lateness of the season and the fashionable taste for going early to the
country; for Cardailhac, the declared foe of nature and the country, who
always struggles to keep Parisians in Paris as late as possible, has
succeeded in filling his theatre, in making it as brilliant as in
mid-winter. Fifteen hundred heads swarming under the chandeliers, erect,
leaning forward, turned aside, questioning, with a great abundance of
shadows and reflections; some massed in the dark corners of the pit,
others brilliantly illuminated by the reflection of the white walls of
the lobby shining through the open doors of the boxes; a first-night
audience, always the same, that collective brigand from the theatrical
columns of the newspapers, who goes everywhere and carries by assault
those much-envied places when some claim to favor or the exercise of
some public function does not give them to him.
In the orchestra-stalls, lady-killers, clubmen, glistening craniums with
broad bald streaks fringed with scanty hair, light gloves, huge
opera-glasses levelled at the boxes. In the galleries, a medley of
castes and fine dresses, all the names well known at functions of the
sort, and the embarrassing promiscuousness which seats the chaste,
modest smile of the virtuous woman beside the eyes blazing with kohl and
the lips streaked with vermilion of the other kind. White hats, pink
hats, diamonds and face paint. Higher up, the boxes present the same
scene of confusion: actresses and courtesans, ministers, ambassadors,
famous authors, critics solemn of manner and frowning, lying back in
their chairs with the impassive gloom of judges beyond the reach of
corruption. The proscenium boxes are ablaze with light and splendor,
occupied by celebrities of the world of finance, decolletee, bare-armed
women, gleaming with jewels like the Queen of Sheba when she visited the
King of the Jews. But one of those great boxes on the left is entirely
unoccupied, and attracts general attention by its peculiar decoration,
lighted by a Moorish lantern at the rear. Over the whole assemblage
hovers an impalpable floating dust, the flickering of the gas, which
mingles its odor with all Parisian recreations, and its short, sharp
wheezing like a consumptive's breath, accompanying the slow waving of
fans. And with all the rest, ennui, deathly ennui, the ennui of seeing
the same faces always in the same seats, with their affectations or
their defects, the monotony of society functions, which results every
winter in turning Paris into a backbiting provincial town, more gossipy
and narrow-minded than the provinces themselves.
Maranne noticed that sullen humor, that evident weariness on the part of
the audience, and as he reflected upon the change that would be wrought
by the success of his drama in his modest life, now made up entirely of
hopes, he asked himself, in an agony of dread, what he could do to bring
his thoughts home to that multitude of human beings, to force them to
lay aside their preoccupied manner, to set in motion in that vast throng
a single current which would attract to him those distraught glances,
those minds, now scattered over all the notes in the key-board and so
difficult to bring into harmony. Instinctively he sought friendly faces,
a box opposite the stage filled by the Joyeuse family; Elise and the
younger girls in front, and behind them Aline and their father, a lovely
family group, like a bouquet dripping with dew in a display of
artificial flowers. And while all Paris was asking disdainfully: "Who
are those people?" the poet placed his destiny in those little
fairy-like hands, newly gloved for the occasion, which would boldly give
the signal for applause when it was time.
"Clear the stage!" Maranne has barely time to rush into the wings; and
suddenly he hears, far, very far away, the first words of his play,
rising, like a flock of frightened birds, in the silence and immensity
of the theatre. A terrible moment! Where should he go? What would become
of him? Should he remain there leaning against a post, with ears
strained and a feeling of tightness at his heart; to encourage the
actors when he was so in need of encouragement himself? He prefers to
confront the danger face to face, and he glides through a little door
into the lobby outside the boxes and stops at a box on the first tier
which he opens softly.--"Sh!--it's I." Some one is sitting in the
shadow, a woman whom all Paris knows, and who keeps out of sight. Andre
takes his place beside her, and sitting side by side, invisible to all,
the mother and son, trembling with excitement, watch the performance.
The audience was dumbfounded at first. The Theatre des Nouveautes,
situated at the heart of the boulevard, where its main entrance was a
blaze of light, among the fashionable restaurants and select clubs,--a
theatre to which small parties used to adjourn after a choice dinner to
hear an act or two of something racy, had become in the hands of its
clever manager the most popular of all Parisian play-houses, with no
well-defined speciality but providing a little of all sorts, from the
spectacular fairy-play which exhibits the women in scant attire, to the
great modern drama which does the same for our morals. Cardailhac was
especially bent upon justifying his title of "manager of the
Nouveautes,"[9] and since the Nabob's millions had been behind the
undertaking, he had striven to give the frequenters of the boulevard
some dazzling surprises. That of this evening surpassed them all: the
play was in verse--and virtuous.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Novelties.
A virtuous play!
The old monkey had realized that the time had come to try that _coup_,
and he tried it. After the first moments of amazement, and a few
melancholy ejaculations here and there in the boxes: "Listen! it's in
verse!" the audience began to feel the charm of that elevating, healthy
work, as if someone had shaken over it, in that rarefied atmosphere,
some cool essence, pleasant to inhale, an elixir of life perfumed with
the wild thyme of the hillsides.
"Ah! this is fine--it is restful."
That was the general exclamation, a thrill of comfort, a bleat of
satisfaction accompanying each line. It was restful to the corpulent
Hemerlingue, puffing in his proscenium box on the ground floor, as in a
sty of cherry-colored satin. It was restful to tall Suzanne Bloch, in
her antique head-dress with crimps peeping out from under a diadem of
gold; and Amy Ferat beside her, all in white like a bride, sprigs of
orange-blossoms in her hair dressed _a la chien_, it was restful to her,
too.
There were numbers of such creatures there, some very stout with an
unhealthy stoutness picked up in all sorts of seraglios, triple-chinned
and with an idiotic look; others absolutely green despite their rouge,
as if they had been dipped in a bath of that arsenite of copper known to
commerce as "Paris green," so faded and wrinkled that they kept out of
sight in the back of their boxes, letting nothing be seen save a bit of
white arm or a still shapely shoulder. Then there were old beaux, limp
and stooping, of the type then known as little _creves_, with protruding
neck and hanging lips, incapable of standing straight, or of uttering a
word without a break. And all these people exclaimed as one man: "This
is fine--it is restful." Beau Moessard hummed it like a tune under his
little blond moustache, while his queen in a first tier box opposite
translated it into her barbarous foreign tongue. Really it was restful
to them. But they did not say why they needed rest, from what
heart-sickening toil, from what enforced task as idlers and utterly
useless creatures.
All these well-disposed murmurs, confused and blended, began to give the
theatre the aspect that it wore on great occasions. Success was in the
air, faces became brighter, the women seemed embellished by the
reflection of the prevailing enthusiasm, of glances as thrilling as
applause. Andre, sitting beside his mother, thrilled with an unfamiliar
pleasure, with that proud delight which one feels in stirring the
emotions of a crowd, even though it be as a street-singer in the
faubourgs, with a patriotic refrain and two tremulous notes in one's
voice. Suddenly the whispering redoubled, changed into a tumult. People
began to move about and laugh sneeringly. What was happening? Some
accident on the stage? Andre, leaning forward in dismay toward his
actors, who were no less surprised than himself, saw that all the
opera-glasses were levelled at the large proscenium box, empty until
then, which some one had just entered and had taken his seat there, both
elbows on the velvet rail, opera-glass in hand, in ominous solitude.
The Nabob had grown twenty years older in ten days. Those impulsive
Southern natures, rich as they are in enthusiastic outbursts, in
irresistible spurts of flame, collapse more utterly than others. Since
his rejection by the Chamber the poor fellow had remained shut up in
his own room, with the curtains drawn, refusing to see the daylight or
to cross the threshold beyond which life awaited him, engagements he had
entered into, promises made, a wilderness of protests and summonses. The
Levantine having gone to some watering-place, attended by her masseur
and her negresses, absolutely indifferent to the ruin of the
family,--Bompain, the man in the fez, aghast amid the constant demands
for money, being utterly at a loss to know how to approach his
unfortunate employer, who was always in bed and turned his face to the
wall as soon as any one mentioned business to him,--the old mother was
left alone to struggle with the disaster, with the limited, guileless
knowledge of a village widow, who knows what a stamped paper is, and a
signature, and who considers honor the most precious possession on
earth. Her yellow cap appeared on every floor of the great mansion,
overlooking the bills, introducing reforms among the servants, heedless
of outcries and humiliations. At every hour in the day the good woman
could be seen striding along Place Vendome, gesticulating, talking to
herself, saying aloud: "Bah! I'll go and see the bailiff." And she never
consulted her son except when it was indispensable, and then only in a
few concise words, careful to avoid looking at him. To arouse Jansoulet
from his torpor nothing less would suffice than a despatch from Paul de
Gery at Marseille, announcing his arrival with ten millions. Ten
millions, that is to say, failure averted, a possibility of standing
erect once more, of beginning life anew. And behold our Southerner,
rebounding from the depths to which he had fallen, drunk with joy and
hope. He ordered the windows to be thrown open, newspapers to be
brought. What a magnificent opportunity that first night of _Revolte_
would afford him to show himself to the Parisians, who believed that he
had gone under, to re-enter the great eddying whirlpool through the
folding doors of his box at the Nouveautes! His mother, warned by an
instinctive dread, made a slight effort to hold him back. Paris
terrified her now. She would have liked to take her child away to some
secluded corner in the South, to care for him with the Elder, both ill
with the disease of the great city. But he was the master. It was
impossible to resist the will of that man whom wealth had spoiled. She
helped him to dress, "made him handsome," as she laughingly said, and
watched him not without a certain pride as he left the house, superb,
revivified, almost recovered from the terrible prostration of the last
few days.
Jansoulet quickly remarked the sensation caused by his presence in the
theatre. Being accustomed to such exhibitions of curiosity, he usually
responded to them without the least embarrassment, with his kindly,
expansive smile; but this time the manifestation was unfriendly, almost
insulting.
"What!--is that he?"
"There he is!"
"What impudence!"
Such exclamations went up from the orchestra stalls, mingled with many
others. The seclusion and retirement in which he had taken refuge for
the past few days had left him in ignorance of the public exasperation
in his regard, the sermons, the dithyrambs with which the newspapers
were filled on the subject of his corrupting wealth, articles written
for effect, hypocritical verbiage to which public opinion resorts from
time to time to revenge itself on the innocent for all its concessions
to the guilty. It was a terrible disappointment, which caused him at
first more pain than anger. Deeply moved, he concealed his distress
behind his opera-glass, turning three-fourths away from the audience and
giving close attention to the slightest details of the performance, but
unable to avoid the scandalized scrutiny of which he was the victim, and
which made his ears ring, his temples throb, and covered the dimmed
lenses of his opera-glass with multi-colored circles, whirling about in
the first vagaries of apoplexy.
When the act came to an end and the curtain fell, he remained, without
moving, in that embarrassed attitude; but the louder whispering, no
longer restrained by the stage dialogue, and the persistency of certain
curious persons who changed their seats in order to obtain a better view
of him, compelled him to leave his box, to rush out into the lobby like
a wild beast fleeing from the arena through the circus.
Under the low ceiling, in the narrow circular passage common in theatre
lobbies, he stumbled upon a compact crowd of dandies, newspaper men,
women in gorgeous hats, tightly laced, laughers by trade, shrieking with
idiotic laughter as they leaned against the wall. From the open boxes,
which sought a breath of fresh air from that swarming, noisy corridor,
issued broken, confused fragments of conversation:
"A delightful play. It is so fresh and clean!"
"That Nabob! What insolence!"
"Yes, it really is very restful. One feels the better for--"
"How is it he hasn't been arrested yet?"
"A very young man, it seems; this is his first play."
"Bois-l'Hery at Mazas!--It isn't possible. There's the marchioness just
opposite us in the first gallery, with a new hat."
"What does that prove? She's plying her trade of _lanceuse_. That's a
very pretty hat, by the way--the colors of Desgranges' horse."
"And Jenkins? What has become of Jenkins?"
"At Tunis with Felicia. Old Brahim saw them both. It seems that the bey
has taken a decided liking to the pearls."
"_Bigre!_"
Farther on, sweet voices whispered:
"Go, father, do go. See how entirely alone he is, poor man."
"But I don't know him, children."
"Even so, just a bow. Something to show him that he isn't utterly
abandoned."
Whereupon a little old gentleman, in a white cravat, with a very red
face, darted to meet the Nabob and saluted him with a respectful
flourish of his hat. How gratefully, with what an eager, pleasant smile,
was that single salutation returned, that salutation from a man whom
Jansoulet did not know, whom he had never seen, but who, nevertheless,
exerted a very great influence upon his destiny; for, except for Pere
Joyeuse, the president of the council of the _Territoriale_ would
probably have shared the fate of the Marquis de Bois-l'Hery. So it is
that in the network of modern society, that vast labyrinth of selfish
interests, ambitions, services accepted and rendered, all castes
communicate between themselves, mysteriously connected by hidden bonds,
from the most elevated to the humblest existences; therein lies the
explanation of the variegated coloring, the complication of this study
of manners, the assemblage of scattered threads of which the writer with
a regard for truth is compelled to make the groundwork of his drama.
Glances cast vaguely into the air, steps turned aimlessly aside, hats
pulled abruptly over the eyes, in ten minutes the Nabob was subjected to
all the outward manifestations of that terrible ostracism of Parisian
society, where he had neither kindred nor substantial connections of any
sort, and where contempt isolated him more surely than respect isolates
a sovereign when paying a visit. He staggered with embarrassment and
shame. Some one said aloud: "He has been drinking," and all that the
poor man could do was to go back into the salon of his box and close the
door. Ordinarily that little _retiro_ was filled during the entr'actes
with financiers and journalists. They laughed and talked and smoked
there, making a great uproar; the manager always came to pay his
respects to his partner. That evening, not a soul. And the absence of
Cardailhac, with his keen scent for success, showed Jansoulet the full
measure of his disgrace.
"What have I done to them? Why is it that Paris will no longer have
anything to do with me?"
He questioned himself thus in a solitude which was emphasized by the
sounds all about, the sudden turning of keys in the doors of boxes, the
innumerable exclamations of an amused crowd. Then suddenly the newness
of his luxurious surroundings, the odd shadows cast by the Moorish
lantern on the brilliant silk covering of the couch and the hangings
reminded him of the date of his arrival. Six months! Only six months
since he arrived in Paris! Everything consumed and vanished in six
months! He relapsed into a sort of torpor from which he was aroused by
enthusiastic applause and bravos. Clearly this play of _Revolte_ was a
great success. They had now reached the powerful, satirical passages;
and the virulent declamation, a little emphatic in tone but relieved by
a breath of youth and sincerity, made every heart beat fast after the
idyllic effusions of the first act. Jansoulet determined to look and
listen with the rest. After all, the theatre belonged to him. His seat
in that proscenium box had cost him more than a million; surely the
least he was entitled to was the privilege of occupying it.
Behold him seated once more at the front of his box. In the hall a
heavy, suffocating heat, stirred but not dissipated by the waving fans,
their glittering spangles mingling their reflections with the impalpable
outbreathings of the silence. The audience listened intently to an
indignant and spirited passage against the pirates, so numerous at that
period, who had become cocks of the roost after long haunting the
darkest corners to rob all who passed. Certainly Maranne, when he wrote
those fine lines, had had nobody less in his mind than the Nabob. But
the audience saw in them an allusion to him; and while a triple salvo of
applause greeted the end of the tirade, all eyes were turned toward the
box on the left, with an indignant, openly insulting movement. The poor
wretch, pilloried in his own theatre! A pillory that had cost him so
dear! That time he did not seek to avoid the affront, but settled
himself resolutely on his seat, with folded arms, and defied that crowd,
which stared at him with its hundreds of upturned, sneering faces, that
virtuous All-Paris which took him for a scapegoat and drove him forth
after loading all its crimes upon him.
A pretty assemblage, in sooth, for such an exhibition! Opposite, the box
of an insolvent banker, the wife and the lover side by side in front,
the husband in the shadow, neglected and grave. At one side the frequent
combination of a mother who has married her daughter according to her
(the mother's) own heart, and to make the man she loved her son-in-law.
Contraband couples too, courtesans flaunting the price of their shame,
diamonds in circlets of flame riveted around arms and necks like
dog-collars, stuffing themselves with bonbons, which they swallowed in
gluttonous, beastly fashion because an exhibition of the animal nature
in woman pleases those who pay for it. And those groups of effeminate
fops, with low collars and painted eyebrows, whose embroidered lawn
shirts and white satin corsets aroused admiration in the guest chambers
at Compiegne; _mignons_ of Agrippa's day, who called one another: "My
heart," or "My dear love." Scandal and wickedness in every form,
consciences sold or for sale, the vice of an epoch devoid of grandeur or
originality, attempting to copy the freaks of all other epochs, and
contributing to the Jardin Bullier that duchess, the wife of a minister
of state, who rivalled the most shameless dancers of that resort. And
they were the people who turned their back upon him, who cried out to
him: "Begone! You are unworthy."
"I unworthy! Why, I am worth a hundred times more than the whole of you,
vile wretches! You reproach me with my millions. In God's name, who
helped me squander them?--Look you, you cowardly, treacherous friend,
hiding in the corner of your box your fat carcass like a sick pasha's! I
made your fortune as well as my own in the days when we shared
everything like brothers.--And you, sallow-faced marquis, I paid a
hundred thousand francs at the club to prevent your being expelled in
disgrace.--I covered you with jewels, you hussy, so letting people think
you were my mistress, because that is good form in our circle, and never
asked you for anything in return.--And you, brazen-faced journalist,
with no other brains than the dregs of your inkstand, and with as many
leprous spots on your conscience as your queen has on her skin, you
consider that I didn't pay you what you were worth, and that's the
secret of your insults.--Yes, yes, look at me, _canaille_! I am proud. I
am better than you."
All that he said thus to himself, in a frenzy of wrath, visible in the
trembling of his thick, pallid lips, the unhappy man, upon whom madness
was swooping down, was, perhaps, on the point of shouting aloud in the
silence, of pouring out a flood of maledictions upon that insulting mob,
and, who can say? of leaping down into the midst of them and killing
some one, ah! God's blood! of killing some one, when he felt a light
touch on his shoulder; and he saw a blond head, a frank, grave face, and
two outstretched hands which he grasped convulsively, like a drowning
man.
"Ah! my dear--my dear--" stammered the poor man. But he had no strength
to say more. That grateful emotion coming upon him in the midst of his
frenzy, melted it into a sob of tears, of blood, of choking speech. His
face became purple. He motioned: "Take me away." And, leaning on Paul de
Gery's arm, he stumbled through the door of his box and fell to the
floor in the lobby.
"Bravo! bravo!" shouted the audience at the conclusion of the actor's
tirade; and there was a noise as of a hail-storm, an enthusiastic
stamping,--while the great inert body, borne by scene-shifters, passed
through the brilliantly-lighted wings, obstructed by men and women
crowding around the entrances to the stage, excited by the atmosphere of
success, and hardly noticing the passage of that lifeless victim carried
in men's arms like the victim of a street affray. They laid him on a
couch in the property room, Paul de Gery by his side with a physician
and two attendants who were eager to help. Cardailhac, who was very busy
with the performance, had promised to come and see how he was getting
on, "in a moment, after the fifth act."
Bloodletting upon bloodletting, cupping, plasters, nothing produced even
a twitching of the skin in the sick man, who was insensible to all the
methods of resuscitation usually resorted to in cases of apoplexy. A
relaxation of every fibre of his being seemed to give him over to death,
to prepare his body for the rigidity of the corpse; and that in the most
dismal place on earth, chaos lighted by a dark lantern, where all the
debris of plays that had been performed, gilded furniture, hangings with
gorgeous fringe, carriages, strong boxes, card-tables, discarded flights
of stairs and banisters, were heaped together pell-mell under the dust,
among ropes and pulleys, a wilderness of damaged, broken, demolished,
cast-off stage properties. Bernard Jansoulet, as he lay amid that
wreckage, his shirt torn away from his chest, at once bleeding and
bloodless, was the typical shipwrecked victim of life, bruised and cast
ashore with the pitiable debris of his artificial splendor broken and
scattered by the Parisian whirlpool. Paul, broken-hearted, gazed sadly
at that face with its short nose, retaining in its inert condition the
wrathful yet kindly expression of an inoffensive creature who tried to
defend himself before dying, but had no time to bite. He blamed himself
for his inability to serve him to any useful purpose. What had become of
that fine project of his of leading Jansoulet through the quagmires, of
saving him from ambuscades? All that he had been able to do was to
rescue a few millions, and even those came too late.
* * * * *