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THE BLUE DUCHESS
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THE LOTUS LIBRARY
FULL LIST OF VOLUMES IN THE LIBRARY
THE TRAGEDY OF A GENIUS =Honoré de Balzac=
VATHEK =William Beckford=
THE MATAPAN JEWELS =Fortuné du Boisgobey=
THE BLUE DUCHESS =Paul Bourget=
ANDRÉ CORNÉLIS =Paul Bourget=
A WOMAN’S HEART =Paul Bourget=
OUR LADY OF LIES =Paul Bourget=
THE CHILDREN OF ALSACE =René Bazin=
THE WOMAN OF THE HILL =“Une Circassienne”=
THE ROMANCE OF A HAREM =“Une Circassienne”=
SAPHO =Alphonse Daudet=
THE POPINJAY =Alphonse Daudet=
SIDONIE’S REVENGE =Alphonse Daudet=
THE NABOB =Alphonse Daudet=
A PASSION OF THE SOUTH =Alphonse Daudet=
THE BLACK TULIP =Alexandre Dumas=
THE LADY WITH THE =Alexandre Dumas=
CAMELIAS
MADAME BOVARY =Gustave Flaubert=
SALAMMBÔ =Gustave Flaubert=
THE TEMPTATION OF ST. =Gustave Flaubert=
ANTHONY
THAÏS =Anatole France=
THE SHE-WOLF =Maxime Formont=
THE DIAMOND NECKLACE =Franz Funck-Brentano=
CAGLIOSTRO & CO. =Franz Funck-Brentano=
THE BLACKMAILERS (“Le =Emile Gaboriau=
Dossier No. 113”)
THE RED SHIRTS =Paul Gaulot=
MDLLE. DE MAUPIN =Théophile Gautier=
THE MUMMY’S ROMANCE =Théophile Gautier=
CAPTAIN FRACASSE =Théophile Gautier=
LA FAUSTIN =Edmond de Goncourt=
THE OUTLAW OF ICELAND =Victor Hugo=
(“Hans D’Islande”)
A GOOD-NATURED FELLOW =Paul de Kock=
COUNT BRÜHL =Joseph Kraszewski=
THEIR MAJESTIES THE KINGS =Jules Lemaître=
MADAME SANS-GÉNE =E. Lepelletier=
THE ROMANCE OF A SPAHI =Pierre Loti=
WOMAN AND PUPPET =Pierre Louys=
THE DISASTER =Paul and Victor
Margueritte=
THE WHITE ROSE =Auguste Maquet=
A WOMAN’S SOUL =Guy de Maupassant=
THE LATIN QUARTER =Henri Murger=
(“Scénes de la Vie de
Bohéme”)
A MODERN MAN’S CONFESSION =Alfred and Paul de
Musset=
HE AND SHE =Alfred and Paul de
Musset=
THE RIVAL ACTRESSES =Georges Ohnet=
THE POISON DEALER =Georges Ohnet=
IN DEEP ABYSS =Georges Ohnet=
THE WOMAN OF MYSTERY =Georges Ohnet=
LIFE’S LAST GIFT =Louis de Robert=
THE DESIRE OF LIFE =Matilde Serao=
WHEN IT WAS DARK =Guy Thorne=
THE KREUTZER SONATA =Leo Tolstoy=
SEBASTOPOL =Leo Tolstoy=
DRINK =Emile Zola=
THE ADVENTURES OF BARON =Anonymous=
MUNCHAUSEN
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[Illustration: PAUL BOURGET]
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THE
Blue Duchess
By
PAUL BOURGET
Translated by
ERNEST TRISTAN
LONDON: GREENING & CO.
NEW YORK: BRENTANO’S
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PREFACE
Paul Bourget was born in the cathedral city of Amiens about fifty years
ago, but there are a number of other interesting things to say about
him. Like so many famous authors, he began, in 1873, with verse.
Probably the verse did not bring him the instant fame that we all desire
with our first book, for he soon turned to prose, which of course as
Saltus has hinted, is more difficult. Again, it is probable that verse
and prose are not really so very far apart, but are related, as an angel
is related to a saint, or a lovely sister to her handsome but very
masculine brother. Essays followed Bourget’s lyrics, then a triumphal
procession of novels and travels, till, in 1904, he became a poet again
by wearing the blue and gold costume of the French Academy.
For about ten years now the writings of Paul Bourget have had great
success in London’s capitol, Mayfair, among a certain set or circle of
ladies whose minds are as carefully tended as are their beautiful
bodies. They have read him, even as they have read Anatole France and
Marcel Prévost, because of notes of distinction in the writings, the
lack of discord, the evidences of balanced, graceful, well-valeted life.
Bourget belongs to the group of writers who are sometimes termed
Salon-writers. I imagine it is a German classification; it brings before
the vision one writing with a gold pen using a silver standish upon a
table of sycamore. Perhaps if we say in English “the kid-glove school”
the phrase will describe, if it does not please. This note of refinement
in style, distinction in utterance, is certainly represented best in
France by Bourget, in Italy by D’Annunzio, in Holland by Couperus, in
America by Saltus. Of course other countries have claims too. There has
been very little written about Bourget in English, not because he writes
French, but because he writes. In a _conte_ charmingly named _A Bouquet
of Illusions_ Bourget himself is one of the characters, the protagonist
part in fact. The _conte_ is written by Saltus and is worthy of both
novelists.
G. F. MONKSHOOD.
LONDON,
1908.
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
Not long ago I assisted at the unexpected end of an adventure, which,
after it had just missed being a tragedy, concluded in an almost comic
fashion. Although I was only cast for a very small part, as a simple
spectator, my heart was too much mixed up in it for me to-day not to
feel in similar circumstances the bitter sensation of the irony of
things, which may be either cruel or beneficial. It is the chill of the
steel which cuts you, though it cures you too. It has occurred to me to
make the adventure into a story. Obviously it would be more reasonable
to go on with one of my unfinished pictures, “The Pardon of Psyche,” for
instance, which has been standing on the easel for years, or one of
those inanimate objects: old furniture, silver, and books, which will
comprise the series called “Humble Friends.”
“A painter,” my master, Miraut, used to say, “should only think brush in
hand.” It is my opinion, from numerous illustrious examples including
Miraut himself, that he should not think at all. But I know only too
well, I am but half a painter, an artist in intention rather than in
temperament, the outline of a Fromentin of the twelfth rank. That is a
singular feeling of sadness too: the feeling that one is but an inferior
double of another, a small and poor proof of a block already printed, a
sample of humanity in the likeness of a model who has already lived, and
in whose destiny it is possible to read beforehand one’s own destiny!
But not all one’s own destiny! For I am only too well aware that I
suffer from the same failings as Fromentin without possessing his
brilliance. But the brush was not sufficient for this complex and
elaborate master. He wanted, with the nervous hand which transmitted
colours to canvas, to put ink upon paper, and what was the result? We
other painters said his painting was too literary, and literary men said
his literature was too technical, too pictorial, and not intellectual
enough.
In my own case at each exhibition of my work for years past my
fellow-painters’ reserve, and their praise particularly, have signified
to me that I lack a real artist’s original and visionary nature. But I
do not require my fellow artists’ judgment; what does my own conscience
say? If I really expressed myself with my brush alone, should I have
brought back from Spain, Morocco, Italy and Egypt as many pages of notes
as sketches? I have for fifteen years, wandered between numberless
contradictory forms of art and mind. I have wandered from country to
country seeking the sun and health; from museum to museum seeking
æsthetic revelations, and later from art school to art school seeking an
artist’s creed, and from dream to dream in search of a love. My affairs
of the heart have all been incipient and abortive for the same reason as
my affairs of the mind: my irremediable incapacity to make up my mind
and stand firm, in which to-day I recognize the strange originality of
my character.
When we see with what infrangible conditions nature surrounds us, is it
not best to accept them? At least, I have made up my mind upon an
essential point, my work. That is something. I have promised myself to
fret no more over vain ambitions. I will be a mediocre painter; that is
all. In that case why should I deny myself the pleasure of writing, a
thing which formerly discipline forbade? As it is certain that the name
of M. Vincent la Croix will never shine in the sky of glory with the
names of Gustave Moreau, of Puvis de Chavannes, and of Burne-Jones, why
should M. Vincent la Croix deprive himself of this compensation: wasting
his time after his own fashion, like the rich amateur, the dilettante
and the critic he is? That is the reason why, when about to live over
again in thought the episodes of a real little romance, into which
chance introduced me, I have prepared paper, a pen, and ink. Here is a
fresh proof that I shall always lack spontaneous and gushing geniality;
I have gone out of my way to explain my motives at the beginning of this
story, instead of starting it simply and boldly. I can see its most
minute details before me, so what need have I of excusing in my own eyes
a work which tempts me? I shall be at liberty to destroy it if I am too
ashamed of it when it is finished. Many a time have I painted out a
canvas which I considered bad! This time two logs in the fireplace and a
match will suffice. That is one of the unspeakable superiorities of
literature over painting.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER I
The reason I can clearly recollect the exact date of the beginning of
the adventure I am about to relate, is that it was my thirty-sixth
birthday. That is twenty-nine months ago. That anniversary found me more
melancholy than usual. The reason of it was still the same: the feeling
that my faculties were at the same time unemployed and limited, and that
the boundary of my talent was continually being reached. The pretext? I
smile at the pretext. But what imaginative man has not had in his youth
childish and heroic determinations? What artist has not fixed beforehand
the stages in his glorious career, comparing himself to some illustrious
person? Caesar, who was as good as most people, said: “At my age
Alexander had conquered the world.” That is an heroic cry when the pride
of a still unknown power palpitates in it, but it is harrowing when the
conviction of definitive impuissance utters this useless sigh towards
triumph. I am not Caesar, but all my diaries—and I have many—abound in
dates which were rendezvous given by me to Fame, but which she failed to
keep.
On my thirty-seventh birthday I had, as my custom was, been looking
through my papers and reflecting that I was still as little known to
fame as I had been in my youth, still as lacking in glorious works,
great actions, and grand passions, and my hope was gradually departing.
That morning, too, an agency to which I was foolish enough to subscribe,
had sent me two newspaper cuttings mentioning my name and making
unfriendly comments upon my work. A fresh wave of discouragement swept
over me, paralyzing the creative energy of the soul, and clearly
demonstrating to me my own shortcomings. My communion with my thoughts
on that darkening autumn afternoon frightened me, and I took refuge in a
means of distraction which was usually successful, a visit to the School
of Arms in the Rue Boissy d’Anglais. There I overcame my nerves by a
series of exercises performed with all the vigour of which I was
capable. A cold bath and a rub down followed by dinner in congenial
company and a rubber used to pass the evening. Towards eleven o’clock I
could return home without much risk of insomnia. I had carried out the
first part of this programme on the first evening of my thirty-seventh
year and should have completed it if I had not, on entering the
dining-room of my club, met perhaps the oldest of my Parisian comrades,
an old school-fellow too, the celebrated novelist and dramatic author,
Jacques Molan.
“Will you come and dine?” he asked me. “I have a table, do dine with
me.”
Under any other circumstances, in spite of our long friendship, I should
have excused myself. Few personalities weary me so quickly as Jacques.
He has combined with faults I detest the quality most lacking in me: the
power to impose himself, the audacity of mind, the productive virility,
and the self-confidence without which a man is not a great artist. Do
the great virtues of genius of necessity bring with them an abuse of the
“I,” of which this writer was an extraordinary example?
The two other men of letters I knew best, Julien Dorsenne and Claude
Larcher, were most certainly not tainted with egotism. They were modest
violets, holy and timid violets, small and humble in the grass by the
side of Jacques. “His” books, “his” plays, “his” enemies, “his” plans,
“his” profits, “his” mistresses, “his” health, existed for himself
alone, and he talked of no one but himself. That was the reason Claude
said: “How can you ever expect Molan to be sad? Every morning he gazes
at himself in the looking-glass and thinks: 'How happy I am to dress as
the first author of the day!’” But Claude was slightly envious of
Jacques, and that was one of the latter’s superiorities; through his
self-conceit he was ignorant of any feeling like envy. He did not prefer
himself to others, he ignored them. The explanation of this mystery was:
with his almost unhealthy vanity only equalled by his insensibility,
this fellow had only to sit down with paper in front of him, and beneath
his pen came and went, spoke and acted, enjoyed and suffered passionate
and eloquent beings, creatures of flesh and blood full of love and
hate—in a word, real men and women. A whole world was produced, so real,
so intense, so amusing, or so moving in turn, that even I am filled with
admiration every time I read his books. But I know it is only illusion,
only magic, only a sleight-of-hand trick; I know that the spiritual
father of these heroes and heroines is a perfect literary monster, with
a flask of ink in the place of a heart. I am wrong. He still has there
the passionate love of success. What marvellous tact, what fingering in
the playing upon that surprising organ, public taste!
Jacques is the accomplished type of what we call in studio slang a
“profiteur,” the artist who excels in appropriating another’s work, and
displaying it to the best advantage! For example, at the period of his
rise, Naturalism was in the ascendant. Zola’s admirable _Assommoir_ had
just appeared, and almost immediately came the extraordinary studies of
peasants and girls which revealed to the world of letters the name of
the unhappy Maupassant. Jacques realized that no great success was
possible in any other form of novel, and at the same time he divined
that after these two masters he must not touch trivial and popular
environment. The reader was satiated with that. Molan then conceived the
idea, which amounted to genius, of applying to high life the results of
the bitter observation and brutal realism so popular then. His four
first volumes of novels and short stories were thus, the description
being bestowed upon them on their first appearance, pomaded with Zola
and perfumed with Maupassant. Epigrams are epigrams, and success is
success. Molan’s success was very rapid, it may be remembered.
Soon after, certain indications made him realize that the reader’s taste
was changing again, that it was turning in the direction of analysis and
psychological study. Then he abruptly changed his methods and we had the
three books which have done most for his reputation: _Martyre Intime_,
_Cœur Brisé_ and _Anciennes Amours_. In them he preserved the faults
usual in imitators: long dissertations, the philosophic treatment of
little love adventures, and particularly, the abuse of worldly
adornment. He had originated naturalism in high life. He introduced
analysis of the poor, humble and middle classes. Afterwards, when virtue
suddenly appeared to be the order of the day, we had from his pen the
only novel of the period which rivalled in honest success, L’abbé
Constantin. It was _Blanche Comme Un Lys_.
When social problems became the critic’s copy, Molan once more changed
his methods and wrote the novel on a working-class family called _Une
Épopée de ce temps_, a work of imagination in two volumes, of which
65,000 copies were sold. See the vanity of æsthetic theories! All these
books were conceived with different principles of art. Through them we
could follow the history of the variations of fashion. Not one of them
is sincere in the real sense of the word, and all of them have in an
equal degree that colour of human truth which seems in this wayward
writer an unconscious gift. The same gift he displayed, when fearing to
weary his readers by an abuse of the novel, he began to write plays. He
wrote _Adéle_, a great success at the Français; _La Vaincue_, at the
Odéon was another, and the newspapers had informed me of his fresh
success at the Vaudeville, with an enigmatically entitled comedy, _La
Duchesse Blue_.
Now the fact that we were at school together proves that this enormous
output: ten volumes of fiction, two of short stories, a collection of
verses, and three plays was produced in sixteen years. Jacques, too,
lived while he worked like this. He had mistresses, made necessary
journeys which allowed him to truthfully write in his prefaces sentences
like this: “When I picked anemones in the gardens of the Villa
Pamphili!” or like this: “I, too, offered up my prayer on the
Acropolis”; or again: “Like the bull I saw kneel down to die in the bull
ring at Seville.” I have quoted these phrases from memory. Besides all
this, the animal looked after his relatives and his investments, and
preserved his gaiety and youthful appetite. I had proof of that the
evening I mechanically dined with him; in spite of my secret antipathy
dominated by the suggestion of vitality emanating from every one of his
gestures. We were no sooner seated than he asked me—
“What wine do you prefer, champagne or Burgundy? They are both very good
here.”
“I think that Eau de Vals will do for me,” I replied.
“Have you not a good digestion?” he asked with a laugh; “I don’t know
that I have a stomach. Then I will have extra dry champagne.” His egoism
was of a convenient kind, as he never discussed other people’s caprices,
nor allowed them to discuss his. He ordered the dinner and asked me if I
had seen his play at the Vaudeville, what I thought of it, and whether
it was not the best thing he had done.
“You know,” I replied in some embarrassment, “I hardly ever go to the
theatre.”
“What luck!” he went on good-humouredly. “I will take you this evening.
I shall find out your first impression of it. Will you be frank with me?
You will see that it is not so bitter as _Adéle_, nor quite so eloquent
as _La Vaincue_. But the way to succeed is to baffle expectations;
never, never repeat oneself! Those who reproached me with lack of brain
and ignorance of my business, have had to acknowledge their mistake. You
know me. I say out loud what I think. When I published _Tendres
Nuances_, last year, you remember what I said to you: 'It is not worth
the trouble of reading’; but _La Duchesse Blue_ is different. The public
is of the same opinion as myself.”
“But where do you find your titles?” I asked.
“What!” he cried; “you, a painter, ask me that question? Don’t you know
Gainsborough’s 'Blue Boy’ in the gallery of Grosvenor House in London?
My play has for its heroine a woman whom one of your colleagues, better
informed than yourself in English manners, has painted in a harmony of
blue tints as the Gainsborough boy. This woman, being a Duchess, has
been nicknamed in her set the Little Blue Duchess, because of the
portrait. With my dialogue and little Favier!”
“Who is little Favier?” I asked.
“What!” he cried, “don’t you know little Favier? You pretend to live in
Paris! Not that I blame you for not frequenting the theatres. Seeing the
kind of plays usually put on, I think it was high time they gave us
young ones a chance.”
“That does not tell me about little Favier,” I insisted.
“Well! Camille Favier is the Blue Duchess. She acts with talent, fantasy
and grace! I discovered her. A year ago she was at the Conservatoire. I
saw her there and recognized her talent, and when I sent my play to the
Vaudeville, I told them I wanted her to take the part. They engaged her,
and now she is famous. My luck is contagious. But you must do her
portrait for me as she is in the play, a symphony in blue major! It will
be a fine subject for you for the next Salon. I repeat I am very lucky.
Then what a head she has for you: twenty-two years old, a complexion
like a tea-rose, a mouth sad in repose and tender when smiling, blue
eyes to complete the symphony, pale, pale, pale blue with a black point
in the middle, which sometimes increases in size; her hair is the colour
of oriental tobacco, and she is slender, supple and young. She lives
with her mother in a third floor in the Rue de la Barcuellére, in your
neighbourhood. That detail is good as a human document. People talk of
the theatre’s corruption: nine hundred francs rent, one servant, and an
outlook on a convent garden! She believes in her art, and in authors!
She believes too much in them.”
He said these words with a smile, the meaning of which was unmistakable.
His remarks had been accompanied by an insolent and sensual look,
gleaming and self-satisfied. I had no doubt as to the feeling the pretty
actress inspired in him. He told me about these private matters in a
very loud voice, with that apparent indiscretion which implies
thoughtlessness and so well conceals design. But this sort of gossip
always has a prudent limit. Besides, the diners at the next table were
three retired generals, to interrupt whose conversation then gun-shot
would have been required. The noises made by the thirty or forty persons
dining were sufficient to drown even Jacques’ most distinct phrases. So
there was really no reason for my companion to speak in low tones, as I
did in questioning him. But what a symbol of our two destinies! I
instinctively experienced, before even knowing Mademoiselle Favier, the
shameful timidity of the sentiment of which Jacques experienced the joy.
“You are paying court to her, that is what you mean?” I asked him.
“No, she is courting me,” he said with a laugh, “or rather has been
doing so. But why should I not tell you, for if I introduce you to her,
she will tell you everything in five minutes? In fact, she is my
mistress. With my reputation, my investments, my books, I can marry whom
I please; and there is plenty of time. The pear is ripe. But if we were
always reasonable, we should be only common people, should not we? She
began it. If you had seen, at rehearsal, how she stealthily devoured me
with her eyes! I took good care not to notice her. She is a coquette and
a half. An author who has a mistress at the theatre when he does not act
himself, is responsible for a serious orthographical error. You know the
proverb: the architect does not hobnob with the mason. But after the
first performance, after the battle was won, I let myself go. Here is
another human document: little Favier had gone through the
Conservatoire, had been on the stage, and my dear fellow she was still
virtuous, perfectly virtuous. Do you understand me?”
“Poor girl!” I cried involuntarily.
“No, no!” Jacques replied shrugging his shoulders. “Some lover must be
first, and it is better to have a Jacques Molan than a pupil of the
Conservatoire, or, as is usually the case, one of the professors there,
is it not? But I am her poesy, her real romance to tell her friends. I
have been kind to her. She desired our love concealed from her mother
and we did so. She desired meetings in cemeteries at the graves of great
men and I have gone there. Can you imagine me, at my age, with a bunch
of violets in my hand, waiting for a friend with my elbows sentimentally
resting upon the tomb of Alfred de Musset, a poet whom I detest? Quite a
student’s idyll, is it not? I repeat it is very foolish, but I found her
so amiable and so fresh the first time. She 'rested me’ from this Paris
in which everything is vanity.”
“And now?” I asked.
“Now?” he repeated, and the insolent and sensual expression came into
his eyes once more. “You want me to confess? That is two months ago, and
a two months’ idyll is a little less fresh, amiable and restful.” Then
in a lower and more confidential tone he asked: “Do you know pretty
Madam Pierre de Bonnivet?”
“You still seem to forget that I am not a fashionable painter,” I
replied, “that I have not a little house on the Monceau Plain, that I do
not ride in the Bois, and frequent the noble Faubourg though I live
there.”
“Don’t let us mix up our localities,” he replied with his usual
assurance. “The Monceau Plain and the Bois have nothing in common with
the Faubourg and the nobility, nor has the charming person to whom I am
referring, anything in common, except her name, with the real Bonnivet
descended from the constable or admiral, the friend of Francis I.”
“There is one less imbecile among her ancestors then,” I interrupted.
“That is one of the advantages the false nobility sometimes has over the
true nobility.”
“Good,” Jacques said, shrugging his shoulders at the sally with which I
had satisfied my ill-humour against her pretensions. “You remind me of
Giboyer. You are a pedant, sir. But I shall not defend what you call the
noble Faubourg against your attacks. I have seen enough of it to never
wish to set foot in it again. There is too much fashion about it for me.
Grand drawing-rooms are not in my line. I have nothing to do with
aristocratic ladies. One-twentieth of the women in Paris, some young,
some not, some titled, some not, have pretensions to be literary,
political, or æsthetic, but they are all brainy and intellectual, and
they are not courtesans. My pleasure is to turn them into courtesans
when it is worth the trouble. If I ever show you Bonnivet, you will
agree that she is worth the trouble. Besides there is at her house
lively conversation and good food. Don’t look so disgusted. After ten
years in Paris even with my stomach, dinner in town becomes a terrible
bore. At her house dinner is a feast, the table exquisite and the cellar
marvellous. Father Bonnivet has made ten or twelve million francs out of
flour. It is not sufficient for his wife for the celebrated men about
whom she is curious to honour her drawing-room with their presence. They
have to fall in love with her as well, and I believe they have all done
so, till now.”
I urged him to continue his story, though his cynicism made me shudder,
his loquacity exasperated me, and I was horrified at his sentiments,
which were so brutally plebeian in their dilettante disguise, for I was
greatly interested in his confidences. He gladly opened his heart to me
as I listened to him, though he actually liked me no more than I did
him. He instinctively felt the fascination he exercised over me and it
pleased him. We were at college together, and that strange bond would
unite us till death in spite of everything. He went on—
“There is nothing to tell you except that for some time Queen Anne, as
her intimate friends call her, absolutely refused to be introduced to
me. In parenthesis, I wonder if this name Anne has been selected as
coquettishly heraldic? I sometimes dine at the house of Madam Éthorel,
her cousin, whom she detests. I met her there, and I also pretended to
avoid her. She told any one who would listen to her that I had no
talent, and that my books either bored or repelled her, that being the
classic method of a fashionable woman who wishes to pique a famous man
by not appearing to join the throng of his admirers. Kind friends always
let one know of this amiability. _La Duchesse Blue_ was produced with
some success, as I have told you, and then, I don’t know how or why,
there came an entire change of front. One of her beaters—she has
beaters, just like a sportsman, whom she recruits from her most ardent
admirers—Senneterre, whom you know well; the old blond who sometimes
takes the bank here, and is a great admirer of mine. Generally we merely
exchanged greetings, but instead of that he showered compliments upon me
and finished up by inviting me to dine at the Club in the room reserved
for fashionable ladies. That is five weeks ago. 'How are they going to
make use of me?’ I thought as I went up the stairs. The first person I
met in the anteroom, one of the prettiest, most elegant corners in
Paris, was Madam Pierre de Bonnivet.”
“She was just like little Favier,” I interposed, “a coquette and a half.
Ever since I have known you your stories have always been the same: they
consist of playing with the women who have the least heart, and you
always win.”
“It is not quite as simple as all that,” he replied without getting
angry; “I amused myself with Queen Anne, but not in the way you think.
The beater placed us side by side at the table. I should like you to
have been there in hiding listening to us. The conversation was sweet,
simple, friendly and melting, the meeting of two beautiful souls. She
spoke well of all the women we knew, and I spoke well of all my
colleagues. We declared in agreement that the great awkward Madam de
Sauve has never had a lover, and that Dorsenne’s novels are his
masterpieces, that the demon Madam Moraines is an angel of
disinterestedness, and that the noodle, René Vincy is a great poet.
Judge of our sincerity. It was as if neither she nor I had ever
suspected that one writer could slander another, that a woman of the
world could commit adultery. We have taken our revenge since, and we are
at this moment in that state of bitter warfare which is disguised by the
pretty name of flirtation. I spare you the details. It is sufficient to
know that she is aware that little Favier is my mistress; she thinks I
am madly in love with her, and her sole aim is to steal me from her.
Accustomed as she is to masculine ruses, she has laid the snare which
has always been successful since the earth has revolved around the sun:
there is no virtue like the sensation of stealing a love from another
woman. The most curious thing is that Queen Anne might easily have been
virtuous. Oh, she is very fast. But I should not be surprised to hear
that she has never had a real lover. Besides, if she had had twenty-five
lovers her scheme would still have succeeded. I would wager that in the
earthly paradise the serpent only told our mother Eve that he was about
to pluck the apple for the female of his own species.”
“But what of Camille Favier?” I asked.
“Naturally she guessed or else I told her—I don’t know how to lie—so she
is no less jealous of Bonnivet than Bonnivet is of her. I have not been
bored for the last week or two I can assure you. Things have moved
quickly, and the rapid are just as successful in gallantry as in
everything else.”
We were having dessert, and he was balancing a piece of pear on the end
of his dessert fork as he concluded his confidence with this brutal
cruelty which made me say—
“You are between two women again? You are playing a dangerous game.”
“Dangerous?” he interrupted with his confident joviality. “To whom? To
me? Happily or unhappily, I am insured against these fires. To Madam de
Bonnivet? If she does not love me, what risk does she run? If she loves
me, she will be grateful. Suffering requires feeling, and to women of
this kind that is everything. But I think she is as hard as I am. As for
Camille, it will develop her talent.”
“Suppose one of the lady admirers of the novels of your second period,
_Anciennes Amours_ or _Martyre Intime_, were to hear you now?” I said to
him. “For this is quite the reverse of what you put in those two books.”
“Ah!” he said. “If one lived one’s books, there would be no trouble in
writing them. Come. Let us go down quickly and have coffee. I want you
to see the beginning of the first act. I have only one quality, but that
is a strong one. I can compose. A play or novel of mine is compact,
there is nothing useless in it. The first and third acts are the best in
the play. Madam de Bonnivet prefers the second and Camille the fourth.
All tastes are suited. Waiter, bring two cups of coffee and two fine
cigars at once. Give me just time to cast my eye down the closing prices
on the Stock Exchange and I am at your service. Good. My gold mine
shares are going up. I am about three thousand francs to the good. How
is your money invested?”
“I have not invested it,” I said sadly, “it stays where it is and brings
in from two and a half to three per cent.”
“That is absurd!” Jacques said as he lit a cigar. “I will advise you. I
have good friends, one of the Mosé among others, who keep me well
informed. I know as much as they do, and if I were not a literary man, I
should like to be a financier. But we must hurry. Queen Anne may be at
the theatre this evening, though she has already seen the play four
times. If she is there, you will see two comedies instead of one. But I
am very glad to have met you this evening.”
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