When my hour was finished and I in liberty to leave that horrible
corner, I pushed out of the crowd and walked down the boulevard, my
hat covering my sin, and went quickly. To be in love with my mystery, I
thought, that was a strange happiness! It was enough. It was romance! To
hear a voice which speaks two sentences of pity and silver is to have a
chime of bells in the heart. But to have a shaven head is to be a monk!
And to have a shaven head with a sign painted upon it is to be a pariah.
Alas! I was a person whom the Parisians laughed at, not with!
Now that at last my martyrdom was concluded, I had some shuddering, as
when one places in his mouth a morsel of unexpected flavour. I wondered
where I had found the courage to bear it, and how I had resisted hurling
myself into the river, though, as is known, that is no longer safe, for
most of those who attempt it are at once rescued, arrested, fined, and
imprisoned for throwing bodies into the Seine, which is forbidden.
At the theatre the frightful badge was removed from my head-top and I
was given three hundred francs, the price of my shame, refusing an offer
to repeat the performance during the following week. To imagine such
a thing made me a choking in my throat, and I left the bureau in some
sickness. This increased so much (as I approached the Madeleine, where
I wished to mount an omnibus) that I entered a restaurant and drank a
small glass of cognac. Then I called for writing-papers and wrote to
the good Mother Superior and my dear little nieces at their convent. I
enclosed two hundred and fifty francs, which sum I had fallen behind in
my payments for their education and sustenance, and I felt a moment's
happiness that at least for a while I need not fear that my poor
brother's orphans might become objects of charity--a fear which,
accompanied by my own hunger, had led me to become the joke of the
boulevards.
Feeling rich with my remaining fifty francs, I ordered the waiter to
bring me a goulasch and a carafe of blond beer, after the consummation
of which I spent an hour in the reading of a newspaper. Can it be
credited that the journal of my perusement was the one which may be
called the North-American paper of the aristocracies of Europe? Also, it
contains some names of the people of the United States at the hotels and
elsewhere.
How eagerly I scanned those singular columns! Shall I confess to what
purpose? I read the long lists of uncontinental names over and over, but
I lingered not at all upon those like "Muriel," "Hermione,"
"Violet," and "Sibyl," nor over "Balthurst," "Skeffington-Sligo," and
"Covering-Legge"; no, my search was for the Sadies and Mamies, the
Thompsons, Van Dusens, and Bradys. In that lies my preposterous secret.
You will see to what infatuation those words of pity, that sense of a
beautiful presence, had led me. To fall in love must one behold a face?
Yes; at thirty. At twenty, when one is something of a poet--No: it
is sufficient to see a grey pongee skirt! At fifty, when one is a
philosopher--No: it is enough to perceive a soul! I had done both; I
had seen the skirt; I had perceived the soul! Therefore, while hungry, I
neglected my goulasch to read these lists of names of the United
States again and again, only that I might have the thought that one
of them--though I knew not which--might be this lady's, and that in so
infinitesimal a degree I had been near her again. Will it be estimated
extreme imbecility in me when I ventured the additional confession that
I felt a great warmth and tenderness toward the possessors of all these
names, as being, if not herself, at least her compatriots?
I am now brought to the admission that before to-day I had experienced
some prejudices against the inhabitants of the North-American republic,
though not on account of great experience of my own. A year previously I
had made a disastrous excursion to Monte Carlo in the company of a
young gentleman of London who had been for several weeks in New York and
Washington and Boston, and appeared to know very much of the country.
He was never anything but tired in speaking of it, and told me a
great amount. He said many times that in the hotels there was never a
concierge or portier to give you information where to discover the best
vaudeville; there was no concierge at all! In New York itself, my
friend told me, a facchino, or species of porter, or some such
good-for-nothing, had said to him, including a slap on the shoulder,
"Well, brother, did you receive your delayed luggage correctly?" (In
this instance my studies of the North-American idiom lead me to
believe that my friend was intentionally truthful in regard to the
principalities, but mistaken in his observation of detail.) He declared
the recent willingness of the English to take some interest in the
United-Statesians to be a mistake; for their were noisy, without real
confidence in themselves; they were restless and merely imitative
instead of inventive. He told me that he was not exceptional; all
Englishmen had thought similarly for fifty or sixty years; therefore,
naturally, his opinion carried great weight with me. And myself, to my
astonishment, I had often seen parties of these republicans become all
ears and whispers when somebody called a prince or a countess passed
by. Their reverence for age itself, in anything but a horse, had often
surprised me by its artlessness, and of all strange things in the world,
I have heard them admire old customs and old families. It was strange to
me to listen, when I had believed that their land was the only one
where happily no person need worry to remember who had been his
great-grandfather.
The greatest of my own had not saved me from the decoration of the
past week, yet he was as much mine as he was Antonio Caravacioli's; and
Antonio, though impoverished, had his motor-car and dined well, since
I happened to see, in my perusal of the journal, that he had been to
dinner the evening before at the English Embassy with a great company.
"Bravo, Antonio! Find a rich foreign wife if you can, since you cannot
do well for yourself at home!" And I could say so honestly, without
spite, for all his hatred of me,--because, until I had paid my addition,
I was still the possessor of fifty francs!
Fifty francs will continue life in the body of a judicial person a long
time in Paris, and combining that knowledge and the good goulasch, I
sought diligently for "Mamies" and "Sadies" with a revived spirit.
I found neither of those adorable names--in fact, only two such
diminutives, which are more charming than our Italian ones: A Miss
Jeanie Archibald Zip and a Miss Fannie Sooter. None of the names was
harmonious with the grey pongee--in truth, most of them were no prettier
(however less processional) than royal names. I could not please myself
that I had come closer to the rare lady; I must be contented that the
same sky covered us both, that the noise of the same city rang in her
ears as mine.
Yet that was a satisfaction, and to know that it was true gave me
mysterious breathlessness and made me hear fragments of old songs during
my walk that night. I walked very far, under the trees of the Bois,
where I stopped for a few moments to smoke a cigarette at one of the
tables outside, at Armenonville.
None of the laughing women there could be the lady I sought; and as my
refusing to command anything caused the waiter uneasiness, in spite of
my prosperous appearance, I remained but a few moments, then trudged on,
all the long way to the Cafe' de Madrid, where also she was not.
How did I assure myself of this since I had not seen her face? I cannot
tell you. Perhaps I should not have known her; but that night I was sure
that I should.
Yes, as sure of that as I was sure that she was beautiful!