She had mounted the shining marble steps with without mishap, without
labor, sustained by her great beauty and her fine nature alone. She had
taken her place in the salons of the rich and great without laying for
her admittance with her honor or her good name. Yet no one could say
whence she came, though people whispered that it was from the depths.
As a waif of a Parisian faubourg, she had starved through her childhood
among surroundings of vice and poverty, such as those only can conceive
who know them by experience. Those of us who get our knowledge from
books and from hearsay have to strain our imagination in order to form
an idea of the hereditary misery of a great city, and yet our most
terrible imaginings are apt to pale before the reality.
It had been only a question of time when vice should get its clutches
upon her, as a cog-wheel seizes whoever comes too near the machine.
After whirling her around through a short life of shame and degradation,
it would, with mechanical punctuality, have cast her off into some
corner, there to drag out to the end, in sordid obscurity, her
caricature of an existence.
But it happened, as it does sometimes happen, that she was “discovered”
by a man of wealth and position, one day when, a child of fourteen, she
happened to cross one of the better streets. She was on her way to a
dark back room in the Rue des Quatre Vents, where she worked with a
woman who made artificial flowers.
It was not only her extraordinary beauty that attracted her patron;
her movements, her whole bearing, and the expression of her half-formed
features, all seemed to him to show that here was an originally fine
nature struggling against incipient corruption. Moved by one of the
incalculable whims of the very wealthy, he determined to try to rescue
the unhappy child.
It was not difficult to obtain control of her, as she belonged to no
one. He gave her a name, and placed her in one of the best convent
schools. Before long her benefactor had the satisfaction of observing
that the seeds of evil died away and disappeared. She developed an
amiable, rather indolent character, correct and quiet manners, and a
rare beauty.
When she grew up he married her. Their married life was peaceful
and pleasant; in spite of the great difference in their ages, he had
unbounded confidence in her, and she deserved it.
Married people do not live in such close communion in France as they
do with us; so that their claims upon each other are not so great, and
their disappointments are less bitter.
She was not happy, but contented. Her character lent itself to
gratitude. She did not feel the tedium of wealth; on the contrary, she
often took an almost childish pleasure in it. But no one could guess
that, for her bearing was always full of dignity and repose. People
suspected that there was something questionable about her origin, but as
no one could answer questions they left off asking them. One has so much
else to think of in Paris.
She had forgotten her past. She had forgotten it just as we
have forgotten the roses, the ribbons, and faded letters of our
youth--because we never think about them. They lie locked up in a drawer
which we never open. And yet, if we happen now and again to cast a
glance into this secret drawer, we at once notice if a single one of the
roses, or the least bit of ribbon, is wanting. For we remember them all
to a nicety; the memories are ran fresh as ever--as sweet as ever, and
as bitter.
It was thus she had forgotten her past--locked it up and thrown away the
key.
But at night she sometimes dreamed frightful things. She could once more
feel the old witch with whom she lived shaking her by the shoulder, and
driving her out in the cold mornings to work at her artificial flowers.
Then she would jump up in her bed, and stare out into the darkness in
the most deadly fear. But presently she would touch the silk coverlet
and the soft pillows; her fingers would follow the rich carvings of her
luxurious bed; and while sleepy little child-angels slowly drew aside
the heavy dream-curtain, she tasted in deep draughts the peculiar,
indescribable well-being we feel when we discover that an evil and
horrible dream was a dream and nothing more.
*****
Leaning back among the soft cushions, she drove to the great ball at
the Russian ambassador’s. The nearer they got to their destination the
slower became the pace, until the carriage reached the regular queue,
where it dragged on at a foot-pace.
In the wide square in front of the hôtel, brilliantly lighted with
torches and with gas, a great crowd of people had gathered. Not only
passers-by who had stopped to look on, but more especially workmen,
loafers, poor women, and ladies of questionable appearance, stood in
serried ranks on both sides of the row of carriages. Humorous remarks
and coarse witticisms in the vulgarest Parisian dialect hailed down upon
the passing carriages and their occupants.
She heard words which she had not heard for many years, and she blushed
at the thought that she was perhaps the only one in this whole long line
of carriages who understood these low expressions of the dregs of Paris.
She began to look at the faces around her: it seemed to her as if she
knew them all. She knew what they thought, what was passing in each
of these tightly-packed heads; and little by little a host of memories
streamed in upon her. She fought against them as well as she could, but
she was not herself this evening.
She had not, then, lost the key to the secret drawer; reluctantly she
drew it out, and the memories overpowered her.
She remembered how often she herself, still almost a child, had devoured
with greedy eyes the fine ladies who drove in splendor to balls or
theatres; how often she had cried in bitter envy over the flowers she
laboriously pieced together to make others beautiful. Here she saw the
same greedy eyes, the same inextinguishable, savage envy.
And the dark, earnest men who scanned the equipages with
half-contemptuous, half-threatening looks--she knew them all.
Had not she herself, as a little girl, lain in a corner and listened,
wide-eyed, to their talk about the injustice of life, the tyranny of the
rich, and the rights of the laborer, which he had only to reach out his
hand to seize?
She knew that they hated everything--the sleek horses, the dignified
coachmen, the shining carriages, and, most of all, the people who sat
within them--these insatiable vampires, these ladies, whose ornaments
for the night cost more gold than any one of them could earn by the work
of a whole lifetime.
And as she looked along the line of carriages, as it dragged on
slowly through the crowd, another memory flashed into her mind--a
half-forgotten picture from her school-life in the convent.
She suddenly came to think of the story of Pharaoh and his war-chariots
following the children of Israel through the Red Sea. She saw the waves,
which she had always imagined red as blood, piled up like a wall on both
sides of the Egyptians.
Then the voice of Moses sounded. He stretched out his staff over the
waters, and the Red Sea waves hurtled together and swallowed up Pharaoh
and all his chariots.
She knew that the wall which stood on each side of her was wilder and
more rapacious than the waves of the sea; she knew that it needed only
a voice, a Moses, to set all this human sea in motion, hurling it
irresistibly onward until it should sweep away all the glory of wealth
and greatness in its blood-red waves.
Her heart throbbed, and she crouched trembling into the corner of the
carriage. But it was not with fear; it was so that those without should
not see her--for she was ashamed to meet their eyes.
For the first time in her life, her good-fortune appeared to her in the
light of an injustice, a thing to blush for.
Was she in her right place, in this soft-cushioned carriage, among these
tyrants and blood-suckers? Should she not rather be out there in the
billowing mass, among the children of hate?
Half-forgotten thoughts and feelings thrust up their heads like beasts
of prey which have long lain bound. She felt strange and homeless in
her glittering life, and thought with a sort of demoniac longing of the
horrible places from which she had risen.
She seized her rich lace shawl; there came over her a wild desire to
destroy, to tear something to pieces; but at this moment the carriage
turned into the gate-way of the hôtel.
The footman tore open the door, and with her gracious smile, her air of
quiet, aristocratic distinction, she alighted.
A young attaché rushed forward, and was happy when she took his arm,
still more enraptured when he thought he noticed an unusual gleam in her
eyes, and in the seventh heaven when he felt her arm tremble.
Full of pride and hope, he led her with sedulous politeness up the
shining marble steps.
*****
“‘Tell me, _belle dame_, what good fairy endowed you in your cradle with
the marvellous gift of transforming everything you touch into something
new and strange. The very flower in your hair has a charm, as though
it were wet with the fresh morning dew. And when you dance it seems as
though the floor swayed and undulated to the rhythm of your footsteps.”
The Count was himself quite astonished at this long and felicitous
compliment, for as a rule he did not find it easy to express himself
coherently. He expected, too, that his beautiful partner would show her
appreciation of his effort.
But he was disappointed. She leaned over the balcony, where they were
enjoying the cool evening air after the dance, and gazed out over
the crowd and the still-advancing carriages. She seemed not to have
understood the Count’s great achievement; at least he could only hear
her whisper the inexplicable word, “Pharaoh.”
He was on the point of remonstrating with her, when she turned round,
made a step towards the salon, stopped right in front of him, and looked
him in the face with great, wonderful eyes, such as the Count had never
seen before.
“I scarcely think, Monsieur le Comte, that any good fairy--perhaps
not even a cradle--was present at my birth. But in what you say of
my flowers and my dancing your penetration has led you to a great
discovery. I will tell you the secret of the fresh morning dew which
lies on the flowers. It is the tears, Monsieur le Comte, which envy and
shame, disappointment and remorse, have wept over them. And if you seem
to feel the floor swaying as we dance, that is because it trembles under
the hatred of millions.”
She had spoken with her customary repose, and with a friendly bow she
disappeared into the salon.
*****
The Count remained rooted to the spot. He cast a glance over the crowd
outside. It was a right he had often seen, and he had made sundry snore
or less trivial witticisms about the “many-headed monster.” But to-night
it struck him for the first time that this monster was, after all, the
most unpleasant neighbor for a palace one could possibly imagine.
Strange and disturbing thoughts whirled in the brain of Monsieur le
Comte, where they found plenty of space to gyrate. He was entirely
thrown off his balance, and it was not till after the next polka that
his placidity returned.