he was ! what a rag- 
 picker's look ! there 's nothing left of him but his 
 whip — did you see how straight he held it? Even 
 when he 's too drunk to stand, he '11 carry it in 
 
Sappho, 89 
 
 front of him like a taper and put it in his room ; 
 he never kept anything decent but that. * Good 
 whip, good lash/ that 's his motto." 
 
 She talked about him unconsciously, as a stran- 
 ger, without disgust or shame ; and Jean was ap- 
 palled to hear her. Such a father ! such a mother ! 
 — compared with the consul's stern features and 
 Madame Gaussin's angelic smile ! And realizing 
 suddenly the full significance of her lover's silence, 
 his revolt against that social filth with which he 
 was splashed by living with her, Fanny observed 
 in a philosophical tone : ** After all, there seems 
 to be something of the sort in all families, and 
 we 're not responsible for it. I have my Pere Le- 
 grand ; you have your Uncle Cesaire." 
 
90 Sappho. 
 
 VI. 
 
 " My dear Boy, — As I write you I am still 
 all in a tremble from the terrible anxiety we have 
 had ; our twins disappeared, away from Castelet a 
 whole day and night and the morning of the next 
 day ! 
 
 ** It was Sunday at breakfast time that we noticed 
 that the little ones were missing. I had dressed 
 them nicely for the eight-o'clock mass to which 
 the consul was to take them ; then I thought no 
 more about it, being busy with your mother, who 
 was more nervous than usual, as if she had a pre- 
 sentiment of the misfortune that was hovering over 
 us. You know, ever since she 's been sick, she 
 has been able to foresee what was going to happen ; 
 and the less able she is to move, the more busily 
 her brain works. 
 
 " Luckily your mother was in her chamber, and 
 the rest of us were all in the living-room waiting 
 for the little ones; we shouted for them all over 
 the home-place, the shepherd blew the great whistle 
 he calls the sheep with; then Cesaire in one direc- 
 tion, I in another, Rousseline, Tardive, everybody 
 rushed all about Castelet, and whenever one of us 
 met another, it was : ' Well ? ' — ' Have n't found 
 anything.' At last we did n't dare ask ; with beat- 
 ing heart we went to the well below the long win- 
 
Sappho, 91 
 
 dows of the hay-loft. What a day ! And I had 
 to go up every minute or two to your mother, to 
 smile calmly, and explain the absence of the little 
 ones by saying that I had sent them to pass Sun- 
 day with their aunt at Villamuris. She seemed to 
 believe it ; but late in the night, while I was sitting 
 up with her, and looking through the window at 
 the lights moving about in the fields and on the 
 Rhone, searching for the children, I heard her cry- 
 ing softly in her bed ; and when I questioned her, 
 * I am crying on account of something which you 
 are hiding from me, but which I have guessed all 
 the same,' she replied, in the girlish voice which 
 her suffering has brought back ; and without say- 
 ing anything more, we both worried our hearts out, 
 keeping our grief to ourselves. 
 
 ** At last, my dear child, not to make the painful 
 story too long, on Monday morning our little ones 
 were brought back to us by the workmen whom 
 your uncle employs on the island, who had found 
 them on a pile of vine-branches, pale with cold and 
 hunger after that night in the open air, and all sur- 
 rounded by the water. And this is what they told 
 us in the innocence of their little hearts. For a long 
 time they had been beset by the idea of doing like 
 their patron saints, Marthe and Marie, whose story 
 they had read, of starting off in a boat without 
 sails or oars or food of any sort, and spreading the 
 Gospel on the first shore to which God's breath 
 might carry them. And so, on Sunday after mass, 
 they cast off a fishing-boat, and, kneeling in the 
 bottom like the holy women, they floated quietly 
 
92 Sappho, 
 
 along with the current and ran aground among the 
 reeds of Piboulette, notwithstanding the freshets, 
 the high wind, the revouluns. Yes, the good Lord 
 took care of them ! and it was he who gave them 
 back to us, the pretties ! with their Sunday ruffles 
 a Httle rumpled, and the gilding on their prayer- 
 books marred. We had not the heart to scold 
 them, but only to hug and kiss them ; but we are 
 all still sick with the fright we had. 
 
 ** The most affected of all was your mother, who, 
 although we had told her nothing about it, felt death 
 passing over Castelet, as she says ; and she, ordi- 
 narily so placid and cheerful, still retains a sadness 
 which nothing seems to cure, although your father 
 and I and everybody are tenderly devoted to her. 
 And suppose I should tell you, my dear Jean, that 
 it is on your account more than any other that she 
 is anxious and depressed? She dares not say so 
 before your father, who wishes you to be left un- 
 disturbed at your work, but you did n't come after 
 your examination as you promised. Give us a 
 surprise for the Christmas holiday ; help an invalid 
 to recover her lovely smile. If you knew how bit- 
 terly we regret, when we no longer have our old 
 people with us, that we did not give them more of 
 our time ! " 
 
 Standing by the window, where the light of a 
 winter's sun filtered sluggishly in through the fog, 
 Jean read that letter, relished to the full its flavor 
 of the fields, the cherished memories of affection 
 and sunlight. 
 
 " What's that? — let me see." 
 
Sappho. 93 
 
 Fanny had just awakened in the yellow light 
 that found its way between the parted curtains, 
 and, heavy with sleep, mechanically put out her 
 hand to the box of Maryland tobacco that always 
 stood on her night table. He hesitated, knowing 
 how the mere name of Divonne always inflamed 
 his mistress's jealousy; but how could he refuse 
 to show her the letter, when she recognized the 
 paper and the handwriting? 
 
 At first the Httle girls' escapade appealed to her 
 sympathies with charming effect, as she sat up in 
 bed, with arms and breast bare, amid the waves of 
 her brown hair, reading and rolling a cigarette; 
 but the closing words irritated her to frenzy, and 
 she crumpled up the letter and threw it across the 
 room. 
 
 " I '11 find a way to stop her mouth, about her 
 holy women ! It 's all a scheme to make you 
 leave Paris. She misses her handsome nephew, 
 the — " 
 
 He tried to check her, to prevent her uttering 
 the filthy word which she hurled at him, followed 
 by a long string of the same sort. She had never 
 given vent to her passion in such vulgar language 
 before him, in such an overflowing torrent of foul 
 anger, as from a sewer that had burst and dis- 
 charged its slime and its stench. All the slang of 
 her past as prostitute and street arab swelled her 
 throat and distended her lip. 
 
 Easy enough to see what they all wanted down 
 there. C^saire had tattled and there was a family 
 scheme to break off their connection, to lure him 
 
94 Sappho, 
 
 back to the province with Divonne's fine frame as 
 a bait. 
 
 " Let me tell you this, if you go I '11 write to 
 your cuckold. I '11 give him warning — ah ! upon 
 my word ! — " 
 
 As she spoke she gathered herself together on 
 the bed with an expression of bitter hatred, with 
 hollow cheeks and staring eyes, like a vicious beast 
 preparing to spring. 
 
 And Gaussin remembered that he had seen her 
 so on Rue de 1' Arcade, but now it was against him 
 that that bellowing hatred was directed, which 
 tempted him to fall upon his mistress and beat 
 her ; for in such carnal passions, where respect and 
 esteem for the loved one are null, brutality always 
 comes to the surface in wrath or in caresses. He 
 was afraid of himself, left the house abruptly for 
 his office, and as he walked along inveighed bit- 
 terly against the hfe he had marked out for him- 
 self That would teach him to put himself in the 
 power of such a woman ! What infamous, ghastly 
 insults ! His sisters, his mother, no one was spared. 
 What ! had he not even the right to go and see his 
 people? Why, in what sort of a prison had he 
 voluntarily confined himself? And the whole 
 course of their Haison passed through his mind ; 
 he saw how the Egyptian's lovely bare arms, twined 
 about his neck on the night of the ball, had clung 
 to him despotically and firmly, isolating him from 
 his friends and his family. Now his mind was 
 made up. That very night, come what may, he 
 would start for Castelet. 
 
Sappho, 95 
 
 Some matters of business despatched, his leave 
 of absence obtained at headquarters, he returned 
 home early, expecting a terrible scene, prepared 
 for anything, even a rupture. But the sweet greet- 
 ing with which Fanny met him, her heavy eyes, 
 her cheeks, softened as it were with tears, left him 
 hardly the courage to assert his will. 
 
 " I am going to-night," he said, straightening 
 himself up. 
 
 " You are quite right, m! ami. Go and see 
 your mother, and above all — " she drew nearer 
 to him coaxingly — ''forget how naughty I was; 
 I love you too much, it is my mania." 
 
 All the rest of the day, while she packed his 
 trunk with coquettish solicitude, as sweet and at- 
 tractive as in the early days, she maintained that 
 penitent attitude, perhaps with the idea of detain- 
 ing him. But not once did she say to him, 
 "Stay; " and when, at the last moment, all hope 
 having vanished in face of the final preparations, 
 she nestled close to her lover, trying to impregnate 
 him with her for the whole time of his journey and 
 his absence, her farewell, her kiss murmured only 
 this : " Tell me, Jean, you are not angry with me, 
 are you ? " 
 
 Oh ! the intoxicating joy of awaking in the 
 morning in the room that was his when he was a 
 child, his heart still warm from the embraces of his 
 dear ones, the outpouring of joy at his arrival, of 
 finding in the same place, on the mosquito bar of 
 his little bed, the same shaft of light that he had 
 
g6 Sappho. 
 
 always looked for when he awoke, of hearing the 
 cries of the peacocks on their perches, the creaking 
 of the well-chain, the cattle rushing from the sheds 
 with hurrying feet, and, when he had thrown his 
 shutters back against the wall, of seeing once more 
 that lovely warm light which entered the room in 
 sheets, as if the floodgates had been opened, and 
 that marvellous prospect of sloping vineyards, 
 cypresses, olive trees and gHstening pine woods, 
 stretching away to the Rhone beneath a deep, 
 cloudless sky, without a fleck of mist notwithstand- 
 ing the early hour, — a green sky, swept all night 
 by the mistral, which still filled the great valley 
 with its strong cheery breath. 
 
 Jean compared that awakening to those in Paris 
 beneath a sky as murky as his love, and felt happy 
 and free. He went downstairs. The house, white 
 with sunlight, was still asleep, all the shutters 
 closed like the eyes of those within ; and he was 
 glad of a moment of soHtude to recover himself, 
 in that moral convalescence which he felt was just 
 beginning for him. 
 
 He walked a few steps along the terrace, took 
 an ascending path in the park — in what they 
 called the park, a forest of pines and myrtles 
 planted at random on the rough hill of Castelet, 
 cut by irregular paths made slippery by dry pine 
 needles. His dog. Miracle, very old and lame, 
 had come out of his kennel, and followed silently 
 at his heels ; how often they had taken that walk 
 together in the morning ! 
 
 At the entrance to the vineyards, where the tall 
 
Sappho. 97 
 
 cypresses that formed the line of demarcation bent 
 their graceful pointed tops, the dog hesitated ; he 
 knew how hard the thick layer of sand — a new 
 remedy for the phylloxera with which the consul 
 was experimenting — and the embankments sup- 
 porting the terrace would be for his poor old 
 paws. The joy of accompanying his master turned 
 the scale at last, however; and at every obstacle 
 there were painful struggles, a timid little whine, 
 brief halts, and the awkward antics of a crab on 
 a rock. Jean did not look at him, being entirely 
 absorbed by the new alicant plants, of which his 
 father had had much to say to him the night before. 
 The shoots seemed to be flourishing in the smooth, 
 glistening sand. At last the poor man was to be re- 
 paid for his persistent labors ; the Castelet vintage 
 would still live when La Nerte, L'Ermitage, all the 
 famous native wines of the South were dead ! 
 
 A little white cap suddenly appeared in front 
 of him. It was Divonne, the first one astir in the 
 house ; she had a reaping-hook in her hand, and 
 something else which she threw away ; and her 
 cheeks, ordinarily so colorless, were dyed with a 
 sudden crimson flush. "Is it you, Jean? You 
 frightened me; I thought it was your father." 
 She recovered her self-possession in an instant, 
 and kissed him. "Did you sleep well?" 
 
 " Very well, aunt ; but why did you dread my 
 father's coming?" 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 She picked up the root she had just torn from 
 the ground. 
 
 7 
 
98 Sappho, 
 
 " The consul told you, did n't he, that this time 
 he was sure of success ? Well, look ! there 's the 
 creature." 
 
 Jean saw a tiny bit of yellowish moss buried in 
 the wood, the imperceptible mould that has 
 brought ruin step by step upon entire provinces ; 
 and it seemed an ironical freak of nature, on that 
 glorious morning, in that vivifying sunlight — that 
 infinitesimal object, destructive and indestructible. 
 
 "That's the beginning. In three months the 
 whole farm will be destroyed, and your father will 
 begin all over again, for his pride is at stake. 
 There will be more new plants and new remedies 
 until the day when — " 
 
 A despairing gesture completed and emphasized 
 her sentence. 
 
 " Really? is it as bad as that? " 
 
 " Oh ! you know the consul. He never says a 
 word, and gives me the money for the month as 
 usual ; but I see that he 's preoccupied. He goes 
 to Avignon and Orange. He is trying to raise 
 money." 
 
 "And C^saire? what about his immersions?" 
 the young man asked in dismay. 
 
 Thank God, everything was going finely in that 
 direction. They had had fifty casks of wine from 
 the last crop ; and this year the product would be 
 twice that. In view of his success the consul had 
 surrendered to his brother all the vineyards in the 
 plain, which had hitherto been allowed to lie fallow, 
 with long hnes of dead stumps like a cemetery ; and 
 now they were under water for three months. 
 
Sappho, 99 
 
 And the Provencal, proud of her man's work, of 
 her Fenat, pointed out to Jean from their elevated 
 position several great ponds — clairs she called 
 them — kept full by embankments of lime as on 
 the salt-marshes. 
 
 " Those plants will bear in two years ; and so 
 will Piboulette, and the island of Lamotte, which 
 your uncle has bought without telling anybody. 
 Then we shall be rich, but we must hold hard till 
 then ; every one must contribute and sacrifice him- 
 self." 
 
 She talked cheerfully of sacrifice, like a woman 
 who has ceased to wonder at it, and with such 
 contagious enthusiasm that Jean, impelled by a 
 sudden thought, replied in the same tone : " We 
 will sacrifice ourselves, Divonne." 
 
 That very day he wrote to Fanny that his 
 parents could not continue his allowance, that he 
 should be reduced to his salary at the department, 
 and that, under those conditions, it was impossible 
 for them to live together. The result was an 
 earlier separation than he expected, three or four 
 years before his anticipated departure from France ; 
 but he felt sure that his mistress would accept those 
 weighty reasons, and that she would take pity 
 upon him and his trouble, would assist him in 
 that painful performance of a bounden duty. 
 
 Was it really a sacrifice? Was he not, on the 
 contrary, relieved to put an end to an existence 
 which seemed hateful and unhealthy to him, es- 
 pecially since he had returned to nature, to his 
 family, to simple and upright affections? His 
 
lOO Sappho. 
 
 letter written, without great effort and without 
 pain, he relied upon the virtuous and loyal affec- 
 tion of the honest hearts about him, upon the ex- 
 ample of that father, proudest and most upright 
 of men ; upon the innocent smile of the httle holy 
 women, and also upon that boundless, peaceful 
 horizon, the health-giving emanations from the 
 mountains, the sky above him, the swift-flowing, 
 eager river, to defend him against what he foresaw 
 would be a fierce reply, full of threats and extrava- 
 gant language ; for, as he thought of his passion, 
 of all the villainous elements of which it was com- 
 posed, it seemed to him that he was just recover- 
 ing from a wasting fever of the sort caused by the 
 exhalations from swamp-lands. 
 
 Five or six days passed in the silence that fol- 
 lows a decisive blow. Morning and night Jean 
 went to the post and returned empty-handed, 
 strangely perturbed in mind. What was she do- 
 ing? What had she decided upon, and, in any 
 event, why not reply? He thought of nothing 
 else. And at night, when everybody at Castelet 
 was sleeping soundly, and the wind crooning 
 through the long corridors, he and Cesaire dis- 
 cussed it in his little room. 
 
 " She 's likely to turn up here ! " the uncle de- 
 clared ; and his anxiety was greatly increased by 
 the fact that the letter of rupture contained two 
 notes, on six months and a year's time, to adjust 
 his debt and the interest thereon. How could 
 he pay those notes? How could he explain to 
 Divonne? He shuddered at the bare thought, 
 
Sappho, loi 
 
 and made his nephew unhappy when he remarked 
 with a long face, as he shook the ashes from his 
 pipe at the conchision of their midmghl-.iiiten'iew, 
 **Well, good-night; at all events^ .what you have 
 done is quite right." , . .' 
 
 At last this reply arrived, and after reading the 
 first Hnes — " My dear man, I have not written to 
 you sooner, because I was determined to prove to 
 you otherwise than by words how well I under- 
 stand you and love you," — Jean stopped, as sur- 
 prised as a man who hears a symphony instead of 
 the signal for capitulation that he dreaded. He 
 turned hastily to the last page, where he read — 
 "' remain until death your dog who loves you, 
 whom you can beat if you choose, and who sends 
 you a passionately loving kiss." 
 
 So she had not received his letter ! But when 
 he read it through, line by line, with tears in his 
 eyes, it proved to be really a reply, and said that 
 Fanny had long anticipated the bad news of the 
 trouble at Castelet, which would hasten the inevi- 
 table separation. She had at once set about find- 
 ing some employment in order that she might no 
 longer remain a burden to him, and she had found 
 a position as manager of a lodging-house on 
 Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, in the service of a 
 very wealthy lady. A hundred francs a month 
 with board and lodging, and her Sundays free. 
 
 *' You understand, my man, one day a week to 
 love each other ; for you will still love me, won't 
 you ? You will repay me for the great effort I am 
 making, working for the first time in my life, for 
 
I02 Sappho. 
 
 the night and day slavery which I accept, with 
 humiliations which you cannot imagine and which 
 will be a s<j-r:e". t^ial to my craze for independence. 
 But I feel a most- extraordinary satisfaction in suf- 
 feriiig for lovt^^of you. I owe you so much, you 
 have taught me so many good, honorable things 
 that no one had ever mentioned to me ! Ah ! if 
 we had only met sooner ! But before you had 
 learned to walk, I was lying in men's arms. But 
 not one of them all can boast of having led me to 
 make such a resolution in order to keep him a 
 little longer. Now, return when you choose, the 
 apartment is empty. I have looked over all my 
 things; that was the hardest of all, to clean out 
 the drawers and throw away the souvenirs. You 
 will find only my portrait left, and that will cost 
 you nothing ; nothing but the kind glances which 
 I beg in its favor. Ah! m' ami, m' ami! How- 
 ever, if you keep my Sunday for me, and my little 
 place in your neck, my place, you know — " And 
 there followed loving phrases, cajoleries, the vo- 
 luptuous wantonness of a cat, coupled with pas- 
 sionate words which made the lover rub his face 
 against the glossy paper, as if the warm human 
 caress were transmitted by it. 
 
 '* Does n't she mention my notes? " asked Uncle 
 Cesaire, timidly. 
 
 " She sends them back to you. You can repay 
 her when you are rich." 
 
 The uncle breathed a sigh of relief, his temples 
 wrinkled with satisfaction, and with portentous grav- 
 ity, with his strong Southern accent, he said, — 
 
Sappho, 103 
 
 " Ah ! do you want mc to tell you something ? 
 That woman 's a saint ! " 
 
 Then, passing to another line of thought, with 
 the instability, the lack of logic and of memory 
 which was one of the absurdities of his character : 
 " And such passion, my boy, such fire ! Why, my 
 mouth is all parched as it used to be when Courbe- 
 baisse read me his letters from La Mornas." 
 
 Once more Jean had to submit to the story of 
 the first journey to Paris, the H6tel Cujas and 
 Pellicule; but he did not hear, as he leaned on 
 the sill of the open window, in the peaceful night 
 bathed by a full moon, so bright that the roosters 
 were deceived and hailed it as the break of day. 
 
 So this redemption by love of which poets sing 
 IS a reality ! and he was conscious of a sort of 
 pride in the thought that all those great, those 
 illustrious men whom Fanny had loved before his 
 time, far from regenerating her, had made her more 
 depraved, whereas he, solely by the power of his 
 upright nature, might perhaps redeem her from 
 vice forever. 
 
 He was grateful to her for having devised that 
 middle course, that semi-rupture in which she 
 would acquire the new habit of labor so hard for 
 her indolent nature; and he wrote her the next 
 day in a fatherly tone, the tone of an elderly gentle- 
 man, to encourage her in her scheme of reforma- 
 tion and to express his uneasiness concerning the 
 quality of the house she was managing and the 
 class of people who resorted to it; for he dis- 
 trusted her indulgence and her readiness to say, 
 
164 Sappho, 
 
 as she submitted to his will: ''What do you want? 
 Is this right?" 
 
 By return mail Fanny, with the docility of a little 
 girl, drew a picture of her lodging-house, a regular 
 family hotel occupied by foreigners. On the first 
 floor were some Peruvians, father and mother, 
 children and numerous servants ; on the second a 
 Russian family and a wealthy Dutchman, a coral 
 merchant. The chambers on the third were let to 
 two riders from the Hippodrome, Englishmen of 
 good form, very coimne il fazit, and the most in- 
 teresting little family, Mademoiselle Minna Vogel, 
 a zither-player from Stuttgart, with her brother 
 Leo, a poor consumptive, who had been obliged to 
 break off his studies at the Paris Conservatoire, 
 and whom his tall sister had come to Paris to 
 take care of, with no other means of paying for 
 their board and lodging than the proceeds of a 
 few concerts. 
 
 ''The most touching and most honorable com- 
 pany imaginable, as you see, my dear man. I my- 
 self am supposed to be a widow, and I am treated 
 with the utmost consideration. Indeed I would 
 not suffer it to be otherwise ; your wife must be 
 respected. Pray understand me when I say ' your 
 wife.' I know that you will go away some day, 
 that I shall lose you, but there will never be 
 another after you ; I shall remain yours forever, 
 retaining the taste of your caresses and the good 
 instincts you have aroused in me. It's very ab- 
 surd, isn't it? — Sappho virtuous! Yes, virtuous, 
 when you are no longer here ; but for you I shall 
 
Sappho, 105 
 
 remain as you have loved me, passionate and ar- 
 dent. I adore you ! " 
 
 Jean was suddenly attacked with a feeling of in- 
 tense depression and ennui. These returns of the 
 prodigal son, after the first joys of the arrival, the 
 orgies of effusive affection and fatted calf, are al- 
 ways poisoned by memories of the associations of 
 the wandering life, regret for the bitter husks and 
 for the indolent flocks. It is a sort of disen- 
 chantment with persons and things, which seem 
 suddenly devoid of attraction and colorless. The 
 Provencal winter mornings lost their bracing, 
 health-giving quality for him, the hunting of the 
 beautiful reddish-brown otter lost its attraction, 
 and the wild-duck shooting in old Abrieu's naye- 
 chien. The wind seemed bitter to Jean, the water 
 rough, and very tedious were the excursions among 
 the inundated vineyards, with his uncle explaining 
 his system of dams, floodgates, and trenches. 
 
 The village, which he viewed for the first few 
 days through the memories of his former experi- 
 ences as a small boy, — a village of old shanties, 
 some abandoned, — smelt of death and desolation 
 like an Italian village; and when he went to the 
 post, on the tottering stone step of every door he 
 must submit to the tiresome repetitions of all the 
 old men, twisted like trees exposed to the wind, 
 with their arms thrust through stocking legs, and 
 of the old women with chins like yellow boxwood 
 under their tight-fitting caps, with little eyes, 
 gleaming and sparkling like lizards' eyes in the 
 crevices of old walls. 
 
io6 Sappho, 
 
 Always the same lamentations over the death of 
 the vines, the end of the madder, the disease of the 
 mulberry-trees, the seven plagues of Egypt ruin- 
 ing that fair land of Provence ; and to avoid them, 
 he sometimes returned by way of the steep lanes 
 that skirt the old walls of the chateau of the Popes, 
 deserted lanes obstructed by underbrush, by the tall 
 Saint-Roch grass, useful as a cure for ring-worm, 
 extremely well placed in that nook out of the Mid- 
 dle Ages, in the shadow of the immense ruin tower- 
 ing over the road. 
 
 Then he would meet the cure Malassagne, on 
 his way from saying mass, coming down the hill 
 with long, excited strides, his band awry, his cas- 
 sock held up with both hands because of the thorns 
 and the weeds. The priest would stop and inveigh 
 against the impiety of the peasants, the infamous 
 conduct of the municipal council ; he would hurl 
 his malediction at the fields, cattle and men, back- 
 sliders who no longer came to service, who buried 
 their dead without the sacraments and treated 
 their own ailments with magnetism or spiritual- 
 ism, to save the expense of a priest and a doctor. 
 
 " Yes, monsieur, spirituaHsm ! that 's what the 
 peasants of the Comtat are coming to ! And you 
 expect that your vines won't be diseased ! " 
 
 Jean, who perhaps had a letter from Fanny open 
 and burning in his pocket, would listen with an 
 absent expression, escape from the priest's sermon 
 as quickly as possible, return to Castelet, and en- 
 sconce himself in a cleft in the cHff, — what 
 the Provencaux call a cagnard, — sheltered from the 
 
Sappho. 107 
 
 wind that blows all about and concentrating the 
 warmth of the sun's rays reflected from the rock. 
 
 He would select the most secluded and the wild- 
 est, overgrown by bramble-bushes and kermes oaks, 
 and would lie on the ground to read his letter; 
 and gradually the subtle odor it exhaled, the 
 caressing words, the images evoked would pro- 
 duce a sensuous drunkenness which quickened his 
 pulse and created an hallucination so powerful as 
 to cause the whole landscape to vanish like useless 
 stage-properties, — the river, the clustered islets, 
 the villages in the hollows of the little alps, the 
 whole sweep of the vast valley where the fierce gust 
 of wind pursued the sunbeams and drove them in 
 waves before it. He was in their bedroom, op- 
 posite the gray-roofed station, a prey to the 
 caresses, the fierce passions which caused them 
 to cling to each other with the convulsive grasp 
 of a drowning man. 
 
 Suddenly he would hear steps in the path, and 
 limpid laughter: "There he is!" His sisters 
 would appear, their little legs bare amid the 
 heather, escorted by old Miracle as proud as Luci- 
 fer to have followed his master's trail, and wag- 
 ging his tail triumphantly; but Jean would send 
 him away with a kick, and decline the offers to 
 play at hide-and-seek or tag, which they timidly 
 put forward. And yet he loved them, his little 
 twin-sisters who doted on their big brother always 
 so far away ; he had become a child for their ben- 
 efit as soon as he arrived, and he was amused by 
 the contrast between the pre-tty creatures, born at 
 
io8 Sappho, 
 
 the same time and so dissimilar. One was tall and 
 dark, with curly hair, of a mystic turn and head- 
 strong ; it was she who had conceived the idea of 
 the boat, excited by what Malassagne the cure had 
 read to her ; and that little Marie the Egyptian had 
 drawn into her scheme the fair-haired Marthe, who 
 was a gentle, yielding creature, resembling her 
 mother and brother. 
 
 But what a hateful annoyance it was, while he 
 was living amid his memories, to have those in- 
 nocent caresses mingling with the dainty perfume 
 that his mistress's letter left upon him. *' No, leave 
 me ; I must work." And he would return to the 
 house, intending to shut himself up in his room, 
 when his father would call to him as he passed, — 
 " Is it you, Jean — just listen to this." 
 The mail hour brought new cause for depression 
 to that man, naturally of a gloomy turn of mind, 
 and retaining from his life in the East a habit 
 of solemn silence, broken abruptly by reminis- 
 cences, — " when I was consul at Hong-Kong," — 
 which blazed out like the sparks from old stumps 
 on the fire. While he listened to his father read- 
 ing and discussing the morning papers, Jean would 
 gaze at Caoudal's Sappho on the mantel, her arms 
 around her knees, her lyre by her side, — the 
 WHOLE LYRE, — a bronze copy purchased twenty 
 years before at the time of the improvements at 
 Castelet; and that bronze, which made him sick 
 at heart in the shop-windows in Paris, aroused an 
 amorous emotion in him, made him long to kiss 
 those shoulders, to unclasp those cold, polished 
 
Sappho, 109 
 
 hands, to hear her say to him, '^ Sappho to you, 
 but to none but you ! " 
 
 The tempting figure rose before him when he 
 went out, walked with him, doubled the sound of 
 his footsteps on the broad, pretentious staircase. 
 The pendulum of the old clock beat time to the 
 name of Sappho, the wind whispered it through 
 the long, cold, flagged corridors of that summer 
 dwelling ; he found it in all the books of that coun- 
 try hbrary, old volumes with red edges, where the 
 crumbs of his luncheons as a child still hngered in 
 the stitching. And that persistent souvenir of his 
 mistress pursued him even to his mother's bed- 
 room, where Divonne was arranging the invalid's 
 lovely white hair, combing it back from her face, 
 which had retained its placidity and its bright 
 color notwithstanding her constant and varied 
 suffering. 
 
 " Ah ! here 's our Jean," the mother would say. 
 But his aunt, with her bare neck, her little cap, 
 her sleeves turned back for the purposes of that 
 invalid's toilet of which she alone had charge, re- 
 minded him of other awakenings, recalled his mis- 
 tress again, leaping out of bed amid the smoke 
 of her first cigarette. He hated himself for such 
 thoughts, especially in that chamber ! But what 
 could he do to avoid them? 
 
 " Our child is no longer the same, sister," Ma- 
 dame Gaussin would say sadly. " What 's the mat- 
 ter with him?" And they would try together to 
 divine the reason. Divonne cudgelled her ingen- 
 uous brain, she would have hked to question the 
 
1 10 Sappho, 
 
 young man ; but he seemed to shun her now, to 
 avoid being alone with her. 
 
 One morning, having watched him, she surprised 
 him in his cagnard, trembling in the fever of his 
 letters and his bad dreams. He rose, with a 
 gloomy expression. She detained him, made him 
 sit down beside her on the warm stone. '* Don't you 
 love me any more? Am I no longer your Divonne 
 to whom you used to tell all your troubles ? " 
 
 " Why yes, why yes," he stammered, disturbed 
 by her affectionate manner, and averting his eyes 
 so that she might not see in them any suggestion 
 of what he had just been reading, — love-calls, des- 
 perate shrieks, the delirious utterances of passion 
 at a distance. '* What is the matter with you? 
 Why are you so depressed?" murmured Divonne, 
 coaxing him with voice and hands, as one deals 
 with children. He was her child in a certain sense ; 
 in her eyes he was still ten years old, the age at 
 which little men are emancipated. 
 
 He, already inflamed by his letter, quivered un- 
 der the disturbing fascination of that lovely body 
 so near his own, of those lips warm with the blood 
 quickened by the fresh breeze that disarranged 
 her hair and sent it flying about over her forehead 
 in dainty curls after the Parisian fashion. And 
 Sappho's lessons — "All women are the same; in 
 the presence of a man they have but one idea in 
 their heads " — made the peasant woman's happy 
 smile and the gesture with which she detained him 
 to listen to her affectionate questions an incitement 
 of his passions. 
 
Sappho, 1 1 1 
 
 Suddenly he felt the blinding rush of an evil 
 temptation to his brain; and the effort he made 
 to resist it shook him with a convulsive shudder. 
 Divonne was dismayed to see him so pale, with his 
 teeth chattering. "Why, the poor boy — he has 
 the fever ! " With an affectionate unreflecting 
 movement, she untied the broad handkerchief that 
 she wore over her shoulders to put it around his 
 neck ; but she was suddenly seized, enveloped, and 
 felt the burning pressure of a frantic kiss on her 
 neck and shoulders, on all the gleaming flesh sud- 
 denly laid bare to the sunlight. She had no time 
 to cry out nor to defend herself, perhaps not even 
 a clear perception of what had taken place. " Ah ! 
 I am mad — I am mad ! " He rushed away and 
 was already far off on the moor, where the stones 
 rolled viciously beneath his feet. 
 
 At breakfast that day Jean announced that he 
 must go away that same evening, being summoned 
 to Paris by an order from the Minister. 
 
 " Go away already ! Why, you said — You 
 have only just come ! " 
 
 There were outcries and entreaties. But he 
 could not remain with them, since Sappho's agitat- 
 ing, corrupting influence persistently intervened 
 between him and all those loving hearts. More- 
 over, had he not made the greatest of all sacrifices 
 to them by abandoning his life a deux? The defin- 
 itive rupture would be consummated a little later ; 
 and then he would return to embrace them all 
 and give his heart to them without shame or em- 
 barrassment. 
 
112 Sappho, 
 
 It was late at night, the family had retired, and 
 the house was dark when Cesaire returned after 
 accompanying his nephew to the train at Avignon. 
 After he had fed the horse and glanced at the sky 
 — the glance of men who live by the products of 
 the soil, to see what the weather promises to be — 
 he was about to enter the house, when he saw a 
 white form on a bench on the terrace. 
 
 " Is that you, Divonne? " 
 
 " Yes, I was waiting for you." 
 
 Being very busy all day, necessarily separated 
 from her Fenat, whom she adored, she had the 
 evening for talking with him and for a httle walk 
 together. Was it because of the brief scene be- 
 tween herself and Jean, which, upon thinking it 
 over, she understood even better than she would 
 have liked, or was it because of the emotion 
 aroused by watching the poor mother weep silently 
 all day? Whatever the cause her voice trembled 
 and her mind was disturbed to an extraordinary 
 degree in a person usually so calm and devoted 
 to her duty. '' Do you know why he left us so 
 suddenly?" She did not beheve in that story 
 about the minister, suspecting rather some un- 
 worthy attachment which was drawing him away 
 from his family. There were so many perils, such 
 fatal associations in that depraved Paris ! 
 
 Cesaire, who could not conceal anything from 
 her, admitted that there was a woman in Jean's 
 life, but an excellent creature, incapable of aliena- 
 ting him from his own people ; and he talked about 
 her devotion, the affecting letters she wrote, lauded 
 
Sappho. \ I 
 
 o 
 
 especially her heroic resolution to work, which 
 seemed perfectly natural to the peasant woman. 
 *' For after all one must work to live." 
 
 " Not that sort of women," said C^saire. 
 
 " Then you mean that Jean is living with a good- 
 for-nothing ? And you have been to their house ? " 
 
 " I swear to you, Divonne, that there is n't a purer 
 or more virtuous woman on earth than she 's been 
 since she knew him. Love has rehabilitated her." 
 
 But his words were too long ; Divonne did not 
 understand them. To her mind that woman be- 
 longed in the riff-raff which she called " bad wo- 
 men," and the thought that her Jean was the victim 
 of such a creature angered her. Suppose the con- 
 sul should get an inkling of it ! 
 
 Cesaire tried to calm her, assured her, by all the 
 wrinkles in his somewhat dissipated, good-humored 
 face, that at the boy's age one could not do with- 
 out women. 
 
 ^^Pardi! then let him marry," she said with 
 affecting earnestness. 
 
 " At all events, they 're no longer together ; it is 
 all right — " 
 
 " Listen, Cesaire," she rejoined in a serious tone, 
 " you know our old saying : ' The misfortune al- 
 ways lasts longer than the man who causes it.* If 
 what you say is true, if Jean has drawn that woman 
 out of the mud, perhaps he has soiled himself in 
 that unpleasant task. Possibly he may have made 
 her better and more virtuous, but who knows if 
 the evil that was in her has n't spoiled our child 
 to the very core?" 
 
 8 
 
114 Sappho. 
 
 They were walking back toward the terrace. 
 Night, peaceful and clear, reigned over the whole 
 silent valley, where nothing was ahve save the 
 glistening moonlight, the rolling river, the ponds 
 lying hke pools of silver. Everywhere profound 
 tranquillity, a sense of remoteness, the untroubled 
 repose of dreamless sleep. Suddenly the up train 
 rumbled heavily along the bank of the Rhone at 
 full speed. 
 
 '* Oh ! that Paris ! " exclaimed Divonne, shaking 
 her fist at the foe upon whom the provinces vent 
 all their wrath, "■ that Paris ! — to think of what we 
 give it and what it sends back to us ! " 
 
Sappho, 115 
 
 VII. 
 
 It was cold and foggy one dark afternoon at 
 four o'clock, even on the broad Avenue des 
 Champs-£lys6es, where the carriages drove hur- 
 riedly by with a dull, muffled roar. Jean was 
 hardly able to read, at the end of a small garden, 
 the gate of which stood open, these words in gilt 
 letters, high in the air, over the entresol of a house 
 of very comfortable and placid cottage-like aspect : 
 Furnished Apartments, Family Hotel, A coupe 
 was waiting at the curbstone. 
 
 Opening the door, Jean at once saw her whom 
 he sought, sitting in the light from the window, and 
 turning the leaves of a huge account book, oppo- 
 site another woman, tall and fashionably dressed, 
 with a handkerchief and a small shoppingrbag in 
 her hands. 
 
 "What do you wish, monsieur?" Fanny rec- 
 ognized him, sprang to her feet in amazement, 
 and said in an undertone as she passed her com- 
 panion, " It 's the little one." The other eyed 
 Gaussin from head to foot with the charming ex- 
 pert sang-froid \\i\\\<:\\ experience imparts, and said, 
 quite loud, without the slightest ceremony : " Em- 
 brace, children — I am not looking." Then she 
 took Fanny's place and began to verify her figures. 
 
 They held each other's hands and were whis- 
 
1 1 6 Sappho, 
 
 pering meaningless phrases: '' How are you ? " — 
 *' Very well, thanks." — " You must have left last 
 night?" But the trembling of their voices gave 
 the words their true meaning. As they sat to- 
 gether on the sofa, Fanny, recovering her self- 
 possession to some extent, asked him under her 
 breath: "Don't you recognize my employer? 
 You have seen her before, at Dechelette's ball, as 
 a Spanish bride. The bride's freshness has worn 
 off a little, eh?" 
 
 "Then it's—?" 
 
 " Rosario Sanches, de Potter's mistress." 
 
 This Rosario — Rosa was her pet name, written 
 on the mirrors of all the night restaurants and 
 always with some obscenity underneath — was a 
 former " chariot lady" at the Hippodrome, fa- 
 mous in the world of pleasure for her cynical disso- 
 luteness and for the blows of her tongue and her 
 whip and much sought after by club men, whom 
 she drove as she did her horses. 
 
 A Spaniard from Oran, she had been beautiful 
 rather than pretty, and still produced by artificial 
 light considerable effect with her black eyes 
 touched with bistre, and her eyebrows connected 
 as by a hyphen ; but even in that dim light her 
 fifty years were plainly marked upon a lifeless, 
 harsh face, with a rough yellow skin like a lemon 
 of her native country. She had been an intimate 
 friend of Fanny Legrand for years, had been her 
 chaperone in gallantry, and the mere mention of 
 her name alarmed the lover. 
 
 Fanny, who understood the trembling of his 
 
Sappho, 117 
 
 arm, tried to excuse herself. To whom was she 
 to apply to find employment? She was very 
 much perplexed. Besides, Rosa was leading a 
 respectable life now ; she was rich, very rich, and 
 lived at her mansion on Avenue de Villiers or at 
 her villa at Enghien, receiving a few old friends, 
 but only one lover, the same old one, her musician. 
 
 "De Potter?" said Paul; ** I thought he was 
 married." 
 
 " So he is, married and has children ; it seems 
 indeed that his wife is pretty, but that did n't pre- 
 vent his coming back to the old flame ; and if you 
 could see how she talks to him, how she treats 
 him. Ah! he's badly bitten, I tell you." She 
 pressed his hand in loving reproof. At that 
 moment the lady looked up from her book and 
 addressed her bag, which was jumping about at 
 the end of its ribbon, — 
 
 '' Just keep quiet, will you ! " Then to the 
 housekeeper in a tone of command : *' Give me a 
 piece of sugar quickly for Bichito." 
 
 Fanny rose, brought the sugar and held it to 
 the opening of the reticule, with an abundance of 
 flattering, childish talk. "■ Just look at the pretty 
 creature ! " she said to her lover, pointing to a 
 sort of fat lizard surrounded with cotton-wool, a 
 deformed, scaly beast, crested and dentelated, 
 with a hooded head above a mass of shivering, 
 gelatinous flesh ; a chameleon sent from Algeria 
 to Rosa, who protected it from the Parisian winter 
 by care and warmth. She loved it as she had 
 never loved any man; and Jean readily divined 
 
ii8 Sappho. 
 
 from Fanny's sycophantic endearments the place 
 that the horrid beast occupied in the house. 
 
 The lady closed the book and prepared to take 
 her leave. " Not very bad for the second fortnight. 
 But be careful about the candles." 
 
 She cast a proprietress's glance around the little 
 salon, which was very neat and orderly with its 
 plush-covered furniture, blew a little dust from the 
 plant on the table, and pointed out a rent in the 
 window-curtain ; after which she said to the young 
 people with a cunning leer : " No nonsense, you 
 know, my children ; the house is perfectly respect- 
 able ; " and entering the carriage which was waiting 
 at the door, she went to take her drive in the Bois. 
 
 "Do you suppose that isn't exasperating?" 
 said Fanny. " I have them on my back, either 
 her or her mother, twice a week. The mother 's 
 even worse, more horrible looking. I must love 
 you pretty well, you see, to stay on in this bar- 
 rack. — Well, you 're here at last, I have you once 
 more ! , I was so afraid." And she held him in 
 her arms a long while, standing, lips against lips, 
 assuring herself by the quivering of the kiss that 
 he was still all hers. But people were going and 
 coming in the hall; they had to be on their guard. 
 When they had brought the lamp, she seated her- 
 self in her usual place, a piece of needlework in her 
 hands ; he sat quite near her, as if making a call. 
 
 "Am I not changed, eh? This is not much 
 like me, is it?" 
 
 She pointed with a smile to her needle, which 
 she handled with the awkwardness of a little girl. 
 
Sappho. 119 
 
 She had always detested needlework ; a book, her 
 piano, her cigarette, or, with her sleeves rolled up, 
 cooking some dainty little dish — she had never 
 done any other work than that. But what could 
 she do here? She could not think of touching 
 the piano in the salon, as she was obliged to stay 
 in the office all day. Novels? She knew many 
 more interesting stories than they had to tell. In 
 default of the prohibited cigarette, she had taken 
 up that piece of lace, which kept her fingers busy 
 and left her free to think, and she understood now 
 the taste of women for such trivial employments, 
 which she formerly despised. 
 
 And while she dropped and picked up her 
 stitches laughingly, with the attention of inexperi- 
 ence, Jean watched her, fresh and blooming in 
 her simple dress, her straight, slender neck, her 
 hair combed smooth on her graceful classic head, 
 and such a sedate, virtuous air ! Without, a con- 
 stant stream of fashionable courtesans, amid luxu- 
 rious surroundings, perched high in air on their 
 phaetons, rolled down the avenue toward the 
 noisy Paris of the boulevards ; and Fanny seemed 
 to feel no regret for that ostentatious, triumphant 
 vice in which she might have taken her part, and 
 which she had disdained for him. Provided that 
 he agreed to see her from time to time, she gladly 
 accepted her life of slavery, and even discovered 
 an amusing side to it. 
 
 All the boarders adored her. The women, 
 foreigners devoid of taste, consulted her before 
 purchasing their dresses; she gave singing les- 
 
120 Sappho. 
 
 sons in the morning to the oldest of the little 
 Peruvians, and she gave advice, concerning books 
 to read and plays to see, to the gentlemen, who 
 treated her with the utmost consideration and at- 
 tention, — one in particular, the Dutchman on the 
 second floor. " He sits right where you are and 
 gazes at me in rapt contemplation until I say to 
 him, ' Kuyper, you annoy me.' Then he replies, 
 ' Pien,' and goes away. It was he who gave me this 
 little coral brooch. It 's worth about a hundred 
 sous, you see ; I took it to avoid discussion." 
 
 A waiter entered, carrying a salver which he 
 placed on the edge of the table, pushing back the 
 plant a little way. " I eat here all by myself, an 
 hour before the table d'hote^ She selected two 
 dishes from the long and varied menu. The 
 manager was entitled to only two dishes and the 
 soup. '' She must be a stingy creature, that Ro- 
 sario ! However, I prefer to eat here ; I don't 
 have to talk, and I read over your letters, which 
 are good company for me." 
 
 She interrupted herself again to procure a table- 
 cloth and napkins; at every moment somebody 
 called upon her: there were orders to give, a 
 closet to be opened, a requisition to fill. Jean 
 realized that he would be in her way if he re- 
 mained longer; then, too, they were bringing in 
 her dinner, and it was so pitiful, that little soup- 
 tureen with one portion smoking on the table, 
 causing the same thought to pass through both 
 their minds, the same regret for their former 
 tete-a-tetes! 
 
Sappho, 121 
 
 " Until Sunday, until Sunday," she murmured 
 low, as she sent him away. And as they could 
 not embrace because of the servants and boarders 
 going up and down the stairs, she took his hand 
 and held it long against her heart, as if to force 
 the caress in. 
 
 All the evening, all night he thought of her, 
 suffering in her humiliating slavery to that trollop 
 and her fat lizard ; then the Dutchman disturbed 
 him also, and until Sunday he hardly lived. In 
 reality that semi-rupture which was to pave the 
 way without a shock for the end of their liaison, 
 was to her the blow of the pruning-hook which 
 gives renewed life to the exhausted tree. They 
 wrote each other almost every day, such loving 
 notes as are produced by the impatience of lovers ; 
 or else there was a pleasant chat in her office, 
 after leaving the department, during her hour for 
 needlework. 
 
 She had spoken of him in the house as *' a rela- 
 tive of mine," and under cover of that vague de- 
 scription he could come occasionally and pass the 
 evening in the salon, a thousand leagues from 
 Paris. He knew the Peruvian family with its in- 
 numerable young ladies, decked out in dazzling 
 colors, arranged around the salon for all the world 
 like macaws on their perches ; he listened to the 
 zither of Mademoiselle Minna Vogel, begirt with 
 flowers like a hop-pole, and saw her sickly, voice- 
 less brother passionately following the rhythm of the 
 music with his head and running his fingers over 
 an imaginary clarinet, the only kind he was allowed 
 
122 Sappho. 
 
 to play. He played whist with Fanny's Dutch- 
 man, a stout, bald-headed dolt, of miserly aspect, 
 who had sailed over all the seas on the globe, and, 
 when he was asked for some facts concerning 
 Australia, where he had passed a number of 
 months, replied, rolling his eyes, '' Guess how 
 much potatoes are in Melbourne?" for he had 
 been impressed by that single fact and no other, the 
 high price of potatoes in every country he visited, 
 
 Fanny was the soul of these occasions; she 
 talked, sang, played the well-informed and worldly 
 Parisian ; and such traces as her manners retained 
 of Bohemia or of the studio either escaped the 
 notice of those exotic creatures or seemed to 
 them the acme of good form. She dazzled them 
 with her intimate acquaintance with the famous 
 names in art and literature, gave the Russian lady, 
 who doted on Dejoie's works, interesting facts con- 
 cerning the novelist's manner of writing, the num- 
 ber of cups of coffee he absorbed in one night, the 
 exact figures of the ridiculous amount the pub- 
 lishers of Cenderinette had paid him for the book 
 that made their fortunes. And his mistress's suc- 
 cess made Gaussin so proud that he forgot to be 
 jealous and would willingly have attested the truth 
 of her words if anybody had cast a doubt upon 
 them. 
 
 While he gazed admiringly at her in that peace- 
 ful salon lighted by shaded lamps, as she served 
 the tea, played accompaniments for the young 
 ladies or gave them advice like an older sister, 
 there was a strange fascination for him in fancying 
 
Sappho, 123 
 
 her to himself in very different guise, when she 
 would arrive at his house the following Sunday- 
 morning, drenched and shivering, and without 
 even going near the fire, which was blazing in her 
 honor, would hurriedly undress and creep into the 
 great bed beside him. Then what embraces, what 
 caresses, wherein the self-restraint of the whole 
 week would have its revenge, the being deprived 
 of each other which kept alive the passion of their 
 love. 
 
 The hours would pass, would run together con- 
 fusedly; they would not stir from the bed until 
 night. There was nothing to tempt them else- 
 where ; no entertainment, no one to see, not even 
 the Hettemas, who had decided to live in the 
 country for economy's sake. Their little lunch 
 prepared beside the bed, they would listen, un- 
 heeding, to the uproar of the Parisian Sunday 
 splashing through the street, the whistling of the 
 locomotives, the rumbling of loaded cabs; and 
 the rain falling in great drops on the zinc of the 
 balcony, with the precipitate beating of their 
 hearts, marked time for that absence of life, ob- 
 livious of the passing hours, until twilight. 
 
 Then the gas, lighted across the street, would 
 cast a pale gleam on the hangings ; they must rise 
 and dress, as Fanny must be at home at seven. 
 In the half-light of the bedroom, all her weari- 
 ness, all her heart-sickness returned, heayier and 
 more cruel than ever, as she put on her boots, still 
 damp from her long walk, her skirts, her manager's 
 dress, the black uniform of poor women. 
 
it 24 Sappho, 
 
 And her chagrin was intensified by the things 
 about her that she loved, the furniture, the Httle 
 dressing-room of the happy days. She would tear 
 herself away at last : " Let us go ! " and, that 
 they might remain together longer, Jean would 
 accompany her; arm-in-arm they would walk 
 slowly up Avenue de Champs-Elysees, where 
 the double row of lamps, with the Arc de Tri- 
 omphe rising out of the darkness in the distance, 
 and two or three stars twinkling in a narrow bit of 
 sky, counterfeited the background of a diorama. 
 At the corner of Rue Pergolese, very near the 
 lodging-house, she would raise her veil for a last 
 kiss, and would leave him there bewildered, dis- 
 gusted with his apartments, to which he returned 
 as late as possible, cursing poverty, and almost 
 angry with the people at Castelet on account of 
 the sacrifice he was making for them. 
 
 They dragged through two or three months of 
 that existence, which at last became absolutely in- 
 tolerable, as Jean had been obliged to make his 
 visits less frequent because of the gossiping of 
 servants, and Fanny was more and more exasper- 
 ated by the avarice of the Sanches family, mother 
 and daughter. She thought in silence of setting 
 up their little household anew, and felt that her 
 lover too was nearing the end of his endurance, 
 but she preferred that he should speak first. 
 
 One Sunday in April Fanny made her appear- 
 ance dressed more elaborately than usual, in a 
 round hat and a spring dress, very simple — they 
 
Sappho, 125 
 
 were not rich — but fitted perfectly to her grace- 
 ful figure. 
 
 " Get up quickly; we are going to lunch in the 
 country." 
 
 "In the country?" 
 
 " Yes, at Enghien, at Rosa's. She invites us 
 both." 
 
 He said no at first, but she insisted. Rosa 
 would never forgive a refusal. "You can afford 
 to do it for my sake. It seems to me that I do 
 enough." 
 
 It was on the shore of the lake at Enghien, with 
 a broad lawn in front extending to a little inlet 
 where several yawls and gondolas rocked at their 
 moorings ; a large chalet, beautifully decorated 
 and furnished ; the ceilings and glass panels re- 
 flecting the sparkling water and the magnificent 
 tall hedges of a park already quivering with early 
 verdure and lilacs in flower. The correct hveries, 
 the paths where not even a wisp of straw could be 
 seen, did honor to the twofold superintendence of 
 Rosario and old lady Pilar. 
 
 The house party were at table when they ar- 
 rived, a false direction having caused them to go 
 astray around the lake, through lanes between 
 high garden walls. Jean's discomposure reached 
 its climax at the cold reception accorded them 
 by the mistress of the house, who was in a rage 
 because they had kept her waiting, and at the ex- 
 traordinary aspect of the old hags to whom Rosa 
 presented him in her van-driver's voice. Three 
 " ^l^gantes," as the illustrious cocottes style one 
 
126 Sappho. 
 
 another, three antique strumpets, numbered among 
 the glories of the Second Empire, with names as 
 famous as that of a great poet or victorious gen- 
 eral, — Wilkie Cob, Sombreuse, Clara Desfous. 
 
 " Elegant " they all were beyond question, tricked 
 out in the latest style, charmingly dressed from 
 collarette to boots; but so withered, painted, 
 powdered ! Sombreuse, with no eyelashes, life- 
 less eyes, nerveless Hp, feehng around for her 
 plate, her fork, her glass; La Desfous, enor- 
 mously stout and bloated, with a hot-water bottle 
 at her feet, displaying on the table-cloth her poor, 
 gouty, distorted fingers covered with gleaming 
 rings as hard to put on and take off as the rings 
 of a Roman puzzle. And Cob, very slender, with 
 a youthful figure which added to the ghastliness 
 of her fleshless face, like a sick clown's, beneath a 
 mane of yellow tow. She, being utterly ruined, 
 her property taken on execution, had gone to 
 Monte-Carlo to try one last coup and had re- 
 turned without a sou, mad with love for a hand- 
 some croupier who would have none of her; 
 Rosa, having taken her in, supported her and 
 gloried in it. 
 
 All these women knew Fanny and welcomed 
 her with a patronizing *' How goes it, Httle one ? " 
 It is a fact that with her dress at three francs the 
 yard and no ornaments save Kuyper's red brooch, 
 she seemed like a raw recruit among those ghastly 
 decorated veterans in harlotry, whom their luxu- 
 rious surroundings, the light reflected from the 
 lake and the sky, pouring in through the folding- 
 
Sappho, 127 
 
 doors of the drawing-room, mingled with the per- 
 fumes of spring, made more spectral than ever. 
 
 There was old Mere Pilar too, the *' chinge" as 
 she called herself in her Franco-Spanish jargon, a 
 genuine monkey with a dead, rasping skin, her 
 grinning features instinct with savage malice, her 
 gray hair cut short around her ears like a boy's, 
 and a broad blue sailor's collar over her old 
 black satin. 
 
 " And Monsieur Bichito," said Rosa, when she 
 had presented all her guests, calling Gaussin's 
 attention to a bunch of pink cotton-wool on the 
 table-cloth, on which the chameleon lay shivering. 
 
 "Well, where do I come in? Are n't you going 
 to introduce me?" inquired, in a tone of forced 
 joviality, a tall man with grizzly moustaches, cor- 
 rectly dressed, but perhaps a little stiff in his light 
 waistcoat and high collar. 
 
 **True, true! Where does Tatave come in?" 
 laughed the women. The mistress of the house 
 carelessly pronounced his name. 
 
 Tatave was De Potter, the accomplished musi- 
 cian, the much applauded author of Clatidia and 
 Sazwnarole ; and Jean, who had only caught a 
 glimpse of him at D6chelette's, was astonished to 
 find in the great artist such a lack of geniality, 
 that stern, regular, wooden face, those dull eyes, 
 putting the seal upon a mad, incurable passion 
 which had bound him to that harridan for years, 
 had made him leave wife and children to become 
 a regular guest at that house, where he engulfed 
 a part of his great fortune, his profits from the 
 
128 Sappho. 
 
 stage, and where he was treated with less consid- 
 eration than a servant. You should have seen 
 Rosa's bored expression as soon as he began to 
 tell a story, and the contemptuous way in which 
 she imposed silence upon him; and Pilar never 
 failed to cap her daughter's reproof by adding in 
 a tone of decision, — 
 
 *' Just leave us alone, my boy." 
 
 Jean had old Pilar for a neighbor at table, 
 and those flabby old lips, which mumbled as she 
 ate with a noise like that made by an animal, that 
 inquisitive inspection of his plate, were a perfect 
 torment to the young man, intensely annoyed as 
 he was by Rosa's patronizing tone, her manner of 
 joking Fanny about the musical evenings at the 
 boarding-house, and the credulity of those poor 
 fools of foreigners who took the manager for a 
 society woman fallen upon evil days. The former 
 " chariot lady," bloated with unhealthy fat, with a 
 stone worth ten thousand francs at each ear, 
 seemed to envy her friend the renewal of youth 
 and beauty due to that young and handsome 
 lover; and Fanny did not lose her temper; on 
 the contrary, she entertained the table, made fun 
 of the boarders in true studio style, of the Peru- 
 vian, who, rolling his white eyes, confessed to her 
 his desire to know a great coticoute, and the silent 
 homage of the Dutchman puffing like a seal, and 
 gasping behind her chair, " Guess how much po- 
 tatoes are at Patavia?" 
 
 Gaussin, for his part, did not laugh ; nor did 
 Pilar, engrossed as she was in watching her daugh- 
 
Sappho, 129 
 
 ter's silverware, or, if she spied a fly on the plate 
 before her or on her neighbor's sleeve, leaning 
 forward abruptly to present it, lisping tender 
 phrases, " Eat it, mi alma, mi corazon^' to the 
 hideous little beast which had tumbled on to the 
 cloth, a flabby, wrinkled, shapeless mass, like La 
 Desfous' fingers. 
 
 Sometimes, when all the flies were in retreat, she 
 would spy one on the sideboard or the glass door, 
 whereupon she would leave her seat and trium- 
 phantly capture it. That manoeuvre, repeated 
 many times, irritated her daughter, who was cer- 
 tainly very nervous that morning. 
 
 "Don't keep getting up every minute; it's tire- 
 some." 
 
 In the same voice, two tones lower in the scale 
 of jargon, the mother replied, — 
 
 " You people eat : why don't you want him to 
 eat too?" 
 
 '' Leave the table or keep still ; you annoy us." 
 
 The old woman answered back, and they began 
 to abuse each other like the pious Spaniards they 
 were, mingling heaven and hell with blackguard- 
 isms of the gutter. 
 
 ^^ Hija del demoniol " 
 
 " Cuerno de Satanas ! " 
 
 ''Putar' 
 
 '' Mi Madref' 
 
 Jean stared at them in dismay, while the other 
 guests, accustomed to these domestic episodes, 
 continued to eat tranquilly. De Potter alone in- 
 tervened, out of regard for the stranger, — 
 
 9 
 
1 30 Sappho. 
 
 '' Come, come, pray don't quarrel." 
 
 But Rosa turned furiously upon him : '' Why 
 do you thrust your nose in? Fine manners, in- 
 deed! Ain't I free to speak? Just go to your 
 wife and see whether I am or not ! I 've had 
 enough of your fried perch's eyes and the three 
 hairs you 've got left. Go and take them to your 
 old turkey ; it 's high time ! " 
 
 De Potter smiled, his face a little pale. 
 
 " And I must live with this creature ! " he mut- 
 tered in his moustache. 
 
 "■ This creature 's quite as good as that one ! " 
 she roared, her whole body almost on the table. 
 " And the door 's open, you know ; off with you — 
 skip ! " 
 
 " Come, come, Rosa," the poor dull eyes im- 
 plored. And Mere Pilar, beginning to eat once 
 more, said with such comical phlegm : " Just leave 
 us alone, my boy ! " that the whole table roared 
 with laughter, even Rosa, even De Potter, who 
 kissed his still grumbling mistress, and to earn 
 his pardon more fully, caught a fly, and presented 
 it delicately, by the wings, to Bichito. 
 
 And that was De Potter, the illustrious composer, 
 the pride of the French school ! How did she re- 
 tain her hold upon him, by what witchcraft, — that 
 creature grown old in vice, vulgar beyond words, 
 with that mother who made her twice as disgust- 
 ing as she naturally was, by exhibiting her as she 
 would be twenty years later, as if reflected in a sil- 
 ver ball ? 
 
 Coffee was served on the shore of the lake, in a 
 
Sappho, 131 
 
 little rockwork grotto, lined with light silks, which 
 reflected the changing surface of the water, — one 
 of those delicious nests for kissing invented by the 
 story-tellers of the eighteenth century, with a mir- 
 ror in the ceiling which reflected the attitudes of 
 the old harridans sprawling over the broad couch 
 in a digestive torpor, and Rosa, her cheeks aflame 
 under the paint, stretching back against her 
 musician. 
 
 *' O my Tatave ! my Tatave ! " 
 
 But that afl"ectionate warmth evaporated with 
 the warmth of the Chartreuse; and one of the 
 ladies having suggested a row on the lake, she 
 sent De Potter to prepare the boat. 
 
 ** The skiff, you understand, not the Norwegian 
 boat." 
 
 " Suppose I tell D^sird — " 
 
 " D6sir^ 's at breakfast." 
 
 ** The skifl" is full of water ; we shall have to bail 
 her out, and that 's a day's work." 
 
 " Jean will go with you, De Potter," said Fanny, 
 who saw that another scene was imminent. 
 
 Sitting opposite each other, with legs apart, 
 each on a thwart, they bailed energetically, with- 
 out looking at each other, without speaking, as 
 if hypnotized by the rhythm of the water gushing 
 from the two dippers. The shadow of a great 
 catalpa fell in perfumed coolness about them, 
 sharply outlined against the resplendent bright- 
 ness of the lake. 
 
 " Have you been with Fanny long?" the musi- 
 cian suddenly asked, pausing in his work. 
 
132 Sappho. 
 
 "Two years," replied Gaussin, somewhat sur- 
 prised. 
 
 '' Only two years ! In that case what you see to- 
 day may perhaps be of service to you. It is twenty 
 years since I went to live with Rosa, — twenty 
 years since, on my return from Italy after my three 
 years' incumbency of the prix de Rome, I went into 
 the Hippodrome one evening and saw her standing 
 in her httle chariot, coming down on me round the 
 turn in the ring, whip in air, with her helmet with 
 eight lanceheads, and her coat covered with gold 
 scales fitting tight to her figure to the middle of 
 her leg. Ah ! if any one had told me — " 
 
 Plying his dipper once more, he told how at 
 first his people had simply laughed at the liaison ; 
 then, when the matter became serious, to what 
 efforts, what entreaties, what sacrifices, his parents 
 had had recourse in order to break it off. Two or 
 three times the girl had been bribed to leave him, 
 but he always joined her again. " Let us try 
 travelling," his mother had said. He travelled, re- 
 turned, and took up with her again. Then he had 
 consented to marry; a pretty girl, a handsome 
 dowry, and the promise of the Institute for a wed- 
 ding present. And three months later he left the 
 new establishment for the old one. " Ah ! young 
 man ! young man ! " 
 
 He told the story of his life in a passionless 
 voice, without moving a muscle in his face, as 
 rigid as the starched collar that held his head so 
 straight. And boats passed, laden with students 
 and girls, overflowing with song and with the 
 
Sappho. 133 
 
 laughter of youth and excitement; how many 
 among those heedless ones might profitably have 
 stopped and taken their share of the lesson ! 
 
 In the kiosk, meanwhile, as if the word had 
 been passed to bring about a rupture, the old 
 d^gantes were preaching common-sense to Fanny 
 Legrand. Her little one was pretty to look at, 
 but not a sou ; what would that bring her to ? 
 
 " But so long as I love him ! " 
 
 And Rosa observed with a shrug : ** Let her 
 alone ; she 's going to miss her Dutchman, as I 've 
 seen her miss all her fine chances. After her affair 
 with Flamant, however, she did try to become 
 practical, but here she is crazier than ever." 
 
 ** Ay ! vellaca! " grumbled Mamma Pilar. 
 
 The Englishwoman with the clown's face inter- 
 vened with the horrible accent to which she owed 
 her long-continued vogue : — 
 
 " It was all very well to love love, little one, — 
 love was a very good thing, you know, — but you 
 ought to love money too. Take me, for instance, 
 if I had still been rich, do you suppose my croup- 
 ier 'd have called me ugly, eh?" She jumped up 
 and down in a frenzy and raised her voice to its 
 shrillest pitch : " Oh ! but that was terrible. To 
 have been famous in the world, known everywhere 
 like a monument or a boulevard, so well known 
 that you could n't find a miserable cabman who 
 would n't know at once where to go when you 
 said, *Wilkie Cob!' To have had- princes to put 
 my feet on, and kings, when I spit, say that it was 
 pretty 1 And then to think of that filthy cur who 
 
1 34 Sappho, 
 
 wouldn't have me because I was ugly; and I 
 did n't have enough to buy him for just one 
 night." 
 
 And waxing excited at the idea that she should 
 have been called ugly, she abruptly opened her 
 dress. 
 
 *^ The face, yes, I sacrificed that ; but the breast 
 and shoulders, — are they white ? are they firm and 
 hard?" 
 
 She shamelessly displayed her witch's flesh, 
 which had retained its youth to a miraculous de- 
 gree after thirty years in the furnace, and over 
 which lowered her face, withered and deathly from 
 the line of the neck upwards. 
 
 " The boat is ready, mesdames ! " called De Pot- 
 ter; and the EngHshwoman, fastening her dress 
 over what remained to her of youth, murmured 
 in comical dismay, — 
 
 " I could n't go half-dressed to public places, 
 you see." 
 
 What an embarkation that was of all those sup- 
 erannuated old Cythereans, in that landscape 
 worthy of Lancret, where the dainty white villas 
 stood out among the new verdure, with the ter- 
 races and lawns framing that little lake gleaming 
 as with scales in the sunlight, — blind Sombreuse 
 and the old clown and Desfous, the paralytic, leav- 
 ing in the wake of the boat the musky odor of 
 their paint ! 
 
 Jean plied the oars, bending his back to the 
 task, ashamed and in despair at the thought that 
 some one might see him and impute to him some 
 
Sappho. 135 
 
 degrading function in that ill-omened, allegorical 
 craft. Luckily, he had facing him, to refresh his 
 heart and his eyes, Fanny Legrand, who sat in the 
 stern, near the tiller held by De Potter, — Fanny, 
 whose smile had never seemed to him so youthful, 
 by reason of the contrast, doubtless. 
 
 '* Sing us something, little one," said La Des- 
 fous, softened by the spring weather. In her 
 deep, expressive voice Fanny began the barcarole 
 from Claudia^ while the musician, moved by that 
 reminder of his first great success, hummed with 
 his mouth closed the orchestral accompaniment, 
 those undulating measures which flit about the 
 melody like the gleam of dancing water. At that 
 hour, in that lovely spot, it was delicious. Some 
 one cried bravo! from a terrace near by; and the 
 Provencal, keeping time with his oars, felt a thirst 
 for that divine music from his mistress's lips, a 
 temptation to put his mouth to the spring itself, 
 and to drink in the sunlight, with his head thrown 
 back, forever. 
 
 Suddenly Rosa in a savage tone interrupted the 
 singing, irritated by the union of the two voices : 
 " I say there, give us some music when you have 
 done cooing into each other's faces. Do you 
 fancy that that funereal stuff amuses us ! We 've 
 had enough of it ; in the first place it 's late, and 
 Fanny must go back to her box." 
 
 With an angry gesture she pointed to the near- 
 est pier. 
 
 " Steer in there," she said to her lover ; " they '11 
 be nearer the station." 
 
1 36 Sappho, 
 
 It was a brutal sort of dismissal ; but the ex- 
 lady of the chariot had accustomed her intimates 
 to her methods of procedure, and no one dared 
 protest. The couple being landed on the shore 
 with a few words of frigid politeness to the young 
 man, and orders to Fanny in a shrill voice, the 
 boat moved away laden with outcries and with a 
 bitter altercation, terminated by an insulting burst 
 of laughter borne to the lovers' ears by the reso- 
 nance of the water. 
 
 " You hear, you hear," said Fanny, livid with 
 rage ; " she is making sport of us ! " 
 
 All her humiliation, all the rankling insults in- 
 flicted upon her, recurred to her mind at that last 
 affront, and she enumerated them as they returned 
 to the station, even admitted some thir>gs that she 
 had always concealed. Rosa's whole object was 
 to part her from him, to afford her opportunities 
 to deceive him. "When I think of all she has 
 said to me to make me take up with that Dutch- 
 man ! Just now again they all went at me. I 
 love you too well, you see ; it bothers her in her 
 vices, for she has them all, the vilest, the most 
 monstrous." 
 
 She checked herself, seeing that he was very 
 pale, that his lips were trembling as on the even- 
 ing when he stirred the dunghill of letters. 
 
 " Oh ! have no fear," she said ; " your love has 
 cured me of all those horrors. She and her pes- 
 tiferous chameleon are equally disgusting to me." 
 
 *' I don't want you to stay there," said the lover, 
 agitated by unhealthy jealousy. ** There is too 
 
Sappho. 137 
 
 much filth in the bread you earn ; you must go 
 home with me ; we will pull through somehow." 
 
 She expected that cry, had been trying for a 
 long time to call it forth. And yet she resisted, 
 objecting that it would be very hard to keep house 
 with the three hundred francs from the depart- 
 ment, and that they would perhaps have to sepa- 
 rate again. *^And I suffered so when I left our 
 poor httlc house ! " 
 
 Benches were placed at intervals under the 
 acacias which lined the road, with telegraph wires 
 covered with swallows ; to talk more at ease, they 
 sat down, both deeply moved, and arm in arm. 
 
 "Three hundred francs a month," said Jean; 
 " why, what do the Hettemas do, who have only 
 two hundred and fifty?" 
 
 " They live in the country at Chaville, all the 
 year round." 
 
 " Well, let 's do as they do ; I do not care for 
 Paris." 
 
 " Really? do you really mean it? oh, my dear! 
 my dear ! " 
 
 People were passing along the road, a galloping 
 line of asses carrying the debris of a wedding- 
 party. They could not embrace, and they sat 
 motionless, very close together, dreaming of a 
 rejuvenated happiness on summer evenings in the 
 country, sweet with that same perfume of green 
 fields, tranquil and warm, and enlivened by carbine- 
 shots in the distance and by the barrel-organ tunes 
 of a suburban fete. 
 
138 Sappho, 
 
 VIII. 
 
 They settled at Chaville, between the upper 
 and the lower town, along that old forest road 
 called the Pav6 des Gardes, in an old hunting- 
 box at the entrance to the woods : three rooms 
 hardly larger than those in Paris, and the same 
 furniture, the cane-seated chair, the painted ward- 
 robe, and to adorn the horrible green paper in 
 their bedroom, nothing but Fanny's portrait, for 
 the photograph of Castelet had its frame broken 
 in moving and was fading away in the lumber- 
 room. 
 
 They hardly mentioned poor Castelet now, 
 since the uncle and niece had broken off their 
 correspondence. 
 
 " A pretty kind of a friend ! " she said, remem- 
 bering Le Fenat's readiness to promote the first 
 rupture. Only the little girls kept their brother 
 informed of the news, for Divonne had ceased to 
 write. Perhaps she still entertained a grudge 
 against her nephew; or did she guess that the 
 bad woman had returned, to unseal, and criticise 
 her poor, motherly letters in the coarse peasant 
 handwriting. 
 
 At times they might have believed that they 
 were still on Rue d'Amsterdam, when they were 
 awakened by the singing of the Hettemas^ once 
 
Sappho, 1 39 
 
 more their neighbors, and the whistling of the 
 locomotives passing constantly in both directions 
 on the other side of the road, and visible through 
 the trees of a large park. But instead of the 
 murky glass walls of the great Western station, 
 its curtainless windows, through which could be 
 seen the silhouettes of clerks bending over their 
 work, and the roar and rumble of the sloping 
 street, they enjoyed the silent, green space be- 
 yond their little orchard, surrounded by other 
 gardens, by villas in clumps of trees, sliding down 
 to the foot of the hill. 
 
 Before starting for Paris in the morning, Jean 
 breakfasted in their little dining-room, with the 
 window open on the broad paved road, grass- 
 grown in spots, and lined by rows of white thorn 
 with its pungent perfume. That road took him 
 to the station in ten minutes, skirting the rustling, 
 chirping park; and when he returned, those 
 sounds grew fainter as the shadows crept out of 
 the thickets to the moss in the green road, em- 
 purpled by the rays of the setting sun, and as the 
 calls of the cuckoos in every corner of the wood 
 blended with the trills of the nightingale among 
 the ivy. 
 
 But as soon as they were fairly settled, and his 
 surprise at the unaccustomed tranquillity of his 
 surroundings had subsided, the lover fell a victim 
 anew to the torments of a sterile and prying jeal- 
 ousy. His mistress's rupture with Rosa and her 
 departure from the lodging-house had led to an 
 appalling explanation between the two women, 
 
140 Sappho. 
 
 full of ambiguous insinuations, which revived his 
 suspicions, his most disturbing anxieties; and 
 when he went away, when he looked out from 
 the train at their little low house, with just a ground- 
 floor surmounted by a round attic window, his 
 glance seemed to pierce the wall. He would say 
 to himself, *'Who knows?" and the thought 
 haunted him even among the papers on his desk. 
 
 When he returned at night, he made her give 
 him an account of her day, of her most trivial 
 acts, of her thoughts, generally most uninterest- 
 ing, which he tried to surprise with a " What are 
 you thinking about? tell me, quick," always fear- 
 ing that she regretted something or some one in 
 that horrible past, admitted by her every time 
 with the same imperturbable frankness. 
 
 When they met only on Sundays and were 
 thirsty for each other, he did not waste time in 
 these insulting and minute searchings of the mind. 
 But now that they were together once more, with 
 no break in their life a deux, they tormented each 
 other even in their caresses, in their most secret 
 communing, excited by the dull wrath, the painful 
 consciousness, of the irreparable. 
 
 Then, too, their energies seemed to relax ; per- 
 haps it was satiety of the senses in the warm en- 
 velopment of nature, or more simply the proximity 
 of the Hettemas. Of all the households encamped 
 in the suburbs of Paris, not one perhaps ever en- 
 joyed the freedom of life in the country as that 
 one did, — the delight of going about clad in rags, 
 in hats made of bark, Madame without corsets, 
 
Sappho, 141 
 
 Monsieur in canvas shoes ; of carrying crusts from 
 the table for the ducks, scrapings for the rabbits ; 
 and hoeing and raking and planting and watering. 
 
 Oh, that watering ! 
 
 The Hettemas set about it as soon as the hus- 
 band, after returning from the office, had ex- 
 changed his office coat for a Robinson Crusoe 
 jacket; after dinner they went at it again, and 
 long after nightfall, in the little dark garden, from 
 which a fresh smell of damp earth arose, could be 
 heard the creaking of the pump, the colliding of 
 the great watering-pots, and elephantine gasps 
 wandering among the flower-beds, with a splash- 
 ing which seemed to be caused by water falling 
 from the toilers' brows into their watering-pots, and 
 from time to time a triumphant exclamation : — 
 
 " I Ve put thirty-two pots on the marrowfat 
 peas ! " 
 
 ** And I fourteen on the balsams ! " 
 
 They were people who were not content to be 
 happy, but gloated over their own happiness and 
 relished it in a way to make your mouth water ; 
 especially the man, by the irresistible way in which 
 he described the joys of their household in winter. 
 
 " It 's nothing now, but just wait till December, 
 then you '11 see ! You come home wet and muddy, 
 with all the vexations of Paris on your back ; you 
 find a good fire, a bright lamp, the soup smoking 
 on the table, and under the table a pair of clogs 
 filled with straw. Ah ! when you Ve stowed away 
 a dish of sausages and cabbage with a slice of 
 gruyere kept fresh under a cloth, and when you 've 
 
142 Sappho. 
 
 poured on it a glass of wine that never saw Bercy, 
 free of christening and duty, how pleasant it is to 
 draw your armchair up to the fire, light a pipe 
 while you drink your coffee laced with a drop of 
 brandy, and take a little snooze opposite each 
 other, while the ice melts on the windows ! Just 
 a bit of a nap, you know, long enough for the 
 heavy part of the digestion. Then you draw a 
 few minutes, the wife clears the table, hustles 
 about fixing the bedclothes and the hot-water 
 bottle ; and when she 's gone to bed and the place 
 is warm, in you jump, and you feel a warmth all 
 over your body just as if you 'd crawled into the^ 
 straw in your shoes." 
 
 He waxed almost eloquent over his material 
 joys, the hairy, heavy-jawed giant, on ordinary 
 occasions so shy that he could not say two words 
 without blushing and stammering. 
 
 That absurd shyness, which contrasted so comi- 
 cally with his black beard and colossal frame, was 
 responsible for his marriage and his tranquil life. 
 Hettema at twenty-five, overflowing with lusty 
 health, knew nothing of love or women ; but one 
 day at Nevers, after a corps dinner, some of his 
 comrades enticed him, half-tipsy, to a house of 
 prostitution and forced him to choose one of the 
 inmates. He left the place in the utmost bewil- 
 derment, went there again and again, always chose 
 the same one, paid her debts, took her away, and, 
 taking fright at the idea that some one might steal 
 her from him, so that he would have to begin a 
 fresh conquest, he ended by marrying her. 
 
Sappho, 143 
 
 ** A legitimate household, my dear," said Fanny, 
 with a triumphant laugh, to Jean, who listened to 
 her in dismay. ** And it is the cleanest and most 
 virtuous of all of that kind I have ever known." 
 
 She affirmed it in the sincerity of her ignorance, 
 for the legitimate households to which she had 
 been admitted doubtless deserved no kinder judg- 
 ment ; and all her ideas of life were as sincere and 
 as false as that. 
 
 As neighbors these Hettemas had a calming 
 effect, being always good-humored, capable of 
 rendering services that were not too burdensome, 
 and having an especial horror of scenes, of quar- 
 rels in which they must take part, and in general 
 of anything calculated to interfere with a peaceful 
 digestion. The wife tried to initiate Fanny in the 
 science of raising chickens and rabbits, in the sa- 
 lubrious delights of watering, but in vain. 
 
 Gaussin's mistress, a child of the faubourg and 
 graduate of studios, did not like the country ex- 
 cept in snatches, on picnics, as a place where one 
 can shout and roll on the grass and lose oneself 
 with one's lover. She detested effort and labor, 
 and as her six months' experience as manager had 
 exhausted her power of energy for a long while, 
 she sank into a dreamy torpor, a drunkenness of 
 comfort and fresh air, which almost left her with- 
 out strength to dress, to arrange her hair, or even 
 to open her piano. 
 
 The cares of housekeeping being confided en- 
 tirely to a country-woman, when, at night, she 
 reviewed her day in order to describe it to Jean, 
 
144 Sappho, 
 
 she could think of nothing but a visit to Olympe, 
 gossip over the wall, and cigarettes, heaps of cigar- 
 ettes, the remains of which disfigured the marble 
 mantel. Six o'clock already ! Barely time to slip 
 on a dress and pin a flower in her waist to go and 
 meet him on the grass-grown road. 
 
 But with the coming of the fogs and rains of 
 autumn, and night falling so early, she had more 
 than one excuse for not going out; and he fre- 
 quently surprised her on his return in one of the 
 white woollen gandouras with broad pleats, which 
 she put on in the morning, and with her hair 
 twisted in a knot as when he went away. He 
 thought her charming so, with her still youthful 
 flesh, well kept and tempting, which was ready to 
 his hand, with nothing in the way. And yet that 
 lack of energy ofl"ended him, alarmed him as a 
 source of danger. 
 
 He himself, after a tremendous effort to increase 
 their resources a little without having recourse to 
 Castelet, after passing nights over plans, reproduc- 
 tions of pieces of artillery, caissons, muskets of a 
 new pattern, which he designed for Hettema, was 
 assailed by the enervating influence of the country 
 and of solitude, by which the strongest and most 
 energetic allow themselves to be overcome, its 
 benumbing seed having been implanted in him 
 by his early childhood in an out-of-the way 
 corner. 
 
 And the materiality of their stout neighbors as- 
 sisted in the process, infecting them, in the endless 
 going and coming from one house to the other, 
 
Sappho, 145 
 
 with a little of their mental degradation and their 
 abnormal appetite. Gaiissin and his mistress also 
 reached the point of discussing the question of 
 meals and bedtime. Cesaire having sent a cask 
 of his " frog's wine," they passed a whole Sunday 
 bottling it, with the door of their little cellar open 
 to the last sun of the year, a blue sky flecked with 
 pink clouds, of the shade of wood-heather. They 
 were not far away from the period of clogs filled 
 with warm straw and the after-dinner nap. Luck- 
 ily something occurred to divert their thoughts. 
 
 He found her one evening highly excited. 
 Olympe had been telling her the story of a little 
 boy, brought up by a grandmother in Morvan. 
 The father and mother, dealers in wood in Paris, 
 had not written or paid any money for months. 
 The grandmother having died suddenly, some 
 bargemen had brought the urchin through the 
 Yonne Canal to turn him over to his parents; 
 but they could not find any one. The wood-yard 
 closed, the mother gone off with a lover, the father 
 become a drunkard, a bankrupt, disappeared ! 
 Fine things, these lawful households ! And there 
 was the Httle fellow, six years old, a perfect love, 
 without bread or clothes, in the gutter ! 
 
 She was moved almost to tears, then said 
 abruptly, — 
 
 " Suppose we should take him? Are you will- 
 ing?" 
 
 " What madness ! " 
 
 "Why so?" And nestling close to him, she 
 continued coaxingly : " You know how I have 
 
146 Sappho, 
 
 longed for a child by you ; we could bring this 
 one up, give him an education. After a while you 
 love the little ones you pick up in the street as 
 dearly as if they were your own." 
 
 She also reminded him what a source of distrac- 
 tion it would be to her, alone as she was all day, 
 growing stupid by dint of overhauling heaps of un- 
 pleasant thoughts. A child is a safeguard. Then, 
 when she saw that he had taken fright at the ex- 
 pense : *' Why, the expense is nothing. Just think, 
 six years old ! we will dress him with your old 
 clothes. Olympe, who knows what she's talking 
 about, assures me that we should never notice it." 
 
 "Why doesn't she take him, then?" said Jean, 
 with the testiness of a man who feels that he is 
 vanquished by his own weakness. He tried to re- 
 sist, however, resorting to the convincing argu- 
 ment : " And when I am no longer here, what will 
 happen?" He rarely mentioned his departure, in 
 order not to sadden Fanny, but he thought of it, 
 and was reassured by the thought against the dan- 
 gers of his present mode of life and De Potter's 
 melancholy confidences. " What a complication 
 the child will cause, what a burden he will be to 
 you in the future ! " 
 
 Fanny's eyes grew dim. 
 
 " You are mistaken, my dear ; he will be some 
 one to talk to about you, a consolation, a respon- 
 sibility too, which will give me strength to work, to 
 retain a desire to hve." 
 
 He reflected a moment, imagined her all alone, 
 in the empty house. 
 
Sappho, 147 
 
 "Where is the little fellow? " 
 
 " At Bas-Meudon, with a bargeman who has 
 taken him in for a few days. After that it 's the 
 hospital, the almshouse." 
 
 " Well, go and get him, as your heart is set 
 on it." 
 
 She threw her arms around his neck, and all the 
 evening, as joyous as a child, she played, and sang, 
 happy, exuberant, transfigured. The next morn- 
 ing, in the train, Jean mentioned their decision to 
 Hettema, who seemed to know about the episode, 
 but to be determined to have no hand in it. 
 Buried in his corner reading the Petit Journal ^ he 
 muttered in the depths of his beard, — 
 
 " Yes, I know — the women did it — it 's none of 
 my business. Your wife seems to me to be very ro- 
 mantic," he added, showing his face above the paper. 
 
 Romantic or not, she was dismayed beyond mea- 
 sure that evening, as she knelt on the floor, a plate 
 of soup in her hand, trying to tame the little fel- 
 low from Morvan, who stood against the wall in a 
 shrinking attitude, his head hanging down, — an 
 enormous head with flaxen hair, — and energeti- 
 cally refused to talk, to eat, even to show his face, 
 but repeated again and again in a loud, choking, 
 monotonous voice, — 
 
 " See Menine, see Menine." 
 
 ** Menine was his grandmother, I imagine. Since 
 two o'clock I have n't been able to get anything 
 else out of him." 
 
 Jean took a hand in trying to make him swallow 
 his soup, but without avail. And there they re- 
 
148 Sappho. 
 
 mained, kneeling so that their faces were on a level 
 with his, one holding the plate, the other the spoon, 
 as if he were a sick lamb, trying to move him by 
 encouraging, affectionate words. 
 
 "■ Let us go to dinner ; perhaps we frighten him ; 
 he will eat if we stop looking at him." 
 
 But he continued to stand there, wild as a hawk, 
 repeating like a little savage his wailing '' See Me- 
 nine," which tore their hearts, until he fell asleep 
 leaning against the sideboard, — such a deep sleep 
 that they were able to undress him and lay him in 
 the rough, rustic cradle borrowed from a neighbor, 
 without his opening his eyes for a second. 
 
 " See how handsome he is ! " said Fanny, very 
 proud of her acquisition ; and she compelled Gaus- 
 sin to admire that wilful brow, those refined and 
 delicate features beneath the sunburn of the fields, 
 that perfect little body with the well-knit loins, the 
 full arms, the legs like a young satyr's, already 
 covered with down below the knee. She forgot 
 herself gazing at that childish beauty. 
 
 " Cover him up ; he '11 be cold," said Jean, whose 
 voice made her start, as if awakened from a dream ; 
 and as she carefully tucked him in, the little one 
 drew several long sobbing breaths, as if struggling 
 in a sea of despair, notwithstanding his sleep. 
 
 In the night he began to talk of his own accord : 
 
 " Guerlande me, Menine." 
 
 **What does he say? listen." 
 
 He wanted to be guerlanded', but what did that 
 patois word mean? Jean at all hazards put out 
 his arm and began to rock the heavy cradle ; grad- 
 
Sappho. 149 
 
 ually the child became quieter and fell asleep hold- 
 ing in his chubby little hand the hand which he 
 believed to be his " Menine's," who had been dead 
 a fortnight. 
 
 He was like a little wild cat in the house, claw- 
 ing and biting, eating apart from the others, and 
 growling when any one approached his bowl ; the 
 few words that they extorted from him were in 
 the barbarous dialect of Morvan wood-cutters, 
 which no one could ever have understood with- 
 out the aid of the Hettemas, who were from the 
 same province as he. However, by dint of con- 
 stant attention and gentleness they succeeded in 
 taming him a httle, " tm pso,'* as he said. He 
 consented to exchange the rags he wore when he 
 arrived for the neat warm clothes, the sight of 
 which at first made him tremble with rage as a 
 jackal would, if one should try to dress him in a 
 greyhound's coat. He learned to eat at the table, 
 to use a fork and spoon, and to answer, when any 
 one asked him his name, that in the country '* i li 
 dision Josaph." ^ 
 
 As for giving him the slightest elementary no- 
 tions in the way of education, they could not think 
 of that as yet. Brought up in the midst of the 
 woods, in a charcoal-burner's hut, the murmur of 
 rustling, swarming nature haunted his tough little 
 rustic's pate as the sound of the sea rings in the 
 spiral folds of a shell ; and there was no way of 
 forcing anything else into it, nor of keeping him 
 in the house even in the most severe weather. In 
 1 They called him Josaph. 
 
1 50 Sappho. 
 
 the rain and the snow, when the bare trees stood 
 hke columns of frost, he would slip out of the 
 house, prowl among the bushes, search the holes 
 and burrows with the ingenious cruelty of a ferret, 
 and when he returned home, in a state of collapse 
 from hunger, he always had in his torn fustian 
 jacket, or in the pockets of his little breeches, cov- 
 ered with mud to his waist, some stunned or dead 
 creature, a bird or mole or field-mouse, or, in its 
 place, potatoes or beets he had dug in the fields. 
 
 Nothing could overcome those poaching, ma- 
 rauding instincts, coupled with a peasant's mania 
 for stowing away all sorts of glittering trifles, 
 copper buttons, bits of jet, tinfoil, which he would 
 pick up, hiding them in his hand, and carry them 
 ofT to hiding-places worthy of a thieving magpie. 
 All this booty was Included by him in a vague, 
 generic name, "the harvest" {la denr^e), which 
 he pronounced denraie ; and neither arguments 
 nor blows would have deterred him from making 
 his denraie at the expense of everybody and 
 everything. 
 
 Only the Hettemas could keep him in order, 
 the draughtsman keeping always within reach, on 
 the table around which the Httle savage prowled, 
 attracted by the compasses and colored pencils, a 
 dog-whip which he cracked about his legs. But 
 neither Jean nor Fanny would resort to such 
 threats, although the little one, in his deahngs 
 with them, was sly, suspicious, untamable even by 
 the most affectionate cajolery, as if Meninej when 
 she died, had deprived him of all power of affec- 
 
Sappho, 151 
 
 tion. Fanny sometimes succeeded in keeping him 
 for a moment on her knees, *' because she smelt 
 good ; " but to Gaussin, although he was very- 
 gentle with him, he was always the wild beast of 
 the first night, with the same suspicious glance 
 and outstretched claws. 
 
 That unconquerable, almost instinctive repulsion 
 on the child's part, the inquisitive, mischievous ex- 
 pression of his little blue eyes, with their Albino- 
 like lashes, and, above all, Fanny's sudden and 
 blind affection for the little stranger who had sud- 
 denly fallen into their lives, tormented the lover 
 with a new suspicion. Perhaps he was her own 
 child, brought up by a nurse or by her stepmother ; 
 and Machaume's death, of which they learned about 
 that time, was a coincidence that seemed to justify 
 his suspicions. Sometimes at night, when he held 
 that little hand, which clung tightly to his, — for 
 the child in the vague land of dreams always 
 thought that Mhiine was holding it, — he ques- 
 tioned him with all his inward, unacknowledged 
 unrest: ''Where do you come from? Who are 
 you?" hoping that the mystery of the little fel- 
 low's birth might be made known to him through 
 contact with his warm flesh. 
 
 But his anxiety vanished at a word from P^re 
 Legrand, who came to ask for assistance in pay- 
 ing for a fence around his deceased helpmeet's 
 grave, and called out to his daughter when he 
 saw Josaph's cradle : — 
 
 " Hallo ! a kid ! you must be pleased, when 
 you 've never been able to raise one." 
 
152 Sappho, 
 
 Gaussin was so happy that he paid for the fence 
 without even asking to see the plans, and kept 
 Pere Legrand to breakfast. 
 
 The 6ld cabman, now employed on the tramway 
 between Paris and Versailles, his face flushed with 
 wine and apoplexy, but still lusty and active under 
 his glazed leather hat, surrounded for the occasion 
 by a heavy crepe band, which made It a genuine 
 " mute's " hat, — the old cabman seemed delighted 
 by his reception at the hands of his daughter's 
 gentlemauy and came again at intervals, to break 
 bread with them. His white hair a la Mr. Punch, 
 surrounding his shaven, bloated face, his majestic, 
 tipsy air, the respect with which he treated his 
 whip, leaning it against the wall In a safe corner 
 with the precautions of a nurse, made a deep im- 
 pression on the child ; and the old man and he at 
 once became very intimate. One day, just as they 
 had finished dining together, the Hettemas sur- 
 prised them. 
 
 '^ Oh ! excuse us, you are having a family party," 
 said Madame, in a mincing tone, and the words 
 struck Jean in the face, as humiliating as a blow. 
 
 His family! That foundhng who was snoring 
 with his head on the cloth, that weather-beaten 
 old pirate, with his pipe stuck in the corner of 
 his mouth and the voice of a fishwife, explaining 
 for the hundredth time that two sous* worth of 
 whipcord would last him six months, and that he 
 had n't changed his handle for twenty years ! His 
 family, nonsense ! they were no more his family 
 than she was his wife, that Fanny Legrand, that 
 
Sappho. 153 
 
 played out, prematurely old creature, leaning on 
 her elbows amid the cigarette smoke. Within a 
 year it would all have disappeared from his life, 
 leaving only the vague memory of travelling ac- 
 quaintances or a neighbor at table d'hote. 
 
 But at other times that thought of approaching 
 departure, which he invoked as an excuse for his 
 weakness when he felt that he was falling, being 
 dragged lower and lower, that idea, instead of 
 comforting him, of encouraging him, caused him 
 to feel more keenly the manifold bonds that held 
 him fast, to realize what a wrench that departure 
 would be, not one rupture, but ten ruptures, and 
 that it would cost him dearly to let go that little 
 child's hand, which rested freely in his at night. 
 Even La Balue, the golden thrush who sang and 
 whistled in his too small cage, which they were 
 always going to change, and in which he was forced 
 to stoop, like the old cardinal in his iron cage, — yes, 
 even La Balue had taken possession of a small 
 corner of his heart, and it would hurt to cast 
 him out. 
 
 And yet that inevitable separation was drawing 
 nigh ; and the gorgeous month of June, which 
 arrayed all nature in festal garb, would probably 
 be the last they would pass together. Was it that 
 that made her nervous and irritable, or was it the 
 burden of Josaph's education, which she had un- 
 dertaken with sudden ardor, to the intense disgust 
 of the little Morvandian, who sat for hours staring 
 at his letters without seeing or pronouncing them, 
 his forehead locked with a bar like the wings of a 
 
154 Sappho. 
 
 farmyard gate? From day to day her woman's 
 nature found vent in violent outbursts and in tears, 
 in constantly recurring scenes, although Gaussin 
 exerted himself to be indulgent; but she was so 
 insulting, her wrath exhaled such reeking fumes 
 of malice and hatred against her lover's youth, 
 his education, his family, the gulf between their 
 two destinies, which fate was about to widen, she 
 was so skilful in touching him on the sensitive 
 spots, that he finally lost his temper too, and 
 answered her. 
 
 But his wrath maintained the reserve, the com- 
 passion of a man of good breeding, refrained from 
 dealing blows which he deemed too painful and 
 too easily dealt, whereas she gave free rein to the 
 bhnd rage of a prostitute, devoid of responsibihty 
 or shame, made a weapon of everything, watched 
 with cruel joy on her victim's face the contraction 
 of pain which she caused, then suddenly threw 
 herself into his arms and besought his forgiveness. 
 
 The faces of the Hettemas, when they were 
 present at these quarrels, which almost always 
 broke out at the table, just as they were seated 
 and ready to remove the lid of the soup tureen or 
 plunge the knife into the joint, were a study for 
 a painter. They would exchange a glance of 
 comical dismay across the table. Might they ven- 
 ture to eat, or was the leg of mutton about to fly 
 away through the garden with the platter, the 
 gravy, and the stewed beans? 
 
 " On condition that there 's to be no scene ! " 
 they would say whenever there was a suggestion 
 
Sappho. 155 
 
 of a reunion of the families; and that was the 
 remark with which they greeted a project for 
 breakfasting together in the forest, which Fanny 
 threw at them over the wall one Sunday. Oh, no ! 
 they would not quarrel to-day ; it was too fine ! 
 And she ran to dress the child and pack the 
 baskets. 
 
 Everything was ready, and they were about to 
 start when the postman brought a stout letter for 
 which Gaussin had to sign a receipt, so that he 
 was detained. He overtook the party at the en- 
 trance to the woods, and said to Fanny in an 
 undertone, — 
 
 " It 's from my uncle. He is wild with delight. 
 A superb crop, sold as it stands. He sends back 
 Dechelette's eight thousand francs, with many 
 thanks and comphments for his niece." 
 
 " His niece, oh, yes ! a la mode de Gascogne. 
 The old wretch ! " said Fanny, who had lost all 
 her illusions concerning uncles from the South. 
 In a moment she added, with joyful satisfaction : 
 " We shall have to invest that money." 
 
 He gazed at her in blank amazement, because 
 he had found her always very scrupulous in money 
 matters. 
 
 *' Invest? why, it isn't yours." 
 
 "Well, you see, I never told you — "with the 
 glance which lost its sparkle at the slightest de- 
 parture from the truth ; Dechelette, like the good 
 fellow he was, having heard what they were doing 
 for Josaph, had written her that that money would 
 help them to bring up the little one. "But you 
 
156 Sappho, 
 
 know, if it annoys you, we '11 send back his eight 
 thousand francs ; he 's in Paris." 
 
 The voice of Hettema, who had discreetly gone 
 on ahead with his wife, echoed through the trees : 
 
 *'To the right or left?" 
 
 **To the right, to the right, — to the Ponds! " 
 cried Fanny; then, turning to her lover: ** Come, 
 come, you 're not going to begin to eat your heart 
 out over trifles ; we 're an old couple, deuce 
 take it!" 
 
 She knew that trembling pallor of the lips, that 
 glance at the boy, interrogating him from head to 
 foot ; but this time there was only a momentary 
 thrill of jealousy. He had reached now the stage 
 of acting the coward from habit, of conceding any- 
 thing for the sake of peace. " What is the need 
 of tormenting myself, of going to the bottom of 
 things? If this child is hers, what more natural 
 than that she should take him in and conceal 
 the truth from me after all the scenes, all the ques- 
 tionings, I have forced her to submit to ! Is n't it 
 better to take things as they are and pass the few 
 remaining months in peace?" 
 
 And he plodded along the forest roads through 
 the valley, carrying their picnic luncheon in its 
 heavy basket covered with white cloth, resigned 
 to his fate, his back bent like an aged gardener's, 
 while the mother and child walked together in 
 front of him, Josaph resplendent and awkward in 
 a complete outfit from the Belle-JardinUre, which 
 made it impossible for him to run, she in a light 
 peignoivy her head and neck bare under a Japan- 
 
Sappho. 157 
 
 ese parasol, her waist less sylph-like than of yore, 
 indolent of gait, and in her lovely twisted hair a 
 broad white streak which she no longer took the 
 trouble to conceal. 
 
 In front of them, and farther down the sloping 
 path, the Hettema couple, in gigantic straw hats 
 like those of the Touarez horsemen, dressed in red 
 flannel and laden with provisions, fishing tackle, 
 nets, crab-spears; and the wife, to lighten her 
 husband's burden, gallantly wearing saltire-wise 
 across her colossal breast the hunting-horn with- 
 out which the draughtsman could not be induced 
 to walk in the forest. As they walked, they sang : 
 
 " J'aime entendre la rame 
 Le soir battre les flots ; 
 J'aime le cerf qui brame — "^ 
 
 Olympe's repertory of those sentimental curb- 
 stone ditties was inexhaustible; and when one 
 considered where she had picked them up, in the 
 degrading half-light behind closed blinds, and to 
 how many men she had sung them, the husband's 
 serenity as he sang a second to them assumed ex- 
 traordinarily grand proportions. The remark of 
 the grenadier at Waterloo, "■ There are too many 
 of them," must have been the key to that man's 
 philosophical indifference. 
 
 While Gaussin musingly watched the huge 
 couple plunge into a hollow, whither he followed 
 them at a short distance, a creaking of wheels 
 
 1 I love to hear the oar 
 Beating the waves at night ; 
 I love the braying stag — 
 
158 Sappho, 
 
 came up the path with a volley of hearty laughter 
 and childish voices ; and suddenly, a few steps 
 away, a wagon-load of little girls, ribbons, and 
 waving hair appeared, in an English cart drawn 
 by a little donkey, with a young girl, hardly older 
 than the others, leading him by the bridle over 
 that rough road. 
 
 It was easy to see that Jean belonged to the 
 party whose heterodox costumes, especially that 
 of the fat woman with a hunting-horn slung over 
 her shoulder, had excited the young people to 
 inextinguishable laughter ; and the older girl tried 
 to impose silence on them for a moment. But 
 that other Touarez hat called forth a still louder 
 burst of mocking laughter ; and as she passed the 
 man who stood aside to make room for the little 
 cart, a pretty smile tinged with embarrassment 
 asked his pardon, and expressed naive surprise 
 to find that the old gardener's face was so youth- 
 ful and attractive. 
 
 He bowed timidly, blushed with no very clear 
 idea as to what he was ashamed of; and as the 
 cart stopped at the top of the hill at a cross-road, 
 and a babel of little voices read aloud the names 
 on the sign-post, half-effaced by the rain, " Road 
 to the Ponds," *^ The Grand Huntsman's Oak," 
 " False Repose," " Road to Velizy," Jean turned 
 and watched them disappear in the green path 
 flecked with sunlight and carpeted with moss, 
 where the wheels rolled as on velvet, — a whirl- 
 wind of fair-haired childhood, a wagon-load of 
 happiness arrayed in the colors of spring, with 
 
Sappho, 159 
 
 laughter exploding like fireworks under the 
 branches. 
 
 A fierce blast on Hettema's bugle, roused him 
 abruptly from his reverie. They had estabhshed 
 themselves on the shore of the pond and were 
 unpacking the provisions; and from a distance 
 one could see in the water the reflection of the 
 white cloth spread on the short grass, and of the 
 red flannel jackets standing out amid the verdure 
 like a huntsman's pink coat. 
 
 ** Come, hurry up ; you have the lobster ! " cried 
 the fat man ; and Fanny's nervous voice added, — 
 
 *' Was it little Bouchereau who stopped you on 
 the road ? " 
 
 Jean started at the name of Bouchereau, which 
 carried him back to Castelet, to his sick mother's 
 bedside. 
 
 "■ Yes," said the draughtsman, taking the basket 
 from his hands ; " the tall one, the one leading the 
 pony, is the doctor's niece. A daughter of his 
 brother, whom he has taken into his family. They 
 live at Velizy in summer. She 's a pretty girl." 
 
 " Oh ! very pretty, — especially that brazen-faced 
 air." And Fanny as she cut the bread, watched her 
 lover, disturbed by the far-away look in his eyes. 
 
 Madame Hettema, unpacking the ham the while, 
 solemnly expressed her disapprobation of that 
 fashion of allowing young girls to roam about the 
 woods at will. ''You will tell me that it's the 
 English way, and that she was brought up in 
 London ; but that does n't make any difference, it 
 really isn't proper." 
 
i6o Sappho, 
 
 " No, but very convenient for adventures.'* 
 
 "Oh! Fanny — " 
 
 " Excuse me, I forgot ; Monsieur believes in in- 
 nocent girls." 
 
 " Come, come, suppose we have our luncheon,'* 
 said Hettema, beginning to take alarm. But Fanny 
 must needs tell all she knew about young girls in 
 society. She had some fine stories on that sub- 
 ject ; convents, boarding-schools, were the scenes of 
 them. Girls left those establishments worn out, 
 withered, disgusted with men, not even capable of 
 having children. " And then they give them to 
 you, you dupes! An ingmue ! As if there was 
 any such thing as an ingenue I as if all girls, in 
 society or not in society, did n't know from their 
 birth what 's what ! I myself had nothing to learn 
 when I was twelve years old ; nor had you, 
 Olympe, eh?" 
 
 " Of course not," said Madame Hettema, with a 
 shrug ; but the fate of the luncheon engrossed her 
 attention when she heard Gaussin, whose temper 
 was rising, declare that there were girls and girls, 
 and that one could still find in some families — 
 
 " Oh ! yes, families," retorted his mistress, scorn- 
 fully, " I like to hear you talk about families ; 
 especially your own." 
 
 "Hush! I forbid you — " 
 
 " Bourgeois ! " 
 
 " Wretch ! Luckily this will soon end. I 
 have n't much longer to live with you." 
 
 " Go, go ! clear out ! I shall be glad enough." 
 
 They were hurling insults at each other's heads. 
 
Sappho, i6i 
 
 before the maliciously inquisitive child, who lay- 
 face downward in the grass, when a terrible blast 
 from the bugle, repeated in a hundred echoes by 
 the pond and the terraced masses of the forest, 
 suddenly drowned their dispute. 
 
 " Have you had enough of it? Do you want me 
 to do it again?" And the bulky Hettema, with 
 purple cheeks and swollen neck, unable to find any 
 other way of making them hold their peace, waited, 
 with the mouthpiece to his lips and the orifice 
 threatening to belch forth afresh. 
 
 IV 
 
1 62 Sappho. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Their quarrels usually lasted but a short time, 
 vanishing under the influence of a little music and 
 Fanny's effusive cajolery; but this time he was 
 more seriously angry with her, and for several days 
 in succession kept the same wrinkle on his brow 
 and maintained the same indignant silence, sitting 
 down to draw immediately after meals and refusing 
 to go anywhere with her. 
 
 It was as if he were suddenly ashamed of the 
 abject life he was leading, afraid of meeting again 
 the little cart ascending the path and that guile- 
 less youthful smile of which he thought constantly. 
 Then, with the confusion of a vanishing dream, of 
 scenery broken to facilitate the transformations of 
 a fairy spectacle, the apparition became indistinct, 
 faded away in the windings of the forest path, and 
 Jean saw it no more. But there remained in him a 
 substratum of melancholy of which Fanny thought 
 that sihe knew the cause, and she determined to 
 banish it. 
 
 *' I have done it," she said to him joyfully one 
 day. *' I have seen Dechelette. I have returned 
 the money to him. He agrees with you that it is 
 better so ; upon my word, I wonder why. How- 
 ever, it 's done. Later, when I am alone, he will 
 
Sappho. 163 
 
 remember the little one. Are you satisfied ? Are 
 you still angry with me?" 
 
 And she described her visit to Rue de Rome, her 
 amazement at finding there, instead of the wild, 
 noisy, caravansary filled with excited crowds, a 
 tranquil, bourgeois household, governed by very 
 strict rules. No more revels, no more fancy-dress 
 balls ; and the explanation of the change, written in 
 chalk over the small door of the studio by some 
 parasite, enraged at being refused admittance: 
 " Closed by reason of marriage." 
 
 ''And that's the truth, my dear. D6chelette, 
 soon after arriving in Paris, lost his head over a 
 skating-rink girl, Alice Dore; he has had her 
 with him a month, keeping house, actually keep- 
 ing house ! A very nice, sweet little creature, a 
 pretty lamb. They make very little noise both 
 together. I promised that we would go and see 
 them ; that will be a little change for us from hunt- 
 ing-horns and barcaroles. What do you say now 
 to the philosopher and his theories? No to-mor- 
 row, no collage} Ah ! I chaffed him well ! " 
 
 Jean allowed himself to be taken to Dechelette's, 
 whom he had not seen since their meeting at the 
 Madeleine. He would have been vastly surprised 
 then if any one had told him that there would come 
 a time when he would fraternize without a feeling 
 of disgust with that cynical and disdainful former 
 lover of his mistress, and become almost his friend. 
 Even at that first visit, he was surprised to feel so 
 
 ^ A slang expression meaning — living as husband and wife 
 though unmarried. 
 
164 Sappho, 
 
 much at home, charmed by the gentle nature and 
 the ingenuous, kindly laughter of that man with the 
 beard of a Cossack and with a serenity of disposi- 
 tion undisturbed by the painful antics of his liver, 
 which gave a leaden tinge to his complexion and 
 the circles around his eyes. 
 
 And how readily one could understand the affec- 
 tion he inspired in that Alice Dor6, with her long, 
 soft, white hands and her insignificant blond beauty, 
 heightened by the splendor of her Flemish flesh, 
 as golden {doree) as her name, by the glint of gold 
 in her hair and in her eyelashes, fringing the eye- 
 Hds and making the skin sparkle even to the nails. 
 
 Picked up by Dechelette on the asphalt of the 
 skating-rink, among the vulgarities and brutalities 
 of the crowd, and the clouds of smoke which a 
 man, as he cuts a flourish, blows into the painted 
 face of a strumpet, she had been surprised and 
 touched by his courtesy. She found herself a 
 woman once more instead of the poor beast of 
 pleasure she had been ; and when he would have 
 sent her away in the morning, conformably to his 
 theories, with a hearty breakfast and a few louis, 
 her heart was so heavy, she said to him so gently 
 and so earnestly, " Keep me a httle longer ! " that 
 he had not the courage to refuse. Afterwards, 
 partly from self-respect, partly from weariness, he 
 kept his door locked on that fortuitous honey- 
 moon, which he passed in the cool tranquillity of 
 his summer palace, so admirably supplied with the 
 comforts of life ; and they lived thus very happily, 
 she because of such tender consideration as she 
 
Sappho, 165 
 
 had never known, he because of the happiness 
 which he was bestowing upon that poor creature 
 and her gratitude, being subjected thus for the 
 first time, and without reaHzing it, to the penetra- 
 ting charm of real intimacy with a woman, the 
 mysterious enchantment of Hfe a dctix, in commu- 
 nity of kindness of heart and gentleness of nature. 
 
 To Gaussin the studio on Rue de Rome was a 
 diversion from the base and degrading environ- 
 ment of his life as a petty clerk with an illegitimate 
 household ; he enjoyed the conversation of that 
 scholar with artistic tastes, of that philosopher in 
 a Persian dressing-gown as airy and loose as his 
 doctrines, and the tales of travel which Dechelette 
 told in the fewest possible words, and which were 
 so appropriate among the Oriental hangings, the 
 gilded Buddhas, the bronze chimeras, the exotic 
 luxuriousness of that vast hall where the light fell 
 from a high window, the same light that we find 
 in the heart of a park, stirred by the slender foli- 
 age of the bamboos, by the denticulated fronds of 
 the tree-ferns, and the enormous leaves of the siil- 
 lingiaSy mingled with philodendrons as thin and flex- 
 ible as water-plants seeking shade and moisture. 
 
 On Sunday especially, with the great bay- 
 window looking on a deserted street of Paris in 
 summer, there was almost as much country and 
 forest there as at Chaville, minus the promiscu- 
 ousness of the company and the Hett^mas' hunting- 
 horn. There was never any company ; but on one 
 occasion Gaussin and his mistress, arriving for 
 dinner, heard several voices in animated conver- 
 
1 66 Sappho, 
 
 satlon as soon as they entered the house. Night 
 was falling, they were drinking raki in the conser- 
 vatory, and the discussion seemed to be quite 
 warm. 
 
 " For my part, I consider that five years in 
 Mazas, the loss of one's name, and the ruin of 
 one's life, are a high price to pay for an act of 
 passion and madness. I '11 sign your petition, 
 Dechelette." 
 
 ** That 's Caoudal," whispered Fanny, with a 
 start. 
 
 Some one rejoined, with a pitilessly curt refusal : 
 " For my part, I '11 sign nothing. I '11 not connect 
 myself in any way with that rascal." 
 
 "■ And that 's La Gournerie ! " said Fanny; press- 
 ing close to her lover, she murmured : *' Let us go, 
 if it annoys you to see them." 
 
 "Why so? not at all." In reality he was not 
 quite certain how he should feel when he found 
 himself face to face with those men, but he did 
 not propose to shirk the test, being desirous per- 
 haps to ascertain the present extent of that jeal- 
 ousy which had formed so large a part of his 
 wretched love-affair. 
 
 " Let us go in ! " he said ; and they made their 
 appearance in the reddish light of the close of day, 
 which shone upon the bald heads and grizzly 
 beards of Dechelette's friends as they reclined on 
 the low divans around an Oriental table with three 
 legs, on which the spiced and milky beverage 
 which Alice was serving trembled in five or six 
 glasses. The women kissed. '' You know these 
 
Sappho, 167 
 
 gentlemen, Gaussin?" said Dechelette, rocking 
 gently in his chair. 
 
 Did he know them? Two^ of them at least were 
 familiar to him, by virtue of his having stared at 
 their pictures for hours in the show-cases of celeb- 
 rities. How they had made him suffer, what bitter 
 hatred he had conceived for them, the hatred of a 
 successor, a fierce longing to leap upon them when 
 he met them in the street, and claw their faces ! 
 But Fanny had well said that that would pass 
 away; now they were simply the faces of ac- 
 quaintances, almost of kinsmen, distant uncles 
 whom he saw again after many years. 
 
 " The youngster *s still handsome ! " said Ca- 
 oudal, his gigantic form stretched out at full 
 length, holding a screen over his eyes to protect 
 them from the glare. *' And, Fanny, let us look 
 at you ! " He lifted himself on his elbow and 
 winked his expert eyes : '' The face still holds its 
 own; but the waist, — you do well to lace good 
 and tight ; however, console yourself, my girl. La 
 Gournerie is stouter than you are." 
 
 The poet pursed up his thin lips disdainfully. 
 Sitting Turkish fashion on his pile of cushions, — 
 since his trip to Algiers he claimed that he could 
 sit no other way, — an enormous, pulpy mass, with 
 no trace of intelligence remaining save his noble 
 forehead beneath a white forest, and his stern 
 negro-like glance, he affected a well-bred reserve 
 with Fanny, an exaggerated courtesy, as if to give 
 Caoudal a lesson. 
 
 Two landscape painters with sun-burned, rustic 
 
1 68 Sappho, 
 
 faces completed the party ; they too knew Jean's 
 mistress, and the younger of them said to her, 
 pressing her hand, — 
 
 ** Dechelette has told us the story of the child, 
 and what you have done is very fine, my dear." 
 
 *' Yes," said Caoudal to Gaussin ; " yes, exceed- 
 ingly chic. Not in the least provincial." 
 
 She seemed embarrassed by their laudatory 
 words; but at that moment some one stumbled 
 against a piece of furniture in the dark studio, 
 and a voice inquired, " No one here? " 
 
 *' Here 's Ezano," said Dechelette. 
 
 Jean had never seen him ; but he knew how great 
 a place that Bohemian, that imaginative creature, 
 now reformed and married, and chief of a division 
 at the Beaux- Arts, had played in Fanny Legrand's 
 life, and he remembered a package of passionate 
 and charming letters. A small man came forward, 
 hollow-cheeked, wrinkled, walking stiffly, who gave 
 his hand at a distance, kept people at arm's length 
 as a result of the habit of speaking from a plat- 
 form, of administrative exclusiveness. He seemed 
 much surprised to see Fanny, especially to find her 
 still lovely after so many years. 
 
 " Why, Sappho ! " and a furtive flush enlivened 
 his cheek-bones. 
 
 That name Sappho, which carried her back to 
 the past, and brought her nearer to all her former 
 lovers, caused a certain embarrassment. 
 
 " And this is Monsieur d'Armandy, who brought 
 her," said Dechelette, hastily, to warn the new- 
 comer. Ezano bowed ; they began to talk. 
 
Sappho. 169 
 
 Fanny, reassured when she saw how her lover 
 took the state of affairs, and being proud of him, 
 of his beauty and his youth, in that party of art- 
 ists and connoisseurs, was very animated, in high 
 feather. Engrossed by her present passion, she 
 hardly remembered her liaisons with those men ; 
 but years of cohabitation, of life in common, left 
 behind them the stamp of habits, of peculiarities 
 communicated by contact and surviving it, even 
 to the way of rolling cigarettes, which, like her 
 preference for Maryland tobacco, was a legacy 
 from Ezano, 
 
 Without the slightest annoyance Jean remarked 
 that little detail, which would once have exasper- 
 ated him, experiencing, when he found how calm 
 he was, the joy of a prisoner who has filed his 
 chains and feels that a slight effort will suffice for 
 his escape. 
 
 " Hein ! my dear Fanny," said Caoudal, in a 
 chaffing tone, pointing to the others, " what a 
 faUing off! see how old they are, how they've 
 flattened out ! we two are the only ones who hold 
 our own." 
 
 Fanny began to laugh : " Ah ! I beg your par- 
 don, colonel," — he was called so sometimes be- 
 cause of his moustaches, — " it is n't altogether 
 the same thing. I 'm of another promotion." 
 
 " Caoudal always forgets that he 's an old fogy,'* 
 said La Gournerie; and at a gesture from the 
 sculptor, whom he knew that he had touched to 
 the quick, he cried in his strident voice : '* Medal 
 of 1840; that 's a date to reckon from, my boy ! " 
 
1 70 Sappho. 
 
 Those two old friends always adopted an aggres- 
 sive tone toward each other ; there was an under- 
 current of antipathy between them, which had 
 never separated them, but which came to the sur- 
 face in their glances, in their lightest words ; and 
 it dated from the day when the poet stole the 
 sculptor's mistress. Fanny was no longer of any 
 consequence to them ; they had both known other 
 joys, other mortifications, but the bitterness re- 
 mained, sinking deeper and deeper with the years. 
 
 " Just look at us two, and say honestly whether 
 I am the old fogy ! " Caoudal stood erect, in the 
 tightly fitting jacket, which showed his bulging 
 muscles, with his chest thrown out, shaking his 
 fiery mane in which not a white hair could be seen. 
 
 " Medal of 1840, — fifty-eight years old in three 
 months. Even so, what does that prove? Is it 
 age that makes old men ? It 's only at the Come- 
 die-Francaise and the Conservatoire that men 
 drool at sixty and keep their heads nodding and 
 totter along with bent back and limp legs and 
 senile tricks of all sorts. Sacrebleu! at sixty a 
 man 's more erect than at thirty, because he takes 
 care of himself; and the women will love you still 
 as long as your heart remains young and warms 
 and stirs up your whole carcass." 
 
 '' Do you think so?" said La Gournerie, glanc- 
 ing at Fanny with a sneer. And Dechelette re- 
 joined with his kindly smile, — 
 
 " And yet you always said that there 's nothing 
 like youth ; you 're a tiresome fellow." 
 
 "It was my little Cousinard who made me 
 
Sappho. 171 
 
 change my views, — Cousinard, my new model. 
 Eighteen years old, rounded outlines, dimples 
 everywhere, a Clodeon. And such a bright one, 
 such a typical child of the people, of the Paris of 
 the Market, where her mother sells poultry ! She 
 makes absurd remarks that make you want to kiss 
 her; on my word, they do. The other day in the 
 studio she takes up one of Dejoie's novels, looks 
 at the title, Therhe, and throws it down again with 
 her pretty little pout : * If he 'd called it Poor 
 Therese, I 'd have read it all night ! ' I am mad 
 over her, I tell you." 
 
 " Before you know it you '11 be keeping house. 
 And six months hence another rupture, tears as 
 big as your fist, distaste for work, and fits of tem- 
 per when you want to kill everybody." 
 
 Caoudal's brow grew dark. 
 
 " It is true that nothing lasts. We take up with 
 one another, then part — " 
 
 " In that case why take up with one another?" 
 
 ** Indeed, and what about yourself ? Do you 
 think that you are settled for life with your 
 Fleming?" 
 
 " Oh ! as for us, we are not housekeeping, are 
 we, Alice?" 
 
 " Of course not," replied the girl, in a sweet, 
 distraught voice; she was standing on a chair 
 picking glycine and leaves to decorate the table. 
 Dechelette continued, — 
 
 " There '11 be no rupture between us, hardly a 
 parting. We have taken a lease of two months to 
 be passed together ; on the last day we shall sepa- 
 
172 Sappho. 
 
 rate without surprise on either side and without 
 despair. I shall return to Ispahan, — ! have al- 
 ready taken my berth in the sleeper, — and Alice 
 to her Httle apartment on Rue La Bruyere, which 
 she has not given up." 
 
 '' On the third floor above the entresol, the most 
 convenient place in the world for throwing one- 
 self out of window ! " 
 
 As she spoke the young woman smiled, red- 
 cheeked and luminous in the fading light, her 
 heavy bunch of purple flowers in her hand ; but 
 the tone of her voice was so deep, so solemn, that 
 no one replied. The wind freshened ; the houses 
 opposite seemed taller. 
 
 " Let us adjourn to the table," cried the colonel, 
 " and let us say idiotic things." 
 
 *' Yes, that's the id^diy gaudeamus igitur, — let us 
 amuse ourselves while we're young, eh, Caoudal?" 
 said La Gournerie, with a laugh that rang false. 
 
 A few days later Jean went again to Rue de 
 Rome; he found the studio closed, the great 
 canvas shade lowered over the window, death- 
 like silence from the cellar to the terraced roof. 
 Dechelette had gone at the appointed time, the 
 lease having expired. And he thought : *' It is a 
 fine thing to do what one chooses in hfe, to gov- 
 ern one's mind and one's heart. Shall I ever have 
 the courage to do what he has done? " 
 
 A hand was placed on his shoulder. 
 
 *' How are you, Gaussin ? " 
 
 Dechelette, looking worn and weary, sallower 
 
Sappho. 173 
 
 and sterner than usual, explained to him that he 
 had not yet left Paris, being detained by some 
 business matters, and that he was living at the 
 Grand Hotel, having a horror of the studio since 
 that frightful thing happened there. 
 
 ** What do you mean ? " 
 
 "To be sure, you don't know. Alice is dead. 
 She killed herself. Wait a moment, till I see if 
 there are any letters for me." 
 
 He returned almost immediately; and as he tore 
 the wrappers from the newspapers with nervous 
 fingers, he talked in a low voice, like a somnambu- 
 list, without looking at Gaussin, who was walking 
 beside him, — 
 
 " Yes, killed herself, threw herself out of the 
 window, as she said the evening you were there. 
 What would you have? for my part, I did not 
 know, I could not suspect. The day I was to go, 
 she said to me calmly : * Take me, Dechelette ; 
 don't leave me alone ; I can't live without you 
 now. ' That made me laugh. Imagine me with 
 a woman among those Kurds ! The desert, the 
 fever, the nights in camp. At dinner she said 
 again : * I won't be in your way ; you will see how 
 good I '11 be.' Then, seeing that she annoyed me, 
 she did not insist any farther. Later, we went to 
 the Varietes, where we had a box; it was all 
 planned beforehand. She seemed satisfied, held 
 my hand all the time, and whispered, * I am 
 happy.* As I was to start during the night, I 
 carried her home in a cab ; we were both of us 
 very melancholy, did not say a word. She did n't 
 
1 74 Sappho, 
 
 even thank me for a little package which I slipped 
 into her pocket, to enable her to live in comfort 
 for a year or two. When we reached Rue La 
 Bruyere, she asked me to go up. I refused. ' I 
 entreat you, just as far as the door.' But when I 
 got there, I held to my word ; I would not go in. 
 My berth was taken, my trunk packed, and, be- 
 sides, I had talked too much about going. As I 
 went downstairs, a little heavy-hearted, I heard 
 her call after me something that sounded hke, 
 * Sooner than you,' but I did n't understand till 
 I got down to the street. Oh ! " 
 
 He paused, his eyes fixed on the ground, before 
 the horrible vision which the sidewalk presented 
 now at every step, that black, inert mass in the 
 agony of death. 
 
 '^ She died two hours later, without a word, with- 
 out a complaint, her golden eyes looking into 
 mine. Did she suffer? Did she recognize me? 
 We laid her on her bed, fully dressed, a long lace 
 mantle wrapped around her head on one side to 
 conceal the wound in her skull. Very pale, with 
 a little blood on her temple, she was pretty still, 
 and so sweet and gentle ! But as I stooped to 
 wipe away that drop of blood, which was instantly 
 replaced by another, from an inexhaustible source, 
 her face seemed to me to assume an indignant, 
 terrible expression. It was as if the poor girl 
 hurled a silent malediction at me. Indeed, what 
 harm would it have done to remain here a little 
 longer, or to take her with me, ready for anything 
 as she was, and so little trouble ? No pride, but ob- 
 
Sappho, 175 
 
 stinacy in keeping to what I had said — Well, I 
 did not yield, and she is dead, dead by my fault; 
 and yet I loved her." 
 
 He grew more and more excited, talked very 
 loud, to the amazement of the people whom he 
 jostled as they walked down Rue d' Amsterdam; 
 and Gaussin, as he passed his former lodging, 
 whose balcony and zinc tent he could see from 
 the street, thought of Fanny and their own story, 
 and felt a shudder run through his veins as Deche- 
 lette continued : — 
 
 " I took her to Montparnasse, without friends or 
 relatives. I wanted to be alone to think about 
 her. And since then I have stayed on here, 
 always thinking of the same thing, unable to 
 make up my mind to go away, with that idea 
 in full possession of me, and avoiding my house, 
 where I passed two months so happily with her. 
 I live out of doors ; I go from place to place ; 
 I try to distract my thoughts, to escape that dead 
 woman's eye, which accuses me under a thread 
 of blood." 
 
 Possessed by his remorse, he stopped, while two 
 great tears glided down his little flat nose, so 
 kindly, so in love with life, and said, — 
 
 '' So it is, my friend ; and yet I am not 
 cruel. But what I did was a little hard, all the 
 same." 
 
 Jean tried to comfort him, attributing everything 
 to chance, to an unkind fate ; but Dechelette, 
 shaking his head, repeated through his clenched 
 teeth, — 
 
1 76 Sappho, 
 
 '' No, no ; I shall never forgive myself. I would 
 like to punish myself." 
 
 That longing for expiation did not cease to 
 haunt him ; he talked about it to all his friends, to 
 Gaussin, whom he went to the office to meet in 
 the afternoon. 
 
 " Why don't you go away, D6chelette ? Travel, 
 work; it will divert your mind," Caoudal and the 
 others said to him again and again, being a little 
 disturbed by his fixed idea, by his persistence in 
 repeating that he was not naturally cruel. At last, 
 one evening, — whether it was that he had felt a 
 desire to see the studio once more before going 
 away, or that he had gone thither in pursuance of 
 a fixed determination to put an end to his misery, 
 — he returned to his own house ; and in the morn- 
 ing, workmen, going down from the faubourg to 
 their work, found him, with his skull fractured, on 
 the sidewalk in front of his door, dead by the 
 same form of suicide as the woman, with the same 
 shocking circumstances, the same horrible com- 
 motion caused by despair cast naked into the 
 street. 
 
 In the half-light of the studio, a crowd of artists, 
 models, actresses, all the dancers, all the guests of 
 the latest festivities, pushed and jostled one another. 
 There was a noise of tramping feet and whisper- 
 ing, the sounds of a mortuary chapel under the 
 short flame of the tapers. Through the convol- 
 vuli and the foliage they gazed at the body, dressed 
 in a gown of flowered silk with gold flowers, a 
 
Sappho. 177 
 
 turban on the head to hide the ghastly wound, 
 lying at full length, the white hands by the sides 
 in an attitude that told of the final collapse and 
 surrender, on the low couch, shaded by glycines, 
 where Gaussin and his mistress had become ac- 
 quainted on the night of the ball. 
 
 13 
 
178 Sappho. 
 
 X. 
 
 So these ruptures sometimes ended in death ! 
 Now, when they quarrelled, Jean no longer dared 
 to mention his departure, he no longer exclaimed 
 in his exasperation : *' Luckily this won't last 
 long." She would simply have had to retort: 
 "Very well, go; I will kill myself; I will do as 
 she did." And that threat, which he fancied that 
 he could read in her melancholy expression, in 
 the melancholy songs she sang, and in her reveries 
 when she was silent, disturbed him even to terror. 
 
 Meanwhile he had passed the examination which 
 closes the stage of service in the department offices 
 for consular attaches ; as he had acquitted himself 
 creditably, he would be appointed to one of the 
 first vacant posts, — it was only a matter of weeks, 
 of days ! And all about them, in those last days 
 of the season, as the hours of sunlight grew shorter 
 and shorter, everything was hastening on toward 
 the changes that winter brings. One morning 
 Fanny cried, as she opened the window to the 
 first fog, — 
 
 " Look, the swallows have gone ! " 
 
 One after another the bourgeois country houses 
 put up their shutters ; on the Versailles road there 
 was a constant succession of furniture vans, of 
 great country omnibuses laden with bundles, with 
 
Sappho. 179 
 
 plumes of green plants on the roof, while the 
 leaves blew away in eddying multitudes, swept 
 along like flying clouds under the low sky, and 
 the windmills stood alone in the bare fields. Be- 
 hind the orchard, stripped of its fruits and made 
 smaller in appearance by the absence of foliage, 
 the closed chalets, the red-roofed drying-houses 
 of the laundries, huddled together in the melan- 
 choly landscape ; and on the other side of the 
 house, the railway, no longer masked, extended 
 along the colorless forest in an endless black line. 
 
 How cruel to leave her all alone amid those 
 melancholy surroundings ! He felt his heart fail 
 him in anticipation; he should never have the 
 courage to bid her adieu. That was precisely 
 what she relied upon, awaiting that supreme mo- 
 ment, and until then maintaining a tranquil de- 
 meanor, never mentioning the subject, true to her 
 promise to place no obstacles in the way of his 
 departure, which had been foreseen and agreed to 
 in the beginning. One day he returned home 
 with this news, — 
 
 *' I have been appointed." 
 
 *' Ah! to what place?" 
 
 She asked the question with feigned Indiffer- 
 ence, but the color faded from her lips and the 
 light from her eyes, and her features were so con- 
 tracted by pain, that he did not prolong the tor- 
 ture: "No, no; not yet. I have let Hedouin 
 have my turn ; that gives us at least six months." 
 
 Then there was a flood of tears and laughter and 
 frantic kisses, and she stammered: "Thanks, 
 
1 80 Sappho. 
 
 thanks ! How happy I will make your life now ! 
 That was what made me spiteful, you see, — the 
 thought of your going away." She proposed now 
 to prepare herself better, to resign herself gradu- 
 ally. And then, six months hence, it would no 
 longer be autumn, with the horror of those two 
 deaths in addition. 
 
 She kept her word. No more nervous out- 
 breaks, no more quarrels; and, furthermore, to 
 avoid the annoyance of the child's presence, she 
 made up her mind to put him at a boarding-school 
 at Versailles. He came home only on Sunday; 
 and if the new order of things did not at once 
 abate his wild and rebellious nature, it taught 
 him hypocrisy, at all events. They lived in a 
 tranquil atmosphere, the dinners with the Hette- 
 mas passed off without a tempest, and the piano 
 was opened once more for the favorite melodies. 
 But at heart Jean was more disturbed, more per- 
 plexed than ever, asking himself where his weak- 
 ness would lead him, and thinking seriously at 
 times of abandoning the consular service for per- 
 manent departmental work. That meant Paris, and 
 an indefinite renewal of the lease of his present 
 life ; but it meant also the demolition of all his 
 youthful dreams, the despair of his family, and an 
 inevitable rupture with his father, who would never 
 forgive that backsliding, especially when he knew 
 the reasons. 
 
 And for whom ? For a faded, prematurely old 
 creature, whom he no longer loved — he had 
 proved that to his satisfaction in presence of her 
 
Sappho. i8i 
 
 lovers. That being so, what witchcraft was there 
 in that life? 
 
 One morning in the last days of October, as he 
 entered the train, a young girl's glance met his 
 and suddenly reminded him of his encounter in 
 the woods, of the radiant charm of that child- 
 woman whose image had haunted him for months. 
 She wore the same light dress which the sun 
 flecked so prettily under the trees, but over it was 
 thrown an ample travelling cloak ; and a package 
 of books, a little bag, and a bunch of long reeds 
 and the latest flowers, that lay beside her on the 
 seat, told the story of the return to Paris, of the end 
 of the season in the country. She had recognized 
 him, too, with a half smile quivering in her eyes, 
 as clear and pure as spring water ; and for an in- 
 stant there was the unexpressed concord of identity 
 of thought between those two. 
 
 "How's your mother, Monsieur d'Armandy?" 
 suddenly inquired old Bouchereau, whom the be- 
 wildered Jean had not noticed at first, buried in 
 his corner, his pale face bending over his news- 
 paper. 
 
 Jean answered his question, deeply touched that 
 he should remember hirn and his ; and his emotion 
 was greatly increased when the girl asked about 
 the two little twins, who had written her uncle such 
 a pretty letter to thank him for what he had done 
 for their mother. She knew of them ! that thought 
 filled him with joy; then, as he was, it would 
 
1 82 Sappho, 
 
 appear, in an unusually susceptible mood that 
 morning, he instantly became depressed when he 
 learned that they were returning to Paris, and that 
 Bouchereau was about to begin his lectures at the 
 Ecole de Medecine. He would have no further 
 opportunities to see her. And the fields flying 
 by the windows, beautiful but a moment before, 
 seemed dark and dismal to him as if the sun were 
 in eclipse. 
 
 The locomotive blew a long whistle; they had 
 arrived. He bowed and lost sight of them; but 
 at the exit from the station they met again, and 
 Bouchereau amid the uproar of the crowd informed 
 him that after the following Thursday he should be 
 at home on Place Vendome — if his heart prompted 
 him to drink a cup of tea. She took her uncle's 
 arm, and it seemed to Jean that it was she who 
 invited him, without speaking. 
 
 After having decided several times that he would 
 call upon Bouchereau, then that he would not — 
 for what was the use of subjecting himself to un- 
 necessary regrets? — he announced at home that 
 there was soon to be a large evening party at the 
 department, which it would be necessary for him 
 to attend. Fanny examined his coat, ironed his 
 white cravats ; and when Thursday evening came he 
 suddenly discovered that he had not the slightest 
 wish to go out. But his mistress argued with him 
 as to the necessity of the task, reproaching herself 
 for having monopolized him too much, for having 
 selfishly kept him to herself, and she persuaded 
 him, finished dressing him with affectionate play- 
 
Sappho, 183 
 
 fulness, retouched the bow of his cravat and his 
 hair, laughed because her fingers smelt of the 
 cigarette, which she laid on the mantel and took 
 up again every minute, and it would make his 
 partners turn up their noses. And when he saw 
 her so bright and good-humored, he was filled 
 with remorse for his lie, and would gladly have re- 
 mained with her by the fire if she had not insisted, 
 "I want you to go — you must!" and lovingly 
 pushed him out into the dark road. 
 
 It was late when he returned ; she was asleep, 
 and the lamplight shining on that sleep of fatigue 
 reminded him of a similar home-coming, already 
 three years ago, after the terrible revelations that 
 had been made to him. What a coward he had 
 shown himself then ! By what strange caprice of 
 fate had the very thing which should have broken 
 his chain riveted it more tightly? He was fairly 
 nauseated with disgust and loathing. The room, 
 the bed, the woman, all were equally horrible to 
 him; he took the light and softly carried it into 
 the adjoining room. He longed so to be alone 
 that he might reflect upon what had happened to 
 him — oh! nothing, almost nothing — 
 
 He was in love I 
 
 There is in certain words in common use a secret 
 spring which suddenly lays open their inmost 
 depths, and explains them to us in their excep- 
 tional private signification ; then the word shuts 
 itself up again, resumes its commonplace form and 
 goes its way, unmeaning, worn threadbare by auto- 
 
184 Sappho. 
 
 matic, every-day use. Love is one of those words ; 
 those to whom its whole significance has been once 
 made clear will understand the delicious agony in 
 which Jean had been living for an hour, with no 
 very definite idea at first as to what his feelings 
 meant. 
 
 On Place Vendome, in the corner of the salon 
 where they had talked together for a long while, 
 he was conscious of nothing save a sense of perfect 
 comfort, a sweet charm which encompassed him. 
 
 Not until he was outside the house once more 
 and the door closed behind him, was he seized by 
 a wild outburst of joy, then by a great wave of 
 faintness as if all his veins were opened : — 
 
 ''Great God! what is the matter with me?" 
 And the Paris through whose streets he walked 
 toward his home seemed to him entirely novel, 
 fairylike, magnified, radiant. 
 
 Yes, at that hour when the beasts of night are 
 set free and are lurking about, when the filth from 
 the sewers comes to the surface, makes itself mani- 
 fest and swarms under the yellow gas, the Paris 
 that he saw, he, Sappho's lover, interested in all 
 forms of debauchery, was the Paris that the inno- 
 cent maiden may see as she returns from the ball 
 with her head filled with dance music, which she 
 hums to the stars beneath her white dress, — that 
 chaste Paris bathed in moonlight wherein virgin 
 souls open to the light ! And suddenly, as he 
 ascended the broad staircase at the station, almost 
 on the threshold of his wretched home, he sur- 
 prised himself saying aloud : '' Why, I love her ! 
 
Sappho, 185 
 
 I love her ! " and that was the way he had learned 
 it. 
 
 " Are you there, Jean ? What on earth are you 
 doing?" 
 
 Fanny awoke with a start, frightened because 
 she did not feel him by her side. He must needs 
 go and kiss her, lie to her, describe the ball at the 
 department, tell her whether there were any pretty 
 dresses there and with whom he had danced ; but 
 to escape that inquisition and, above all, the car- 
 esses which he dreaded, impregnated as he was 
 with the memory of the other, he invented some 
 urgent work, drawings for Hettema. 
 
 ''The fire's out; you will be cold." 
 
 **No, no." 
 
 *' At least, leave the door open, so that I can see 
 your lamp." 
 
 He must act his lie out to the end, put the table 
 in position and the plans ; then he sat down, hold- 
 ing his breath, and thought, recalled all the inci- 
 dents of the evening, and, to fix his dream in his 
 mind, described it to C^saire in a long letter, while 
 the night wind stirred the branches, which creaked 
 and groaned without the rustling of leaves, while 
 the trains rumbled by one after another, and while 
 La Balue, annoyed by the light, moved about in 
 his little cage and jumped from one perch to the 
 other with hesitating cries. 
 
 He told him everything, the meeting in the 
 woods, in the railway carriage, his strange emo- 
 
1 86 Sappho. 
 
 tion on entering those salons which had seemed 
 to them so dismal and tragic on the ,day of the 
 consultation, with all the furtive whispering in the 
 doorways and the sorrowful glances exchanged 
 from chair to chair, and which, on that evening, 
 were thrown open to him, full of life and anima- 
 tion, in a long brilliantly lighted line. Even 
 Bouchereau himself had not that stern counte- 
 nance, that black eye, searching and disconcerting 
 under its great, bushy eyebrow, but the placid, 
 paternal expression of a worthy bourgeois who is 
 pleased to have people enjoy themselves in his 
 house. 
 
 " Suddenly she came toward me, and I saw 
 nothing more. Her name is Irene, my dear uncle; 
 she is very pretty, with an attractive manner, hair 
 of the golden brown common among English girls, 
 a child's mouth always ready to laugh — but not 
 that laughter without merriment that excites one 
 in so many women ; a genuine overflow of youth 
 and happiness. She was born in London; but 
 her father was French, and she has no foreign 
 accent at all, only an adorable way of pronounc- 
 ing certain words, of saying ' uncle,' which brings 
 a caress to old Bouchereau's eyes every time. He 
 took her into his family to relieve his brother, 
 who has numerous children, and to replace Irene's 
 sister, the oldest child, who married the chief of 
 his clinical staff two years ago. But doctors don't 
 suit her at all. How she amused me with the 
 idiocy of that young savant who demanded that 
 his fiancee, first of all, should enter into a solemn 
 
Sappho. 187 
 
 and formal agreement to bequeath both their 
 bodies to the Anthropological Society ! She is a 
 migratory bird. She is fond of boats and the sea ; 
 the sight of a bowsprit pointed seaward touches 
 her heart. She told me all this freely, as to a 
 comrade, a true miss in her manners despite her 
 Parisian grace ; and I listened to her, enchanted 
 by her voice, her laughter, the similarity of our 
 tastes, a secret certainty that the happiness of my 
 life was there at my hand, and that I had only to 
 grasp it, to carry it far away, wherever the chances 
 of * the career ' might send me." 
 
 " Do come to bed, my dear." 
 
 He started, stopped writing, instinctively hid the 
 unfinished letter : ** In a few minutes. Go to sleep ; 
 go to sleep." 
 
 He spoke angrily, and, bending over the table, 
 listened for the return of sleep in her breathing ; 
 for they were very near together, and so far apart ! 
 
 "Whatever happens, this meeting and this love 
 will be my salvation. You know what my life is ; 
 you will have understood, without my ever men- 
 tioning it, that it is the same as before, that I have 
 not been able to free myself. But what you do not 
 know is that I was ready to sacrifice fortune, future, 
 everything, to this fatal habit, in which I was sink- 
 ing a little deeper every day. Now I have found 
 the mainspring, the prop that I lacked ; and in 
 order to give my weakness no further opportunity, 
 I have sworn never to go to that house again un- 
 
1 88 Sappho. 
 
 til we have separated and I am free. To-morrow I 
 make my escape." 
 
 But he did not do it the next day or the day 
 after. He needed some excuse for flight, some 
 pretext, the climax of a quarrel in which one ex- 
 claims, " I am going away ! " to cover his failure 
 to return ; and Fanny was as sweet and cheerful 
 as in the early illusion-ridden days of their house- 
 keeping. 
 
 Should he write, " It is all over between us," 
 without any further explanations ? But that violent 
 creature would never be resigned to that, she would 
 ferret him out, would pursue him to the door of 
 his house, of his office. No, it would be much 
 better to attack her face to face, to convince her 
 of the irrevocableness, of the finality of the rup- 
 ture, and to enumerate the reasons for it without 
 anger, but without pity. 
 
 But with these reflections the dread of a sui- 
 cide like Alice Dore's recurred to his mind. In 
 front of their house, on the other side of the street, 
 was a lane running down to the railroad track and 
 closed by a gate; the neighbors went that way 
 when they were in a hurry, and walked along the 
 track to the station. And in his mind's eye, the 
 Southerner saw his mistress, after the final scene, 
 rush across the road, down the lane, and throw her- 
 self under the wheels of the train which whirled 
 him away. That dread beset him so, that the bare 
 thought of that gate between two ivy-covered walls 
 made him postpone the explanation. 
 
Sappho, 189 
 
 If he had only had a friend, some one to take 
 care of her, to assist her in the first paroxysm ; but 
 living underground as they were, like mountain 
 rats in their collage, they knew no one ; and the 
 Hettemas, those abnormal egoists, shiny and swim- 
 ming in fat, whose animalism became more marked 
 with the approach of the season for hibernating, 
 like the Esquimaux, were not people upon whom 
 the poor creature could call for help in her despair 
 and her abandonment. 
 
 He must break with her, however, and do it 
 quickly. Despite his promise to himself, Jean had 
 been to Place Vendome two or three times, and had 
 fallen deeper and deeper in love ; and although the 
 subject had not as yet been mentioned, the hearty 
 welcome accorded him by old Bouchereau, and 
 Irene's attitude, wherein reserve was blended with 
 affectionate indulgence and what seemed to be ex- 
 cited anticipation of a declaration, — everything 
 urged him to delay no longer. And then, too, the 
 torture of lying, the pretexts he invented to satisfy 
 Fanny, and the species of sacrilege in going from 
 Sappho's kisses to lay his respectful, faltering hom- 
 age at the other's feet. 
 
196 Sapph 
 
 10. 
 
 XI. 
 
 While he was hesitating between these alter- 
 natives, he found a card on his table at the depart- 
 ment, the card of a gentleman who had already- 
 called twice during the morning, said the usher, 
 with a certain respect for the following nomen- 
 clature : — 
 
 C. GAUSSIN D'ARMANDY, 
 
 President of the Submersionists of the Rhone Valley, 
 
 Member of the Central Committee of Study and Vigilance, 
 
 Departmental Delegate, etc., etc. 
 
 Uncle C^saire in Paris ! Le Fenat, a delegate, 
 member of a vigilance committee ! He had not 
 recovered from his stupor when his uncle appeared, 
 still as brown as a pineapple, with the same won- 
 dering eyes, the laugh wrinkling his temples, and 
 the beard of the days of the League ; but, instead 
 of the everlasting fustian jacket, a new broadcloth 
 frock-coat buttoned tightly over his stomach and 
 endowing the little man with truly presidential 
 majesty. 
 
 What brought him to Paris? The purchase of 
 an elevating machine for the immersion of his new 
 vines, — he uttered the word elevatoire with an air 
 of conviction which magnified him in his ovm eyes, 
 — and to arrange for a bust of himself which his 
 
Sappho. 191 
 
 colleagues desired as an ornament to the directors' 
 room. 
 
 " As you have seen by my card," he said mod- 
 estly, " they have chosen me president. My idea 
 of submersion is making a great sensation in the 
 South. And to think that I, Le Fenat, am actu- 
 ally the man to save the vineyards of France ! 
 Only the crazy fellows are good for anything, you 
 see." 
 
 But the principal object of his journey was the 
 rupture with Fanny. Realizing that the affair was 
 dragging, he had come to lend a hand. " I know 
 all about such creatures, as you can imagine. 
 When Courbebaisse let his go, in order to get 
 married — " Before attacking his story, he 
 stopped, unbuttoned his coat and produced a 
 Httle wallet with well-rounded sides. 
 
 " In the first place, relieve me of this. Take it, 
 I say! money — to grease the wheels." He mis- 
 understood his nephew's gesture and thought that 
 he refused from motives of delicacy. " Take it ! 
 take it I It makes me proud to be able to repay 
 the son for a little of what the father has done for 
 me. Besides, Divonne wants me to do it. She 
 knows all about the affair, and is so glad to know 
 that you 're thinking of marrying and shaking off 
 your old crampfish ! " 
 
 Jean thought that '' old crampfish " was a little 
 unjust in Cesaire's mouth after the service his 
 mistress had done him, and he replied with a 
 touch of bitterness, — 
 
 ''Take back your wallet, uncle ; you know 
 
192 Sappho, 
 
 better than any one how indifferent Fanny Is to 
 such considerations." 
 
 "Yes, she was a good girl," said the uncle, by 
 way of funeral oration ; and he added, winking his 
 crow's foot, — 
 
 " Keep the money all the same. There are so 
 many temptations in Paris that I prefer to have it 
 in your hands instead of mine ; and then, too, you 
 need it for ruptures just as you do for duels." 
 
 With that he rose from his chair, declaring that 
 he was dying of hunger and that that momentous 
 question could be discussed more satisfactorily at 
 the breakfast table, fork in hand. It was the typi- 
 cal airy, jesting tone of the Southerner in discuss- 
 ing questions relating to women. 
 
 "Between ourselves, my boy," — they were 
 seated in a restaurant on Rue de Bourgogne, and 
 the uncle, his napkin tucked in his neck, was beam- 
 ing with satisfaction, while Jean nibbled with the 
 ends of his teeth, unable to eat, — " it seems to me 
 that you take the thing too tragically. I know 
 very well that the first step is hard, the explana- 
 tion an infernal bore ; but if you feel that it 's too 
 much for you, say nothing at all, — do as Courbe- 
 baisse did. Up to the very morning of the wed- 
 ding. La Mornas knew nothing about it. At night, 
 on leaving his intended, he would go to the place 
 where the singer was squalling and escort her 
 home. You will say that that was n't very regu- 
 lar, nor very honest either. But when one is n't 
 fond of scenes, and with such terrible creatures as 
 
Sappho. 193 
 
 Paola Mornas ! For nearly ten years that tall, 
 handsome fellow had trembled before that little 
 hussy. When it came to cutting loose, he had to 
 manoeuvre, to resort to stratagem." And this is 
 how he went about it. 
 
 On the day before the wedding, one Fifteenth of 
 August, the day of the great festival, Cesaire pro- 
 posed to the young woman that they should go 
 and fish in the Yvette. Courbebaisse was to join 
 them for dinner; and then they would all three 
 return together on the following evening, when 
 Paris would have evaporated its odor of dust, of 
 exploded fire-crackers and oil-lamps. She as- 
 sented. Behold them both lying at full length 
 on the bank of that little stream, which purls and 
 gleams between its low shores, and makes the 
 fields so green and the willows so leafy. After 
 the fishing, the bath. It was not the first time 
 that he and Paola had swum together, like two 
 boys, like comrades; but on that day that little 
 Mornas, with her bare arms and legs, her perfectly 
 moulded gypsy-like body, to which the wet cos- 
 tume clung closely everywhere — perhaps, too, the 
 thought that Courbebaisse had given him carte 
 blanche. Ah ! the little wretch ! She turned, 
 looked him in the eyes, and said sternly, — 
 
 " You understand, Cesaire ; don't try that again." 
 
 He did not insist, for fear of spoiling his chances, 
 but said to himself, " I will wait till after dinner." 
 
 Very merry the dinner was, on the wooden bal- 
 cony of the inn, between the two flags which the 
 landlord had hoisted in honor of the Fifteenth of 
 
 13 
 
1 94 Sappho, 
 
 August. It was very warm, the sweet bay was very 
 fragrant, and they could hear the drums and fire- 
 works and the music of the hurdy-gurdy trundhng 
 through the streets. 
 
 '' How stupid it is of that Courbebaisse not to 
 come till to-morrow," said La Mornas, stretching 
 out her arms, with a gleam of champagne in her 
 eyes. *' I feel like having some fun to-night." 
 
 '' Gad ! and so do I ! " 
 
 He was leaning by her side on the balcony rail, 
 which was still burning hot from the scorching rays 
 of the sun, and slyly, as an experiment, slipped his 
 arm around her waist, " Oh, Paola ! Paola !" That 
 time, instead of being angry, the singer began to 
 laugh, but so loud and heartily that he ended by 
 doing the same. A similar attempt was repulsed in 
 the same way in the evening, when they returned 
 from the fete, where they had danced and eaten 
 sweets ; and as their bedrooms adjoined, she sang 
 to him through the partition : " You are too 
 small, oh ! you are too small," — with all sorts of 
 uncomplimentary comparisons between Courbe- 
 baisse and himself He was strongly tempted to 
 retort, to call her the widow Mornas; but it was 
 too soon. The next day, however, as they sat 
 before a bountiful breakfast, and when Paola had 
 become impatient and finally anxious at her man's 
 failure to appear, it was with considerable satis- 
 faction that he drew his watch and said solemnly : 
 
 '' Noon ! it is all over." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 ** He is married." 
 
Sappho. 195 
 
 ''Who?" 
 
 " Courbebalsse." 
 
 Vlan! 
 
 '* Ah ! my boy, what a blow ! In all my love- 
 making I never received such a one. And on the 
 instant she insisted on starting off. But there was 
 no train till four o'clock. And meanwhile the un- 
 faithful one was scorching the rails of the P., L., 
 and M. on his way to Italy with his wife. There- 
 upon she turned on me again and took it out of 
 me with her fists and her claws, — such luck ! — 
 when I had turned the key in the door; then 
 she went for the furniture, and finally fell on the 
 floor in a terrible attack of hysteria. At five they 
 put her on her bed and held her there ; while I, all 
 torn and bleeding as if I had just been through a 
 thicket of brambles, hurried off to find Doctor 
 d'Orsay. In such affairs it 's just the same as it is 
 in duelling, you should always have a, doctor in 
 attendance. Fancy me rushing along the road 
 with an empty stomach, and in such a hot sun ! 
 It was dark when I returned with him. Suddenly, 
 as I approached the inn, I heard the sound of 
 voices and saw a crowd under the windows. Great 
 God ? had she killed herself? had she killed some 
 one else? With La Mornas the latter was more 
 probable. I rushed forward, and what did I see? 
 The balcony strung with Venetian lanterns, and 
 the singer standing there, consoled and superb, 
 wrapped in one of the flags and shrieking the 
 Marseillaise as a contribution to the imperial holi- 
 day, above the applauding multitude. 
 
196 Sappho, 
 
 " And that, my boy, is how Courbebaisse's liaison 
 came to an end ; I won't say that it was all ended at 
 one stroke. After ten years of imprisonment, one 
 must always expect a brief period of surveillance. 
 But the worst of it fell on me, at all events ; and I 
 will stand as much from yours, if you choose." 
 
 *' Ah ! uncle, she 's not the same kind of a 
 woman." 
 
 " Nonsense," said Cesaire, breaking the seal of 
 a box of cigars and holding them to his ear to 
 make sure that they were dry; ''you're not the 
 first man who has left her." 
 
 " That is true enough." 
 
 And Jean joyfully grasped at that suggestion, 
 which would have torn his heart a few months 
 before. His uncle and his amusing story really 
 encouraged him a little, but what he could not 
 endure was the living a twofold lie for months, 
 the hypocrisy, the division of his time ; he could 
 never make up his mind to that, ariH had waited 
 only too long. 
 
 ''What do you mean to do, then?" 
 
 While the young man was struggling with his 
 perplexities, the member of the vigilance commit- 
 tee combed his beard, experimented with smiles, 
 attitudes, different ways of carrying the head, then 
 inquired with a careless air, — 
 
 " Does he live very far from here?" 
 
 "Who, pray?" 
 
 " Why, this artist, this Caoudal, whom you sug- 
 gested to me for my bust. We might go and in- 
 quire his prices while we are together." 
 
Sappho. 197 
 
 Caoudal, although he had become famous, was 
 a great spendthrift and still lived on Rue d'Assas, 
 the scene of his early successes. C^saire, as they 
 walked thither, inquired concerning his rank as an 
 artist ; he would ask a big price, of course, but the 
 gentlemen of the committee insisted upon a work 
 of the first order. 
 
 " Oh ! you need have no fear, uncle, if Caoudal 
 is willing to undertake it." And he enumerated 
 the sculptor's titles, — Member of the Institute, 
 Commander of the Legion of Honor, and a multi- 
 tude of foreign orders. Le Fenat opened his eyes 
 in amazement. 
 
 " And you are friends?" 
 
 "Very good friends." 
 
 "What a place this Paris is? What fine ac- 
 quaintances one makes here ! " 
 
 Gaussin would have been somewhat ashamed to 
 confess that Caoudal was one of Fanny's old lovers, 
 and that she had brought them together. But one 
 would have said that Cesaire was thinking of it. 
 
 " Is he the one who did that Sappho we have at 
 Castelet? Then he knows your mistress and can 
 help you, perhaps, to break with her. The Insti- 
 tute, the Legion of Honor, — those things always 
 make an impression on a woman." 
 
 Jean did not reply ; perhaps he too thought that 
 he might make use of the first lover's influence. 
 
 The uncle continued with a hearty laugh : — 
 
 " By the way, you know the bronze is no longer 
 in your father's room. When Divonne learned, 
 when I was unlucky enough to have to tell her 
 
1 98 Sappho. 
 
 that it represented your mistress, she wouldn't 
 have it there. Considering the consul's whims, 
 his objections to the slightest change, it was n't an 
 easy matter to move it, especially without letting 
 him suspect the reason. Oh, these women ! She 
 managed so cleverly that to-day Monsieur Thiers 
 presides over your father's mantel, and poor 
 Sappho lies in the dust in the windy chamber, 
 with the old firedogs and cast-off furniture; she 
 suffered too in the moving, — her head-dress was 
 smashed and her lyre broken off. Doubtless 
 Divonne's spite was the cause of her misfortune." 
 
 They reached Rue d'Assas. In view of the 
 modest, hard-working aspect of that city of artists, 
 of studios with numbered barn-Hke doors, opening 
 on both sides of a long courtyard at the end of 
 which were the ugly buildings of a district school 
 with a perpetual murmur of reading, the president 
 of the Submersionists conceived fresh doubts as to 
 the talent of a man so modestly quartered ; but 
 as soon as he entered Caoudal's studio, he knew 
 what to expect. 
 
 *' Not for a hundred thousand francs, not for a 
 million ! " roared the sculptor at Gaussin's first 
 word ; and slowly raising his long body from the 
 couch on which he lay in the centre of the dis- 
 orderly, neglected studio, he added: *'A bust! 
 Oh, yes ! just look at that mass of plaster in a 
 thousand pieces on the floor, — my group for the 
 next Salon, which I have just pulverized with a 
 mallet. That's all I care for sculpture, and tempt- 
 ing as monsieur's lineaments are — " 
 
Sappho, 199 
 
 ** Gaussin d'Armandy, president — " 
 
 The uncle collected all his titles, but there were 
 too many of them ; Caoudal interrupted him and 
 turned to the younger man, — 
 
 *' You are staring at me, Gaussin. Do you think 
 I have grown old ? " 
 
 It was quite true that he looked his full age in 
 that light from above falling upon the scars, the 
 furrows and wrinkles of his dissipated, fatigued 
 face, his Hon's mane showing bald spots like old 
 carpet, his cheeks hanging and flabby, and his 
 moustache of the color of tarnished gilt, which he 
 no longer took the trouble to curl or dye. What 
 was the use? Cousinard, the little model, had gone. 
 " Yes, my dear fellow, with my moulder, a savage, 
 a brute, but twenty years old ! " 
 
 His tone was fierce and ironical, and he strode 
 up and down the studio, kicking aside a stool that 
 stood in his path. Suddenly, halting in front of 
 the mirror with a carved copper frame over the 
 couch, he looked at himself with a ghastly grim- 
 ace : " What an ugly, played-out thing ! veins and 
 dewlaps like an old cow ! " He put his hand to his 
 face, and in a piteous, comical tone, with the fore- 
 sight of an old beau bewailing his charms : " To 
 think that I shall regret even this, next year ! " 
 
 The uncle was horrified. The idea of that acad- 
 emician talking in that tone and telling about his 
 vile love-affairs ! So there were crackbrains every- 
 where, even in the Institute ; and his admiration 
 for the great man lessened with the sympathy he 
 felt for his weaknesses. 
 
200 Sappho. 
 
 ** How's Fanny? Are you still at Chaville?** 
 said Caoudal, suddenly subsiding and sitting down 
 beside Gaussin, and tapping him familiarly on the 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Oh, poor Fanny ! we have n't much longer to 
 live together." 
 
 "Are you going away?" 
 
 " Yes, very soon ; and I am going to be married 
 first. I have got to leave her." 
 
 The sculptor laughed a savage laugh. 
 
 " Bravo ! I am delighted to hear it. Avenge us, 
 my boy; avenge us on those trollops. Deceive 
 them, throw them over, and let them weep, the 
 wretches ! You will never do them as much harm 
 as they have done to others." 
 
 Uncle Cesaire was triumphant. 
 
 " You see, monsieur does n't take such a tragic 
 view of the afifair as you do. Can you imagine 
 such a zany? What keeps him from leaving her 
 is the fear that she will kill herself! " 
 
 Jean frankly avowed the effect that Alice Dore's 
 suicide had made upon him. 
 
 " But this is a different matter," said Caoudal, 
 earnestly. "That girl was a melancholy, soft 
 creature, with hands always falling at her sides, — 
 a poor doll without any sawdust. Dechelette was 
 wrong in thinking that she died for him. A sui- 
 cide from fatigue and disgust with life. While 
 Sappho — ah! yes, she'll kill herself! She's 
 too fond of love for that ; she '11 burn to the end, 
 down to the bobhhes. She 's of the race of 
 jeunes preinierSy who never change their line of 
 
Sappho, 201 
 
 parts and die, toothless and without eyelashes, in 
 their jeune premier costumes. Just look at me. 
 Do I kill myself? It's of no use for me to grieve. 
 I know perfectly well that now she has gone I shall 
 take another, that I must always have one. Your 
 mistress will do as I do, as she has done before. 
 Only she is no longer young, and it will be a 
 harder task." 
 
 Still the uncle was triumphant : ** You feel bet- 
 ter now, eh ? " 
 
 Jean said nothing, but his scruples were over- 
 come and his mind made up. They were going 
 away, when the sculptor called them back to show 
 them a photograph which he took from the dust 
 on his table and wiped with his sleeve. " See, 
 there she is. Is n't she a pretty one, the hussy, 
 to kneel before ? Those legs, that breast ! " The 
 contrast was terrible between those glowing eyes, 
 that passionate voice, and the senile trembling of 
 the great, spatula-shaped fingers in which quivered 
 the smiling image of Cousinard, the little model, 
 with her dimpled charms. 
 
202 Sappho. 
 
 XII. 
 
 ** Is it you ? How early you have come home ! " 
 
 She came in from the garden, her skirt full of 
 fallen apples, and ran quickly up the steps, dis- 
 turbed by her lover's manner, which was at once 
 embarrassed and determined. 
 
 ''What's the matter?" 
 
 "■ Nothing, nothing ; it 's this weather, this 
 bright sunshine. I wanted to make the most of 
 the last fine day to take a turn in the forest, we 
 two. What do you say? " 
 
 She gave her street urchin's cry, which came to 
 her lips whenever she was pleased. 
 
 '' Oh, what luck ! " For more than a month 
 they had not been out, housed by the rains and 
 winds of November. It was not always entertain- 
 ing in the country ; one might as well live in the 
 Ark with Noah and his beasts. She had a few 
 orders to give in the kitchen, because of the Het- 
 temas, who were coming to dinner; and while he 
 waited outside on the Pave des Gardes, Jean gazed 
 at the little house, warmed by that mild Indian 
 summer light, and at the broad moss-covered 
 pavement of the country street, with that farewell, 
 all-embracing and endowed with memory, which 
 we say with our eyes to places we are about to 
 leave. 
 
Sappho, 203 
 
 The window of the living-room was wide open, 
 so that he could hear the warbling of the thrush 
 alternating with Fanny's orders to the servant: 
 " Be sure and remember to have it ready at half- 
 past six. First you will serve the wild duck. Oh ! 
 I must give you the table linen." Her voice rang 
 out clear and happy among the noises of the 
 kitchen and the twittering of the bird pluming 
 himself in the sun. And he, knowing that their 
 household had only two hours more to live, felt 
 sick at heart in presence of those festal prepa- 
 rations. 
 
 He longed to go in, to tell her everything, on 
 the spot, at one stroke ; but he dreaded her shrieks, 
 the horrible scene which the neighbors would over- 
 hear, and a scandal that would stir Upper and 
 Lower Chaville to their depths. He knew that 
 when she had thrown off all restraint, nothing had 
 any effect upon her, and he adhered to his plan of 
 taking her into the forest. 
 
 " Here I am, all ready." 
 
 She joyously took his arm, warning him to speak 
 low and walk fast as they passed their neighbors' 
 house, fearing that Olympe would want to accom- 
 pany them and spoil their little party. Her mind 
 was not at rest until they had crossed the track 
 and turned to the left into the woods. 
 
 It was a bright, mild day, the sun's rays sifting 
 through a silvery, floating mist which bathed the 
 whole atmosphere, clung to the thickets, where 
 some trees still displayed magpies' nests and tufts 
 of mistletoe, at a great height among the few golden 
 
204 Sappho. 
 
 leaves clinging to the branches. They heard the 
 cry of a bird, maintained without a break, like the 
 noise made by a file, and those blows of the beak 
 on the wood which answer the woodcutter's axe. 
 
 They walked slowly, keeping step on the rain- 
 soaked ground. She was warm from having 
 walked so fast ; her cheeks were flushed, her eyes 
 sparkled, and she stopped to take off the lace 
 mantle, a gift from Rosa, which she had thrown 
 over her head as she came out, — a fragile and 
 costly relic of bygone splendors. The dress she 
 wore, a poor black silk, ripped under the arms and 
 at the waist, had been familiar to him for three 
 years ; and when she raised it, walking in front of 
 him because of a puddle, he saw that the heels of 
 her boots were badly worn. 
 
 How cheerfully she had endured that semi- 
 poverty, without regret or lamentation, thinking 
 solely of him, of his comfort, never happier than 
 when she was rubbing against him, her hands 
 clasped on his arm. And Jean, as he glanced at 
 her, rejuvenated by that new supply of sunshine 
 and of love, marvelled at the never-faihng energy 
 of such a creature, at the wonderful power of for- 
 getting and forgiving which enabled her to re- 
 tain such a store of cheerful spirits and heedless 
 gayety, after a life of passions, of disappointments 
 and tears, all marked upon her face, but vanishing 
 at the slightest effusion of merriment. 
 
 " It 's a mushroom ; I tell you it 's a mushroom ! '* 
 
 She plunged into the underbrush up to her knees 
 in the dead leaves, returned with dishevelled 
 
Sappho, 205 
 
 hair and her dress torn by the brambles, and 
 pointed out the little network at the foot of the 
 mushroom which distinguishes the genuine from 
 the false variety. "You see, it has the tulle!'' 
 And she was triumphant. 
 
 He did not listen ; he was thinking of other things, 
 asking himself: " Is this the best time? Shall I? " 
 But his courage failed him ; she was laughing too 
 heartily, or the place was not favorable ; and he led 
 her on and on like an assassin planning his crime. 
 
 He was on the point of making up his mind, 
 when, at a bend in a path, some one appeared and 
 disturbed their tete-a-tete^ — the keeper of that 
 district, Hochecorne, whom they sometimes met. 
 A poor devil, who had lost, one after another, in 
 the little house in the woods on the edge of the 
 pond, which the state allotted him, two children 
 and his wife, all by malignant fevers. At the time 
 of the first death the doctors declared the house 
 unhealthy, as being too near the water and its 
 emanations; but, despite the certificates and re- 
 ports, they had left him there two years, three 
 years, long enough to see his whole family die with 
 the exception of one little girl, with whom he had 
 finally moved into a new house on the outskirts of 
 the woods. 
 
 Hochecorne had a square Breton face, with bright, 
 brave eyes, a forehead receding beneath his forage 
 cap, — a typical specimen of fidelity to duty, of 
 superstitious obedience to all orders ; he had his 
 rifle barrel over one shoulder and on the other the 
 head of his sleeping child, whom he was carrying. 
 
2o6 Sappho. 
 
 " How is she ? " Fanny inquired, smiling at the 
 little four-year-old girl, pale and shrunken with 
 fever, who awoke and opened her great eyes sur- 
 rounded by pink circles. The keeper sighed. 
 
 '' Not very well. I take her everywhere with me, 
 but it's no use: she doesn't eat anything, she 
 doesn't want anything; I can't help thinking it 
 was too late when we changed the air, and that she 
 had already caught the disease. She 's so light 
 — just see, madame, you'd think she was a leaf. 
 One of these days she '11 run away like the others ! 
 Good God ! " 
 
 That '' good God ! " muttered in his mustache, 
 was the whole of his revolt against the cruelty of 
 departments and clerks. 
 
 '' She is trembling ; she seems to be cold." 
 
 *' It 's the fever, madame." 
 
 "Wait a moment; we will warm her." She 
 took the mantle that was hanging on her arm and 
 wrapped the little one in it: *' Yes, yes, let it stay; 
 it shall be her bridal veil later." 
 
 The father smiled a heartbroken smile, and shak- 
 ing the child's hand, — she had fallen asleep again 
 and was ashen-hued like a little dead girl,- in all 
 that white, — he bade her thank the lady, then 
 went his way with a ** good God ! " drowned by 
 the cracking of the branches under his feet. 
 
 Fanny was no longer merry, but clung closely 
 to him with all the timorous fondness of the 
 woman whom her emotion, be it sad or joyous, 
 draws nearer to the man she loves. Jean said to 
 himself, *' What a kind-hearted girl ! " but with- 
 
Sappho. 207 
 
 out weakening in his resolve, on the contrary be- 
 coming more determined to put it in execution ; 
 for Irene's face rose before him on the sloping 
 path on which they were entering, the memory of 
 the radiant smile he had met in that path, which 
 had taken his heart captive at once, even before 
 he knew its enduring charm, the secret spring of 
 intelligence and sweetness of character. He re- 
 flected that he had waited until the last moment, 
 that it was Thursday. ** Come, I must do it ; " 
 and, spying a cross-road a short distance away, 
 he mentally fixed upon that as the limit. 
 
 It was a clearing where the wood had recently 
 been cut away, trees lying prostrate amid chips, 
 fragments of bark, twigs, and charcoal kilns. A 
 little farther on was the pond, from which a white 
 vapor arose, and on the shore the little abandoned 
 house, with its dilapidated roof, windows open and 
 broken, the lazaretto of the Hochecornes. Be- 
 yond, the woods ascended toward Velizy, a vast 
 hillside of ruddy foliage, of lofty trees, crowded 
 closely together and melancholy to look upon. 
 Suddenly he stopped. 
 
 ** Suppose we rest a moment? " 
 
 They sat down on a long trunk- lately felled, an 
 old oak whose branches could be counted by the 
 wounds of the axe. It was a warm corner, en- 
 livened by a pallid reflection of the sun's rays, 
 and by a perfume of belated violets. 
 
 ** How nice it is here ! " she said, letting her 
 head fall languidly on his shoulder and seeking 
 the place for a kiss in his neck. He drew back a 
 
2o8 Sappho. 
 
 little, took her hand. Thereupon she took alarm 
 at the expression of his face, which had suddenly 
 grown stern. 
 
 '' What 's the matter? What is it? " 
 
 ** Bad news, my poor girl. You know Hddouin, 
 who went away in my place." He spoke hesi- 
 tatingly, in a hoarse voice, the sound of which 
 astonished himself, but which gained in firmness 
 toward the end of the story he had prepared be- 
 forehand. Hedouin had fallen sick on arriving at 
 his post, and he was appointed by the department 
 to replace him. He had concluded that that would 
 be easier to say, less painful than the truth. She 
 listened to him to the end, without interrupting 
 him, her face of a grayish pallor, her eyes staring 
 into vacancy. " W^hen are you going?" she 
 asked, withdrawing her hand. 
 
 " Why, this evening, to-night." And in a false, 
 whining voice he added, *' I intend to pass twenty- 
 four hours at Castelet, then sail from Marseille." 
 
 " Enough, don't lie to me ! " she cried with a 
 savage explosion which brought her to her feet. 
 " Don't lie to me any more ; you don't know what 
 you 're doing. The truth is that you 're going to 
 be married. Your family 's been working on you 
 long enough. They're so afraid that I'll keep 
 you, that I '11 prevent you from going in search of 
 the typhus or the yellow fever ! At last they 're 
 satisfied. The young lady's to your taste, of 
 course. And when I think how I fussed over the 
 knot in your cravat that Thursday! What an 
 idiot I was, eh?" 
 
Sappho, 209 
 
 She laughed a ghastly, atrocious laugh, which 
 distorted her features and showed the gap made 
 on one side by the breaking — of recent occurrence, 
 doubtless, for he had never before noticed it — of 
 one of her lovely, pearly teeth of which she was so 
 proud ; and the absence of that tooth in that clay- 
 colored, wrinkled, distorted face caused Gaussin a 
 horrible pang. 
 
 " Listen to me," he said, taking her arm and 
 forcing her to sit close beside him. '* It is true ; I 
 am going to be married. My father was set upon 
 it, as you know so well ; but what difference can 
 that make to you, since I am to leave France ? " 
 
 She released herself, preferring to keep her 
 temper at the boiling point. 
 
 " And it was to tell me this that you made me 
 walk a league through the woods ! You said to 
 yourself: 'At all events, they won't hear her if 
 she cries,' But no : not an outcry, you see, not 
 a tear. In the first place, I 've had my fill of a 
 pretty boy like you ; you can go, I sha'n't be the 
 one to call you back. Run away to the Indies 
 with your wife, your little one, as they say where 
 you come from. She must be a sweet creature, 
 the little one, ugly as a gorilla, or else enceijite 
 with a big waist, for you 're as big a gull as those 
 who chose her for you." 
 
 She no longer restrained herself, launching out 
 upon a sea of insults and abominations, until she 
 was able to do no more than falter in his face, 
 tauntingly, as one shakes one's fist, " Coward ! liar ! 
 coward ! " 
 
 14 
 
2i6 Sappho, 
 
 It was Jean's turn to listen to her without a 
 word, without attempting to stop her. He liked 
 her better so, insulting, degraded, Pere Legrand's 
 own daughter ; the separation would be less cruel. 
 Did she realize it? At all events, she suddenly 
 ceased, fell at her lover's feet, her head and breast 
 foremost, with a great sob which shook her whole 
 frame, and from which emerged a broken wail: 
 " Forgive me ! mercy ! I love you ; I have no- 
 body but you. My love, my life, do not do this 
 thing ; do not leave me ! What do you suppose 
 will become of me?" 
 
 He began to yield to her emotion. Oh ! that 
 was what he had dreaded. The tears rose from 
 her to him, and he threw back his head to keep 
 them in his overflowing eyes, trying to calm her 
 by stupid words, and by insisting upon that sen- 
 sible argument, *' Why, as long as I must leave 
 France, anyway." 
 
 She sprang to her feet, crying in words which 
 disclosed her whole hope, — 
 
 ** Ah ! but you would not have gone. I would 
 have said to you, 'Wait; let me love you still.' 
 Do you suppose that it happens twice to a man 
 to be loved as I love you ? You have time enough 
 to marry, you are so young ; but it will be all up 
 with me before long. I shall be at the end of my 
 strength, and then we shall part naturally." 
 
 He tried to rise; he had courage enough for 
 that, and to say to her that all that she could do 
 would be of no avail; but by clinging to him, 
 dragging herself on her knees through the mud 
 
Sappho, 211 
 
 that still remained in that hollow spot, she forced 
 him to resume his seat; and kneeling before him, 
 twining her arms around him, with her lips and 
 the clinging embrace of her eyes, her childlike 
 caresses, patting that stern face with her hands, 
 twining her fingers in his hair, she tried to kindle 
 anew the cold embers of his love, she reminded 
 him in whispers of their past happiness, of their 
 joyous Sunday afternoons. All that was nothing 
 compared to the happiness she would give him 
 hereafter. 
 
 And while she whispered in his ear words like 
 these, great tears rolled down her face, distorted 
 as it was by an expression of anguish and terror, 
 and she struggled and shrieked in the voice that 
 one hears in dreams : "■ Oh, it cannot be ! tell 
 me that it is n't true that you are going to leave 
 me ! " And more sobs and groans and calls for 
 help, as if she saw a knife in his hand. 
 
 The executioner was hardly more courageous 
 than the victim. He feared her wrath no more 
 than her caresses, but he was defenceless against 
 that despair, that bf^''*- -Wrh filled the woods 
 and died away over the fever-laden, .•^'^o-nant water 
 whereon the sun lay, red and melancholy . '^ 
 expected to suffer, but not so intensely as that; 
 and it required all the dazzling splendor of the new 
 love to enable him to resist the impulse to lift her 
 with both hands and say to her, *' I will stay; 
 hush ! I will stay." 
 
 For how long a time did they thus exhaust each 
 other's strength? The sun was no longer aught 
 
212 Sappho, 
 
 but a red bar, constantly narrowing, on the ho- 
 rizon ; the pond was of a slate-gray hue, and one 
 would have said that its unhealthy vapor was in- 
 vading the moor and the woods and the hillsides 
 opposite. In the growing darkness he saw noth- 
 ing but that pale face raised to his, that open 
 mouth emitting a lament to which there was no 
 end. A little later, when it was quite dark, her 
 cries subsided. Then there was the rushing sound 
 of floods of tears, without end, one of those showers 
 that follow the greatest fury of the tempest, and 
 from time to time an " Oh ! " deep and low, as if 
 called forth by some horrible vision which she 
 drove away and which constantly returned. 
 
 Then nothing at all. It was all over ; the beast 
 was dead. A cold north wind arose, rustled 
 among the branches, bringing the echo of a dis- 
 tant clock striking the hour. 
 
 ^' Come, let us go ; don't stay here." 
 He raised her gently, and felt that she was like 
 wax in his hands, as submissive as a child and 
 convulsed by heartrending sobs. It seemed to 
 him that she retail "^ '-^'n dread, a certain 
 
 respect, for the man who had shown himself so 
 sLrong. She walked beside him, keeping step 
 with him, but timidly, without taking his arm ; and 
 to see them thus, walking uncertainly in gloomy 
 silence along the paths where the yellow reflection 
 of the ground guided them, one would have said 
 that they were a couple of peasants returning 
 home exhausted after a long and fatiguing day in 
 the open air. 
 
Sappho, 213 
 
 As they came out of the woods a light appeared 
 at Hochecorne's open door, and against it they 
 saw the silhouettes of two men. " Is that you, 
 Gaussin?" asked Hettema, walking toward them 
 with the keeper. They were beginning to be anx- 
 ious because of their failure to return and of the 
 groans they had heard in the woods. Hochecorne 
 was just going to get his gun, to set out in search 
 of them. 
 
 " Good-evening, monsieur, madame. The little 
 one 's much pleased with her shawl. I had to put 
 it in the bed with her." 
 
 It was their last act in common, that almsgiving 
 of a short time before ; their hands had joined for 
 the last time around the moribund's little body. 
 
 *' Good-night, good-night, Pere Hochecorne." 
 And they hurried away, all three, toward the 
 house, Hettema still greatly puzzled concerning 
 those noises which filled the woods. " They rose 
 and fell and rose again ; you 'd have thought some- 
 body was killing an animal of some sort. But 
 didn't you hear anything?" 
 
 Neither of them replied. 
 
 At the corner of the Pavd des Gardes Jean 
 hesitated. 
 
 " Stay to dinner," she whispered imploringly. 
 " Your train has gone ; you can take the nine 
 o'clock." 
 
 He went into the house with them. What need 
 he fear? Such a scene is not acted twice, and the 
 least he could do was to give her that trifling 
 consolation. 
 
214 Sappho. 
 
 The living-room was warm, the lamp burned 
 brightly, and the sound of their footsteps in the 
 by-path had warned the servant, who was placing 
 the soup on the table. 
 
 '* Here you are at last ! " said Olympe, already 
 seated, her napkin under her short arms. She 
 removed the lid of the soup-tureen, then suddenly 
 paused with an exclamation, — 
 
 " Mon Dieu! my dear — " 
 
 It was Fanny, haggard of face, seemingly ten 
 years older, her eyes swollen and bloodshot, with 
 mud on her dress and even in her hair, the terri- 
 fied disarray of a prostitute after a chase by the 
 police. She breathed heavily a moment, her poor 
 inflamed eyes blinking in the light; and little by 
 little the warm atmosphere of the little house, the 
 bright and attractive table, evoked memories of the 
 happy days and caused a new outburst of tears, 
 amid which could be distinguished the words: 
 
 '* He is going to leave me ; he is going to be 
 married." 
 
 Hettema, his wife, and the peasant woman who 
 was serving them looked at one another and at 
 Gaussin. " At all events, let us dine," said the fat 
 man, evidently in a passion; and the clashing of 
 greedy spoons mingled with the sound of running 
 water in the adjoining bedroom, where Fanny was 
 sponging her face. When she returned, all blue 
 with powder, in a white woollen peignoir, the Het- 
 temas watched her with alarm, expecting some 
 fresh outburst, and were greatly astonished to see 
 her, without a word, attack the food greedily, like 
 
Sappho. 215 
 
 a shipwrecked sailor, and fill the hollow dug by 
 her chagrin and the gulf made by her shrieks with 
 whatever was within reach, — bread, cabbage, a 
 wing of the wild duck, potatoes. She ate and ate. 
 
 The conversation was somewhat constrained at 
 first, but gradually became more spontaneous ; and 
 as the Hettemas talked only upon commonplace, 
 material topics, such as the method of making pan- 
 cakes digest well with preserves, and whether hair 
 or feathers were better to sleep on, they arrived 
 safely at the coffee, which the stout couple flavored 
 with a little burned sugar, and sipped slowly with 
 their elbows on the table. 
 
 It was a pleasure to see the trustful and placid 
 glance exchanged by those two bulky crib and 
 manger mates. They had no desire to part, not 
 they. Jean surprised that glance, and in that 
 familiar room, filled with souvenirs, with old habits 
 crouching in every corner, the torpor of weariness, 
 of digestion, of bodily comfort stole over him. 
 Fanny, who was watching him closely, had softly 
 approached his chair, rubbed against him, and 
 passed her arm through his. 
 
 " Listen," he said suddenly. " Nine o'clock ! 
 adieu ! I will write to you." 
 
 He sprang to his feet and was out-of-doors, 
 across the street, feeling in the darkness for the 
 latch of the gate at the entrance to the lane. Two 
 arms were thrown about his waist: "Kiss me, at 
 least." 
 
 He felt that he was enveloped in her dress, that 
 he was impregnated with the perfume, the warmth. 
 
2i6 Sappho, 
 
 of that woman's embrace, intoxicated hy that fare- 
 well kiss, which left in his mouth the taste of fever 
 and of tears. 
 
 And she, feeling that he was weak, murmured, 
 "Just a little while, only a httle while." 
 
 A signal on the track. It was the train ! 
 
 How had he the strength to tear himself free, to 
 rush to the station whose lamps gleamed through 
 the leafless branches ? He was still overcome with 
 amazement as he sat panting in a corner of the 
 carriage, gazing out through the window at the 
 lighted windows of the little house and a white 
 figure at the gate. *' Adieu ! adieu ! " And that 
 cry banished the speechless dread he had felt at 
 that curve in the track of seeing his mistress in the 
 place she occupied in his dream of death. 
 
 Putting out his head, he watched their little sum- 
 mer house recede and grow smaller and rise and 
 fall in the inequalities of the ground, until it was 
 no more than a wandering star. Suddenly he felt 
 a prodigious joy and sense of relief. How freely 
 he breathed, how lovely the whole valley of Meu- 
 don was, and those broad black hillsides ending 
 far away in a twinkling triangle of innumerable 
 lights, descending toward the Seine in regular 
 lines ! Irene was waiting for him there, and he was 
 flying to her with all the speed of the train, with all 
 his lover's eagerness, with all his impulsive yearn- 
 ing for a new and honorable Hfe. 
 
 Paris ! He called a cab to be driven to Place 
 Vendome. But under the gaslight he scrutinized 
 his clothes, his shoes covered with mud, a thick, 
 
Sappho, 217 
 
 clogging mud, his whole past which still held him 
 fast by burdensome and degrading bonds. " Oh, 
 no ! not to-night." And he drove to his old lodg- 
 ing-house on Rue Jacob, where Le Fenat had 
 taken a room for him near his own. 
 
2i8 Sappho. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The next day Cesaire, who had taken upon him- 
 self the dehcate commission of going to Chaville to 
 get his nephew's books and other property, to con- 
 summate the rupture by moving out of the house, 
 returned very late, just as Gaussin was beginning 
 to tire himself out with all sorts of wild and sinister 
 conjectures. At last a cab with a rail around the 
 top, heavy as a hearse, turned the corner of Rue 
 Jacob, loaded with corded boxes and an enormous 
 trunk which he recognized as his own, and his 
 uncle entered, mysterious and heartbroken. 
 
 '' I took plenty of time, in order to pick up every- 
 thing at once and not have to go there again." 
 He pointed to the boxes which two porters were 
 placing in different parts of the room. ''Your 
 clothes and your Hnen are in this one, your papers 
 and books there. Nothing is missing but your let- 
 ters ; she begged me to let her keep them, so that 
 she could read them over again, could have some- 
 thing from you. I could n't see that there was any 
 danger in that. She 's such a soft-hearted girl ! " 
 
 He sat down on the trunk, breathing hard, spong- 
 ing his forehead with his brown silk handkerchief, 
 as large as a napkin. Jean dared not ask him for 
 details, in what mood he had found her ; the other 
 furnished none for fear of making him sad. And 
 
Sappho. 219 
 
 they filled that painful silence, pregnant with things 
 unexpressed, by remarks as to the sudden change 
 in the weather, which had grown much colder 
 since the preceding day, as to the depressing as- 
 pect of that bare, desert suburb of Paris, planted 
 with factory chimneys, and with enormous cast- 
 iron cylinders, used as storehouses by market- 
 gardeners. 
 
 " Did she give you nothing for me, uncle?" Jean 
 asked after a while. 
 
 " No ; you need have no fear. She won't bother 
 you ; she has chosen her course with much deter- 
 mination and dignity." 
 
 Why did Jean detect in those few words a sug- 
 gestion of blame, a rebuke for his harshness? 
 
 "I tell you," continued the uncle, ''job for job, 
 I prefer La Mornas's claws to that unhappy crea- 
 ture's despair." 
 
 " Did she cry much?" 
 
 ** Oh, my dear boy — And so hard, so heartily, 
 that I sobbed myself as I sat opposite her with no 
 strength to — " He blew his nose and shook ofif 
 his emotion with a shake of the head like an old 
 goat. ''However, what can you expect? It isn't 
 your fault ; you could n't pass your whole life there. 
 Things are settled quite as they should be; you 
 leave her some money and her furniture. And 
 now, on with the courting ! Try to arrange your 
 marriage in good season. Such affairs are too se- 
 rious for me. The consul will have to take a hand 
 in it. As for me, I can only deal with left-handed 
 connections." He was suddenly seized by a fresh 
 
220 Sappho. 
 
 paroxysm of melancholy, and added, as he stood 
 with his forehead against the window, looking out 
 at the low clouds from which the rain poured down 
 upon the roofs, — 
 
 '' I tell you, the world is growing dismal ; in my 
 day we used to part more cheerfully than this." 
 
 When Le Fenat had gone, accompanied by his 
 elevating machine, Jean, deprived of that restless, 
 talkative good-humor, had a long week to pass, an 
 impression of emptiness and solitude, all the dark 
 bewilderment of widowhood. In such cases, even 
 without regret for a vanished passion, you seek for 
 your double, you miss him ; for the life together, 
 the sharing of table and bed, create a network of 
 invisible, subtle bonds, whose strength is disclosed 
 only by the effort and the pain of breaking them. 
 The influence of close association and habit is so 
 marvellously penetrating that two persons who 
 live the same life end by resembling each other. 
 
 His five years with Sappho had not as yet 
 moulded him to that extent; but his body re- 
 tained the marks of the chain and felt its heavy, 
 dragging weight. And just as it happened on 
 several occasions that his steps turned instinctively 
 toward Chaville when he left his office, so, in the 
 morning, he would feel on the pillow beside him 
 for the heavy masses of black hair, released from 
 their comb, upon which his first kiss was wont to 
 fall. 
 
 The evenings especially seemed interminable to 
 him in those furnished lodgings which recalled the 
 early days of their liaison, the presence of another 
 
Sappho. 221 
 
 mistress, reserved and silent, whose little card sur- 
 rounded the mirror with an alcove perfume, and 
 with the mystery of her name : Fanny Legrand. 
 Thereupon he would leave the house and try to 
 tire himself out, to distract his thoughts with the 
 music and glare of some petty theatre, until old 
 Bouchereau should give him the right to pass three 
 evenings a week with his fiancee. 
 
 They had reached an understanding at last. 
 Irene loved him, UncU was content ; the marriage 
 was to take place early in April, at the end of the 
 course of lectures. They had the three winter 
 months to see each other, to become acquainted 
 with each other, to desire each other, to make the 
 fond and charming paraphrase of the first glance, 
 which binds hearts together, and the first avowal, 
 which causes unrest. 
 
 On the evening of his betrothal, Jean, returning 
 home without the slightest inclination for sleep, 
 felt an impulse to arrange his room so as to give it 
 an orderly, hard-working appearance, obeying the 
 natural instinct to make our life correspond with 
 our thoughts. He put his table in place and his 
 books, which he had not as yet unpacked, and 
 which were tossed pell-mell into one of those 
 packing-boxes made in haste, the Code between 
 a pile of handkerchiefs and a gardening jacket. 
 As he was arranging the books, a letter in his 
 mistress's handwriting, with no envelope, fell from 
 between the leaves of a Dictionary of Commercial 
 Law, the book he consulted most frequently. 
 
 Fanny had intrusted it to the hazard of his fut- 
 
121 . Sappho, 
 
 ure labors, distrusting the too short-lived emotion 
 of Cesaire, and thinking that she would gain her 
 object more surely in that way. He determined 
 not to open it at first, but yielded at the very mild, 
 very reasonable words with which it began, her 
 agitation being evident in the trembling of the 
 pen, the unevenness of the lines. She asked but 
 one favor, a single one, that he would return to 
 her from time to time. She would say nothing, 
 she would reproach him with nothing, neither with 
 his marriage nor with the separation, which she 
 knew to be absolute and final. But if she could 
 only see him ! 
 
 *' Remember that it was a terrible blow to me, 
 and so sudden, so unexpected ! I am just as If 
 some one had died, or I had been burned out, — I 
 don't know which way to turn. I weep, I expect 
 you, I gaze at the place where my happiness used 
 to lie. No one but you can accustom me to this 
 new situation. As an act of charity, come and 
 see me, so that I may feel not so entirely alone. 
 I am afraid of myself." 
 
 Those lamentations, that imploring summons, 
 ran through the whole letter, with the constantly 
 recurring refrain, ** Come, come." He could fancy 
 himself in the clearing in the heart of the woods, 
 with Fanny at his feet, and that piteous face raised 
 to his under the pale violet sky of evening, all 
 haggard and soft with tears, that mouth opening 
 in the darkness to cry out. It was that that 
 haunted him all night, and disturbed his sleep, and 
 not the intoxicating bliss he had brought from 
 
Sappho, 223 
 
 Place Vendome. It was that worn, aged face that 
 he constantly saw, despite all his efforts to place 
 between it and him the face with pure outlines, 
 the checks like a carnation in flower, which the 
 declaration of love tinged with a Httle red flush 
 under the eyes. 
 
 That letter was dated a week before; for a 
 whole week the unhappy creature had been await- 
 ing a word or a visit, the encouragement she 
 sought in resigning herself to her fate. But how 
 did it happen that she had not written since? 
 Perhaps she was ill ; and his former fears returned. 
 He thought that Hettema might be able to give 
 him news of her, and, relying upon the regularity 
 of his habits, he went and waited for him in front 
 of the Artillery headquarters. 
 
 The last stroke of ten was striking at Saint 
 Thomas d'Aquin's when the stout man turned the 
 corner of the little square, with his collar turned 
 up and his pipe between his teeth, and holding 
 the latter with both hands to warm his fingers. 
 Jean watched him approaching in the distance, 
 deeply moved by all the memories that the sight 
 of him recalled ; but Hettema greeted him with a 
 repugnance which he hardly tried to conceal. 
 
 "It's you, is it? Perhaps we haven't cursed 
 you this week ! — and we went into the country to 
 lead a tranquil life." 
 
 As he stood in the doorway, finishing his pipe, 
 he told him that on the preceding Sunday they had 
 asked Fanny to dinner with the child, whose day 
 it was to be at home, hoping to turn her mind from 
 
224 Sappho. 
 
 her miserable thoughts. The dinner passed off 
 very cheerfully : she even sang something to them 
 at dessert ; then about ten o'clock they separated, 
 and the Hettemas were preparing to go comfort- 
 ably to bed, when some one suddenly knocked on 
 the shutters, and little Josaph cried in a terrified 
 voice, — 
 
 *' Come quick ; mamma 's trying to poison her- 
 self! " 
 
 Hettema rushed to the house and arrived in 
 time to take the phial of laudanum from her by 
 force. He had had to fight, to throw his arms 
 around her and hold her, and at the same time 
 defend himself against the blows of her head and 
 her comb, which she aimed at his face. In the 
 struggle, the phial broke, the laudanum was spilled 
 on everything, and there was no harm done be- 
 yond the spotting and perfuming of clothes with 
 the poison. " But you can understand that such 
 scenes, a whole drama of sensational news-items, 
 don't suit peaceful folks like us. So, it 's decided, 
 I Ve given my notice, and next month I move." 
 He replaced his pipe in its case, and with a very 
 affable adieu disappeared under the low arches of 
 a small courtyard, leaving Gaussin thoroughly be- 
 wildered by what he had heard. 
 
 He pictured to himself the scene in that chamber 
 which had been theirs, the terror of the little one 
 calling for help, the rough struggle with the stout 
 man, and he fancied that he could taste the bitter, 
 sleep-producing flavor of the spilled laudanum. 
 The horror clung to him all day, aggravated by 
 
Sappho. 225 
 
 the thought of the isolation that was soon to be 
 her lot. When the Hettemas had gone who 
 would restrain her hand when she made another 
 attempt? 
 
 A letter arrived, and comforted him to some ex- 
 tent. Fanny thanked him for not being so hard- 
 hearted as he chose to appear, since he still took 
 some interest in the poor abandoned wretch, " He 
 told you, did he not? I tried to die ; it was because 
 I felt so lonely! I tried, but I could not; he 
 stopped me ; perhaps my hand trembled, — the fear 
 of suffering, of becoming ugly. Oh, how did that 
 little Dore have the courage? After the first 
 shame of failure, it was a joy to think that I could 
 still write to you, love you at a distance, see you 
 again ; for I have not lost the hope that you will 
 come once, as one goes to see an unhappy friend 
 in a house of mourning, for pity's sake, simply 
 for pity's sake." 
 
 Thereafter there came from Chaville every two 
 or three days letters of varying length, a journal 
 of sorrow which he had not the heart to send back, 
 and which enlarged the sore spot in that tender 
 heart made by a pity without love, no longer for 
 the mistress, but for the fellow-creature suffering 
 because of him. 
 
 One day her theme was the departure of her 
 neighbors, those witnesses of her past happiness, 
 who carried away so many souvenirs. All that 
 she had now to remind her of it was the furniture, 
 the walls of their little house, and the servant, 
 poor uncivilized creature, as little interested in 
 
 15 
 
226 Sappho, 
 
 anything as the thrush, which huddled sadly in a 
 corner of his cage, shivering with the cold. 
 
 Another day, when a pale sunbeam shone 
 through her window, she awoke joyful in the firm 
 conviction, "He will come to-day!" Why? for 
 no reason, just an idea. She at once set about 
 making the house attractive, and herself coquettish 
 in her Sunday dress and with her hair arranged as 
 he hked it; and then she counted the trains from 
 her window until evening, until the last trace of 
 light had vanished, and listened for his footstep on 
 the Pave des Gardes. She must be mad ! 
 
 Sometimes just a line: "It rains; it is dark; I 
 am alone, and I am weeping for you." Or else she 
 would content herself with placing in the envelope 
 a poor little flower, all drenched and stiff with frost, 
 the last flower from their little garden. That little 
 flower, picked from under the snow, conveyed the 
 idea of winter, of solitude and abandonment, better 
 than all her lamentations ; he could see the place, 
 at the end of the path, and a woman's skirt brush- 
 ing against the flower-beds, wet to the hem, saun- 
 tering to and fro in a solitary promenade. 
 
 The result of this pity, which tore his heart, was 
 that he still lived with Fanny notwithstanding the 
 rupture. His mind was there, he pictured her to 
 himself every hour of the day ; but, by a singular 
 freak of his memory, although it was only five 
 or six weeks since their separation, and the most 
 trivial details of their home were still present to 
 his mind, from La Balue's cage, opposite a wooden 
 cuckoo won at a country fair, to the branches of 
 
Sappho, 227 
 
 the walnut-tree which tapped at their dressing- 
 room window in the Hghtest breeze, the woman 
 herself no longer appeared to him distinctly. He 
 saw her in a sort of mist, with a single detail of 
 her face clearly marked and painful to see, — the 
 deformed mouth, the smile punctured by the gap 
 once filled by the missing tooth. 
 
 Thus withered and aged, what would become of 
 the poor creature by whose side he had slept so 
 long? When the money he had left her was spent, 
 where would she go, to what depths would she de- 
 scend? And suddenly there rose before him in 
 his memory the wretched street-walker he had met 
 one night in an English tavern, dying of thirst 
 before her slice of smoked salmon. She whose 
 attentions, whose passionate and faithful affection 
 he had so long accepted, would become like her ! 
 And that thought drove him to despair. But what 
 could he do? Because he had had the misfortune 
 to meet that woman, to live some time with her, 
 was he doomed to keep her forever, to sacrifice his 
 happiness to her? Why he, and not the others? 
 In the name of what principle of justice? 
 
 Although forbidding himself to see her, he wrote 
 to her; and his letters, purposely matter-of-fact 
 and dry, afforded glimpses of his emotion beneath 
 soothing and prudent counsels. He urged her to 
 take Josaph away from the boarding-school, to 
 keep him at home with her to divert her thoughts ; 
 but Fanny refused. What was the use of inflict- 
 ing her sorrow, her discouragement, on that child ? 
 The little fellow had quite enough of it on Sunday, 
 
228 Sappho, 
 
 when he prowled from chair to chair, wandered 
 from the living-room to the garden, conscious that 
 some great misfortune had cast a blight upon the 
 house, and not daring to ask any more questions 
 about " Papa Jean," since she had told him, sobbing, 
 that he had gone away and would not come back. 
 
 '* All my papas go away, don't they? " 
 
 And that remark of the little foundling, repeated 
 in a heartrending letter, weighed heavily on Gaus- 
 sin's heart. Soon the thought that she was at 
 Chaville became so oppressive to him that he ad- 
 vised her to return to Paris, to see people. With 
 her sad experience of men and separations, Fanny 
 saw in that suggestion simply a shocking egotism, 
 a hope to rid himself of her forever by one of those 
 sudden fancies for which she had been famous ; and 
 she stated her views frankly : — 
 
 *' You know what I said to you long ago. I will 
 remain your wife in spite of everything, your faith- 
 ful and loving wife. Our little house encompasses 
 me with you, and I would not leave it for anything 
 on earth. What should I do in Paris? I am dis- 
 gusted with my past, which keeps you away from 
 me; and then just think what temptation you 
 would expose us to ! Do you think you are very 
 strong, pray? Then come, bad boy, once, only 
 once." 
 
 He did not go ; but one Sunday afternoon, when 
 he was alone and working, he heard two little taps 
 at his door. He was startled, recognizing her 
 abrupt way of announcing her presence, as of 
 yore. Fearing to find some order below, she had 
 
Sappho. 229 
 
 ascended the stairs at a breath, without asking any 
 questions. He crept to the door, his footsteps 
 muffled in the carpet, and heard her breathe 
 through the crack, — 
 
 "Are you there, Jean?" 
 
 Oh, that humble, broken voice ! Once again, 
 not very loud, '* Jean ! " then a sighing groan, the 
 rustling of a letter, and the caress and farewell of a 
 kiss thrown through the door. 
 
 When she had descended the stairs, slowly, stair 
 by stair, as if expecting to be recalled, then, not 
 before, did Jean pick up the letter and open it. 
 Little Hochecorne had been buried that morning 
 at the Children's Hospital. She had come with 
 the father and some few persons from Chaville, and 
 had been unable to resist going up to see him or 
 to leave these hues written beforehand. ''What 
 did I tell you ? If I lived in Paris, I should be on 
 your stairs all the time. Adieu, my dear; I am 
 going back to our home." 
 
 As he read, his eyes blurred with tears, he re- 
 called a similar scene on Rue de I'Arcade, the grief 
 of the discarded lover, the letter slipped under the 
 door, and Fanny's heartless laughter. So she 
 loved him better than he loved Irene ! Or is it 
 true that man, being more involved than woman 
 in the conflicts of business and of Hfe, has not, like 
 her, the exclusiveness of love, the forgetfulness of 
 and indifference to everything save her one absorb- 
 ing passion? 
 
 That torment, those pangs of pity, were allayed 
 only in Irene's presence. There only did his 
 
230 Sappho, 
 
 agony relax, melt away beneath the soft blue 
 rays of her glances. He was conscious of naught 
 save a great weariness, a temptation to lay his 
 head on her shoulder, and to remain there without 
 speaking or moving, under her wing. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " she would say to him. 
 "Aren't you happy?" 
 
 Yes, indeed, very happy. But why did his hap- 
 piness consist of so much melancholy and weeping? 
 At times he was tempted to tell her everything, 
 as a kind friend who would understand his misery ; 
 without considering, poor fool, the unhappiness that 
 such confidences cause in untried hearts, the in- 
 curable wounds they may inflict upon the trustful- 
 ness of an attachment. Ah ! if he could only have 
 carried her away, have fled with her ! he felt that 
 that would be the end of his misery; but old 
 Bouchereau would not advance by one hour the 
 appointed time. " I am an old man ; I am sick. 
 I shall never see my child again, so don't rob me 
 of these last days." 
 
 Beneath his stern exterior that great man was 
 the kindest of men. Doomed irrevocably by the 
 aflection of the heart, whose progress he himself 
 followed and noted, he talked about it with mar- 
 vellous sang-froid, continued his lectures when he 
 could hardly breathe, ausculted patients who were 
 less ill than he. There was but one weak side to 
 that boundless mind, and it was one that betrayed 
 the peasant origin of the native of Touraine : his 
 respect for titles, for the nobility. And the re- 
 membrance of the little towers of Castelet and 
 
Sappho, 231 
 
 the venerable name of Armandy were not without 
 their influence on his readiness to accept Jean as 
 his niece's husband. 
 
 The marriage was to take place at Castelet, in 
 order to avoid discommoding the poor mother, 
 who sent every week to her future daughter an 
 affectionate letter, dictated to Divonne or to one 
 of the little saints of Bethany. And it was a sooth- 
 ing delight to him to talk with Irene about his 
 family, to find Castelet on Place Vendome, all his 
 affections centred around his dear betrothed. 
 
 But he was dismayed to feel so old, so weary, 
 compared with her, to see her take a childish 
 pleasure in things which no longer amused him, 
 in the every-day joys of life, already discounted 
 by him. For instance, the list that must be pre- 
 pared of all that they would need to take to the 
 distant consulate, furniture and coverings to be 
 selected ; and one evening he paused in the 
 middle of it, with hesitating pen, dismayed to find 
 his mind returning to his installation on Rue 
 d'Amsterdam, and by the thought that he must 
 inevitably begin anew all the pleasures that were 
 exhausted and forever ended for him by those five 
 years with another woman, in a burlesque of mar- 
 riage and domesticity. 
 
^32 Sappho, 
 
 XIV. 
 
 " Yes, my dear fellow, he died last night in Rosa's 
 arms. I have just taken him to the taxidermist's." 
 De Potter, the musician, whom Jean met coming 
 out of a shop on Rue du Bac, clung to him with 
 an effusiveness hardly compatible with his features, 
 the stern and impassive features of a man of busi- 
 ness, and described to him the martyrdom of poor 
 Bichito, slain by the Parisian winter, shrivelled with 
 cold, despite the wads of cotton-wool, the saucer 
 of spirits of wine that had been kept lighted for 
 two months under his little nest, as for children 
 born before their time. Nothing could keep him 
 from shivering ; and the previous night, while they 
 were all about him, one last shudder shook him 
 from head to tail, and he died like a good Chris- 
 tian, thanks to the quantities of holy water which 
 Mamma Pilar poured on his scaly skin, where life 
 vanished in changing hues, in prismatic displays, 
 saying, with uplifted eyes : " God forgive him ! " 
 
 ** I laugh about it, but my heart is heavy all 
 the same ; especially when I think of the grief of 
 my poor Rosa, whom I left in tears. Luckily, 
 Fanny was with her." 
 
 "Fanny?" 
 
 '' Yes, we had n't seen her for ages. She ar- 
 rived this morning just in the midst of the drama, 
 
Sappho, 233 
 
 and the dear girl remained to comfort her friend." 
 Heedless of the effect produced by his words, 
 he added: '' So it's all over between you? You 
 aren't together now? Do you remember our 
 conversation on the lake at Enghien? At all 
 events, you profit by the lessons you receive." 
 And a touch of envy could be detected in his 
 approbation. 
 
 Gaussin knit his brow, feeling genuinely dis- 
 gusted at the thought that Fanny had returned to 
 Rosario ; but he was angry with himself for such 
 weakness, for, after all, he no longer had any sort 
 of authority over her life or responsibility for it. 
 
 De Potter stopped in front of a house on Rue de 
 Beaune, a very old street of the aristocratic Paris 
 of an earlier day, into which they had turned. 
 There it was that he lived, or was supposed to Hve, 
 for the purposes of propriety and for the world at 
 large ; for in fact he passed his time on Avenue de 
 Villiers or at Enghien, and made only brief visits 
 to the conjugal domicile, so that his wife and child 
 might not seem too entirely abandoned. 
 
 Jean was walking on, his mouth already open to 
 say adieu, but the other held his hand in his long, 
 hard key-board crusher's hands, and, without a 
 trace of embarrassment, like a man to whom his 
 vice is no longer a matter for apology, — 
 
 ** Pray do me a favor. Come upstairs with me. 
 I was to dine with my wife to-day, but I really 
 cannot leave my poor Rosa all alone with her de- 
 spair. You will serve as a pretext for my going 
 out and avoid a tiresome explanation." 
 
234 Sappho, 
 
 The musician's study, a superb but cold bour- 
 geois apartment on the second floor, smelt of the 
 solitude of the room in which no work is done. 
 Everything was too clean, without the slightest 
 disorder, with none of the feverish activity which 
 infects objects and furniture. Not a book, not a 
 paper on the table, which was occupied in solitary 
 majesty by a huge bronze inkstand, without ink, 
 and polished as if for exhibition in a shop-window ; 
 nor was there a sign of music on the old spinet- 
 shaped piano, by which the early works were in- 
 spired. And a bust of white marble, the bust of a 
 young woman with refined features and a sweet ex- 
 pression, pale in the fading light, made the fireless, 
 draped fireplace even colder, and seemed to gaze 
 sadly at the walls covered with beribboned golden 
 wreaths, with medals, with commemorative frames, 
 a glorious, pompous collection generously left to 
 his wife by way of compensation, and cared for by 
 her as the decorations of the tomb of her happiness. 
 
 They had hardly entered the study when the 
 door opened again and Madame de Potter ap- 
 peared. 
 
 *' Is it you, Gustave? " 
 
 She thought that he was alone, and stopped 
 abruptly at sight of the strange face, with evident 
 disquietude. Refined and pretty, fashionably but 
 quietly dressed, she seemed to have more char- 
 acter than her bust, the sweet expression of her 
 face being replaced by a courageous and nervous 
 determination. In society opinions were divided 
 with regard to her. Some blamed her for endur- 
 
Sappho. 235 
 
 ing the advertised contempt of her husband, that 
 second establishment known of all the world; 
 others, on the contrary, admired her silent resigna- 
 tion. And she was generally considered a placid 
 creature, loving her repose above everything, find- 
 ing sufficient compensation for her widowhood in 
 the caresses of a lovely child and the satisfaction 
 of bearing the name of a great man. 
 
 But while the musician presented his companion 
 and muttered some falsehood or other to escape 
 the dinner at home, Jean could see by the change 
 that passed over that youthful face, by the fixity of 
 that glance which no longer saw nor listened, as if 
 absorbed by mental suffering, that a terrible sor- 
 row was buried alive beneath that worldly exterior. 
 She seemed to accept the fable, which she did not 
 believe, and simply said in a gentle tone, — 
 
 " Raymond will cry ; I promised him that we 
 would dine by his bed." 
 
 " How is he ? " asked De Potter, distraught, 
 impatient. 
 
 " Better, but he still coughs. Are n't you com- 
 ing to see him? " 
 
 He muttered something in his mustache, pre- 
 tending to be looking around the room: "Not now 
 — in a great hurry — appointment at the club at 
 six o'clock." What he was most anxious to avoid 
 was being left alone with her. 
 
 " Adieu, then," said the young woman, suddenly 
 subdued, her features resuming their serenity, like 
 a placid pool disturbed to its lowest depths by a 
 stone. She bowed and disappeared. 
 
236 Sappho. 
 
 "Let us be off!" 
 
 And De Potter, free once more, left the room, 
 followed by Gaussin, who watched him as he went 
 downstairs in front of him, stiff and correct in his 
 long tight-fitting frock-coat of English cut, — that 
 ill-omened lover, who was so deeply affected when 
 he carried his mistress's chameleon to be stuffed, 
 and left his house without kissing his sick child. 
 
 "All this, my dear fellow," said the musician, 
 as if in answer to his friend's thought, " is the fault 
 of those who made me marry. A genuine favor 
 to me and to that poor woman ! What an insane 
 idea to try to make a husband and father of me ! 
 I was Rosa's lover ; I remained so, and I shall re- 
 main so until one of us dies. Does a man ever 
 cut loose from a vice that seizes him just at the 
 right moment and holds him fast? Take your 
 own case, — are you sure that if Fanny had 
 chosen — " 
 
 He hailed an empty cab which was passing and 
 added, as he stepped in, — 
 
 " A propos of Fanny, do you know the news ? 
 Flamant is pardoned ; he has left Mazas. It was 
 Dechelette's petition. Poor Dechelette ! he did 
 some good even after his death." 
 
 Gaussin stood still, with a mad longing to run, 
 to overtake those wheels jolting rapidly down the 
 dark street where the lamps were being lighted, 
 and was astounded to find himself so deeply moved. 
 " Flamant pardoned — left Mazas ! " he repeated 
 the words softly, seeing in them an explanation of 
 Fanny's silence for several days, of her lamenta- 
 
Sappho, ^37 
 
 tions abruptly broken off, hushed under the ca- 
 resses of a comforter; for the poor devil's first 
 thought, when he was set free, must have been for 
 her. 
 
 He remembered the affectionate letters from the 
 prison, his mistress's obstinacy in defending him 
 alone, when she held the others so cheap ; and 
 instead of congratulating himself upon a piece of 
 good fortune which logically relieved him of all 
 cause for anxiety, of all remorse, an indefinable 
 heartache kept him awake and excited most of the 
 night. Why? He no longer loved her; but he 
 thought of his letters, still in that woman's hands, 
 which she would read to the other, perhaps, and 
 which — who knows ? — she might some day, under 
 an evil influence, make use of to disturb his repose, 
 his happiness. 
 
 Whether it was false or genuine, or whether, un- 
 known to him, it concealed a fear of another sort, 
 that anxiety ^bout his letters led him to determine 
 upon an imprudent step, the visit to Chaville which 
 he had always obstinately refused to make. But 
 to whom could he intrust so delicate and confiden- 
 tial a mission ? One morning in February he took 
 the ten o'clock train, very calm in mind and heart, 
 with no other fear than that of finding the house 
 closed and the woman already vanished with her 
 felon. 
 
 From the curve in the track, the sight of the 
 open blinds and the curtains at the windows of the 
 little house reassured him ; and remembering his 
 emotion when he watched the little light receding 
 
238 Sappho, 
 
 behind him in the darkness, he laughed at himself 
 and the fickleness of his impressions. He was no 
 longer the same man, and certainly he should not 
 find the same woman. And yet only two months 
 had passed. The woods by which the train sped 
 had taken on no new leaves, retained the same 
 leprous blotches as on the day of the rupture and 
 of her shrieking to the echoes. 
 
 He alighted alone at the station in that cold, 
 penetrating fog, took the narrow country road, 
 slippery with the hard snow, passed under the 
 railroad bridge, and met no one before he reached 
 the Pave des Gardes, where a man and boy ap- 
 peared at the entrance to the path, followed by a 
 railway porter pushing his truck laden with trunks. 
 
 The child, all muffled up in a comforter, his cap 
 pulled over his ears, restrained an exclamation as 
 they passed him. " Why, it 's Josaph ! " he said 
 to himself, a little surprised and saddened by the 
 child's ingratitude ; and as he turned to look be- 
 hind him, he met the eyes of the man who was 
 leading the boy by the hand. That clever, intel- 
 ligent face, blanched by confinement, those second- 
 hand clothes purchased the day before, that light 
 beard close to the chin, not having had time to 
 grow since Mazas — Flamant, /<a:r^/^w / And Jo- 
 saph was his son ! 
 
 It was a revelation in a flash of lightning. He 
 saw and understood everything, from the letter in 
 the casket wherein the handsome engraver com- 
 mended to his mistress's care a child of his in the 
 provinces, down to the little fellow's mysterious 
 
Sappho. 239 
 
 arrival and Hettema's embarrassed manner at any 
 mention of the adoption, and Fanny's significant 
 glances at Olympe ; for they were all in the plot 
 to make him support the counterfeiter's son. Oh, 
 what a jolly simpleton he was, and how they must 
 have laughed at him ! He felt a shudder of dis- 
 gust with all that shameful past, a longing to leave 
 it far, far behind him ; but certain things disturbed 
 him, which he wished to have cleared up. The 
 man and the child had gone, why not she? And 
 then his letters, he must have his letters, and leave 
 nothing of his in that den of contamination and 
 misery. 
 
 " Madame ! Here is monsieur ! " 
 
 "What monsieur?" artlessly inquired a voice 
 from the bedroom. 
 
 " It is I." 
 
 He heard a little shriek, a hurried movement, 
 then, " Wait, I am getting up ; I am coming." 
 
 Still in bed, after twelve o'clock ! Jean shrewdly 
 suspected the reason ; and while he awaited her 
 coming in the living-room, where the slightest ob- 
 jects were familiar to him, the whistle of a locomo- 
 tive, the quivering bleat of a goat in a neighboring 
 garden, the scattered dishes on the table carried 
 him back to the mornings of other days, the hasty 
 breakfast before he started for Paris. 
 
 Fanny came in and ran impulsively toward him, 
 then suddenly checked herself in face of his frigid 
 manner; and they stood for a second, surprised, 
 hesitating, as if two people should meet, after one 
 
240 Sappho, 
 
 of these shattered intimacies, on opposite sides of 
 a broken bridge, where the banks are far apart, 
 and with a vast expanse of turbulent, all-engulfing 
 waves between. 
 
 " Good-morning," she said in a low voice, with- 
 out moving. 
 
 It seemed to her that he had changed, grown 
 pale. He was amazed to find her so youthful, 
 simply a little heavier, not so tall as he remem- 
 bered her, but bathed in that peculiar radiance, 
 that brilliancy of the complexion and the eyes, 
 that softness as of a well-kept lawn which followed 
 nights given over to pleasure. So the woman, the 
 memory of whom gnawed his heart with pity, had 
 remained in the woods, in the ravine strewn with 
 dead leaves ! 
 
 " People rise late in the country," he observed 
 satirically. 
 
 She apologized for herself, talked about a sick 
 headache, and, like him, used the impersonal forms 
 of the verb, uncertain how to address him; then 
 she said, in answer to the unspoken question con- 
 veyed by a glance at the remains of the breakfast, 
 *' It was the child ; he breakfasted here this morn- 
 ing before going away." 
 
 " Going away? Where has he gone, pray?" 
 
 He affected supreme indifi'erence with his lips, 
 but the gleam in his eyes betrayed him. 
 
 ** The father has reappeared," said Fanny ; ** he 
 came and took him away." 
 
 " On his discharge from Mazas, eh?" 
 
 She was startled, but did not try to lie. 
 
Sappho, 541 
 
 " Well, yes. I promised to do it ; I did it. How 
 many times I longed to tell you, but I dared not ; I 
 was afraid that you would turn him out, poor little 
 fellow." And she added timidly, "You were so 
 jealous ! " 
 
 He laughed aloud in disdain. He jealous, and 
 of that convict ! Nonsense ! And feeling that 
 his wrath was rising, he cut himself short, and 
 told her hurriedly why he had come. His letters ! 
 Why had she not given them to Cesaire? That 
 would have avoided an interview painful to them 
 both. 
 
 *' True," she said, still very gently, " but I will 
 give them to you ; they are in here." 
 
 He followed her into the bedroom, noticed 
 the tumbled bed, the clothes hastily thrown over 
 both pillows, inhaled the odor of cigarette smoke 
 mingled with the perfumes of a woman's toilet, 
 which he recognized, as he did the little mother- 
 of-pearl casket on the table. And as the same 
 thought came to both their minds, she said, open- 
 ing the box : " There are n't very many of them ; we 
 should n't run any risk by putting them in the fire." 
 
 He said nothing, sorely perturbed, his mouth 
 parched, hesitating to approach the rumpled bed, 
 where she was turning over the letters for the last 
 time, her head bent, the neck firm and white be- 
 neath the raised coils of her hair, and her figure, 
 unconfined in the loose woollen garment she wore, 
 yielding and flexible and somewhat ampler than of 
 yore. 
 
 ** There ! They are all there." 
 16 
 
242 Sappho. 
 
 Having taken the package and thrust it absently 
 into his pocket, for the current of his thoughts had 
 changed, Jean rejoined, — 
 
 ** So he is taking his child away? Where are 
 they going? " 
 
 *' To Morvan, in his province, to hide himself 
 and work at his engraving, which he will send to 
 Paris under a false name." 
 
 ''And you? Do you expect to remain here?" 
 
 She turned her eyes away to avoid his glance, 
 stammering that it would be very dismal. So that 
 she thought — perhaps she might go away soon — 
 a short journey. 
 
 "To Morvan, of course? To keep house for 
 him ! " Thereupon he gave free rein to his jeal- 
 ous rage : '' Why don't you say at once that 
 you 're going to join your thief, that you 're going 
 to live with him? You've wanted to do it long 
 enough. Good ! Go back to your kennel. 
 Strumpet and counterfeiter go well together; I 
 was very good to try and drag you out of that 
 mire." 
 
 She maintained her mute immobility, a gleam 
 of triumph stealing between her lowered lashes. 
 And the more fiercely he stung her with his sav- 
 age, insulting irony, the prouder she seemed, and 
 the quiver at the corners of her mouth became 
 more marked. Now he was talking about his 
 happiness, about virtuous, youthful love, the only 
 true love. Ah ! what a soft pillow to lie upon was 
 a virtuous woman's heart ! Then, suddenly lower- 
 ing his voice, as if he were ashamed, — 
 
Sappho, 243 
 
 " I just met your Flamant ; did he pass the 
 night here ? " 
 
 " Yes, it was late and snowing. I made up a 
 bed for him on the couch." 
 
 " You He ! he slept there ; one has only to use 
 his eyes ! " 
 
 ** And what then ? " she put her face close to 
 his, her great gray eyes lighted with a lustful flame. 
 ** Did I know that you would come? And when I 
 had lost you, what did I care for all the rest ! I 
 was alone, depressed, disgusted." 
 
 " And then the bouquet of the galleys ! After 
 living so long with an honest man ! How you 
 must have revelled in his society ! Ah, you filthy 
 creature ! take this ! " 
 
 She saw the blow coming without a movement 
 to avoid it, received it full in the face, then, with 
 a dull roar of pain, of joy, of victory, she leaped 
 upon him and threw her arms about him. 
 
 " M'ami, m'ami, you love me still ! " 
 
 An express train rushing by with a great uproar 
 aroused him with a start toward evening; and he 
 lay for some moments with his eyes open, unable 
 to identify himself, alone in the depths of that 
 great bed. Much snow had fallen during the 
 afternoon. In a silence as profound as that of the 
 desert, he could hear it melting, running down 
 the walls and the windows, dripping in the gutters 
 on the roof, and, now and then, sputtering on the 
 coke fire on the hearth. 
 
 Where was he? What was he doing there? 
 
244 Sappho, 
 
 Gradually, in the light reflected from the little 
 garden, the room appeared before him, all white, 
 lighted from below, with Fanny's great portrait 
 hanging opposite him; and he recalled the cir- 
 cumstances of his downfall without the slightest 
 astonishment. Immediately on entering that room, 
 standing by that bed, he had felt that he was re- 
 captured, lost ; old associations drew him on Hke 
 a yawning chasm, and he said to himself, " If I 
 fall now, it will be irrevocably and forever." It 
 was done ; and beneath the feeling of melancholy 
 and disgust at his cowardice, there was a sort of 
 relief in the thought that he would never again 
 emerge from that mire, the pitiable satisfaction of 
 the wounded man who, while the blood gushes 
 from his wound, throws himself upon a dung-hill 
 to die, and, weary of suffering, of struggling, all 
 his veins being open, buries himself blissfully in 
 the soft and fetid warmth. 
 
 What remained for him to do now was ghastly 
 but very simple. Could he return to Irene after 
 such treachery, and run the risk of a household a 
 la de Potter ? Low as he had fallen, he had not 
 yet reached that point. He would write to Bou- 
 chereau, the great physiologist who was the first 
 to study and describe diseases of the will, and lay 
 before him a horrible case, the story of his life 
 from his first meeting with that woman, when she 
 had laid her hand upon his arm, down to the day 
 when, believing that he was saved, in the midst of 
 his happiness, of his intoxicating bliss, she seized 
 him again by the magic of the past, that horrible 
 
Sappho, 245 
 
 past in which love occupied so small a place, 
 simply cowardly habit and the vice that had 
 entered into his bones. 
 
 The door opened. Fanny stole softly into the 
 room in order not to waken him. Between his 
 lowered eyelids he watched her, active and strong, 
 rejuvenated, standing at the fire warming her feet, 
 which were wet through with the snow in the gar- 
 den, and from time to time turning to look at 
 him with the little smile her face had worn in the 
 morning during the quarrel. She took the pack- 
 age of Maryland, which was in its usual place, 
 rolled a cigarette and was going out, but he called 
 her back. 
 
 ** Are n't you asleep? " 
 
 " No. Sit down here and let us talk." 
 
 She sat on the edge of the bed, a little surprised 
 by his gravity. 
 
 " Fanny, we must go away." 
 
 She thought at first that he was joking, to test 
 her. But the very precise details that he gave her 
 soon undeceived her. There was a vacant post, 
 that at Arica ; he would ask for it. It was a mat- 
 ter of a fortnight, just time enough to get their 
 trunks ready. 
 
 " And your marriage?" 
 
 ** Not another word on that subject. What I 
 have done is irreparable. I see plainly enough 
 that that is all over; I cannot tear myself away 
 from you." 
 
 *' Poor bebe ! " she said with melancholy gentle- 
 
246 Sappho, 
 
 ness, not unmixed with contempt. Then, after 
 
 two or three puffs, — 
 
 ** Is this place you speak of very far away ? " 
 "Arica? very far, in Peru. Flamant won't be 
 
 able to join you there," he added in a whisper. 
 She sat thoughtful and mysterious in her cloud 
 
 of tobacco smoke. He still held her hand, patted 
 
 her bare arm, and, lulled by the dripping of the 
 
 water all about the house, he closed his eyes and 
 
 sank gently into the mire. 
 
Sappho* 247 
 
 XV. 
 
 Nervous, quivering, with steam up, already 
 under way in fancy like all those who are prepar- 
 ing for departure, Gaussin has been two days at 
 Marseille, where Fanny is to join him and sail with 
 him. Everything is ready, the staterooms taken, 
 two in the first cabin for the vice-consul at Arica 
 travelHng with his sister-in-law; and here he is 
 pacing up and down the worn floor of his hotel 
 chamber, in the twofold feverish expectation of 
 his mistress and the time for sailing. 
 
 He must needs walk and work off his excitement 
 where he is, as he dares not go out. The street 
 embarrasses him like a criminal, a deserter, — the 
 bustling, swarming Marseille street, where, at every 
 corner, it seems to him that his father or old 
 Bouchereau will appear, lay their hands on his 
 shoulder, to recapture him and take him back. 
 
 He keeps himself in seclusion and eats in his 
 room, not even going down to the table-d'hote, 
 reads without fixing his eyes on the page, throws 
 himself on his bed, diverting his vague siestas with 
 the Shipwreck of La Perouse and the Death of Cap- 
 tain Cook, which adorn the wall, covered with fly- 
 specks, and leans for hours at a time on the rotten 
 wooden balcony, sheltered by a yellow shade as 
 profusely patched as the sail of a fishing boat. 
 
248 Sappho. 
 
 His hotel, the " Hotel du Jeune Anacharsis," — 
 the name, which he chanced to see in Le Bottin, 
 tempted him when he appointed a rendezvous with 
 Fanny, — was an old inn, by no means luxurious, 
 not even very clean, but looking on the harbor 
 with an odor of the sea and of travel. Under his 
 windows, parrots, cockatoos, canaries, with their 
 sweet interminable chirping, the whole open-air 
 display of a dealer in birds, whose cages, piled one 
 upon another, salute the dawn with the murmurs 
 of a virgin forest, overshadowed and drowned 
 as the day advances by the noisy labors of the 
 port, regulated by the great bell of Notre-Dame de 
 la Garde. 
 
 There is a confusion of oaths in all tongues, of 
 the cries of boatmen and porters and dealers in 
 shells, between the blows of the hammer in the 
 refitting docks, the groaning of the cranes, the 
 sonorous blows of the arms of the great levers on 
 the pavement, ship's bells, whistles, the rhythmic 
 music of pumps and capstans, water pouring from 
 holes, escaping steam, — all this uproar, increased 
 twofold and repeated by the echoing surface of 
 the sea near at hand, from which at intervals arises 
 the hoarse roar, the marine monster's breath of a 
 great transatlantic liner steaming out to sea. 
 
 And the odors, too, evoke distant countries, 
 wharves on which the sun beats down more 
 fiercely than on this ; the cargoes of sandal-wood 
 and logwood being discharged, the lemons, oranges, 
 pistachio nuts, figs, whose penetrating odor ascends 
 in clouds of exotic dust in an atmosphere saturated 
 
Sappho, 249 
 
 with brackish water, burned herbs, and the greasy 
 smoke of the Cookhouses. 
 
 At nightfall these noises diminish, these dense 
 substances in the air fall to the ground and evap- 
 orate ; and while Jean, reassured by the darkness, 
 raises his shade and looks down upon the black 
 sleeping harbor, beneath the interlacing network 
 of masts and yards and bowsprits, when the silence 
 is broken only by the splashing of an oar or the 
 distant barking of a ship's dog, out at sea, far out 
 at sea, the revolving light of Planier casts a long 
 red or white flame which rends the darkness, 
 shows in the twinkling of an eye the shadows of 
 islands, forts and cliffs. And that luminous glance, 
 guiding myriads of lives over the waves, likewise 
 suggests travel, invites him and beckons to him, 
 summons him in the voice of the wind, the long 
 swell of the open sea, and the hoarse clamor of a 
 steamboat always gasping and blowing somewhere 
 in the roadstead. 
 
 Twenty-four hours more to wait ; Fanny is not 
 to join him until Sunday. Those three days of 
 waiting at the rendezvous he expected to pass with 
 his family, to devote them to the loved ones whom 
 he will not see again for several years, whom he 
 will never see again, perhaps ; but on the evening 
 of his arrival at Castelet, when his father learned 
 that the marriage was broken off and guessed the 
 reason, a violent, terrible explanation had taken 
 place. 
 
 What manner of creatures are we, in God's name, 
 
250 Sappho, 
 
 what are our tenderest affections, the affections 
 nearest our heart, that a fit of passion between two 
 persons of the same flesh and blood should twist 
 and tear out and carry away the natural senti- 
 ments, whose roots are so deep and strong, with the 
 blind irresistible violence of one of those typhoons 
 of the China seas which the bravest sailors do not 
 dare to remember, but say, with pallid cheeks, 
 "Let us not talk about that." 
 
 He will never talk about it, but he will remember 
 all his life that terrible scene on the terrace at 
 Castelet where his happy childhood was passed, 
 facing that placid, beautiful landscape, those pines, 
 those myrtles, those cypresses, which stood quiver- 
 ing in serried ranks around the paternal curse. 
 He will always have before his eyes that tall old 
 man, with his trembling, convulsed features, strid- 
 ing toward him with that expression of hatred 
 about his mouth, with that look of hatred in his 
 eyes, uttering the words one does not forgive, 
 driving him from the house and from the ranks of 
 men of honor : ** Begone ! go with your harlot ; 
 you are dead to us ! " And the little twins, cry- 
 ing and dragging themselves on their knees to the 
 door, imploring forgiveness for the big brother, 
 and Divonne's pale face, without a glance, without 
 a farewell word, while, at the window above, the 
 invalid's sweet, anxious face asked the explanation 
 of all that noise, and why her Jean went away so 
 hurriedly and without kissing her. 
 
 The thought that he had not kissed his mother 
 made him turn back half-way to Avignon ; he left 
 
Sappho, 251 
 
 Cesaire with the carriage on the outskirts of the 
 farm, took the cross-road, and entered Castelet by 
 the vineyard like a thief It was a dark night ; his 
 feet sank in the dead vines, and he actually ended 
 by being unable to tell where he was, seeking his 
 house in the darkness, already a stranger at home. 
 The vague reflection of the rough-cast walls guided 
 him at last; but the door was fastened, and there 
 was no light in any window. Should he ring or 
 call? He dared not, through fear of his father. 
 He walked around the house two or three times, 
 hoping to make his way in through some insecurely 
 fastened shutter. But Divonne's lantern had gone 
 the rounds, as it did every evening ; and after gaz- 
 ing long at his mother's chamber and bidding fare- 
 well with all his heart to the home of his childhood, 
 which, too, repulsed him, he fled at last in despair, 
 with a burden of remorse which gave him no 
 rest. 
 
 Ordinarily, when young men set out for a pro- 
 longed absence, on voyages subject to the danger- 
 ous hazards of the sea and the wind, their relatives 
 and friends prolong their leave-takings until the 
 final embarkation ; they pass the last day together, 
 they inspect the boat and the traveller's stateroom, 
 in order to follow him the better on his journey. 
 Several times each day Jean sees such affectionate 
 escorts pass his hotel, sometimes numerous and 
 noisy; but he is especially touched by a family 
 party on the floor below his. An old man and an 
 old woman, country people in comfortable circum- 
 
252 Sappho, 
 
 stances, in broadcloth coat and yellow Cambral 
 linen dress, have come to see their son off, to be 
 with him until the saihng of the packet; and he 
 can see them, all three, leaning out of their window, 
 idling away the hours of waiting, holding one 
 another's arms, the sailor in the middle, very close 
 together. They do not speak ; they embrace. 
 
 As Jean watches them, he thinks what a happy 
 departure he might have had. His father, his little 
 sisters, and, resting her soft trembling hand on his 
 arm, she whose eager mind and adventurous soul 
 all the white sails in the offing would irresisti- 
 bly attract. Vain regrets ! The crime is consum- 
 mated ; his destiny is on the rails ; he has only to 
 go away and to forget. 
 
 How slow and cruel the hours of the last night 
 seemed to him ! He tossed and turned in his hard 
 hotel bed, watched for the daylight to appear on 
 the windows, with the gradual shading from black 
 to gray, followed by the whiteness of dawn, which 
 the lighthouse still punctured with a red spark, 
 soon extinguished by the rising sun. 
 
 Not until then did he fall asleep ; and he was 
 abruptly awakened by a flood of light streaming 
 into his room, by the confused cries from the bird- 
 dealer's cages blending with the innumerable chimes 
 of Sunday in Marseille, echoing over the empty 
 wharves, where all the engines are at rest and flags 
 flying at the mastheads. Ten o'clock already ! and 
 the express from Paris arrives at noon. He dresses 
 in haste to go and meet his mistress; they will 
 breakfast looking out upon the sea, then they will 
 
Sappho, 153 
 
 carry the luggage on board, and at five o'clock the 
 signal for departure. 
 
 A wonderfully lovely day, a deep blue sky with 
 sea-gulls flying hither and thither like white specks, 
 the sea of a still deeper, mineral blue, whereon 
 sails, smoke, everything is visible, — everything 
 glistens and dances; and, like the natural out- 
 pouring of those sunlit banks encompassed by 
 the transparent atmosphere and water, harps are 
 playing beneath the hotel windows, an Italian air, 
 divinely sweet, but with a dragging movement of 
 the fingers across the chords that excites the nerves 
 painfully. It is more than music, it is a winged 
 translation of the joyous humor of the South, the 
 plenitude of life and love swollen even to tears. 
 And the memory of Irene steals into the melody, 
 quivering and weeping. How far away it is ! 
 What a fair, lost country, what never-ending regret 
 for opportunities vanished beyond recall ! 
 
 Let us be off! 
 
 On the threshold, as he is going out, Jean meets 
 a waiter: "A letter for Monsieur le Consul. It 
 arrived this morning, but Monsieur le Consul was 
 so sound asleep ! " Travellers of distinction are 
 rare at the Hotel du Jeune Anacharsis, so the 
 worthy Marseillais parade the title of their guest at 
 every opportunity. Who can have written to him ? 
 No one knows his address except Fanny. And as 
 he looks more closely at the envelope, he shud- 
 ders, he understands. 
 
 ** No, I will not go ! it is too great a piece of 
 
^54 Sappho, 
 
 folly, to which I do not feel equal. For such 
 undertakings, my poor fellow, one must have youth, 
 which I no longer have, or a blind, mad passion, 
 which neither of us has. Five years ago, in the 
 happy days, at a sign from you, I would have fol- 
 lowed you to the ends of the earth, for you cannot 
 deny that I loved you passionately. I gave you 
 all I had ; and when it was necessary to tear my- 
 self away from you I suffered as I never suffered 
 for any man. But such a love exhausts one, you 
 see. To feel that you were so handsome, so young, 
 to be always trembling because of having so many 
 things to defend ! Now I can do no more ; you 
 have made my life too hard, have made me suffer 
 too much, and I am at the end of my strength. 
 
 *' Under these conditions the prospect of that 
 long journey, of changing my whole Hfe, terrifies 
 me. Just think how fond I am of keeping still, 
 and that I have never been farther than Saint-Ger- 
 main ! And then women grow old too quickly in 
 the sun, and before you are thirty I shall be as 
 yellow and wrinkled as Mamma Pilar ; then is the 
 time that you would be angry with me for your 
 sacrifice, and poor Fanny would pay for everybody 
 else's sins. Do you know, there is a country in the 
 East — I read about it in one of your numbers of 
 Le Tour du Monde — where, when a woman de- 
 ceives her husband, they fasten her alive to a cat 
 and put them in the reeking skin of a beast just 
 flayed, then toss the bag on the beach, howling 
 and plunging about in the hot sun. The woman 
 screeches, the cat scratches, while the skin dries 
 
Sappho, 255 
 
 up and contracts around that horrible struggle be- 
 tween prisoners, until the last death-rattle, the last 
 convulsive movement of the bag. That is the sort 
 of torture that would be in store for us if we were 
 together." 
 
 He paused a moment, crushed, stupefied. As far 
 as he could see, the blue waves sparkled in the sun. 
 Addio ! sang the harps, reinforced by a voice as 
 ardent and passionate as they. Addio ! And the 
 utter nothingness of his shipwrecked, ruined life, 
 all debris and tears, appeared before him, the field 
 mown, the crops harvested beyond recall, and 
 all for that woman who was slipping from his 
 grasp ! 
 
 '* I ought to have told you this sooner, but I 
 dared not, seeing that you were so worked up, so 
 determined. Your excitement influenced me ; and 
 then my woman's vanity, my very natural pride in 
 having won you back after the rupture. But, deep 
 down in my heart, I felt that I was no longer 
 equal to it, that something had broken and it was 
 all over. What can you expect? after such par- 
 oxysms ! And do not imagine that it is on account 
 of poor Flamant. For him, as for you and every- 
 body else, it is all over, my heart is dead; but 
 there is that child, whom I cannot do without, and 
 who leads me back to his father, poor man, who 
 ruined himself for love of me, and came back to 
 me from Mazas as ardent and loving as at our first 
 meeting. Just fancy that when we met again, he 
 
256 Sappho. 
 
 passed the whole night weeping on my shoulder ; 
 so you see there was no reason for you to lose 
 your head about him. 
 
 " As I have told you, my dear child, I have 
 loved too much ; I am worn out. At the present 
 time, I need to have some one love me, coddle me, 
 admire me, and rock me to sleep. Flamant will be 
 at my feet and will never see any wrinkles or gray 
 hairs ; and if he marries me, as he intends to do, I 
 shall be doing him a favor. Compare. Above all 
 things, no nonsense. I have taken precautions to 
 prevent your finding me. From the little railway 
 cafe where I am writing to you, I can see through 
 the trees the house where we passed such happy 
 and such painful moments, and the sign flapping 
 against the door, awaiting new tenants. You are 
 free ; you will never hear of me again. Adieu ! 
 one kiss, the last, in your neck — m'amiy 
 
BETWEEN THE FLIES AND THE 
 FOOTLIGHTS. 
 
 BRIEF STUDIES OF THEATRICAL LIFE. 
 
To Jules Ebner:^ — 
 
 As a good captain should always have on board, in case 
 of disaster, and to facilitate the saving of lives, a miscellane- 
 ous collection of small boats, skiffs, gigs, launches, and 
 whaleboats, so the author who publishes his work in the 
 greatest possible variety of forms seems to me the most 
 certain to escape absolute shipwreck. This explains the 
 diversity of my editions. 
 
 In any event, my dear Ebner, if my name survives by 
 clinging to one of my boats, large or small, it is impossible 
 that yours should not be saved by the same means. For 
 we have been sailing together twenty-four years, since the 
 war and the siege. And such certificates of service, entirely 
 unconnected with professional collaboration and altogether 
 outside of literature, are of the sort which nothing can re- 
 quite unless it be a tender and enduring friendship. 
 
 ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
 Paris, January i6, 1894. 
 
 1 Monsieur Daudet's secretary. 
 
BETWEEN THE FLIES AND 
 THE FOOTLIGHTS. 
 
 THE ACTOR AT WORK. 
 
 There is no question that actors who really 
 work are very rare; so it is that there are very 
 few good ones. As a general rule, a beginner 
 begins by displaying too great zeal ; but he falls off 
 as soon as he thinks that he has earned his place 
 in the sunshine, as if it were not a hundred times 
 more difficult to keep it and defend it than to 
 win it. 
 
 How many actors we have known, who, when 
 the rehearsal is done, stuff their roles into their 
 pockets and take a sort of pride in not touching 
 them again, in not even thinking about them, 
 when they are once outside the theatre! They 
 learn the play by rehearsing it and keep the manu- 
 script in their hands at rehearsal until the very 
 eve of the performance. 
 
 Others, on the contrary, who are blessed with a 
 quick memory, rehearse without manuscript after 
 the second day, and, being firmly convinced that 
 learning a/ole by heart is equivalent to knowing 
 
262 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 it, they no longer concern themselves with aught 
 but their wigs and costumes. Oh, the costume! 
 that is the great, often the only preoccupation. 
 
 One of our friends, a poet, was reading a very 
 exciting drama one day to a jeime premier named 
 Delessart, who was to create a leading rdle therein. 
 Our poet was enchanted with the effect produced by 
 the reading. Tho, jeune premier seemed attentive 
 and affected ; indeed, once or twice he had gone 
 through the motion of wiping away with his glove, 
 according to rule, a great tear that had lodged in 
 the corner of his eye. When the play was fin- 
 ished, he raised his head, which he had kept lowered 
 all the time as if to concentrate all his faculties 
 in his hearing, and these were his first words : 
 
 "How do you want me to dress for this part.? 
 Shall I wear gaiters? " 
 
 Throughout the whole reading he had been 
 thinking of nothing but that, — whether the part 
 could or could not be acted in gaiters. 
 
 Oh, unquestionably a fine pair of yellow 
 leather gaiters, reaching well to the knee and 
 shaped to the leg, produce an irresistible effect; 
 but it is also of some importance to study the 
 physiognomy, the mental qualities, the whole 
 conception of the character, and one should not 
 carry too far the taste for the picturesque and for 
 finery. But most of our younger comedians do 
 just that; they all "imagine themselves in 
 gaiters," and that is what stands out most clear 
 and distinct in their way of understanding a role 
 and studying it. 
 
The Actor at Work, 263 
 
 If some actors do not work, there are others 
 who, on the contrary, take a vast amount of 
 trouble, and, when they have a part to create, 
 think of it day and night, at the theatre, at home, 
 in the street, borrowing from real life all that it 
 can furnish them to assist in building up their 
 conception of the part. Even when they have no 
 part to create, these actors are always investi- 
 gating, studying; their art is their fixed idea. 
 
 " Since I have been on the stage," said Madame 
 Arnould-Plessy one day in our presence, "I do 
 not remember that I have ever passed a morning 
 without working." And we certainly realized it 
 when we saw that excellent actress carry, with 
 the same ease of manner, the same accuracy of 
 observation, C^limene's fan and Nany's huge 
 head-dress. Let us remark in passing that at the 
 Th^dtre-Francais, where pensionnaires and soci^- 
 taires^ alike are sometimes omitted from the cast 
 for a long while, if the artists thus situated were 
 to cease work until they have a new part to create, 
 or even an old one to resume, they would be in 
 great danger of growing rusty. One grows rusty 
 so quickly in that profession. The action be- 
 comes heavy, the voice thickens, the memory 
 wavers, the legs are no longer reliable. 
 
 It is the same with the actor who has been a 
 long time off the boards as with the writer who 
 has passed months without writing. Which of us 
 
 1 At the Theatre-Frangais, the sociitaires are those members 
 of the company who share in the profits ; the pensionnaires , those 
 who receive a fixed salary. 
 
264 Between the Files and the Footlights. 
 
 has not known the horrible torture of feeling that 
 his hand is numb, as if frozen, while the brain is 
 boiling, smoking with ideas which would fain 
 come forth? And that terrible first sentence 
 which one can never make up one's mind to write ! 
 
 It is as if, by dint of remaining too long asleep 
 and lying on the table, the pen has become heavy 
 to the point of refusing to perform any service. 
 It is one of the most disagreeable sensations one 
 can feel, and it exists in all the arts. 
 
 The actor must work, therefore, but he must 
 not work too much. There is another reef to 
 avoid. There are the subtle creatures who delight 
 in abstractions, those who spend too much time 
 seeking to read between the lines, and end by 
 going astray there; those who, by dint of explor- 
 ing and hollowing out a role, pierce it through 
 and through, come out on the other side, and never 
 recover themselves at all. They are the actors 
 who say to you with the utmost gravity, " Moliere 
 is not understood ! " And, strong in that idea, 
 they pass their lives construing Moliere, com- 
 menting on him, complicating him, discovering 
 in him all sorts of intentions which he never had. 
 To hear them, you would swear that Le Misan- 
 thrope was written in Chinese, in some mysterious, 
 hermetically sealed tongue of which they alone 
 have the key. And they act him as they talk 
 about him, with a multitude of subtleties and 
 refinements which the public utterly fails to 
 understand, which it does not even suspect. It 
 reminds one of the story of the Tyrolean who 
 
The Actor at Work, 265 
 
 played on the jew's-harp, and had acquired the 
 art of extracting marvellously harmonious strains 
 from the little piece of steel which he held be- 
 tween his teeth. A great artist, it was said; 
 unfortunately no one but himself could hear what 
 he was playing. 
 
 And now that we have drawn the line between 
 actors who work, those who do not work, and 
 those who work too much, let us give our exclu- 
 sive attention to the first class, and see what their 
 different methods of work are. These methods 
 vary according to the temperament of the artists 
 and the nature of the parts they play. If, for 
 example, some evening during the season of the 
 regular repertory, you enter Constant Coquelin's 
 dressing-room^ during the entr'acte, you will find 
 it overflowing with bustle and activity and light. 
 Mascarillo is there, swaggering and uproarious, 
 as on the stage. He goes in and out, gesticulates, 
 laughs his hearty laugh with his mouth immeasur- 
 ably wide open, makes the windows tremble with 
 his Saxony-trumpet voice. Short cloaks lined 
 with white satin, silk breeches with broad blue 
 or red stripes, pumps adorned with knots and 
 ribbons, are lying on chairs all about him. Talk- 
 ing all the while, Mascarillo tries on a wig, 
 touches up his rouge before a mirror, then turns 
 with a pirouette and consults as to his new cap a 
 whole battalion of young painters by whom he is 
 always surrounded. 
 
 Seeing him leap and whirl about, like a squirrel 
 
 * He was at the Theatre-Fran5ais at this time. 
 
266 Betwee7i the Flies a7id the Footlights. 
 
 in its cage, you feel that the actor wishes to keep 
 his energy alight from the beginning of the 
 evening to the end, to remain at the same pitch 
 of mischievous, rollicking gayety. From time 
 to time some one knocks, or, rather, scratches at 
 the door, to use Saint-Simon's expression. It is 
 Tradition, come to visit the actor in the guise of 
 an old subscriber to the Comedie-Frangaise, 
 shaved and wrinkled and with a cunning smile. 
 He has seen the elder Montrose play this same 
 part of Mascarillo. 
 
 "Well, monsieur, are you satisfied .? " Coquelin 
 asks him. 
 
 "Very well satisfied," replies the old sub- 
 scriber, who lacks only a little powdered pigtail 
 dancing on the back of his neck. "Very well 
 satisfied. But Monsieur Montrose phe did n't 
 say it as you do." 
 
 "Indeed! tell us how he said it." 
 
 Thereupon the discussion begins, waxes warm, 
 passes from one subject to another; they talk of 
 literature, politics, painting, especially painting. 
 Coquelin alone makes more noise than all his 
 painters together : he grows excited, angry, roars 
 with laughter; and when the stage-manager 
 shouts, " Ready for the third act ! " you hear that 
 loud, youthful laugh ringing out along the corri- 
 dors, down the stairs, and even in the wings. 
 "Your cue, Coquelin ! " some one calls to him as 
 soon as he arrives, and, sure of himself and of his 
 imperturbable memory, the actor rushes on the 
 stage as if he proposed to take it by assault. 
 
The Actor at Work 267 
 
 Why should he not be sure of himself? 
 Throughout the whole entr'acte, without seeming 
 to do so, he has thought constantly of his role, 
 indeed, he has hardly ceased to act it. 
 
 If, on leaving Coquelin's dressing-room, you 
 enter Monsieur Delaunay's, you will almost always 
 find that artist alone, seated in front of his mirror, 
 his Moliere lying open beside him on the mar- 
 ble top of his dressing-table. The gas is turned 
 low in order not to tire the actor's eyes, and he, 
 while "making up his head" with painstaking 
 care, reviews his part, meditates his effects, and 
 sits there, thoughtful and excited, as if he were 
 acting for the first time in his life. From this 
 musing, from this quasi-religious meditation, will 
 result the outbursts of genuine passion, the 
 admirably modulated exclamations, which seem 
 to be improvised, born of the situation of the 
 moment, whereas they are the fruit of study and 
 reflection. Is it not enough to have seen these 
 two actors in their dressing-rooms to realize that 
 they arrive at the same goal by different paths, 
 and that their methods of work resemble each 
 other no more than their natures 1 
 
 We have before us a very interesting and valu- 
 able letter of Mademoiselle Fargeuil, wherein the 
 great actress analyzes subtly, with the precision 
 and firm touch of a practised writer, the way in 
 which she goes about the study of her parts. 
 
 "From the day when the role is assigned to 
 me," says the artist, "we live together. I might 
 add that it takes possession of me, lives in me. 
 
268 Between the Flies aiid the Footlights. 
 
 It certainly takes from me more than I give it. 
 So it happens that I assume, at home and else- 
 where, the tone, the physiognomy, the general 
 character, which I propose to give to the part; 
 and I do it unconsciously. Impressionable as I 
 am under such circumstances, I could not be in 
 a merry mood, being at odds with a pitiful and 
 redoubtable me, who forces herself on my mind, 
 any more than my black mood resists that other 
 me, who jests and laughs uproariously in my ear. 
 That is how it is. Have I made myself under- 
 stood } That is the whole secret of my work. I 
 think and live the r61e ; it has been lived through 
 when I hand it over to the public. That is very 
 simple, is it not.? it is neither a method nor a 
 fixed plan of study. It is simply a way of living. 
 There is no other rule about it than that contained 
 in my observation: to watch my duality walk 
 before me, to watch it move and act, and to think 
 it out. The picture moves, and I change my con- 
 ception according to the impression it gives me. 
 Later, the public teaches me what passages I must 
 emphasize or slight. I do not know if this con- 
 ception of work is the best possible one; but I 
 cannot adopt any other. To study a partial effect 
 of voice, of feature, of gesture, seems to me an 
 unnatural effort. Study, as it is generally under- 
 stood on the stage, is not my system of study, 
 therefore." 
 
 The expression living the part, which Mademoi- 
 selle Fargeuil uses to define her method of work, 
 occurs in a letter which an artist of very great 
 
The Actor at Work. 269 
 
 talent, Monsieur Lafontaine, addressed to Figaro 
 several years ago. 
 
 " I have not declined the honor of playing Mont- 
 joye," he wrote. "I have asked for two months, 
 in order to become as perfect as possible in so 
 important a part ; for one must not simply learn 
 Montjoye, one must live him." 
 
 And that is, in very truth, a most excellent 
 system of study, when the r61e is that of a char- 
 acter taken from modern life, one of those com- 
 plex types, compounded of baseness and grandeur, 
 whom the nervous, feverish epoch in which we 
 live envelops as with a stormy atmosphere. 
 
 But of course this system would not be a suit- 
 able one to adopt in the case of a personage of the 
 repertory of the olden time. Mademoiselle Far- 
 geuil is the first to recognize that fact, and this 
 is what she adds, in the letter from which we 
 quoted a moment ago: 
 
 " If I had the honor to belong to the Th^atre- 
 Frangais, I should not have adopted this method. 
 I know how much study and effort one must put 
 forth to interpret worthily our great classics. 
 But it does not seem to me that the modern reper- 
 tory demands the same care, I mean the same 
 amount of reflection based on observation." 
 
 This, too, is very sensible. An actor certainly 
 requires less study to represent faces of his own 
 time, which live in the same atmosphere with 
 him and for which the street furnishes him 
 with models, than to revive the types of a 
 glorious age, already long past, with which he 
 
2^0 Between the Flies and the Footlights. 
 
 is connected only by the threads of tradition, 
 stretched more and more and growing weaker 
 day by day. 
 
 The passions are everlasting, doubtless, but 
 their expression undergoes modifications; and it 
 is a mistake to think that the works of the past 
 can be played in the modern style. The mere idea 
 is offensive, as involving an anachronism. It 
 seems to us, however, that if Mademoiselle Far- 
 geuil had had, as she says, the honor to belong to 
 the Theatre-Francais, she would have taken her 
 place in the front rank there, even in the classic 
 repertory. At the outset she would have had, 
 against her the feverishness of gesture and dic- 
 tion, the little exclamations, ^^ voyons ! voyons !'* 
 with which she was accustomed to work herself 
 into a passion ; but do you not think that an artist 
 of her merit, who speaks of her art so sensibly 
 and so conscientiously, would easily have rid her- 
 self of tricks contracted in familiar modern dia- 
 logue, in Monsieur Sardou's unfinished sentences 
 and little exclamations.-* And then, when the 
 ground was once cleared, what intelligence she 
 would have brought to the service of the masters, 
 what energy in passion, what force, and what a 
 keen sense of humor! Would it not have been 
 charming to see her play Elm ire in Tartuffe ? and 
 would not the slight mannerisms with which she 
 handled her voice, with which she "fluted" it, 
 have lent an additional attraction to the savage 
 eloquence of Celimene.? But the Theatre- 
 Francais already had one perfect Celimene, you 
 
The Actor at Work, 271 
 
 say? Very good; then it would have had two, 
 and nobody would have complained. 
 
 The public cannot be told too often or too ear- 
 nestly that there is a vast amount of effort, of 
 hidden toil, in this profession of acting, which 
 seems so joyous and so easily mastered. Nor can 
 we sufficiently caution the young people who take 
 to the stage, and warn them of the difficulty of 
 the calling. Many become actors for the sake of 
 the costume, through vanity or indolence, or long- 
 ing to make a show, or inability to determine 
 what to do ; and you should see them before the 
 footlights ! — Unfortunate youths who stutter 
 when they talk, who cannot walk straight, and 
 who do not know what to do with their hands 
 when they take them out of their pockets. 
 
 And the women ! Speaking dolls, who have 
 retained the gestures and attitude taught by their 
 professor, with fairy queens' voices from which it 
 is impossible to extract a single correct intona- 
 tion. There is nothing natural, youthful, sponta- 
 neous, or intelligent about them. 
 
 Now, these are the very actors who do not work, 
 who are never where they should be, never ready 
 for their cue, and whom you constantly hear snick- 
 ering in some corner of the wings or the green- 
 room. It would be well if this race of false 
 artists could be made disgusted with the stage; 
 and that end might perhaps be attained by con- 
 vincing them that, in order to be even a passable 
 actor, one must work tremendously. 
 
 Are the suburban theatres a better school for 
 
272 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 our actors than the Conservatoire? It certainly 
 is beyond controversy that several of our most 
 distinguished artists come to us from the suburbs. 
 I could cite many names in addition to those of 
 Parade, Lafontaine, Bocage, etc. Few persons 
 know, for instance, that Monsieur Mounet-Sully, 
 the refulgent Mounet-Sully, has more than once 
 attended "general rehearsal" with his colleagues 
 in the little omnibus that carries the Montparnasse 
 troupe between Saint-Cloud, Sceaux, Crenelle, 
 and Rue de la Gaite. 
 
 The work that is done in those little theatres is 
 something prodigious. 
 
 In less than a week a long play is learned, 
 mounted, and performed ; it is genuine provincial 
 hard work, with the advantage that the actors 
 remain in the atmosphere of Paris, in the midst 
 of its bustle, and that they are able to study on 
 their respective stages the greatest actors of the 
 time, whose example is equal to the best of les- 
 sons; but how many risks one runs, how many 
 deplorable habits one is likely to contract on 
 those suburban boards ! The actor who makes his 
 ddbut there should take counsel only of his in- 
 stinct. He is thrown into the water, and he must 
 swim for his life. 
 
 It is an over-violent method; either he is 
 drowned at once, or the consciousness of the 
 danger develops in him unknown powers which 
 enable him to survive the most terrible plunges. 
 
 At the Conservatoire, on the other hand, before 
 putting you in the water, they teach you the 
 
The Actor at Work, 273 
 
 theory of natation and all its various motions. 
 But how many come forth, who, to continue our 
 image, when they are once launched upon the 
 unfamiliar element, struggle for life in accordance 
 with all the rules, and yet are drowned at last ! 
 
 To learn is not enough ; you must feel ; you 
 must understand. It is the same with all the 
 classical studies. One does not really know 
 Latin on leaving school; the noblest lines of 
 Virgil, even the sweet-smelling couplets of the 
 Georgics, have a scholastic side which repels you ; 
 the sentences still retain in your mind the pencil- 
 marks of the wearisome school editions. But on 
 some day long after, in the heart of the country, 
 the poet, freely translated by nature, suddenly 
 reveals himself to you in everything that he de- 
 scribes. The dead tongue awakes, renews its life, 
 the bees of Aristaeus fly about and buzz in your 
 ears like golden balls. On that day you know 
 Latin. 
 
 On leaving the Conservatoire you must forget 
 the professor's gestures and intonation, and try to 
 understand and act for yourself, if you do not 
 wish to remain a scholar all your life. In any 
 event, it is a severe discipline for the mind and 
 an excellent school for defective pronunciation; 
 and we firmly believe that, with an equal amount 
 of inclination to learn in the pupil, two years at 
 a suburban theatre are not equal to two years in a 
 good class at the Conservatoire, in such a class as 
 Samson's was and Regnier's is. 
 
 When they have once left the Conservatoire and 
 18 
 
i 74 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 have obtained an engagement somewhere or other, 
 with a salary, small or large, attached, our young 
 people believe that they know everything, and 
 they work no more. And yet that is the time 
 when serious studies should begin, — studies of 
 life as well as of the stage, close observation of 
 the manners, the faces, the customs, which sur- 
 round them and which they are constantly called 
 upon to reproduce; continual practice in delivery 
 and memory, and persistent reading by way of 
 supplement to an education that is almost always 
 defective. 
 
 But how many are there who interest them- 
 selves in all this? 
 
 The choice of a dressmaker or a tailor, the cut 
 of a wig or a pair of gaiters, — those are the in- 
 terests which warm the blood of our young artists 
 when they are about to create a new role. They 
 fancy that they have done everything when they 
 approach the stage with a good costumer and an 
 infallible memory. Why should we wonder that 
 their performance shows the effect of such indo- 
 lence.? It costs more than that, thank God! to 
 become a great artist. The fact is, that debu- 
 tants never exert their imaginations enough. 
 
Madame d' Epinays Dream, 275 
 
 11. 
 
 Seated at her harpsichord on a drowsy summer 
 afternoon, the Marquise d'Epinay fell asleep and 
 dreamed that she was Clairon, the great Clairon 
 of the Comedie-Francaise. Theatrical affairs and 
 theatrical people were a frequent subject of dis- 
 cussion in the marchioness's salon; indeed, 
 Grimm and Diderot had just been there, discuss- 
 ing the actor's trade and the qualities essential 
 to success therein, — Grimm sedate and logical, 
 somewhat slow of speech; Diderot with his out- 
 bursts of enthusiasm, his pythoness-like quiver- 
 ing, with the fiery eloquence, always ablaze, 
 which he would shake like a torch, and which 
 gave more light than smoke. 
 
 It was not surprising, therefore, that Madame 
 d'fipinay should dream of the stage, and, above 
 all, that she should dream of Clairon, the 
 fashionable actress, whose portrait was in the 
 Salon, whose name was in all the papers, whose 
 fame filled and wearied the four corners of the 
 earth. 
 
 The marchioness was not embarrassed in her 
 new role: she walked about her apartments, de- 
 claimed in front of her mirror, drew her eyebrows 
 
276 Between the Flies and the Footlights. 
 
 together tragically, waved her lovely arms in 
 curves like a swan's neck, in fact, was rehearsing 
 her part for the evening, and at the same time 
 despatching several business letters and private 
 notes, when two young men were announced, 
 strangers both, — one from Monsieur de Voltaire, 
 the other from Monet, the former manager of the 
 Opera-Comique. 
 
 Naturally Voltaire's protege was first admitted, 
 and presented a letter wherein the patriarch of 
 Ferney requested his fair friend to assist with her 
 advice the bearer thereof, a young gentleman, 
 whose dramatic endowments were truly extraor- 
 dinary. Clairon looked at the neophyte, an ex- 
 ceedingly comely youth whom her scrutiny did 
 not seem to abash. 
 
 "Recite something for me,'* she said. 
 
 He attacked a scene from Alzire, which he de- 
 claimed with much spirit, but with as perfect an 
 imitation of the voice and attitudes of Lekain as 
 if the great actor were behind him, speaking and 
 making the gestures. 
 
 The actress tried to make some comments. 
 Impossible. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, mademoiselle. It cannot 
 be badly done, as Monsieur Lekain does it the 
 same way. I have his manner and his intonation 
 in that passage exactly. " 
 
 "That is true," retorted La Clairon at last, tes- 
 tily ; " indeed, we have the advantage of Lekain in 
 youth and beauty. Monsieur de Voltaire made a 
 mistake in sending you to me. You are too per- 
 
Madame d'Epinays Dream, 277 
 
 feet to need lessons; I will give you a letter to 
 the Comedie, and I doubt not that you will be 
 allowed to make your debut there." 
 
 Our coxcomb withdrew enchanted. The 
 Comddie-Frangaise was about to receive one 
 more wretched actor; but is wretched a strong 
 enough term.? Do you know of anything more 
 horrible than utter absence of individuality .'' 
 
 Having rid herself of that prodigy, Mademoi- 
 selle Clairon orders the other young man to be 
 introduced; he was certainly not so handsome, 
 nor so well set up, but there was more intelli- 
 gence and animation in his features. 
 
 " In what can I serve you, my friend } " 
 
 "Madame, I propose to join the company of the 
 Theatre-Francais. " 
 
 " First of all, do not call me Madame, — call 
 me Mademoiselle; that is the title given to 
 actresses. Have you ever acted .'* " 
 
 No; he had never acted. Monsieur Monet had 
 discovered some capabilities in him and had said 
 to him, "Go and see Clairon." 
 
 So he had come, dam! 
 
 This was said in an artless tone which inter- 
 ested the actress. She bade him sit on a couch 
 beside her, then said, — 
 
 "I beg your pardon. Go and bring me my 
 work-bag which is on that console at the end of 
 the room, near the Japanese work-table." 
 
 This was a pretext to see how he walked, how 
 he carried himself. When he returned, she 
 asked him, — 
 
278 Between the Flies and the Footlights. 
 
 "You have never had occasion, have you, to 
 associate with people of quality? " 
 
 "No, mademoiselle." 
 
 " So it seems. — Let us see," she added at once, 
 to save him from embarrassment, " what are the 
 roles which you think you know best and which 
 you propose that I shall hear? " 
 
 "In the first place, mademoiselle, Ndron, in 
 Britannicus.^^ 
 
 " Ah ! yes, very good ; but first do me the favor 
 to tell me who this Neron (Nero) was, how he 
 obtained the imperial crown, what his claim was, 
 his descent, his parents, his education, his char- 
 acter, his tastes, his virtues, his vices ? I assume 
 that, having to represent him on the stage, you 
 know his life as well as you know your own, and 
 not only his life but the spirit, the manners, of 
 his time. The key to the role is to be found 
 there; the rest is simply a matter of mechanism." 
 
 The poor boy was confused, admitted that he 
 did not know a word of any of those things, lost 
 his courage at the thought of all that he must 
 learn, — in a word, displayed such genuine, pro- 
 found discouragement that Clairon, kind-hearted 
 creature that she was, was touched. She encour- 
 aged him, promised that, if he really had an incli- 
 nation for the stage, she would guide him in his 
 reading and loan him such books as he might need. 
 
 "But, meanwhile," she said, "let us see what 
 you can do. Recite to me, for instance, N6ron's 
 first scene with Narcisse and the scene in the 
 third act with Burrhus." 
 
Madame d'Epinays Dream, 279 
 
 She listened to the end without speaking, and 
 when he had finished, — 
 
 "All this is good for nothing; you act love and 
 frenzy prettily enough, but you are neither amor- 
 ous nor frantic. To be sure. Monsieur de Vol- 
 taire's protege is not to be compared to you, else 
 I should not take the trouble to say so much to 
 you; but your Neron is too automatic, — it was 
 Monsieur de Vaucanson who fashioned it. Why, 
 my poor boy, you allow him to retain the same 
 tone, the same expression, when he is with his 
 freedman Narcisse as when he is addressing 
 Burrhus, his tutor; and he such a cunning actor, 
 such an expert in falsehood and grimaces ! Did I 
 not tell you that the key to the part lay in the 
 knowledge of the man and his history } " 
 
 "That is doubtless true, madame, with refer- 
 ence to historical figures, whom we know where 
 to study. But in the case of a character in 
 comedy, one of those heroes of modern life whom 
 we see in the dramas of Monsieur Diderot and 
 Monsieur Sedaine, how are we to learn his his- 
 tory, study his character, where, in what books ? " 
 
 " In the great book of the world, which is open 
 to all, but which only seers can decipher. Copy 
 life, young man, and your acting will be accurate 
 and true: you will be what Caillot is in Syl- 
 vain, in Le Dherteur, in Lucile, in L'Amotiretcx de 
 Qiiinze Ans ; have you seen him? No.? Well, 
 go and see him ; but if you find yourself imitat- 
 ing him as that great booby who was here just now 
 imitates Lekain, do not see him any more. You 
 
28o Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 will gain more by seeing bad actors act, pro- 
 vided that you feel that they are bad, than by 
 following sublime actors step by step." 
 
 " Monsieur Monet also told me, mademoiselle, 
 that it would be well for me to visit museums, as I 
 could study the effects of passions in the pictures 
 and statues." 
 
 " Yes, doubtless, but direct observation is much 
 more valuable. As a general rule, remember that 
 you should study nature in preference to art. 
 Lastly, and above all things, have genius, — for 
 genius divines everything, replaces everything." 
 
 "And if I haven't any?" 
 
 " You must abandon acting, monsieur, or, at all 
 events, abandon all idea of obtaining the reputa- 
 tion of a great actor. You may gesticulate, you 
 may shout, you may strike attitudes, you may act 
 for the pit and the boxes; and when you visit 
 certain quarters of Paris you will have the conso- 
 lation of hearing people say that they prefer you 
 to Caillot and Lekain, and you will finally per- 
 suade yourself that you surpass them, — the 
 public is such a judicious critic, and self-esteem 
 is so credulous." 
 
 At this point Madame d'fipinay awoke with a 
 start and found herself at her harpsichord, her 
 face buried in her music and her head heavy from 
 having discoursed so long and learnedly. 
 
 Every word of this fragment, written a hundred 
 years ago, is true to-day. To-day, as then, ig- 
 norance, presumption, indolence, are the three 
 sacramental virtues of most of our actors. Some 
 
Madame d'Epinays Dream, 281 
 
 of them work, to be sure ; but very few know how 
 to work. 
 
 Apropos of a study wherein we called attention 
 to the intellectual torpor of the personnel of our 
 theatres, the actor Marais, who has died since, 
 in the prime of life and brimful of talent, wrote 
 to us, — 
 
 "But I work, monsieur, I work: some of my 
 friends can tell you that, after acting all the 
 evening, I sometimes remain out until two or 
 three o'clock in the morning, discussing ques- 
 tions relating to our art, or declaiming speeches 
 from Tartuffe or Le Misanthrope. " 
 
 That is all very well. But, as Madame d'fipi- 
 nay says, remember that you should study nature 
 in preference to art. Tartuffe and Le Misan- 
 thrope by all means, but the salons, the street, 
 the tramways and restaurants are boundless fields 
 for study also. 
 
 Copy life, watch men, speak as lovers speak, 
 who are always inclined to be confidential, 
 observe our gestures, our intonations, the way in 
 which yonder lazy fellow holds his heavy nerve- 
 less, drooping hands, the absent air with which 
 that borrower listens to you, watching for the 
 moment to "tap" you; make mentally, all the 
 time and everywhere, sketches after nature, which 
 you must do your best to reproduce as soon as 
 you are at home; and then, have genius. That 
 is the surest way of all to succeed. 
 
282 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 III. 
 
 PROVINCIAL CIRCUITS. 
 
 During the very hot months, when the asphalt 
 on the boulevards becomes heated and soft under 
 the feet, when we see no one at the play save 
 people in travelling costume, small round hats 
 and plaid jackets, — at that season our actors 
 organize flocks like the swallows, to emigrate 
 into the departments. 
 
 It is like the cross-over figure in a quadrille; 
 for the provincial actors come to Paris at the 
 same time of year to seek engagements for the 
 coming season, one and all cherishing in their 
 hearts a vague hope of finding an opening at one 
 of our Parisian theatres, and of achieving at last 
 the success, the salary, and the consideration 
 which even the largest provincial towns only 
 partially afford them. 
 
 It is a hard trade that those poor creatures 
 follow. Playing before an audience of limited 
 size, especially if we compare it to the crowd 
 which fills all our theatres every evening, they 
 are obliged to know a large number of parts in 
 order to give novelty to the announcements, 
 which soon become familiar and stale. In that 
 way they hardly have time to learn, never to 
 
Provincial Circuits, 283 
 
 study, to sink their own identity in that of the 
 character they represent, to make the most of all 
 the resources of a role. Although this enforced 
 variety in their labors makes them supple, com- 
 pels them to practise a wide range of intonations 
 and attitudes, they lose steadiness, and even the 
 taste for serious work; for a clever actor, after 
 playing the leading part in a melodrama, is often 
 obliged to perform in an opera the same evening. 
 
 We can understand, in view of such disadvan- 
 tages, the longing of those unfortunate artists to 
 obtain a hearing here. So they all pass the whole 
 of their vacation going up and down the dark 
 stairways of theatrical agencies, at first pitilessly 
 refusing to listen to a suggestion of anything 
 that is not Paris or a station on the road to Paris ; 
 then, when September arrives, after refusing 
 Nantes or Nevers as too far away, too "provin- 
 cial," forced to sign an engagement for Barcelona 
 or New Orleans. 
 
 Meanwhile the fortunate Parisian actors are 
 executing, singly or in flocks, their provincial 
 circuits. Sometimes an impresario arranges the 
 affair, signs the contracts with the managers of 
 the different theatres, and assumes all the respon- 
 sibility at his own risk; sometimes the actors 
 club together, with salaries proportioned to the 
 services rendered, and assume all the risks of the 
 undertaking. 
 
 It is an excellent way of utilizing the vacation 
 months, for it rarely happens that these expedi- 
 tions fail to show a profit. 
 
284 Between the Flies ajid the Footlights, 
 
 Moreover, the actor, naturally nomadic and 
 fond of change, finds therein a means of gratify- 
 ing the craving for movement which has always 
 tormented him since the days of Thespis' chariot. 
 
 But the methods of transportation have changed 
 somewhat since them. To-day Thespis has aban- 
 doned her chariot to strolling players and gypsies ; 
 and if Captain Fracasse should undertake to fol- 
 low the charming Ysabelle in these days of ours, 
 his adventures would all be concerned with rail- 
 way stations, trains missed, tickets lost, and dis- 
 putes over extra luggage. 
 
 Gone also is the time when Wilhelm Meister 
 discussed with his companions in the coach the 
 proper way to act Shakespeare, whether Hamlet 
 should be fair or dark, stout or thin. 
 
 Actors nowadays travel by express train and 
 give but little thought en route to any other sub- 
 ject than the probable merits of the hotel at which 
 they are to stay. 
 
 As little as possible is left unprovided for, to 
 depend upon chance. 
 
 The programme of the plays to be given and 
 the number of performances is agreed upon in 
 advance with the manager, who has furnished in- 
 formation concerning the quality of his audiences, 
 and has selected from the repertory the plays 
 which he considers best adapted to their tastes ; 
 for we must not imagine that the provinces accept 
 blindly, with admiration made to order, the 
 Parisian troupes which come to them heralded by 
 newspaper puffs, and which usually include per- 
 
Provincial Circuits, 285 
 
 haps two or three celebrities surrounded by a 
 crowd of people of moderate talent. 
 
 Just the opposite happens as a general rule. 
 Each town has its favorite actors, whom it praises 
 and patronizes with a sort of local self-esteem, 
 and who form a part of its monuments, its curiosi- 
 ties. How many times have we heard provincial 
 subscribers to their local theatres say : 
 
 " We have a Trial here, and a Dtigazon, — your 
 Paris theatres have nobody to compare with 
 them." 
 
 It is rarely true; but it indicates a tendency 
 to extravagant admiration of their own people 
 which constitutes a real danger to travelling com- 
 panies. They should be prepared, therefore, for 
 severe disappointment. 
 
 The question of the repertory is very import- 
 ant. Plays that are too Parisian in tone fall flat 
 before the ignorance of the spectators, do not 
 take, and arouse prejudices. 
 
 Again, they sometimes arrive at a town rent by 
 a local quarrel of which they know nothing, and 
 to which the situations, the most innocent pas- 
 sages in the most inoffensive work seem to 
 allude. That is why it is the first duty of a good 
 impresario to become thoroughly familiar with 
 the territory to be covered by his troupe. 
 
 Generally speaking, whether they go to applaud 
 or to criticise, the provincial audience goes to 
 the theatre to see the Parisians. There are some 
 towns where ** society " goes there at no other 
 time. 
 
286 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 And what memories our celebrities have some- 
 times left behind them upon stages which they 
 have simply passed across ! Those memories 
 save them forever from oblivion, from the speedy 
 burial which Paris gives to its lions, knowing 
 that there are others at hand awaiting their turn. 
 
 How many old names, fougotten among us, still 
 live in the provinces in all their glory! 
 
 The arrival of the actors is an event. When 
 they have left the railway station they belong to 
 the public, which stares at them and examines 
 them. When there are great men, famous men 
 among them, there is always a little disappoint- 
 ment. 
 
 " What ! is that So-and-So ? " 
 
 They are surprised to see those famous artists 
 appear in simple travelling-caps, carrying in their 
 hands hat -boxes in which their haloes must be 
 sadly cramped. 
 
 On the streets, on the esplanade, people point 
 them out to one another, follow them uncere- 
 moniously, for they know that such curiosity does 
 not embarrass them in the least, and that an 
 actor walks all the better when some one is 
 looking at him. 
 
 It rarely happens that their presence in a town 
 does not give birth to some vocation for the 
 drama. Little plays are submitted to them, as 
 to which, "I should be very glad to have your 
 opinion." 
 
 Nor is this the only agreeable feature of his 
 journey to an actor on circuit. His self-esteem 
 
Provincial Circuits, 287 
 
 IS gratified in every way. First of all, he has the 
 satisfaction of creating parts which he has longed 
 for, and which the predilection of manager or 
 authors has hitherto intrusted to other inter- 
 preters. 
 
 Vanity aside, the genuine artist who does not 
 confine himself to servile imitation may derive 
 great enjoyment in the way of gratified curiosity 
 and emulation. 
 
 In truth, a role may be understood in more ways 
 than one, and an actor always believes that he 
 has found the best way. And then how many 
 stars of the second magnitude pass quickly and 
 easily into the ranks of the first magnitude upon 
 boards where comparisons do not exist or are 
 favorable ! A name that is printed in almost 
 imperceptible letters at the Gymnase or Porte- 
 Saint-Martin, appears in huge capitals at the top 
 of the posters. 
 
 The return to Paris seems hard after this expe- 
 rience, and one consoles himself for being obliged 
 to return to the ranks with the thought that for 
 one month he has been a "star." 
 
 Sometimes it happens that the troupe which 
 came from Paris is not complete and is recruited 
 from the local actors. In such cases the "star" 
 proffers advice as to the proper method of inter- 
 preting the role, and does it with a charming 
 affability due to his great superiority. 
 
 Sometimes he goes so far as to promise to use 
 his influence with a Parisian manager. This 
 often gives rise to strange disillusionings. The 
 
288 Between the Flies and the Footlights. 
 
 point of view is so different; the light of Paris 
 is so bright, so pitiless in revealing defects ! 
 
 Some one discovers at Bordeaux or Toulouse 
 a wonderful jeiine premier, a Delaunay at twenty. 
 He is brought to Paris. He makes his debut at 
 the Theatre-F'rancais, and it is found, but too 
 late, that he is a provincial Delaunay and will 
 always remain one ! 
 
 Paris is full of these actors, who are destined to 
 shine only in peripatetic theatres. They should 
 organize a company once and for all, find an 
 experienced manager, and go hence never to 
 return; for they are swallows whose return no 
 one desires. 
 
Theatrical Mournmg, 289 
 
 IV. 
 
 THEATRICAL MOUR>:iNG. 
 Dialogue between two Orchestra Chairs, 
 
 " What 's the matter ? Why do you crumple up 
 that newspaper so angrily? Does the play bore 
 you?" 
 
 "Faith, no, for I 'm not listening to it. It's 
 this article I have just read, — one of the stereo- 
 typed articles that recur five or six times a year 
 with the irritating monotony of a flat, sentimental 
 refrain, as hackneyed and as false as the patriotic 
 ballad with which Monsieur Cooper is just now 
 torturing our ears. Oh! the idiotic sentimental- 
 ism, the misplaced enthusiasm, the judgment 
 which limps and stumbles in all the ruts of the 
 conventional ! " 
 
 " But what is it all about? " 
 
 " B , the actor, who has just lost his daugh- 
 ter and took part in a benefit performance two 
 days after." 
 
 " Oh, the poor man ! " 
 
 "Bah! nonsense. You're just like the re- 
 porter. You groan over the fate of that despair- 
 ing father who goes upon the boards, paints his 
 face, puts on a wig and a pasteboard forehead, to 
 try and make us laugh on returning from a funeral 
 
 19 
 
290 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 at which he has wept so bitterly ! Morbleu ! if 
 the fellow's grief was so great as they say, who 
 compelled him to reappear so soon? " 
 
 "His manager, probably, or his contract." 
 " I don't believe a word of it. What manager 
 would be inhuman enough to deny a father the 
 right to weep for his child a day or two, and force 
 him to come on the stage with red eyes only 
 partly wiped? And if by any chance there were 
 such a manager, where would he find a court and 
 judges to justify him? Judges are men, after all. 
 Impassive law is not the only thing that occupies 
 a seat among them. There is pity, too, — the 
 fellow-feeling of man for man; and I cannot 
 imagine that an actor who appeared at the bar, 
 dressed in black, in the black that is much more 
 dismal and solemn than that worn by lawyers, 
 and who should say just this : * Messieurs, my 
 daughter's death was a great blow to me. It was 
 impossible for me to return to the stage for a 
 fortnight,' — I cannot believe that such an unfor- 
 tunate creature would be sentenced to pay a fine 
 or to any sort of penalty, just because his voice 
 refused to sing and his sorrow to be amusing." 
 
 " In very truth, my dear fellow, you seem to me 
 to be led astray by an excessive and unjust sen- 
 sitiveness. It vexes you to see an author reap- 
 pear en the stage so soon after the death of one 
 of his nearest relations; but you do not cry out 
 against the grocer at the street corner, who, on 
 the day after his wife's death, takes his place 
 bright and early behind his counter, crushing 
 
Theatrical Mourning, 291 
 
 sugar and grinding coffee with great courage. 
 Why, some shopkeepers have actually made use 
 of invitations to a funeral as advertisements; and 
 do you think that the announcement, * His be- 
 reaved widow will continue the business,' is an 
 invention of the petty newspapers? However, 
 without going so far as these extravagant exhibi- 
 tions of selfishness, these instances of atrophy of 
 the moral sense which the constant thought of 
 money sometimes produces, the story of your 
 actor is to some extent the story of all of us. 
 One hardly has time to stoop over the friend, the 
 relative, who has fallen, — for life is there, close 
 on your heels, urging you on and crowding you; 
 you must rise speedily, resume your place in the 
 ranks, and march forward. That is why the crowds 
 in large cities are so sad to contemplate. You 
 rub elbows with despair, with recent mourning, 
 visible in furtive tears behind long black veils; 
 you hear nervous voices still trembling with im- 
 precations or sobs; but they all hurry along none 
 the less, mingle with the passing stream without 
 pausing long at the gloomy shores where one can 
 weep for one's dead undisturbed. In the country 
 it is even more striking. The land does not wait ; 
 the cattle require their daily pasturage. It is 
 impossible to postpone ploughing or reaping, for 
 the seasons change pitilessly. And so while the 
 master, in the upper chamber of the farmhouse 
 or the mill, feels his last hour draw nigh, the 
 usual occupations are uninterrupted, the ploughs 
 go forth, the cattle return, the laborers in the 
 
292 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 fields sow seeds which he will never see above the 
 ground; and no sooner is he buried in the little 
 village cemetery than his widow, her eyes swollen 
 with weeping, sweeps the living-room, lights the 
 fire, and prepares the noonday meal for the chil- 
 dren and servants immediately after laying aside 
 her ample funeral cloak. " 
 
 "What you say is true. But all the occupa- 
 tions you cite are manual, material, give employ- 
 ment to the physical being only. It is, in short, 
 the stern law of toil imposed upon mankind ever 
 since the world began to revolve. There is noth- 
 ing offensive to me in the association of this idea 
 of enforced labor with the idea of mourning. 
 But in the actor's profession there is an element 
 of choice, of enjoyment, of uselessness, a constant 
 display of militant vanity which seems incom- 
 patible with true grief. In fact, it is not a pro- 
 fession; it is an art." 
 
 " Yes, it is an art ; but be careful of your words. 
 If the actor who appears on the stage on the day 
 following a cruel bereavement ruffles your deli- 
 cacy of sentiment and makes you long to hiss 
 him vigorously in order to teach him discretion 
 and propriety, what will you say of the writer 
 whose necessities compel him to blacken paper 
 under circumstances no less painful? Do you 
 remember the ghastly yet eloquent scene in one 
 of Balzac's books, where Rubempre writes his 
 horrible couplets by the light of the tapers gleam- 
 ing about Coralie's dead body.? Perhaps it may 
 seem to you a romantic invention. In that case, 
 
Theatrical Mourning, 293 
 
 I can cite an example from real life, almost as 
 brutal and cruel as that. I had in my hands 
 recently the correspondence of one of the most 
 illustrious writers of this age, who died a few 
 years since. In one of those letters, written 
 toward the close of his career, the poor great 
 poet, condemned by fate to excessive, unremit- 
 ting toil with his pen, compared himself to a cart- 
 horse that had * fallen in the shafts,' and thinking 
 of the heavy load he had been dragging for thirty 
 years, he declared that he had never had the 
 right to rest, to lay aside his task for one moment, 
 *that even during the week when his mother died, 
 he had written his feuilleton, and that that feuil- 
 leton paid the funeral expenses. ' — I confess that 
 I shuddered when I read that sentence which I 
 should not venture even to repeat, were it not 
 that the letter from which it is taken is soon to 
 appear with the whole of the poet's correspond- 
 ence. What impression does that letter make 
 upon you } Will you vent your wrath upon that 
 man also.? I am sure not; and yet his case is 
 identical with your actor's. What distinction 
 can you make between them.? Why are they 
 not equally entitled to your respect and your 
 sympathy } " 
 
 There was one of those pauses which follow an 
 unanswerable argument, and which we may com- 
 pare to the failure of respiration caused by a blow 
 with a fist on the chest. In a moment one of the 
 two voices continued : 
 
 " Well, yes, I believe you are right ! It may 
 
294 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 be that this actor, who acted on the day after his 
 daughter's funeral, was driven to it by one of the 
 unnatural necessities of existence of which you 
 were just speaking. But I wish that he need not 
 be praised for his action ; I would prefer not to 
 read on every occasion this everlasting, tearful, 
 hackneyed article which made me so angry and 
 led up to our discussion: 'Poor father! Coura- 
 geous artist ! To think that while he was making 
 us laugh until our sides ached, he was thinking 
 of his child and weeping inwardly!' — Or this: 
 * Unfortunate wife, brave-hearted actress, com- 
 pelled to sing, to grimace, to sharpen with all 
 her roguish wit the point of an obscene line, 
 while she knows that her husband is in the death 
 agony and is not sure of finding him alive when 
 she returns home ! ' — When one has read that 
 stuff five times, ten times, in a year, how is one 
 to avoid losing his temper? And if you knew the 
 influence such articles have on actors, on those 
 great children who are always longing to be 
 stared at, who think of nothing but producing an 
 effect or a sensation, and who strike attitudes 
 everywhere, even under the most depressing cir- 
 cumstances ! Deceived as to the public feeling, 
 led astray too by the false glare of the stage to 
 which their profession accustoms them, there 
 comes a time when their idea of what honor re- 
 quires is sadly distorted : ' My daughter died 
 yesterday. No matter; I promised to appear at 
 this benefit, and appear I will. Professional 
 duty before everything ! ' — The truth is that the 
 
Theatrical Mourning, 295 
 
 actor loves to act, that he cannot do without 
 acting. Be assured that the poet when he wrote 
 that terrible feidlleton of which the letter speaks, 
 wrote it with difficulty, in a frenzy of grief, in a 
 solitary room, made larger and colder by the ab- 
 sence of the loved one, where everything reminded 
 him of his loss. The actor, on the other hand, 
 when he is once on the stage, * in his goodman's 
 skin,' as they say, has entirely forgotten his mis- 
 fortune; he has forgotten it for a whole evening, 
 in the intoxication of the brilliant light and the 
 applause of the crowd. And it is just because I 
 feel that he has forgotten it, because I feel that 
 he has greatly enjoyed entertaining us, that, 
 despite all your excellent arguments, there is 
 something which wounds me in the lowest depths 
 of my human ego in his too great haste to return 
 to the boards. Moreover, all actors do not fall 
 into this absurd and inhuman exaggeration of 
 professional duty. For example, here is an anec- 
 dote that I once heard of the excellent* Lafontaine, 
 at the time of his charming evenings at the Gym- 
 nase; I cannot say that it is true, but it is 
 entirely consistent with the character of the man, 
 whom you knew as well as I. One evening, a few 
 moments before it was time for him to go on the 
 stage, Lafontaine received a despatch stating that 
 his old father, who then lived in the suburbs of 
 Paris, was seriously ill and wished to see him at 
 once. In the twinkling of an eye the distracted 
 actor, who was three fourths made up, unmade 
 his face, dressed himself, left his dressing-room 
 
296 Between the Flies ajid the Footlights, 
 
 at full speed, and rushed down the stairs, deaf to 
 the lamentations of stage manager and acting 
 manager. 
 
 " 'Where are you going, you villain ? The hall 
 is full ! ' 
 
 " ' No matter, make an announcement, return 
 the money, change your play. ' 
 
 "'But — ' 
 
 " ' There is no but. You cannot force me to 
 act with this knife through my heart. In the 
 first place, I could not do it. I should be think- 
 ing all the time that my father was likely to die 
 without seeing me. I should be quite capable of 
 sobbing bitterly or running away in the middle 
 of a scene. ' 
 
 " In vain did they implore, threaten him with 
 a lawsuit; it was all unavailing, the actor took 
 flight, and the Gymnase did without him that 
 evening. It seems to me that that incident con- 
 firms my opinion and condemns all those who do 
 not behave as he did. Instead of stalking 
 through the wings with a long face, heaving 
 heart-breaking sighs, giving and receiving sym- 
 pathetic clasps of the hand, inviting the whole 
 staff, prompter included, to say, * My poor fel- 
 low ! ' in accordance with the usual programme in 
 such cases, Lafontaine went to embrace his father, 
 perhaps saved himself from bitter remorse, and 
 spared us poor devils the annoyance of reading in 
 the newspapers the famous article : * Unfortunate 
 son! Courageous artist ! To think that, etc. ' 
 
 " The charm of the story lies in the fact that 
 
Theatrical Mourning. 297 
 
 Lafontaine, on reaching his destination, found 
 his father playing his game of piquet with a 
 neighbor, as he did every evening. When his son 
 appeared the old man began to laugh, — 
 
 "* I gave you a fine fright, didn't I, my boy? 
 But what could I do ? I felt horribly depressed, 
 full of black thoughts ; I longed to embrace you, 
 and as I knew you were not acting — come, don't 
 scold me, but sit you down, and we '11 have a 
 pleasant evening together. ' " 
 
 I had not heard of this denouement, but, no 
 matter, I persist in the opinion that Lafontaine 
 is a fine fellow and that he was quite right to do 
 as he did. 
 
298 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 V. 
 
 STAGE-SETTING AND REHEARSALS. 
 I. 
 
 In the days of Tartuffe and Le Misanthrope, it 
 would have been very hard to arrange any sort of 
 a stage-setting, with the double row of noblemen 
 standing along both sides of the stage, encroach- 
 ing upon it and throwing everything into confu- 
 sion by going noisily in and out, sometimes too 
 by practical jokes, as on the evening when a cer- 
 tain marquis in merry mood conceived the idea of 
 taking with him, and installing in the reserved 
 places, as many hunchbacks as he could find. 
 Under such conditions, upon a stage so largely 
 monopolized, the actors had no choice but to 
 confine themselves to their acting and to their 
 delivery, without seeking any considerable 
 scenic effect. The author's stage directions 
 sufficed for that. 
 
 A dramatic writer now little known, Chapu- 
 zeau, a contemporary of Moliere, tells us in a 
 very interesting and very rare little book, in the 
 chapter on Rehearsals, that " the author is always 
 present and assists the actor if he falls into any 
 error, if he does not grasp the meaning, if he de- 
 parts from what is natural in voice or gesture, if 
 
Stage-Setting and Rehearsals. 299 
 
 he displays more fire than is fitting in passages 
 which demand some fire. The intelligent actor 
 too is at liberty to give advice at these rehearsals, 
 without giving offence to his comrade, because 
 the pleasure of the public is concerned." We 
 must believe that at that time actors were less 
 sensitive than in our day; for, even though the 
 pleasure of the public be never so much con- 
 cerned, our theatrical characters rarely accord the 
 right of criticism to a comrade. 
 
 As for leaving to the author alone the respon- 
 sibility of staging his play, that was possible in 
 Chapuzeau's time, when it was simply a matter 
 of " assisting the actor as to his voice or gesture ; " 
 but with all the complications of the modern 
 stage, that has become very difificult, for the 
 scenic perspective does not approach very closely 
 that of life and requires special study. 
 
 Certain of our authors, however, arrange the 
 stage-setting of their works themselves. 
 
 Monsieur Sardou, for example, sits in the man- 
 ager's seat and allows no one to come near him 
 while he is directing his rehearsals. He comes 
 with his play all mounted in his head. He 
 knows beforehand when his characters will sit 
 down, rise, cross the stage; he can tell the exact 
 location of every property and whether a certain 
 door should open out or in. 
 
 You feel that while writing his comedy he 
 acted it, that he saw it at the same time that he 
 composed it; and it is in fact most essential to 
 consider the action as well as the words in an art 
 
300 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 in which the eyes are as good judges as the 
 thought. 
 
 But all dramatic authors are not like Monsieur 
 Sardou, who has given his life exclusively to the 
 stage and knows all the nooks and corners of the 
 trade. There are some whom the boards terrify ; 
 who, while they have a very clear and well- 
 defined vision of what they have conceived, are 
 unable to describe it so that others may under- 
 stand and interpret it, and who lack assurance at 
 rehearsals because they feel that they are awk- 
 ward in expressing their ideas in gesticulation and 
 declamation. And then there are suggestions to 
 be made to the actors. 
 
 The excellent Chapuzeau speaks of it very 
 unconcernedly; but it is more of a task than 
 one would think "to assist the actor." 
 
 In the first place, when the author is young 
 and the work in question is one of his first, the 
 rehearsals cause the curious intoxication which 
 the sculptor or the painter feels as his sketch 
 progresses, as his thought takes form and becomes 
 a work. Everything seems beautiful, grand, to 
 him. The actor must needs be a stutterer, and 
 a terrible one at that, to prevent a debutant in 
 dramatic writing from experiencing a sensation 
 of pure enjoyment as he hears his prose or his 
 verse declaimed. 
 
 Later, when experience has come, if he sees 
 that the sentiments he has tried to express are dis- 
 figured by their interpretation, he is always some- 
 what embarrassed about mentioning that fact. 
 
Stage-Setting and Rehearsals. 301 
 
 It is so disagreeable to say to a man who 
 claims to know his business : 
 
 "You are mistaken; that 's not right." 
 
 In such a case the actor has innumerable an- 
 swers to make ; he appeals to his experience, his 
 familiarity with the public. He knows what 
 takes and what does not take. 
 
 You are very fortunate if he does not close 
 your mouth with some disgusting remark taken 
 from the vocabulary of the wings, like \h2X. jeune 
 premier^ whom one of our friends requested to 
 deliver more quietly an amorous speech which 
 he failed to understand and spoiled by loud 
 declamation. 
 
 "It isn't possible," the actor remonstrated. 
 "I can never say that passage in that way; / 
 haven t it in my legs.'^ 
 
 He had not that passage in his legs ! What 
 answer can you make to such objections as that.? 
 The best way is to yield, unless you prefer to 
 be confronted by a concentrated ill-humor, a 
 determination to submit under protest, expressed 
 by a drawing in of the lips, a stiff, conventional 
 attitude, the nonchalant air of a man who seems 
 to say : " I will do what you wish; but I wash my 
 hands of all responsibility." 
 
 Whereupon, if you distrust yourself ever so 
 little, you are full of doubts and fears until the 
 first performance has proved you to be right or 
 wrong. 
 
 With a good stage manager beside him the 
 author avoids all these annoyances; but a good 
 
302 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 stage manager is a very rare thing, for the post 
 demands much flexibility and tact in addition to 
 great scenic intelligence. 
 
 The audience, watching the performance of a 
 play, has no suspicion of all the work required 
 to stage and direct a plot that seems to it so 
 natural. Not an intonation, not a gesture that 
 has not been agreed upon beforehand, that does 
 not form part of a carefully thought-out whole. 
 The least important passages — that is the term 
 applied to the going and coming across the stage 
 — have been the subjects of long discussions. 
 
 If there are many people on the stage, you 
 must arrange the position of each one, make the 
 groups harmonize with one another, give the 
 characters who are not speaking something to do, 
 and at the same time concentrate the interest at 
 the really vital point, so that it may not be dis- 
 tributed indifferently in all the corners. If, on 
 the other hand, there are only two people in 
 sight, you must see to it that they alone fill the 
 whole stage, you must make them begin the scene 
 in one corner, continue it in another, keep up 
 the action without interruption and avoid leaving 
 one side of the stage too long unoccupied and 
 cold. 
 
 These matters are elementary in the trade, but 
 one must thoroughly understand them and proceed 
 cautiously, especially when confronted by a deli- 
 cate situation, by one of those dangerous scenes, 
 brittle as spun glass, in which everything depends 
 on the appropriate grouping of the characters. 
 
Stage- Setting and Rehearsals, 303 
 
 The stage manager undertakes to arrange all 
 these things, — after taking the author's advice, 
 of course. 
 
 Skilful management consists in bringing the 
 leading idea of the play into relief, in concentrat- 
 ing the light on the proper points, in a word, — 
 the stage being always to some extent a picture, 
 — in paying special attention to the foreground 
 and leaving in a sort of vague perspective the 
 defects or weaknesses of the work and its 
 interpretation. 
 
 How great a store of patience this requires! 
 How many battles must be fought, now with the 
 author, now with the actors ! In the most per- 
 fectly constructed play one always discovers, 
 when it is subjected to the test of rehearsals, 
 situations which end too abruptly or passages of 
 wearisome length unnoticed in the reading. 
 
 The author must be induced to lengthen or cut 
 a scene. 
 
 To lengthen — that is easily done; but as to 
 cutting — especially if the dramatist happens to 
 be a writer at the same time, and has exerted 
 himself to frame his drama in fine language — he 
 will be very hard to convince. 
 
 Nor is the stage manager's situation more 
 agreeable with regard to the actors. There again 
 there are susceptibilities to be handled gingerly, 
 and surly temperaments and self-esteem always 
 raw and ready to bleed at the slightest touch. 
 
 At the first rehearsals all goes well. The 
 actors are in a fine frenzy of creation ; they study, 
 
304 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 they work, they ponder; but if the studies last 
 too long, their ardor dies out. They grow weary 
 and lose their enthusiasm. 
 
 Those who know their lines thoroughly lose 
 their patience because of the slow progress caused 
 by denser or less experienced intellects. The 
 manager is the scapegoat; he is assailed on every 
 side. Some great actors, spoiled by long- 
 continued success, have nerves like a pretty 
 woman's and impose no restraint on them. 
 
 How many times we have seen poor Felix, an 
 actor by instinct rather than by study, albeit 
 a most estimable man, lose his temper over thp 
 length of a rehearsal and hurl his book over 
 the footlights ! " I won't rehearse any more — 
 sapristi!'' 
 
 The manager, unmoved, would pick up the 
 book and read the lines that day in place of Felix, 
 who would return the next day as if nothing had 
 happened. 
 
 A good manager should be able at any moment 
 to fill the place of any and every character in the 
 play under rehearsal; that is why the post is 
 generally given to a former actor who has been 
 compelled by advancing years or some infirmity 
 to abandon the stage, like the excellent Davesnes, 
 who was stage manager at the Th^atre-Francais 
 for twenty-five years. 
 
 Monsieur Dubois-Davesnes, a graduate of the 
 Conservatoire, had had a very thorough dramatic 
 education and made a successful debut, but he 
 felt that his small stature would always be an 
 
Stage-Setting and Rehearsals, 305 
 
 obstacle to his advancement, and he left the 
 stage very suddenly. 
 
 He was a typical stage manager, a very small 
 man, very mild and courteous, very discreet; 
 but he took fire as soon as he stepped on the 
 boards, bustled about in all directions, declaiming 
 one after another, in different voices, passages 
 from all the roles, — noble fathers, despairing 
 mothers, innocent maidens, adulterous wives; and 
 withal very modest and deferential when he had 
 to deal with such actors as Got, Coquelin, or De- 
 launay; nevertheless those eminent artists, know- 
 ing their manager's worth, never failed to come 
 to him at the end of each rehearsal and ask, — 
 
 " Well, Monsieur Davesnes, are you satisfied ? " 
 
 When the play is thoroughly "disentangled," 
 when the parts are learned, the effects decided 
 upon, it is customary for the acting manager in 
 person to watch the final rehearsals. 
 
 Some of these gentlemen know nothing about 
 it and spoil the work already accomplished; 
 others, on the contrary, are consummate masters 
 of their duties. No one ever understood better 
 than Monsieur Montigny the art of staging bour- 
 geois plays. 
 
 He was one of the first to break loose from 
 solemn traditions, introducing on the stage the 
 natural and familiar incidents of real life, those 
 honest, kindly roles which are played with the 
 back, with the hands in the pockets. 
 
 Monsieur Perrin always aimed at beautiful 
 stage-pictures; he remembered that he had been 
 
 20 
 
3o6 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 manager of the Opera, and was a little cramped 
 in the classic repertory which his decorative in- 
 ventions caused to crack in all directions. 
 
 Before him Monsieur fidouard Thierry, a very 
 bright and well-informed man, aimed to present a 
 moral stage-setting, so to speak, and in modern 
 plays became the collaborator of his authors. 
 
 Monsieur Hostein, like Monsieur Marc Fournier 
 long before, was an admirable master of stage 
 effects from the point of view of the masses. Give 
 him all the multicolored costumes of a fairy ex- 
 travaganza or a great historical play to group, 
 and he would produce a marvellous picture. 
 
 Monsieur Carvalho is the most artistic, the 
 most original of all. His only fault is a con- 
 suming activity, a poetic imagination which al- 
 ways leaves him dissatisfied with what he has 
 devised, because he is so anxious to devise some- 
 thing better. He destroys one day what he made 
 the night before; and when the play is ready, one 
 must positively snatch it from his hands. 
 
 Parisian managers have the fault of keeping 
 their plays in rehearsal too long. A play which 
 is unhappily destined to enjoy only a very limited 
 number of performances is likely to have had an 
 incalculable number of rehearsals, thereby re- 
 minding one of those exotic plants which are cul- 
 tivated a hundred years, to bloom for a single 
 day. 
 
Stage-Setting and Rehearsals, 2P7 
 
 In Moliere's lifetime, the most perfect mas- 
 terpieces required little more than a week of 
 rehearsals. 
 
 Doubtless there was an opening there for im- 
 provisation of the Italian sort, and we must 
 admit that the complications and perfection of 
 modern stage-setting require much more time 
 and labor. 
 
 But what can any one gain by studies prolonged 
 beyond all reason.^ By dint of digging and 
 delving in a role, one always finds the bottom at 
 last, or goes astray at last in the search for it. 
 
 It generally happens, too, that the actors, feel- 
 ing that they have unlimited time before them, 
 go about their work lazily, and out of fifty re- 
 hearsals not more than twenty are of any value. 
 The other thirty simply serve to bore and surfeit 
 all concerned. 
 
 The glowing enthusiasm of the early rehearsals 
 having once died away, they all go through their 
 parts with a feeling of distaste, and in this first, 
 negligent interpretation the faults of the play 
 naturally stand out in bolder relief, while its 
 good qualities are less striking. 
 
 By degrees the actor's confidence becomes im- 
 paired in this constant discussion at the front of 
 the stage, this hesitation, this groping. 
 
 Soon tiring of repeating the same words again 
 and again, he contents himself with a mere sug- 
 gestion of his gestures and tones, and if you re- 
 prove him, he replies with a smile: 
 
 " Never fear. That 's not the way I shall act." 
 
3o8 Between the Flies and the Footlights. 
 
 Unluckily bad habits are acquired more easily 
 than they are abandoned, and you may be sure 
 that it is just the way he will act. Sometimes, 
 again, this study of a work lasts so long, every- 
 body is so bored and exhausted, that you are 
 compelled to stop work several days before the 
 performance and leave an interval between the 
 first and last rehearsals. 
 
 Such interruption almost always has an unfortu- 
 nate effect. How many suggestions have been for- 
 gotten and must be repeated, how many faults have 
 become inveterate, ineradicable, and, above all, 
 how much of the author's time has been wasted ! 
 
 Indeed, far too little thought is given to the 
 cost in hours, days, months, entailed by the prep- 
 aration of a historical work, to the time required 
 to write it, to procure its acceptance, and, lastly, 
 to have it properly rehearsed ! 
 
 But is it absolutely essential that the author 
 should attend all rehearsals.'* Most assuredly, 
 especially when the study of his play is unduly 
 protracted. If he is absent the actors lose inter- 
 est in his work. He must be there, always there, 
 to sustain and encourage them, to compliment 
 them, to take the place of the absent audience, 
 the glare of the footlights, and the applause. 
 
 It is no trivial task; and when he has performed 
 that duty forty or fifty days in succession, the 
 unhappy author ends by execrating his work. 
 
 Another thing that seems to us a great abuse is 
 the dress rehearsal, — at all events, as it is usually 
 conducted. 
 
Stage-Setting and Rehearsals, 309 
 
 At the present time it is simply a sort of first 
 performance "before letter," where the friends 
 of the author, of the manager, of the actors, are 
 convoked to applaud the play and predict for it an 
 immense success. 
 
 Given under such conditions, on the day before 
 or perhaps the very day of the first nigJit, these 
 rehearsals iri extremis can be of no benefit to any- 
 body but scene-shifters and costumers. 
 
 The dressmaker makes sure that the ingenue' s 
 apron with shoulder straps reflects the light pret- 
 tily. The gasman determines in consultation 
 with the decorator how high the footlights shall 
 be turned up. The leader of the claque indicates 
 to his lieutenants the speeches to be applauded, 
 the entries to be made for the actors. 
 
 But in what way can this dress rehearsal benefit 
 the author.^ To no purpose are all the chande- 
 liers in the hall lighted ; the poor devil is uncon- 
 scious of it all. His play is so familiar to him, 
 he is so accustomed to the voices and gestures of 
 the actors, that he can no longer distinguish the 
 good from the bad, and submits in every point to 
 the decisions of the stage authorities. 
 
 And his friends.? On such an occasion friends 
 are debarred from giving their opinion, for several 
 reasons. The first is that on a dress rehearsal 
 day few persons are able to remain clear-headed 
 and give an opinion of any value. 
 
 There is so much difference between a play 
 acted before a small group of friends and the 
 same play acted before a crowded theatre. The 
 
3IO Betwee7i the Flies mid the Footlights, 
 
 acoustic properties are entirely different. They 
 who listened to you yesterday were in the secret, 
 a chosen band; to-day you have before you a 
 crowd of twelve to fifteen hundred auditors, and 
 they are far more difficult to arouse. 
 
 In all the contrary currents that run hither and 
 thither in a crowded hall, the interest in your 
 drama seems to be scattered, disseminated, and 
 you are amazed to find that a phrase which had 
 produced a tremendous effect at the dress re- 
 hearsal the day before falls flat on the first night, 
 as if stifled by lack of space and air. 
 
 Everybody is misled by these infernal rehears- 
 als, the oldest actors, the most experienced man- 
 agers. How can the author's friends, blinded by 
 their friendship, fail to be deceived t Moreover, 
 assuming that anybody did retain his clearness of 
 vision, what good would it do the day before the 
 performance? By all means, go to an author 
 overwhelmed with fatigue, with vexations of all 
 sorts, who sees the end of his agony close at hand, 
 go to actors who are always sure of themselves, 
 go to a manager who has already sold half of his 
 house, and try to make them believe that their 
 play offends in this or that place, that a whole 
 act must be rewritten, and the production post- 
 poned for a fortnight. 
 
 You will be looked upon as a jealous fellow, a 
 marplot, and they will be very careful not to 
 heed what you say. The wisest course, therefore, 
 is to hold your peace, since anything you might 
 suggest would come too late and do no good. 
 
Stage- Set ti7tg and Rehearsals, 3 1 1 
 
 Once or twice, however, I have seen, at the 
 end of a dress rehearsal, an author, illumined by 
 a sudden flash of intelligence, admit that his play 
 was too long. 
 
 *'Very well! let us cut it," said the manager. 
 
 Whereupon everybody at once took a hand in 
 the work. 
 
 They cut, they pruned, they exploded the mine, 
 and whole scenes blew up during the night. But 
 as it was all done in too great a hurry, it was 
 apparent on the evening of the performance that 
 the whole edifice had been jarred by the shock, 
 and that the drama was no longer firm on its feet. 
 
 In my humble opinion, in order that the dress 
 rehearsal may serve any purpose whatever, it 
 should take place as soon as the play is learned 
 and rough-hewn, when the actors no longer 
 rehearse manuscript in hand. 
 
 Many things still remain to be finished and 
 polished; but these matters of detail are not 
 what decide the success or failure of a work. Such 
 as it is, it can then be judged as a whole, and the 
 impression is still soft enough to make it an easy 
 matter to retouch the faulty places, which are 
 more readily apparent to less fatigued or less 
 prejudiced eyes. 
 
 3. ' 
 
 A theatrical anecdote to conclude this study of 
 
 rehearsals : 
 
 Scene, the actors' lobby of a great Parisian 
 
 theatre, in the daytime. The members of the 
 
3 1 2 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 company are chatting after rehearsal, before sepa- 
 rating. The actresses one after another take 
 their shawls or cloaks, which they had tossed 
 carelessly on the seats or backs of chairs when 
 they arrived. Suddenly one of them exclaims : 
 
 " I have been robbed ; some one has taken my 
 purse." 
 
 Intense excitement ; every one rises. 
 
 A theft is a rare thing at the theatre, and 
 actors freely declare, with artless and touching 
 pride, that their profession is the only one un- 
 represented at the galleys. Imagine, therefore, 
 the indignant glances and protestations. There 
 were venerable noble fathers there, as old as the 
 oldest chair in the theatre, who stammered with 
 emotion and trembled from head to foot. 
 
 Some one said : 
 
 "Let us all be searched; let no one leave the 
 room ! " 
 
 Every one instinctively prepared to turn his 
 pockets inside out. 
 
 A single one, a young actor of some celebrity, 
 refused. Standing erect, with his head in the 
 air, like a rooster shaking his comb he cried: 
 
 "I, Saturnin, allow myself to be searched! — 
 what becomes of the artist's dignity.? " 
 
 Thereupon he left the room, stiff as a ramrod, 
 his coat tightly buttoned, with a noble bearing in 
 which familiarity with the stage counted for 
 something, leaving all his comrades flushed and 
 confused by such a lesson in dignity. 
 
 But the culprit must be found none the less. 
 
Stage-Setting and Rehearsals. 313 
 
 Life became unendurable in that little world; 
 there were furtive glances, words whispered in 
 the ear, and the most virtuous felt that they 
 were under suspicion. The lowest employes, 
 machinists, firemen, gasmen, who have free access 
 to every corner of the theatre at all times, fearing 
 that they might be suspected, swore to find the 
 thief for the honor of their craft. A secret sys- 
 tem of espionage was organized; from hour to 
 hour the circle of suspicion became narrower. 
 
 Did the villain suspect something.'* Did he 
 mean to get rid of the purse, to throw it into some 
 corner where the attendants would find it, or had 
 he hidden it on the day of the theft and was he 
 simply coming to get it ? This much is certain, 
 that one evening, during the performance, he 
 crept into the property store-room and thrust his 
 arm under a pile of old rope. A hand seized his ; 
 the purse was in it. 
 
 " Nabbed, Monsieur Saturnin !" said the hoarse, 
 jeering voice of the chief machinist. 
 
 The other stammered, implored, struggled; 
 but the machinist held him fast, exclaiming, — 
 
 " Ah ! you rascal ! I 've had my eye on you for 
 a week." 
 
 "Let me go, let me go, in God's namel" said 
 the poor devil. " You hear them calling me." 
 
 The monitor was in fact hurrying through the 
 corridors, calling, — 
 
 "You're wanted, Saturnin, — your cue, Satur- 
 nin!" 
 
 The audience waxed impatient. They looked 
 
3 1 4 Between the Flies a7id the Footlights, 
 
 everywhere for Saturnin. At last his comrades 
 discovered him in the store-room, struggling 
 under the harpoon of the sturdy whaler. The 
 manager ran to the spot, attracted by the tumult. 
 
 ** Well, well. Play your part first; we '11 have 
 an explanation afterwards." 
 
 And he pushed the miserable wretch onto the 
 stage, where, despite his terror and his shame, 
 hearing the story of his infamy run through the 
 corridors, divining, behind each upright, scorn- 
 ful eyes fastened upon him, he was forced to act 
 and did act, as well as ever, better, perhaps, 
 lashed as he was by fever, his great scene in Les 
 Faux Bons-homines. 
 
 That was the last time. He had a wife and 
 daughter, and the affair was hushed up; but he 
 was never seen again on any Parisian stage. 
 
Drunkenness on the Stage. 315 
 
 VI. 
 
 DRUNKENNESS ON THE STAGE. 
 
 It is always very difficult to represent drunken- 
 ness on the stage, the actor being drawn in differ- 
 ent directions by the desire to be true to nature 
 and the fear of offending good taste. For, in 
 truth, how pitiable is the spectacle of that wilful 
 debasement, of that temporary madness which 
 man brings upon himself! To be sure, there is 
 something comical in that self-abandonment of 
 the human being, that faltering in speech and 
 movement, in the awkward antics, the falls, the 
 insane freaks of drunkenness, but the comicality 
 is so heartrending that one can rarely disguise 
 the distastefulness and horror of the situation 
 with the aid of laughter. 
 
 On hearing Schneider, the illustrious diva of 
 Meilhac and Hal6vy's operas, stammer between 
 two hiccoughs: "/ am a little tipsy ; Jmsh ! you 
 must not telly'' — and seeing her fill the whole 
 stage with her unsteady gait and her befuddled 
 face, one could but think of the people coming 
 out of a night restaurant in carnival time, when 
 all the druggists' shops are closed, and they are 
 unable, unfortunately, to procure a drop of 
 ammonia. 
 
3 1 6 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 On the other hand, how well Dupuis, on the 
 same stage, in Les Millions de Gladiator^ acted 
 the slight intoxication which follows a good din- 
 ner, at which one has drunk a little more than was 
 necessary to quench his thirst; how eloquently 
 young Isidore's tearful expansiveness, the mobil- 
 ity of his ideas, his tranquil contempt of life, bore 
 witness to the generous and healthful qualities 
 of the vintage he had abused ! 
 
 And Bressant's drunkenness in the Barber of 
 Seville — do you remember it ? — what distinc- 
 tion, what good humor, what respect for truth and 
 the proprieties ! 
 
 Madame Marie-Laurent herself, before taking 
 part in the Voleuse d Enfants^ had had a whole 
 act of merry, extravagant, bumptious drunkenness 
 in Les Chevaliers du Brouillard ; but there she 
 represented a young scamp embellished with all 
 the vices, and the travesty facilitated the daring 
 originality of the role. But to represent in Paris, 
 before a French audience and at a time when 
 comic opera had not made us proof against any 
 eccentricity, — to represent a woman too drunk to 
 stand, was a difficult and ticklish undertaking. 
 The actress hesitated a long while before under- 
 taking to create the part; and when she had once 
 made up her mind, she determined to cover up 
 the odium of the impersonation by carrying it to 
 that pitch of ghastly reality which becomes true 
 art by virtue of accuracy, conscientiousness, and 
 impulsive earnestness. 
 
 Her first idea was to go to London, to study 
 
Drunkenness on the Stage. 317 
 
 the stupefying effects of gin in the slums of the 
 great city; but as she had not the leisure for the 
 journey, she contented herself with scrutinizing 
 the common people of Paris, who, although they 
 have no gin, have their vile barrier wines, perni- 
 cious and destructive, and absinthe and bitters, 
 an endless variety of dangerous adulterations, 
 which display their poisoned colors behind the 
 dirty windows of the cabarets. 
 
 You should see the working-men on their way 
 to work, at daybreak, on the outer boulevards, 
 crowding around the doors of the wine-shops al- 
 most before they are open, and tossing off large 
 glasses of white eau-de-vie — what they call "the 
 drop " — to temper the cold, damp air of a Pari- 
 sian morning. And such a drop ! if a little of that 
 liquid overflows on the zinc counter, it leaves a 
 corrosive blue stain, like the mark, still hot, 
 made by a lighted match. Imagine that stuff 
 pouring into a poor empty stomach. '* It wakes 
 you up ! " as they say. Alas ! it bestializes even 
 more surely, and ere long the drunkenness of 
 Paris will have no reason to envy the London 
 article. 
 
 Often, on leaving the theatre, Marie-Laurent 
 and her husband would follow for hours some 
 wretched sot, who reeled against the wall as he 
 walked, waving his hands, haranguing the closed 
 doors, shouting his dream aloud, an incoherent 
 dream, sometimes full of animation, sometimes 
 melancholy. She would study the evolutions of 
 that bewildered will, as it dragged the body in 
 
3 1 8 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 every direction, until at last, exhausted, van- 
 quished, it propped him up against a post or 
 stretched him at full length on the edge of the 
 sidewalk, pale and dazed, v^ith a fixed grimace of 
 fatigue and suffering. Every day the artist 
 observed some new detail, some new gesture; 
 but as she departed from the conventional to 
 enter into the real, she was more and more dis- 
 mayed by the grim ghastliness of the task. " It 
 isn't possible," she said to herself; "the audience 
 will never let me go on to the end." 
 
 So it was that never, in any other of her crea- 
 tions, had she been assailed by such an overpower- 
 ing dread as on the first night of the Volense 
 d EnfantSy when she made her appearance in the 
 sixth tableau. She entered at the rear, through 
 a doorway several steps above the stage. Her 
 alarm was heightened by the necessity of mak- 
 ing that difficult descent characteristically, and 
 according to rule. 
 
 Dressed in a marvellously hideous costume, all 
 rags and tatters, horrible in her bewilderment 
 and pallor, clinging to the rail, pitching forward, 
 holding herself back, she reached the foot of the 
 staircase without a sign from the audience to 
 indicate its impression. 
 
 That glacial silence disturbed the actress. She 
 had expected that as soon as she appeared the 
 audience would be enthusiastic or disgusted, and 
 would show it instantly. 
 
 Nothing of the sort. Utter stupefaction reigned 
 supreme. The people watched and waited. 
 
Drmikeniiess on the Stage. 319 
 
 Oh, " how long the descent of those six stairs 
 seemed to her ! " If I had walked from the Made- 
 leine to the Bastille," she said afterward, "I 
 should not have been so exhausted as when I 
 reached the foot of that terible staircase." 
 
 Those are, in very truth, terrible moments for 
 the actor, who sees all those faces leaning forward 
 or raised toward him, and those myriads of glances 
 in which he can read naught save an expression 
 of suspense, of eager but ill-defined curiosity. 
 
 But when she reached the front of the stage, 
 when the audience, confronted by that ghastly 
 image of drunkenness, by that pallid mask, dis- 
 torted by horrible internal burns, those great eyes 
 shooting flames, that black hair glued to the head 
 by the mud of the gutter in which it had dragged 
 again and again, — when the audience suddenly 
 realized that that bundle of rags was alive, aye, 
 that it was suffering, and that they had not before 
 them a vile sot but one of the damned, forgotten 
 by God, who bore her hell within her, then they 
 were deeply moved, they overflowed with pity and 
 enthusiasm, and rewarded the brave actress with 
 prolonged applause. 
 
320 Between the Flies and the Footlights. 
 
 VII. 
 
 SIXTY YEARS ON THE STAGE. 
 
 In his preface to Bouffe's Souvenirs^ Monsieur 
 Legouve tells this anecdote: 
 
 " Some one asked Brunet, who had retired at 
 eighty-four, and had since lived in the country: 
 * How do you pass your time in your solitude.-* ' 
 
 " ' I review my roles. ' 
 
 "His rdles! Jocrisse and the like on the 
 threshold of eternity! Face to face with God! 
 The idea makes me shudder." 
 
 With due deference to the eloquent and witty 
 academician, he has unearthed a pulpit effect, an 
 outburst a la Bridaine, more striking than pro- 
 found, which will not bear analysis. When old 
 Brunet, that fanatical actor, whose ambition was 
 "to die in the glare of the footlights," mumbled 
 over hisjocrisseries, he was trying to find between 
 the lines his old theatrical life, an echo of the 
 jovial days and the triumphs of his youth; and 
 the stupidest joke, the most vapid nonsense, the 
 suggestion of a grimace or a gesture, had for him 
 a mysterious, reminiscent meaning and brought to 
 his face the flush of 3. first night, of a theatre filled 
 to the roof. It is the memory-call which every 
 one beats in his own way. 
 
Sixty Years on the Stage, 321 
 
 To the old actor, even when he is face to face 
 with God, there is no greater pleasure than to 
 open and turn over the old repertory, which is so 
 wound up in the artist's existence that he cannot 
 touch one of his roles without bringing to mind 
 some date, some cherished memory, or touching 
 some vibrating note in the tender recesses of his 
 heart. Do not smile at the name of Ababa- 
 Patapouf, for it reminds Boiiffe of his appearance 
 in La Petite Lampe Merveilleiise in 1822, his first 
 great success, of Brunet and Vernet coming up 
 to his dressing-room to embrace him, while Pere 
 Ch6del, puffing out his shirt-front, pompously 
 gives him to understand that his salary is doubled 
 from that day, raised from fifteen hundred to 
 three thousand francs. 
 
 O miracle of love 1 
 
 Three thousand francs, the exact amount de- 
 manded by Charlotte's parents! 
 
 " I would have liked to go at once to the Gil- 
 berts', to tell them the happy news; but it was 
 midnight, hardly a suitable hour for a call. So 
 I had to wait until the next day; it was a very 
 long time. I made haste to change my clothes 
 and wash off the paint; but I had entirely for- 
 gotten that a razor had deprived me of my hair. 
 When I saw that I was completely bald, I cried : 
 ' Ah ! my God ! how ugly I am ! I cannot appear 
 before my bride that is to be with this hideous 
 head ! ' — I looked among my wigs, but the one 
 that I wore as Lubin in La Bonne Mhe was the 
 only one that resembled in the least a civilized 
 
32 2 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 head of hair; and it was longer and lighter than 
 mine. I was an utterly ridiculous object. How- 
 ever, that did not prevent our wedding taking 
 place a few weeks later, on the same day as that 
 of my younger sister, who married the foreman 
 of my father's shop." 
 
 And there is Rigolard, Uncle Rigolard, one of 
 the most comical of all his creations — if you 
 knew what gloomy visions he evokes from the old 
 actor's past! 
 
 On the day before the first performance, his 
 eldest daughter, a little darling of five, was taken 
 with a fever, with a hoarse, hard cough, which 
 racked her frame all night. It was the croup ; but 
 the doctor at the theatre, who was sent for in the 
 morning, dared not say so for fear of interfering 
 with the performance, and so poor Rigolard, with 
 his mind at rest, ran upon the stage, his dancing- 
 master's kit in his hand, with smiles and capers 
 and pirouettes. 
 
 "The instant that I appeared, and before I had 
 said a word, there was an outburst of applause. 
 Dejazet and Lafont were on the stage; during 
 the uproar, which made it impossible for me to 
 begin my lines, I took a hand of each of my 
 generous comrades and, hardly able to stand, said 
 to them : * My daughter is dead ! ' '* 
 
 He was not mistaken. His child was dead; 
 and the audience, advised of the sad news before 
 the father, instinctively gave that proof of sym- 
 pathy with his grief. 
 
 As we see, Bouff6, in writing this artless and 
 
Sixty Years on the Stage. 323 
 
 touching memento of his life, did nothing more 
 than review his roles, like Brimet. And they 
 are not all personal reminiscences which he dis- 
 covers therein; sometimes there is a historical 
 date, some Parisian incident, a scandal of the 
 street or the Chambers, like the expulsion of 
 Manuel and the famous "seize that man,"^ which 
 had its echo in an artist's peaceful life. 
 
 It happened that on the very evening of that 
 parliamentary quarrel, he was acting in Trigolini 
 the part of a pompous old fool of an alcalde, who 
 had to say several times : " Seize that man ! " ^ 
 You can imagine that he did not resist the temp- 
 tation to do a little violence to his lines and to 
 repeat exactly the memorable words of the gen- 
 darme Foucault, the hero of the day. 
 
 "These words were no sooner out of my mouth 
 than there was a thunder of applause; shouts, 
 bravos, cries of ^ encore! encore!^ arose from all 
 parts of the hall. Oh! then I realized that I had 
 committed a grave, very grave indiscretion. I 
 would have been only too glad to recall my 
 words, but the shouts of * encore ! encore ! ' came 
 faster and faster, and I could not complete my 
 part until I had repeated that unfortunate phrase. 
 On returning to the wings I found there Monsieur 
 Gronfier, commissioner of police, with a gendarme 
 on either side; he accosted me very roughly, 
 and in spite of all the arguments I could bring 
 forward, drew up a report. It goes without say- 
 
 1 Empoignez-moi cet homme. 
 
 2 Emparez-vous de cet hotnme-lh. 
 
324 Betwee7t the Flies and the Footlights. 
 
 ing that the audience recalled me at the close of 
 Trigolini. The incident of the commissioner had 
 been noised about through the hall; the people 
 knew that he proposed to take me into custody at 
 the end of the play, and there was some talk of 
 resisting my arrest. Some voices were injudi- 
 cious enough to shout : * They sha'n't seize you ! ' ^ 
 All these demonstrations served simply to inflame 
 the wrath of Monsieur Gronfier, who said to me 
 in a very severe tone, as soon as the curtain had 
 fallen, — 
 
 "*Go and change your clothes, monsieur; I 
 have a carriage waiting for you.' 
 
 "Escorted by my gendarme, I went to my 
 dressing-room ; quarter of an hour later I entered 
 the government cab. An enormous crowd had 
 gathered in Rue Basse-du-Temple behind the 
 theatre. They were altogether too zealous and 
 were shouting at the tops of their voices, — 
 
 " * Down with the gendarmes ! down with the 
 commissioner! ' 
 
 "The driver lashed his horses — " 
 
 And poor Bouff6 passed his night at the sta- 
 tion, in the midst of the herd of human cattle 
 weltering there; then, in the morning, being 
 taken by two gendarmes to the examining magis- 
 trates' corridor, he was sharply questioned and lec- 
 tured, and finally dismissed, with explicit orders 
 to hold himself at the disposal of the authorities. 
 Thus were actors treated under the paternal 
 regime of the Restoration; nor was the bureau- 
 
 1 On ne vous e?nJ)oignera pas ! 
 
Sixty Years on the Stage, 325 
 
 cratic government of the Second Empire much 
 more considerate of them. 
 
 One day, in 1854, Bouff^, who had been kept 
 off the stage several years by a distressing ner- 
 vous trouble, determined to take advantage of a 
 lull in his disease and appear at the Porte-Saint- 
 Martin in one of his favourite parts. Unfortu- 
 nately the license of that theatre did not allow 
 vaudeville to be played there; and the minister, 
 Monsieur Fould, a sort of petty autocrat, like the 
 old alcalde in Trigolini, persisted in an inflexi- 
 ble and inexplicable refusal to extend its terms. 
 Thereupon the great artist remembered that, when 
 he was acting in London some years before. Prince 
 Louis had called upon him in his dressing-room 
 and complimented him ; he wrote at once to the 
 Emperor to remind him of the incident, intrusted 
 his letter to Princess Mathilde, and received, a 
 few days later, a solemn official assurance that 
 his interests were being forwarded by those in 
 high places, and that he would receive forthwith 
 the desired authorisation from the minister. 
 
 " It is most astonishing," says the author of the 
 SouvenirSy "that, despite the Emperor's wish and 
 command, I could not obtain the authorisation 
 promised, although I waited a fortnight and paid 
 ten visits to the department." 
 
 And that is all, — not a word of indignation, 
 not a complaint; he does not return to the subject 
 of his ill-fortune except to call down a thousand 
 and a thousand blessings on the name of Monsieur 
 Camille Doucet, whose intervention in his favor 
 
326 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 at last procured for him, after weeks of mental 
 suffering and running hither and thither, the 
 permission denied to the Emperor. 
 
 The book is written from the first page to 
 the last in this tone of good humor and serenity. 
 Bad faith of managers, jealousy of comrades, 
 injustice of press or public, everything passes 
 lightly over that angelic disposition. There is 
 barely a flash of indignation against Laferriere, 
 who played him the scurvy trick of producing 
 one of his plays on the eve of his arrival at 
 Saint-Quentin; indeed, there is more sorrow than 
 anger in his narrative of that far-away injury. 
 
 Happy is the man in whom life, after nearly a 
 century of disasters and mortifications, has not 
 left the least rancor, and who remembers only to 
 admire and to bless. He has known none but 
 excellent people ; he has grasped none but loyal 
 hands. Was it an illusion of his gentle nature, 
 or did the crabbed humor of certain of his fellow- 
 men really melt in the warmth of his heart.? 
 
 We can almost believe it when we hear him 
 speak of Roqueplan, whom he knew well, as the 
 most upright, the most accommodating of men, 
 credulous and kindly, easily moved. 
 
 "What a charming disposition and how pleas- 
 ant our relations were during the four years I 
 passed under his management ! It seemed to me 
 as if I were in Paradise." 
 
 It is a far cry from this Nestor to the Cardail- 
 hac of the Nabob, the sceptical, cold-blooded Pro- 
 vengal, a blackthorn staff hardened in the flame 
 
Sixty Years 07i the Stage. 327 
 
 of the footlights, trampling upon life like a side- 
 walk, with his hat on one side and his hands in 
 his pockets, and not the shadow of a superstition 
 in his whole body. But, bless my soul ! if we 
 should all look at men and places through the 
 same spectacles, our observations could all be 
 contained in a single book and the world would 
 die of ennui. 
 
 Among these souvenirs of Bouffd we are es- 
 pecially charmed with those of his youth, his 
 apprenticeship in the Marais, in his father's 
 gilding-shop. There is in these pages a whole 
 corner of industrial Paris, the petty bourgeois 
 Paris of the early days of the Restoration, intoxi- 
 cated with peace and well-being, thinking only of 
 work and amusement, now that the blood of the 
 great war has at last ceased to flow. 
 
 The whole quarter is filled with society thea- 
 tres: the Theatre Mareux on Rue Saint-Antoine, 
 opposite Rue de Jouy; the Theatre Doyen, Rue 
 Transnonain; another on Rue de Paradis, man- 
 aged by Thierry, a painter of buildings; another 
 on Rue Mauconseil in a shoe factory, amid boxes 
 filled with lasts, which sometimes fell on the 
 stage with a thunderous uproar; and another on 
 Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, at Simonnet's, a dancing- 
 master's, and in the house formerly belonging to 
 Provost's father, the Provost of the Comedie- 
 Francaise. 
 
 It was by haunting all these bouis-botiis that 
 young Bouffe caught the stage fever, and also in 
 
328 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 the shop of his Aunt Angelique, costumer at the 
 Ambigu; but his new passion did not prevent his 
 working faithfully at his gilding. His father was 
 ill; and he, the "little old man," as he was then 
 called, managed the whole establishment with 
 the sympathetic good humor, the ingenuous and 
 light-hearted heroism of one of M^lesville's 
 characters. 
 
Diderot's Advice to an Actress, 329 
 
 VIII. 
 
 DIDEROT'S ADVICE TO AN ACTRESS. 
 I. 
 
 This Mademoiselle Jodin, whose name has come 
 down to posterity among Diderot's luggage, does 
 not seem to have deserved, by virtue of her 
 talents or her character, the signal honor which 
 the philosopher conferred upon her by being her 
 adviser and her correspondent for four years in 
 succession. 
 
 The daughter of a clockmaker of Geneva, who 
 was one of the collaborators in the Encyclop^die, 
 and whose rigid Protestantism echoed all of Jean- 
 Jacques' horror of the stage and of actors, it was 
 not until her father's death that she was at liberty 
 to yield to the irresistible attraction which the 
 footlights and their false glare exerted upon 
 her. 
 
 As soon as the goodman was buried, everything 
 in the house was sold, and the mother and 
 daughter, equally frivolous, took up their abode in 
 Paris, where the warm and all-powerful interest 
 of Diderot, Pierre Jodin's former collaborator, 
 awaited them. Presumably it was to the patron- 
 age of the philosopher and his friend Grimm, 
 
330 Between the Flies and the Footlights. 
 
 both of whom were very influential at the North- 
 ern courts, that the young debutante owed her 
 engagement at the French theatre in Warsaw; at 
 all events, during her stay there Diderot wrote 
 to her regularly, advising her, sketching for her 
 a little dramatic code, as true to-day as it was 
 a hundred years ago, scattered here and there 
 through a score of admirable letters which our 
 young actresses should learn by heart. 
 
 " I have heard you but little, mademoiselle, but 
 it has seemed to me that I can discover in your 
 acting a most important quality which may be 
 simulated perhaps by cleverness and study, but 
 which can never be acquired; a mind which for- 
 gets itself, which is deeply affected, which trans- 
 ports itself to the scene of the drama, which is 
 this or that person whom it represents, which 
 actually sees and speaks to this or that other 
 character. I was entirely satisfied when, on 
 recovering from a violent outburst of emotion, 
 you seemed to have returned from a long dis- 
 tance and hardly to recognize the place from 
 which you had set out and the objects which sur- 
 rounded you." 
 
 Despite this complimentary tone, with which 
 the correspondence opens, it is easy to see at the 
 outset that Diderot has no very' exalted opinion 
 of the debutante's talents. From the way he 
 preaches naturalness and simplicity, we can 
 divine a provincial style, pretentious and noisy, 
 with her arms waving over her head. He urges 
 her especially to moderate her gestures; frequent 
 
Diderot's Advice to an Actress. 331 
 
 gesticulation impairs energy and destroys nobility 
 of bearing. 
 
 "The face, the eyes, the whole body, should 
 move, and not the arms." 
 
 And this recommendation recurs in every 
 paragraph : 
 
 "Turn your attention to quiet scenes." 
 
 By quiet scenes Diderot meant smooth, deftly 
 shaded comedy scenes, in which the actress can 
 show taste, delicacy, judgment, and wit. In his 
 view ability to render an impassioned passage was 
 almost nothing at all; the poet is responsible for 
 half of the effect. 
 
 First of all, one must study the accents, the 
 movements of nature, that primitive language 
 which the average audience understands, grasps 
 instantly. The meaning of a fine line is not 
 within the reach of all ; but a well-modulated cry, 
 a sigh from the very depths of the entrails, 
 eloquent glances, a natural trembling of the 
 hands, of the voice, — those are the touches that 
 stir and move and electrify the crowd. 
 
 "I wish that you might have seen Garrick play 
 the part of a father who has let his child fall into 
 a well. There is no maxim which our poets have 
 more generally forgotten than that which says 
 that great sorrows are dumb. Do you remember 
 it for them, in order to palliate by your acting 
 the impertinence of their long harangues. It lies 
 wholly within your power to produce a greater 
 effect by silence than by their fine words." 
 
 The next letter congratulates the actress on 
 
332 Between the Flies and the Footlights. 
 
 her successful beginning, while not disguising the 
 fact that she owes it in part to the lack of taste 
 of her audiences in that benighted country. She 
 must not seek to please the Tartars but the Athe- 
 nians. Above all, let us get rid of these tragedy 
 hiccoughs which she would palm off as accents 
 from the heart, but which are simply a paltry 
 bit of stage business, fatiguing and unpleasant, 
 a trick as unendurable on the stage as in society. 
 Watch the most violent of mortals, the fiercest 
 paroxysms of wrath, you will never see anything 
 of the sort. Vow a mortal hatred against what- 
 ever is false, fictitious, or conventional. 
 
 "Mademoiselle, there is nothing good in this 
 world except what is true; be true therefore on 
 the stage, and true off the stage." 
 
 Let her study women in society, in the front 
 rank of society, if she is fortunate enough to be 
 thrown with them ; there she will learn ease and 
 grace of movement. The street, the people, the 
 thousand varied details of domestic life, observed 
 near at hand, will suggest the real attitudes of 
 passion, the action and accent of love, jealousy, 
 despair, anger. Let her carry all these away in 
 her eyes, in her ears; let her make of her brain 
 a portfolio for all these pictures ; when she exhibits 
 them on the stage, every one will recognize and 
 applaud them, on the sole condition that she ex- 
 presses just what she feels, and never tries to go 
 beyond that. And always the same refrain : 
 
 "Turn your attention to quiet scenes." 
 
 Few actors are good listeners, preoccupied as 
 
Diderot^ s Advice to an Actress. 333 
 
 they all are with their effect on the public and a 
 thousand other matters which have no connection 
 with the stage. Let there be neither foreground 
 nor background so far as Mademoiselle Jodin is 
 concerned ; let her consider the stage strictly as 
 a place where and from which no one sees her; 
 she must have the courage sometimes to turn her 
 back to the spectator, she must never remember 
 that he exists. Every actress who addresses him 
 deserves to have a voice call out to her from the 
 pit: "Mademoiselle, I am not here." 
 
 It is also important not to aim too much at suc- 
 cess. One is not a genuine artist unless he at- 
 tempts, even with danger to himself, to accomplish 
 bold enterprises, to enjoy a pleasure that is new 
 and altogether his own. 
 
 In view of the general tone of these letters, we 
 wonder if Diderot is in earnest when he informs 
 the young actress of Clairon's final retirement, 
 and suggests to her that the vacant place is a 
 pleasant one to occupy. At all events, it is cer- 
 tain that the young woman took it seriously and 
 was already talking of cancelling an engagement 
 in order to return to France. 
 
 The master energetically dissuades her. She 
 had great faults when she went away, the tragic 
 hiccoughs, a general lack of form ; young noble- 
 men who have seen her in Warsaw assert that 
 she has contracted a habit of swaying from side 
 to side that is altogether unpleasant. She must 
 return to Paris, if at all, with all her faults cor- 
 rected, otherwise she will expose herself to 
 
334 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 painful disappointments. The Parisian public 
 becomes harder to please, both for actors and 
 authors, in proportion as its taste is led astray. 
 We have nothing but a succession of unfortunate 
 d6buts, tumultuous scenes, flat failures amid 
 hisses and laughter. 
 
 The next letter recurs to the same subject, the 
 necessity of perfecting herself before thinking of 
 returning to Paris. 
 
 Before everything she must study the quiet 
 scene — does it not seem to you as if you heard 
 Sarcey talking about the scene to be written? To 
 repeat every morning by way of morning prayer 
 the scene between Athalie and Joas, and for even- 
 ing prayer a scene or two between Agrippine and 
 Neron; for benediction the first scene between 
 Phedre and her confidant. She must never con- 
 tract mannerisms. An actress may cure herself 
 of primness, of stiffness, of rusticity, of rigidity, 
 of lack of dignity; she can never cure herself of 
 little mannerisms and affectation. 
 
 " Be emphatic at times, for so the poet is ; but 
 not so often as he, because emphasis is almost 
 never natural; it is an overdone imitation of 
 nature. If you once feel that Corneille is almost 
 always at Madrid and almost never in Rome, you 
 will often tone down his wealth of verbiage by 
 simplicity, and the characters will assume in your 
 mouth a homogeneous, frank, unaffected domestic 
 heroism which they almost never have in his 
 plays. Garrick said to me one day that it would 
 be impossible for him to play any of Racine's 
 
Diderot's Advice to an Actress. 335 
 
 roles, that his sentences resembled great serpents 
 which twined themselves about an actor. Gar- 
 rick's idea and his words were equally judicious. 
 Crush Racine's serpents ; break Corneille's stilts." 
 On another occasion he discusses a proposed 
 engagement of Mademoiselle Jodin at the Imperial 
 Theatre at St. Petersburg. The terms were sixteen 
 hundred roubles, equal to eight thousand francs 
 of French money; one thousand pistoles for the 
 journey, the same amount for the return journey. 
 She must furnish her own French, Greek, and 
 Roman costumes; those for extraordinary occa- 
 sions will be supplied from the court wardrobe. 
 The engagement is to be for five years. A car- 
 riage will be furnished only for performances 
 before the court. The bonuses are sometimes 
 very large, but she must earn them there as else- 
 where. In case these conditions should be accept- 
 able. Mademoiselle Jodin must write two letters a 
 week apart; in one she must ask for more than is 
 offered, in the second she must accept uncondi- 
 tionally. She is to send both of them to Diderot, 
 who will at first produce only the former. And 
 the philosopher, fearing that he had wounded the 
 provincial by the unceremonious way in which he 
 speaks of her profession, adds in one of those 
 bursts of graceful eloquence which are peculiar 
 to him: "If I had the mind, the voice, and the 
 face of Quinault-Dufresne, I would go on the 
 stage to-morrow, and I should esteem it a greater 
 honor to force the wicked man to shed tears over 
 persecuted virtue than to declaim from a pulpit, 
 
33^ Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 arrayed in a surplice and square cap, pious plati- 
 tudes which are interesting only to the simpletons 
 who believe them. Your morals are of all times, 
 all peoples, all countries; theirs change a hun- 
 dred times within very narrow limits." 
 
 This enthusiasm for the actor's profession did 
 not prevent Diderot from writing some time after 
 to his young friend, whom a caprice had impelled 
 to leave the stage and whom another caprice had 
 led back to it : 
 
 " I should not dare to approve your venture in 
 the dramatic line ; I can see no great advantage 
 in success, and I can see a very serious disadvan- 
 tage in failure." 
 
 Farther on he attempts again to induce her to 
 abandon her project : 
 
 "No more plays, no more theatre, no more dis- 
 sipation, no more follies. A small apartment 
 with plenty of fresh air in some quiet corner of 
 the city, a sober and healthful diet, a few sure 
 friends, a little reading, a little music, much 
 exercise and walking, — these are suggestions 
 which when it is too late you will wish that you 
 had followed." 
 
 We are compelled to believe that this idyllic 
 prospect did not tempt Mademoiselle Jodin, for on 
 May II, 1769, Diderot writes to congratulate her 
 on her debut at the Grand Theatre at Bordeaux, 
 at the same time calling her attention to the dif- 
 ference between that stage and the stage of the 
 Comedie-Frangaise : 
 
 " I wish that you could have obtained here, on 
 
Diderot's Advice to an Actress, 337 
 
 the stage with Mademoiselle Clairon or Mademoi- 
 selle Dumesnil, the public applause that you have 
 received at Bordeaux. Work therefore, work with- 
 out respite; judge yourself severely; trust less to 
 the hand-clapping of your provincials than to your 
 own testimony as to your merits. What confi- 
 dence can you have in the acclamations of people 
 who remain silent at times when you yourself feel 
 that you are doing well, for I doubt not that that 
 has happened to you sometimes, has it not? Per- 
 fect yourself first of all in the quiet scene.'' 
 
 Side by side with this purely technical advice, 
 Diderot gives his young friend lessons in morals 
 and the bearing of the actress in society, and this 
 second part of the correspondence is even more 
 interesting and significant than the first. 
 
 "My age and experience, the friendship be- 
 tween your father and myself, and the interest I 
 have always taken in you, justify me in hoping 
 that such advice as I may give you concerning 
 your conduct and your character will not be 
 taken amiss." 
 
 And he immediately avails himself of that 
 hope to tell her some harsh truths : 
 
 "We are tempestuous, very tempestuous, the 
 worst possible fault in a woman, whose first and 
 most essential garment should, it seems to me, 
 be gentleness. Vain, too, we are, and vanity is 
 seldom unaccompanied by folly of some sort. 
 
 22 
 
33^ Between the Flies and the Footlights. 
 
 " Only persons of small stahire consta7itly walk 
 on tiptoe, 
 
 "False? No, not precisely that; but perhaps 
 we do not show sufficient respect for truth in what 
 we say. That is another petty characteristic. 
 None but the fool and the villain may indulge in 
 falsehood; the former to replace the wit he lacks, 
 the latter to mask his designs. In fact, we have 
 all the foibles of the profession ; we are extrava- 
 gant, careless, and our morals are somewhat loose. 
 We must look to this. 
 
 "The philosopher, who does not believe in 
 religion, cannot pay too much heed to his morals; 
 the actress, who has against her the preconceived 
 opinion of the morality of her profession, cannot 
 watch herself too closely or show too great eleva- 
 tion of character. " 
 
 Not that Diderot demands from an actress a 
 degree of virtue which is almost incompatible 
 with her profession, and which women in society 
 rarely retain amid a life of luxury, far removed 
 from the temptations of every sort with which the 
 actress is surrounded; but Mademoiselle Jodin 
 must remember that a woman does not earn the 
 right to throw off the fetters imposed upon her 
 sex by custom and public opinion, save by vir- 
 tue of her talent, her courage, and her intellect. 
 Above all things, he urges her to respect the pro- 
 prieties, and to display judgment in her tastes. 
 
 This is morality with flowing sleeves, as it was 
 worn in the eighteenth century, and quite suffi- 
 cient for an actress of that epoch. 
 
Diderot'' s Advice to an Actress, 339 
 
 The philosopher himself admits that his views 
 are not over austere, and adds with the indulgent 
 smile of 2i garde de Paris assigned to superintend 
 the morals of ballet-dancers : 
 
 " I am not hard to please. I shall be content 
 if you do nothing likely to impair your real wel- 
 fare. The caprice of the moment has its charms. 
 Who does not know it ? But it has bitter conse- 
 quences which one may avoid by little sacrifices 
 when one is not mad. Be virtuous if you can ; if 
 you cannot, at least be brave enough to bear the 
 punishment of vice." 
 
 At other times the master is more severe, more 
 exacting; he believes that an actress should main- 
 tain a virtuous, respectable bearing and talk like 
 a girl of education, for there is no other way for 
 her to keep at a distance rakes and libertines and 
 all the insulting familiarities that the profession 
 attracts. She must earn the reputation of an 
 honest, virtuous creature and be most scrupulous 
 in her choice of the persons whom she receives at 
 all frequently. Above all things, she must not 
 imagine that her conduct in society has no bearing 
 upon her success on the stage ; we are reluctant to 
 applaud those whom we hate or despise. Lastly, 
 she must be economical. That is the best of all 
 safeguards of her independence and her virtue. 
 
 Farther on, he recurs to the subject of the in- 
 fluence of the artist's mode of life upon her suc- 
 cess before the public. In his opinion the vir^ 
 tuous actress must feel more keenly and express 
 her feelings more truly than the other. And just 
 
340 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 as there is an infinite difference between the elo- 
 quence of an honest man and the verbosity of a 
 mere rhetorician who does not believe a word of 
 what he says; so the acting of an honest woman 
 will surpass that of a vile, degraded creature who 
 stands before the footlights and reels off long 
 tirades about virtue. The public is not deceived. 
 A virtuous part, played by an actress who is not 
 virtuous, is almost as offensive as the part of a 
 girl of fifteen played by a woman of fifty. 
 
 The philosopher does not blink the fact, how- 
 ever, that the surroundings amid which his pro- 
 tegee is living are not salutary for young women. 
 She must not hope to find true friends among the 
 men of her profession; as to the women, she 
 should treat them courteously but form no intima- 
 cies with any of them. The society of the wings 
 is so complicated, so artificial! Compelled to 
 simulate innumerable varying sentiments on the 
 stage, they are all the more likely to reach a point 
 at which they lose all sentiment, and life becomes 
 to them simply a game which they adapt as well 
 as they can to the different circumstances in which 
 they find themselves. 
 
 "Indeed, when we reflect upon the reasons 
 which may have led a man to become an actor, a 
 woman to become an actress, upon the place where 
 fate laid hold of them, upon the strange circum- 
 stances which forced them on the stage, we cease 
 to wonder that talent, morality, and probity are 
 equally rare among actors." 
 
 Despite the pupil's flighty character, we may 
 
Diderot'' s Advice to a7i Actress. 341 
 
 believe that the master's lessons benefited her 
 somewhat, judging from the dithyrambic tone of 
 letter VII., which begins like this: 
 
 "What! mademoiselle, can it be that every- 
 thing is as it should be, and that, despite the 
 natural giddiness of the profession, of the pas- 
 sions, and of youth, you have really had one sen- 
 sible thought, and the intoxication of the present 
 has not prevented you from looking into the 
 future ? Can it be that you are ill ? Have you 
 lost the enthusiasm of your talents ? Can you no 
 longer promise yourself the same advantages ? I 
 have little faith in conversions, and prudence has 
 always seemed to me the one good quality that 
 is least compatible with your character. I am 
 utterly unable to understand." 
 
 What had happened, in Heaven's name? A 
 miraculous thing. The actress had saved money 
 — yes, you have read the words aright, saved 
 money — and requested Diderot to invest it for 
 her. It is so rare, so novel a circumstance that 
 the philosopher refuses to believe it. If he does 
 not receive the money in a month, he will not 
 expect it at all. And lo ! to set his mind at rest, 
 there arrives from Warsaw a draft for twelve 
 thousand francs on Messieurs Tourton and Baure. 
 Evidently Mademoiselle Jodin is more prudent 
 than he thought. He knew that her heart was all 
 right; but as for her head, he believed that no 
 woman on earth had ever carried on her shoulders 
 a wickeder and more unreasoning one. She has 
 disappointed him very agreeably. 
 
342 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 In letter XL everything has gone wrong again; 
 the master appears, with flashing eyes and wig 
 awry, between the angry, reproachful lines. 
 
 "You will never persuade me, mademoiselle, 
 that you did not draw upon yourself the unpleas- 
 ant experience you have had." 
 
 What unpleasant experience 1 He does not go 
 into details. We simply infer that in the course 
 of some scandalous episode the actress had pub- 
 licly laid claim to Diderot's friendship, at the 
 risk of compromising his good name. 
 
 This same letter contains some private advice 
 which admits us to the secret of Mademoiselle 
 Jodin's liaison with the Count of Schullembourg, 
 a friend with whom she had become acquainted 
 in Warsaw. There is trouble in the household, 
 it seems, and the excellent Diderot, greatly flat- 
 tered by having received the count's portrait, 
 feels called upon to intervene in these terms: 
 
 "Be prudent, be virtuous, be gentle," he says 
 to his protegee. " If you have had the good for- 
 tune to captivate a man of worth, try to appreciate 
 all his good qualities ; remember that sweetness, 
 patience, and delicacy of feeling are the proper 
 attributes of woman, and that tears are her real 
 weapons. It is unworthy a brave man to strike a 
 woman ; it is more unworthy to deserve the blow. 
 If you do not mend your ways, if your life con- 
 tinues to be marred by mad freaks, I shall lose all 
 the interest I have taken in you ; present my re- 
 spects to Monsieur le Comte, and make him 
 happy, since he has undertaken to make you so." 
 
Diderot's Advice to an Actress, 343 
 
 Mingled with these quarrels of an actress's 
 household, the philosopher's stern features, his 
 sermons upon love and virtue, assume a mildly 
 comical aspect. The poor man has a hard task 
 between those two passionate and stormy natures. 
 Sometimes he urges them to love each other 
 peacefully, to abstain from foolish outbreaks on 
 both sides, if they do not wish to be chastised for 
 them by each other. 
 
 At other times, thoroughly discouraged, he 
 admits that he is no longer certain that they 
 were made to live together. The actress has her 
 failings, which the count is never inclined to over- 
 look; the count has his, to which she never shows 
 the slightest indulgence. He seems to be intent 
 exclusively upon destroying the effect of his gen- 
 erosity and affection. She, for her part, is always 
 ready to work herself up to some violent pro- 
 ceeding. The best course seems to be to abandon 
 them to their caprices. 
 
 Beneath the apparent impartiality of this 
 advice, one easily detects the respect, the defer- 
 ence, of the plebeian Diderot for the title and 
 escutcheon of the Count of Schullembourg. In 
 every paragraph we find " Respects to Monsieur le 
 Comte. " The correspondence would unquestion- 
 ably have held much less interest for him, had he 
 not felt behind the actress the great nobleman, 
 whose attentions flatter and enliven him. 
 
 And yet in the later letters, when Monsieur le 
 Comte is no longer mentioned, having evidently 
 foundered, disappeared in some domestic tempest, 
 
344 Between the Flies and the Footlights. 
 
 the philosopher bravely continues to perform his 
 functions as guide and counsellor; he intervenes 
 in family disputes, invests the actress's money, 
 exerts himself to arouse her intelligence and to 
 instill in her a taste for well-doing. 
 
 **If you are wise," he says to her in one of his 
 last letters, "you will leave as few loose ends as 
 possible for fate to lay hold of; you will bethink 
 yourself betimes of living as you will wish that 
 you had always lived. Of what use are all the 
 harsh lessons you have received if you do not 
 profit by them ? You have so little self-control ! 
 Among the marionettes of Providence, you are 
 one of those whose wire it shakes in such strange 
 fashion that I shall never believe you to be where 
 you are not ; and you are not at Paris, nor are you 
 likely to be at once." 
 
 Shortly after, the correspondence ended ab- 
 ruptly, broken off by the imprisonment of Made- 
 moiselle Jodin. The Genevese, a converted Prot- 
 estant, and as such in receipt of a pension, 
 ventured to speak slightingly of the passage of 
 a religious procession; she was arrested and 
 secluded. 
 
 Diderot was alarmed and did not acknowledge 
 her. 
 
Fanny Kemble, 345 
 
 IX. 
 
 FANNY KEMBLE, AFTER HER MEMOIRS. 
 
 Fanny Kemble, born at London in 18 10, was 
 what Parisians call an enfant de la balle} Her 
 father, Charles Kemble, an actor of talent, was 
 manager at Covent Garden Theatre. Her mother, 
 who was of French descent, acted for many years 
 and also gave lessons in declamation. Finally, 
 she was a niece of Mrs. Siddons and John Kem- 
 ble, two shining lights of the English stage. 
 
 Under such circumstances it would have been 
 difficult for her to avoid being an actress too. 
 And yet the profession was not agreeable to her, 
 but caused her an instinctive feeling of alarm and 
 repugnance. 
 
 Being very well brought up and well educated, 
 passionately fond of Manfred and Childe Harold, 
 she would have preferred to write, to create in- 
 stead of interpreting, and her first drama was 
 already under way, a magnificent "five acts" in 
 verse, when Charles Kemble decided that his 
 daughter should make her debut as an actress. 
 
 The poor manager, whose prospects at Covent 
 Garden were not of the brightest, hoped that 
 Fanny's youth, her nervous and forceful charm, 
 
 1 That is to say, an actor's child, who follows its father's pro- 
 fession j akin to the English "chip of the old block." 
 
346 Between the Flies and the Footlights. 
 
 would swell the receipts; but, knowing his 
 daughter's ideas, and that reserved nature, averse 
 to all display, he felt his way, tried to find an 
 opening, began to talk timidly about there being 
 "a fine fortune to be made by any young woman 
 of even decent talent on the stage now;" then 
 abruptly revealed his distress, saying: 
 
 "You are the only one who can save us, 
 Fanny!" 
 
 She hesitated no longer, but imposed silence 
 on her repugnance and her scruples, and con- 
 sented to play Juliet, which she first recited to 
 her parents. What refined and charming pages 
 the actress writes under the inspiration of those 
 memories ! 
 
 "They neither of them said anything beyond 
 ' Very well, very nice, my dear,' with many kisses 
 and caresses, from which I escaped to sit down on 
 the stairs half-way between the drawing-room and 
 my bedroom, and get rid of the repressed nervous 
 fear I had struggled with while reciting, in floods 
 of tears. A few days after this my father told me 
 he wished to take me to the theatre with him to 
 try whether my voice was of sufficient strength to 
 fill the building; so thither I went. That 
 strange-looking place, the stage, with its racks of 
 pasteboard and canvas, — streets, forests, banquet- 
 ing-halls, and dungeons, — drawn apart on either 
 side, was empty and silent ; not a soul was stirring 
 in the indistinct recesses of its mysterious depths, 
 which seemed to stretch indefinitely behind me. 
 In front, the great amphitheatre, equally empty 
 
Fanny Kemble, 347 
 
 and silent, wrapped in its gray holland covers, 
 would have been absolutely dark but for a long, 
 sharp, thin shaft of light that darted here and 
 there from some height and distance far above 
 me, and alighted, in a sudden, vivid spot of 
 brightness, on the stage. Set down in the 
 midst of twilight space as it were, with only 
 my father's voice coming to me from where he 
 stood hardly distinguishable in the gloom, in 
 those poetical utterances of pathetic passion, I 
 was seized with the spirit of the thing; m}'- 
 voice resounded through the great vault above 
 and before me, and, completely carried away 
 by the inspiration of the wonderful play, I acted 
 Juliet as I do not believe I ever acted it again, 
 for I had no visible Romeo and no audience 
 to thwart my imagination; at least, I had no 
 consciousness of any, though in truth I had one. 
 In the back of one of the private boxes, com- 
 manding the stage but perfectly invisible to me, 
 sat an old and warmly attached friend of my 
 
 father's. Major D , a man of the world — of 
 
 London society, ... a first-rate critic in all 
 things connected with art and literature . . . ; 
 the best judge, in many respects, that my father 
 could have selected, of my capacity for my pro- 
 fession and my chance of success in it. Not till 
 after the event had justified my kind old friend's 
 prophecy did I know that he had witnessed that 
 morning's performance, and joining my father at 
 the end of it had said : * Bring her out at once ; 
 it will be a great success.* And so, three weeks 
 
34^ Between the Flies and the Footlights. 
 
 from that time I was brought out, and it was a 
 * great success. ' " ^ 
 
 Three weeks of study in all had sufficed to bring 
 about that happy result; but our young actors 
 must not be led astray, but must be careful not 
 to take that estimate of three weeks literally, for 
 behind those three weeks, to say nothing of in- 
 stinctive, hereditary aptitudes, there were long 
 years of reflection and observation, a thorough 
 professional training unconsciously acquired by 
 contact with actors and actresses, by being present 
 day after day at their conversations, their labors, 
 their discussions. "To act by inspiration" is a 
 phrase which does not mean very much. 
 
 If Fanny Kemble had had only those three 
 weeks of study and her inspiration, not only would 
 she have been unable to walk two steps on the 
 stage, but Juliet would have been much more 
 engrossed by her hands and arms than by Romeo. 
 
 With stirring impressiveness and close attention 
 to details, the actress describes her first appear- 
 ance; despite the emotion which dimmed her 
 eyes and grasped her throat as in a vice, she saw 
 everything, observed everything, remembers 
 everything, even to the walk she took that morn- 
 ing in St. James Park. She carried with her 
 Blunt' s "Scripture Characters" and selected the 
 chapters relating to Jacob and Saint Paul, seeking 
 in those edifying pages a sedative for the excite- 
 ment of her brain and her nerves. 
 
 1 Records of a Girlhood, by Frances Anne Kemble, p. i88, 
 Amer ed. 
 
Fanny Kemble, 349 
 
 A strange preparation for the balcony scene. 
 It is equal to Stendhal's condemning himself to 
 absorb a certain number of articles of the Code, 
 before writing a page of U Amour. 
 
 At last the hoar for the performance arrived. 
 Mrs. Kemble, the debutante's mother, who had 
 retired from the stage twenty years before, 
 returned to it that evening in order to be nearer 
 her daughter. The two women arrived at the 
 theatre together; each went to her own dressing- 
 room ; and until the curtain rose Fanny saw no 
 more of her mother, who was as nervous and 
 troubled as she, and afraid of showing her 
 emotion. 
 
 " My dear Aunt Dall, my maid, and the theatre 
 dresser performed my toilet for me, and at length 
 I was placed in a chair, with my satin train laid 
 carefully over the back of it; and there I sat, 
 ready for execution, with the palms of my hands 
 pressed convulsively together, and the tears I 
 in vain endeavored to repress welling up into my 
 eyes and brimming slowly over, down my rouged 
 cheeks, upon which my aunt, with a smile full of 
 pity, renewed the color as often as these heavy 
 drops made unsightly streaks in it. Once and 
 again my father came to the door, and I heard his 
 anxious * How is she? ' to which my aunt an- 
 swered, sending him away with words of comfort- 
 ing cheer. At last, * Miss Kemble called for the 
 stage, ma'am!' accompanied with a brisk tap at 
 the door, started me upright on my feet, and I 
 was led round to the side scene opposite to the 
 
350 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 one from which I saw my mother advance on the 
 stage; and while the uproar of her reception filled 
 me with terror, dear old Mrs. Davenport, my 
 nurse, and dear Mr. Keely, her Peter, and half 
 the dramatis personce of the play (but not my 
 father, who had retreated, quite unable to endure 
 the scene) stood round me as I lay, all but 
 insensible, in my aunt's arms. ' Courage, courage, 
 dear child! poor thing, poor thing!' reiterated 
 Mrs. Davenport. ' Never mind 'em. Miss Kem- 
 ble, ' urged Keely, in that irresistibly comical, 
 nervous, lachrymose voice of his, which I have 
 never since heard without a thrill of anything 
 but comical association; ' never mind 'em! don't 
 think of 'em, any more than if they were so many 
 rows of cabbages ! ' ' Nurse ! ' called my mother; 
 and on waddled Mrs. Davenport, and, turning 
 back, called in her turn : ' Juliet ! ' My aunt gave 
 me an impulse forward, and I ran straight across 
 the stage, stunned with the tremendous shout that 
 greeted me, my eyes covered with mist, and the 
 green baize flooring of the stage feeling as if it 
 rose up against my feet; but I got hold of my 
 mother, and stood like a terrified creature at bay, 
 confronting the huge theatre full of gazing human 
 beings. I do not think a word I uttered during 
 this scene could have been audible; in the next, 
 the ball-room, I began to forget myself; in the 
 following one, the balcony scene, I had done so, 
 and, for aught I knew, I was Juliet ; the passion I 
 was uttering sending hot waves of blushes all 
 over my neck and shoulders, while the poetry 
 
Fanny Kemble. 351 
 
 sounded like music to me as I spoke it, with no 
 consciousness of anything before me, utterly 
 transported into the imaginary existence of the 
 play. After this, I did not return into myself 
 till all was over, and amid a tumultuous storm of 
 applause, congratulation, tears, embraces, and a 
 general joyous explosion of unutterable relief at 
 the fortunate termination of my attempt, we went 
 home."i 
 
 Thus her destiny was decided, and she resigned 
 herself to follow a profession which repelled her, 
 natural and sincere creature that she was, by its 
 artificiality and falsehood, and which was espe- 
 cially offensive to her womanly delicacy and 
 reserve. 
 
 " I assure you " — she wrote to a friend on the 
 day following her debut — "that I have not em- 
 braced this course without due dread of its dan- 
 gers, and a firm determination to watch, as far as 
 in me lies, over its effect upon my mind." 
 
 And those dangers are not the ones you may 
 imagine. At the time when Fanny Kemble 
 wrote that letter, she did not even suspect their 
 existence. No; but in her childhood she had 
 been greatly impressed by her Aunt Siddons's 
 incurable melancholy, her indifference to every- 
 thing, and she sought in advance to be on her 
 guard against that melancholy, that weariness, 
 that distaste for life which marks the decline of 
 lives that have been too resplendent, the dull 
 apathy so often observed in great actors on the 
 
 1 Records of a Girlhood, pp. 219, 220. 
 
352 Between the Flies and the Footlights, 
 
 retired list, as in fallen monarchs, old Don Juans 
 discarded and foundered. 
 
 I cannot, to my great regret, follow Fanny 
 Kemble through all the incidents of her twofold 
 career as actress and dramatic author, of which 
 she describes the ups and downs, the triumphs 
 and the disappointments, with most attractive 
 frankness and sincerity. Always brave-hearted, 
 devoted to her parents, when her father asked her 
 one day if she would consent to expatriate herself, 
 to take part in an American tour, to last two or 
 three years, which would probably be very lucra- 
 tive and would wipe out at last the terrible past 
 of Covent Garden, "Let us go," she replied; but 
 how her heart bled to leave that English public 
 always so kind, so paternal, in its regard for her ! 
 
 "As I thought" — she is writing of her last 
 performance in the old Covent Garden — "as I 
 thought of the strangers for whom I am now to 
 work in that distantj strange country to which we 
 are going, the tears rushed into my eyes, and I 
 hardly knew what I was doing. I scarcely think 
 I even made the conventional courtesy of leave- 
 taking to them, but I snatched my little nosegay 
 of flowers from my sash, and threw it into the pit 
 with handfuls of kisses, as a farewell token of my 
 affection and gratitude."^ 
 
 It was a prosperous tour, it seems, but very 
 unpleasant, anti-artistic, above all. The actress 
 describes it in detail with good-humored irony, 
 leads us from theatre to theatre, from one end to 
 
 1 Records of a Girlhood, p, 52 T. 
 
Fanny Kemble. 353 
 
 the other of the United States, through that igno- 
 rant and indolent Bohemia, which is always the 
 same in every quarter of the globe. Then sud- 
 denly, in the midst of her nomadic, triumphant 
 life, occurs this little sentence, which brings the 
 journey and its memories to a close : 
 
 " I was married in Philadelphia, on the 7th of 
 June, 1834, to Mr. Pierce Butler, of that city." 
 
 And with that the book ends, an exquisite book, 
 written by a real poet, in places a little toe 
 romantic and exhortatory for our taste ; but that 
 is a matter of epoch and education. 
 
 A single point offends us, and that is the con- 
 ceited tone, intensely English, in which the 
 actress on several occasions compares the respec- 
 tability of the actors of her country "to the shame- 
 ful laxity of morals which characterizes foreigr 
 actors." We shall astonish the English beyonci 
 measure by informing them that there are in Pari.' 
 Fanny Kembles of great talent who, although the\ 
 do not attend rehearsals with Bibles in thei' 
 pockets, are none the less very estimable women, 
 devoted and courageous mothers, worthy of ali 
 respect. Nor do we lack Bohemians and eccen 
 trie individuals, it is true; but, being less ambi 
 tious than our neighbors, we do not claim tc 
 have a monopoly of them. 
 
 23 
 
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