The emotion experienced by Camille during this dramatic adventure,
suddenly determined upon, thanks to her presence of mind, in a
theatrical catastrophe, had been so strong that directly she was out of
sight of the two men she felt like fainting. All she could do was to get
into a cab and drive to the Rue de la Barouillére. There a real attack
of nervous fever prostrated her and made her go to bed. So it was not
from her that I learned this episode in which she played a part so
naturally, spontaneously, magnanimously, and generously. It was a noble
part which suited the noble heart revealed by her beautiful blue eyes,
by her proud mouth, and by her well bred and charming personality!
Otherwise, had she been well enough to get out, on the day following
this dreadful day she would have hastened to me to complete her
sorrowful confidence of her first surprise by her second confidence of
her heroic sacrifice for her most unworthy lover. But persons capable of
acting as she had acted do not boast.
It was Molan himself who first told me the details of these almost
incredible scenes—at least those he knew, Camille herself having since
completed them. The subtle feline person had two reasons for making me
acquainted with this adventure, in which he still played a flattering
part—current morality being taken for granted—of a man loved to
distraction by one of the most elegant and courted women in Paris, and
to martyrdom by one of the prettiest actresses not only in Paris but in
Europe. The first of these two reasons was his natural fatuity, and the
second his interest. He was afraid that after such an experience the
devotion of the Blue Duchess would shrink from another ordeal, that of
acting a comedy at the house of the rival she had saved. Now he
considered, not without good reason, that Camille’s presence at Madam de
Bonnivet’s party was the indispensable conclusion of the scene in the
Place Saint François Xavier. The husband’s suspicions must have been
strongly aroused to have gone to the extremity of espionage, and there
was no answer to this phrase with which Molan completed his disclosure.
“As long as Bonnivet does not see these two women face to face, his
suspicion may be again aroused, and suspicion is like apoplexy, the
first attack can be cured but there is no remedy for the second.”
His theory was right. But while he retailed it to me, as a conclusion,
my thoughts were only for the real drama he had just narrated. I can
still hear myself crying, “Oh, the wretches!” When he described to me
Camille in the anteroom of the suite of rooms, while Madam de Bonnivet
was listening to her repeated ringing of the bell, pale with terror, I
can realize to-day that this story of Jacques’ was most indelicate on
his part, for he must needs begin by this phrase. “First of all I will
tell you the whole truth. I am Madam de Bonnivet’s lover.” I was no
longer astonished at my colleague’s cynicism. When he had finished, the
misery of this adventure overwhelmed me with sorrow, and there were
tears in my voice when I asked him—
“And after that you want Camille to act at that woman’s house?”
“She must,” he replied, “and I am relying upon you to ask her.”
“Upon me,” I cried, “you must be mad.”
“Not a bit,” he went on. “It is very simple. While listening to you she
will only think of the risk I have run and say 'yes.’ That is the a. b.
c. of jealousy.”
“But if she refuses. You seem to think she has no malice against you.”
“Not a bit,” he replied with his frightful smile; “either I am quite
ignorant of the human heart, or else she has never loved me so much,
since I have never treated her so badly.”
“If she does not tell me the story you have just told me, how am I to
turn the conversation?”
“She will tell you; then be the first to begin. Confess that I have told
you in the madness of my emotion and remorse. It will not be a lie, for
it is a fact that in the cab yesterday while I looked at Camille sitting
in her corner with fixed gaze and excited face, I would have given
everything to love her at that moment as she loved me. Explain that I
was not thinking of the other woman. I called upon the latter to-day.
What a woman, my dear friend, and how the crack of the whip of danger
made her vibrate! I found her with her husband after breakfast, and he
left us together after a quarter of an hour’s affectionate talk, which
proves that his suspicion is at any rate a little allayed. That man does
not know how to pretend. Lately he has hardly shaken hands with me. We
did not abuse his complaisance and we were right, for I met him
returning home, as I was leaving twenty minutes later, to find out how
long my visit had lasted. There was just time for Anne to give me the
two or three most indispensable items of information. You admire
Camille’s courage, don’t you? But what will you say to the presence of
mind of this great lady who was indeed risking something, her life
perhaps, her honour without a doubt, her position and everything which
constitutes her reasons for existence. Do you know where she went when
she was able to escape. She drove straight to a furrier’s, where she
purchased an astrakhan jacket as like the other one as possible. She had
no money to pay for it and did not like to leave her name. The idea
struck her to go to her jeweller and borrow the money. She pretended
that she had lost her purse, and then returned to the furrier’s to pay
for her jacket, picked up her own carriage, which, she had left at a
friend’s house and ordered to meet her outside the shops near the
Louvre, and reappeared at home dressed as she was when she went out.
These are the true details. Would you believe them? Her visit to the
jeweller’s and furrier’s moved me very much. How frightened she must
have been at risking them. Now all she has to do is to tell her maid a
lie to account for the difference of jackets. A mistake after calling or
trying on, that is all. But every fresh little lie is a new landmark if
the husband pursues his inquiries. This man would shrink from
questioning the servants. That is what saved us this time. He will have
had me followed, not his wife, but I was imprudent enough to accompany
her to the rooms. My luck makes me frightened,” he added seriously,
after being silent for a time.
“Yesterday’s discovery has, all the same, not destroyed Bonnivet’s
jealousy, I repeat, since he returned home during my visit, and if
Camille does not keep her promise his suspicion may be aroused again.”
“But with this distrust and the knowledge he possesses of your rooms,” I
said, “your appointments will not be very easy to make.”
“It is for that reason that Madam de Bonnivet will not fail to keep one
now. She is a curious and bored woman, and her commonplace adventure
with me has at last given her the tremor,” he added smilingly. “Ah, ah,
she is of the same nature as the divine marquis to some extent. But you
don’t understand these things at all, my dear boy. As for the address of
the rooms, the fact that Bonnivet knows it will make no difference.
Having seen me leave there with Camille, he will never believe me
capable of taking the other one to the Rue Nouvelle.”
“You will go on then without any fear?”
“Yes. I was frightened yesterday when I heard the ringing and knocking
at the door, and I repeat that I am sometimes afraid of my luck. It is
as stupid as believing in the evil eye, but the feeling, is stronger
than I am.”
“There is no doubt that in Camille,” I replied, “you have met the only
woman in Paris capable of such an action. If you had even a little bit
of heart, you would spend your life in making her pardon your infamy.”
“My dear boy,” he interrupted, “then you will never understand that she
only loves me like that because she understands that I do not love her.
Then,” he added, shrugging his shoulders, “without doubt it is a
question of personality, I desire the other one and I do not desire
Camille. This explanation of love is not brilliant, and if the
abstractors of quintessence who subtilize upon the sentiment, like your
friend Dorsenne, gave it in one of their books, they would lose their
feminine clientele, their twenty-five thousand skirts I call it. I
myself am neither an analyst nor a psychologist, and I maintain that
this explanation is the true one.”
“So he told you everything!” Camille said ironically when I saw her the
day after this conversation. I had written to her, to be sure and not
miss her. I found her pale with eyes burning from insomnia. She was in
the little drawing-room in the Rue de la Barouillére, which always
looked so commonplace, poor and grey, while its canvas-covered furniture
gave it the appearance of a room prepared for moving. “Did he boast also
of the delicacy with which his wretch of a mistress thanked me? Here,”
and she handed me a leather case with her monogram upon it, C.F., which
I had noticed her fingering nervously for five minutes. I opened the
case, which contained, glistening upon black velvet, a massive gold
bracelet incrested with diamonds. It was one of those jewels in which
the work of the goldsmith is reduced to a minimum, and of which the
brutal richness makes the present an equivalent of a cheque or a roll of
sovereigns. I looked at the bracelet, then I looked at Camille with a
look in which she could read my surprise at the method employed by Madam
de Bonnivet to pay her for her devotion.
“Yes,” the actress went on, and, in a tone of disgust which made me ill,
she repeated: “Yes, that is the object which came this very evening with
my coat. It is my medal for bravery,” she sneered. “My first object as
soon as I go out will be to give the wretch a lesson in delicacy!”
“Be content with returning the jewel through Jacques to her,” I
suggested. “A scene would be too unworthy of you. When a person has the
whip hand, which you most certainly have, it is wise to keep it to the
end.”
“No,” she proudly said, “there will be no scene between us. I would not
have one. I will go and sell the bracelet to a jeweller, then I will go
to a church, spend the money in charity, and Madam de Bonnivet will
receive with her jacket two little pieces of paper—one the jeweller’s
bill, and a note from the priest saying, 'Received for the poor, from
Madam de Bonnivet, so much.’ This infamous adventure will at least have
served to put a fire on a fireless hearth and a loaf of bread on an
empty table.”
“Suppose the husband is there when the messenger arrives?” I asked.
“She must explain it the best way she can,” Camille said, and a gleam of
cruelty passed into her blue eyes, which deepened in colour almost to
black. “Do you think I should have moved my little finger to help her
the day before yesterday, if it had not been necessary to save her to
save Jacques? Ah! that Jacques has not even called to inquire after me
this morning. He knows, too, that I have not acted for two consecutive
evenings. He knows me and that emotion makes me ill. Vincent,” she
added, taking my hand in her feverish grasp, “never love. It is such
madness to have a heart in this cruel world. From Jacques I have not
even had a note, two words upon his card, the little sign of politeness
one owes to a suffering friend.”
“You are not just,” I told her, “he fears to face you. It is very
natural. He is too conscious of his faults, and, you see, he has sent me
to find out how you are.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head dolefully, “he came to see you, because
he needed you for something. Confess to me what it was? From the first I
told you that you do not know how to lie or scheme. Oh, God! how nice it
would be to love some one like you, not in the way I love you, as a
friend, but in the other way! Come, confess that you have a commission
from Jacques for me.”
“Well, yes,” I replied after a second’s hesitation. There was such
uprightness in this strange girl, such a rare nobility of sentiment
emanated from her whole being! To finesse with her seemed to me a real
shame. I therefore gave her, simply and sadly, Jacques’ message: simply,
because I reckoned, and rightly, too, that the surest way to influence
her was to state the facts without any phrasing; sadly, because I felt
the hardness of this new demand of Molan’s. I also realized its
necessity. When I had finished, tears came into her blue eyes.
“So,” she said, with an even more bitter expression and a disenchanted
smile, in which there was much love, though it was for ever poisoned by
contempt, “he has thought of that, to save this woman again! He finds
that I have not sacrificed myself enough. Besides, it is logical. When
one has begun, as I did, one must go on to the end. I will go.” With her
forehead crossed by a wrinkle of resolution, her eyes hard, and her
mouth ugly, she went on: “Very well, Vincent. You have repeated his
words to me, and I thank you. That must have cost you something, too!
You owed me that frankness. You promise to exactly repeat mine to him,
do you not? Tell M. Molan, then, that I will act at Madam de Bonnivet’s
as is arranged. Yes, I will act there, and no one, you understand, shall
suspect with what feelings. But it is on one condition—tell him that,
too, and if he does not keep it, I will break my promise: I forbid him,
you understand, I forbid him to write or speak to me from this time
onward. He will talk to me at that woman’s house just sufficiently to
prevent anything being noticed. That must be all. I shall not know him
afterwards, you understand. After this last act he is dead to me.
Perhaps I shall really die myself,” she added in a stifled voice, “but
it is all over between us.”
She made a gesture with her hands as of tearing up an invisible
agreement. Her eyes closed for a moment. Her features contracted with a
twitch of pain, and then this creature, so feminine in her grace and
mobility, assumed a tender look and a gentle smile as she got up and
said to me—
“Leave me now, friend. Don’t come to see me again before I let you know.
We will finish the picture later on. I love and esteem you very much,
and feel real sympathy for you. But,” her voice was stifled as she
concluded, “but I must forget, all the same, to try and live.” Then with
a proud little inclination of her blonde head and a courageous shrug of
her slender shoulders, she concluded: “I am not to be pitied. I have my
art left.”
I knew that Camille was incapable of breaking a promise made with such
seriousness as to be almost solemnity. She had that trait common to all
persons, men or women, who attach great importance to their feelings: a
fastidious scrupulousness in keeping unwritten agreements, reciprocal
engagements. Therefore I insisted with the greatest energy upon Jacques
conforming strictly to the condition which the actress had imposed upon
him, and I myself, great though the cost was to me, had the courage to
observe with the greatest rigour the programme of absence and silence,
the wisdom of which I understood. Around certain moral fevers, just as
around certain physical ones, there is darkness, suppression of motion,
and a total suspension of life. In spite of my absolute faith in
Camille’s word, I was not without uneasiness when I repaired a few days
later to Madam de Bonnivet’s party. I knew that the poor Blue Duchess,
if not quite restored to health, was at least well enough to reappear at
the theatre. When I say that I followed the programme drawn up by her
with the greatest rigour, I must add that I allowed myself once to go
and see her act without, as I thought, breaking the agreement, since she
did not see me sitting in the pit, and I had a feeling of relief at
seeing that there was no difference in her acting. I came to the
conclusion that she had taken to her art again, as she had said to me,
to that cult of the theatre which had been the naïve enthusiasm of the
dreams of her youth. I hoped that that love which never deceives would
cure the wound made by the other. But in the carriage which conveyed
Jacques and I to the club, where we again dined together, this
confidence gave place to apprehension, in spite of my companion’s
optimism, he having become once more a person of an imperturbable
assurance, which seemed born to manœuvre in false situations.
“I am curious,” he said to me, “to know what she has prepared for her
audience of swells. She has promised the great scene from _La Duchesse
Blue_ with Bressoré, and then a few monologues and imitations. You don’t
know her in that light, do you? She has like every actor or actress her
monkey side.”
“Imitations!” I repeated. “Fashionable people are admirable. They no
sooner have in their hands an artist of talent than they become
possessed of a single idea, to degrade that talent by forcing the
possessor to become a plaything for them. If it is a painter like
Miraut, they order from him portraits with a disgusting want of
expression to put upon bon-bon boxes! If he is a man of letters like
you, they make him write bad prose and verse at a moment’s notice! If he
is a musician, he has to produce a piece for the piano at once! In the
case of an actress like Camille, with ardour, temperament, and passion,
they make a parade of her. Good God, what foolishness it is! What is
going to happen to-night?”
“Would you prefer,” sneered the dramatic author, “to hear the plaints of
Iphigenia or of Esther proclaimed ten paces away from a buffet laden
with _foie gras_ sandwiches, punch, orangeade, chocolate and iced
champagne? On my word of honour you seem to me admirable! But if you had
the lightest tint of that transcendental irony, without which life does
not present the slightest savour, you would find it exquisite that my
pretty Blue Duchess has saved the honour, and perhaps the life, of my
adorable Queen Anne, and that they met face to face—one playing her part
as a fashionable Parisian hostess, respected and worshipped; the other
giving her performance before an audience of the idle; while I myself am
the third person. My only regret for the beauty of the situation is that
I did not have an appointment with both during the day. Would you
believe it? Since these happenings I desire Camille again, and I would
retake her if I did not fear to spoil her masterpiece. Yes, the
masterpiece of her rupture. For she has discovered it; there is no
denying it. If André Mareuil had not laid down his humorous pen to
become a Commissioner of Police, if he were still writing his _Art de
rompre_ instead of drawing up regulations, I should submit the case to
him. Have you ever thought of a more divine method of a mistress ridding
herself of her lover and leaving in his mind an exquisite memory? That
is the ideal end of love.”
“Try at least to be ashamed of your egoism,” I interrupted. I realized
that he was amusing himself by making my _naïveté_ display itself, and
that he was joking. But actually the fact that he was unable to jest on
such an occasion angered me, and I continued, touching his breast as I
did so: “Have you, then, absolutely nothing there but a ream of paper
and a bottle of ink, for the idea of this love, devotion and sorrow,
only to inspire you with one more paradox instead of bringing tears from
your eyes?”
“One must never judge what is visible,” he replied with sudden
seriousness which contrasted strangely with his former flippancy. Did he
conceal in an inner fold of his heart, poisoned though it was with
social vanity, commercial calculations and literary ambitions, a tender
corner, too small to be ever exalted into complete passion, but
sufficiently alive to sometimes bleed, and had I touched the secret
wound? Or was his one of those complicated natures which keep just
enough sensibility to suffer because they have no more? These two latter
hypothesis are not irreconcilable in such a complex nature. They would
at least explain the anomaly of a talent for accurate human observation,
being associated with such implacable hardness of heart and a systematic
and utilitarian depravity of mind. Never had the astounding contrast
between Jacques’ person and his work struck me as it did in that rapidly
moving carriage. He was the first to break a silence which had lasted
for a few minutes by saying—he was without doubt replying to a thought
my reproaches had suggested to him—
“Besides, if it were to begin again, I should have prevented that party.
It is useless. I don’t know what fresh information Bonnivet has
received, but he is charming to me and his wife. I found both of them
the other day examining two ornaments their jeweller had just brought.
In parenthesis, what do you think of this conjugal scene? She was
clasping around her neck a necklace of pearls and looking at herself in
the glass, while her husband said to me—to me!—as she showed me another
one: 'Which one do you prefer?’ She experienced a keen pleasure at this
high comedy scene. I saw that her eyes were shining like the pearls in
the necklace. At what price had she purchased this renewal of
confidence?”
“But,” I said, “did not a scene like this, and the conclusion you drew
from it, make you take your hat and stick and go away, never to return?”
“You are not, and never will be, intellectual, my dear boy,” he replied.
“Understand that there is a sort of bitter and ferocious joy in
despising what one desires, just as there is in enjoying what one hates.
That is how Queen Anne holds me fast, perhaps for a long time, just as I
hold her fast by the attraction of the danger involved. We have already,
since the affair, revisited the rooms in the Rue Nouvelle; would you
believe it? Decidedly there is no tincture of cantharides like fear?”
“That is folly,” I cried, “to tempt fate like that!”
“Quite right,” he said with a shrug of the shoulders, “but one must live
to write. There is a play in this story, and I will not miss it.”
We reached Madam de Bonnivet’s house, and found a long string of
carriages already in the street. I was to find a great difference
between the almost familiar reception of the other evening and my
reception now. It seemed as if Jacques had in those few minutes tried to
give a complete representation of the different phases of character of
this human lighthouse. While we ascended the carved wooden staircase,
with its wealth of pictures, busts, tapestry, and ancient stuffs, he
whispered to me this last expression, which had nothing cunning nor
dandified about it, but was simply the childish vanity of the
middle-class gentleman engaged in a love affair—
“You must admit that my friend is not badly housed?”
I am quite sure that at that moment the carpets upon which his pumps
rested warmed a secret place in his heart. I am certain that the lustre
on that staircase illuminated the darkest depths of his snobbish
conceit. I am sure that a conqueror’s pride swelled his chest as he said
to himself in these luxurious surroundings: “I am her lover.” He had
become during the last few weeks too transparent for this shade of his
sensibility to escape me. Each of his words was like the striking of a
clock, the works of which are in a glass case. When the sound strikes
the ear one can see the little cogwheels bite the large ones and the
complicated mechanism at work.
The hall doors had opened, and Jacques and myself were at once
separated. The spectacle, which this room, vaulted like a chapel and
unknown to me, and the two drawing-rooms opening from it presented,
awakened the painter in me, the man used to vibrating by a look. In a
corner of the hall a little platform had been erected, which was empty
just then. There were perhaps fifty women sitting with a like number of
men, all in evening dress, and the women’s jewels sparkled in their
blonde or dark hair and on their naked shoulders. The entire range of
colours was displayed in these various toilettes, which were heightened
by their contrast with the black coats and the details which had on my
first visit to this house so displeased me, the too composite character
of the decorations, blended and harmonized as they were in this light
with the aid of the moving crowd. Fans were waving, eyes shining, faces
were animated by questions and answers, and Queen Anne, towards whom I
went to pay my respects, really had in her white evening dress the
majestic air of a princess worshipped by her courtiers.
As I approached her, I thought of the mortal peril she had been in the
other week. There seemed to me no more trace of it in her pale azure
eyes than there was of jealousy upon Bonnivet’s beaming face. For the
first, and, without doubt, the last time in my life, I was supplied with
positive information about a fashionable intrigue. Usually one does not
know the history of these fine gentlemen and beautiful ladies except
from a vague “they say.” A woman is suspected of having so and so for a
lover, and a man is suspected of having so and so as his mistress. This
suspicion, which to people of their class is equivalent to certainty, is
not reduced to exactness. The street and number of the house where they
meet is not known. It is not known under what circumstances they start
for the rendezvous. A door remains open to doubt, and if not open it is
ajar.
As I bowed to Madam de Bonnivet and received her greeting in the form of
an amiable commonplace, I could see this haughty head on the pillow in
the chamber of adultery, and the terror of her disturbed features when
the continuous ringing of the bell and the repeated knocking at the door
had warned her of her danger. The contrast was so sharp that for the
first time I understood the unhealthy attraction which this to some
extent double existence exercises over certain imaginations, and why
women or men who have tasted these sensations no longer find any relish
in others. Such profound and perilous deception procures something like
an evil intoxication, the pleasure of a really superior and almost
demoniac hypocrisy, to the man or woman who lie in that fashion. To this
kind of infernal falsehood belonged the phrase which Madam de Bonnivet
used to close our rapid and uninteresting conversation.
“There is some one who would not forgive me for detaining you any
longer,” she said, and the point of her fan indicated a direction which
my glance followed. I saw Camille Favier, whom at that moment Jacques
was approaching. “Go and speak to her,” she continued, “and tell your
friend Molan that I have a little commission for him while I think of
it.”
I was prepared, on arriving that evening, to encounter much coolness in
this woman, who was depraved by coldness a coquette through egoism, and
curious even as regards vice through idleness. I had not even thought
the audacity of such a phrase addressed by her to me who knew everything
possible. In spite of my firm intention not to allow my impressions to
appear, she read my astonishment in my face. Her half-closed eyes darted
at me the most incisive look which has ever fathomed the soul of a man
to its depths. Without doubt, regarding her liaison with Molan, she
thought I had only one of those hypotheses, which I was unable to
verify, one of those hypotheses which grow around those so-called
mysteries, Parisian love affairs, and that I could not very well conceal
my deductions. The acuteness of her eyes became dulled into indulgent
irony, and I left her to obey the order she had given me, but in part
only. She had obviously calculated, with her habit of relying upon the
evil sentiments of her intimates, that I should be only too happy to
convey her message to Jacques in Camille’s presence, to make their
quarrel all the worse and put my friend in a somewhat false position.
She was to find out that a good fellow of a painter did not lend himself
to this pleasantry. I approached the two lovers as if the beautiful
enemy of the pretty actress had not entrusted me with any commission.
They were only exchanging, according to agreement, the most
indispensable polite phrases in a loud voice—
“Have you come to this corner of Bohemia, then?” Molan said, my presence
restoring his natural assurance to him; “it is quite natural that you
should.”
“Do not boast,” I replied in a tone of banter with a foundation of truth
to it similar to the one he affected. “It is a long time since you
passed as a man of the world.”
“Big words!” he said still gaily. “I am off. Don’t talk too much ill of
your friend Jacques, and do not monopolize her too much,” he added,
turning to me; “she must do a little flirting to be a success with the
men.”
He went away with the renewed desire, of which he had spoken to me,
shining in his eyes. Camille had bowed as he went without speaking, but
with a smile in which I, who knew her so well, could read so much
suffering and disgust. She fanned herself nervously, while I looked at
her with an emotion which I did not endeavour to conceal. We were in our
out-of-the-way corner like two outcasts, though our sorrowful
_tête-à-tête_ was very brief! Senneterre was already on his way towards
us from the other end of the hall with a young man who had asked to be
introduced to Camille. Those two minutes sufficed for us to exchange a
few phrases which redoubled my impression of danger. It had continually
increased ever since I had entered the house.
“So you are come,” the actress said, “thank you;” and in a supplicating
tone she added: “Do not leave me this evening, if you love me a little.”
“Don’t you feel well?” I asked.
“I have presumed too much upon my strength,” she replied. “I was quite
well up to the moment I was presented to this woman and heard her voice.
Oh! that voice! Then Jacques came in, and I felt ill. Look, he is going
to her. They are talking, and are alone. Go and tell him that he must
not trample too much upon my heart. I am exhausted, and can bear no
more.”
She pronounced these last few words hesitatingly, and forced herself to
smile, a convulsive smile like a nervous tremor. I do not think that I
have ever seen her so beautiful. The absence of jewels in the midst of
these well-dressed women and the simplicity of her toilette in these
luxurious surroundings gave her something like a tragic character. I had
no time to reply, for the professional “beater” was there with his
stereotyped phrase—
“Mademoiselle, allow me to present to you my young friend, Roland de
Bréves, one of your most passionate admirers.”
“With what selections are you going to charm us with this evening,
mademoiselle?” the young noodle asked Camille, who was still vibrating
with emotion. “It is rare good fortune to hear you in society; Madam de
Bonnivet will make many people jealous.”
“Really there is no occasion for it, sir,” Camille replied, and to
correct his impertinence added: “I shall give a scene from _La Duchesse
Blue_ with Bressoré, and then three or four fragments. Besides, your
curiosity will soon be satisfied, for I can see Bressoré coming. He was
acting this evening in the new play, but he has got away early. What
luck!”
“What good fortune for us,” her questioner said, “who will hear you all
the sooner!”
“No,” she brutally said, “for me to be able to go to bed all the
sooner.”
She turned her back on the young man, who was disconcerted by the
harshness of this strange reply, to exchange a few equally amiable words
with another gentleman who greeted her. The insolence of the phrases she
uttered, she who was usually so gracious, proved quite well that she was
hardly mistress of herself. Of what an outburst she would be capable if
Madam de Bonnivet, as her attitude towards Jacques at that moment made
me fear, gave too bold a display of coquetry. My anxiety was suddenly
borne to its highest pitch. I understood that in insisting upon Camille
figuring at this party, the cruel woman had not only proposed to put her
husband’s suspicions at rest for ever. For that she relied upon other
weapons. The dominant trait of her implacable nature was vanity, and
this vanity wished to have the actress at her mercy, to revenge herself
for the two humiliations she could not forget—the insulting heroism at
the rooms, and the return of the bill for the bracelet with the receipt
from the priest of Saint François Xaviers.
Wounded in her most secret susceptibilities, she had promised herself
that for two or three hours she would keep her rival, who was then in
her employ, at her house, to inflame her again and again with the most
poignant and powerless jealousy, and leave herself free to pardon her
after the punishment and forget her, and also the man of letters whom
she had taken from the actress. He had already ceased to interest her,
now that he no longer represented another women whose happiness she
wished to steal. She would soon give proof of it, and also that the fop
was bragging when he thought that he had awakened her to the pleasure of
love. In spite of so many and such disturbing emotions, she had left his
arms as insensible, as far off as ever that total ravishment by person
which metamorphoses a coquette into a slave and enslaves her to the man
who has initiated her into this complete intoxication. She acted,
however, during this evening as if she had loved Jacques. The desire of
torturing the woman by whom she had been so strangely saved and wounded
was strong enough in her blasé heart to equal physical pleasure. I
gained this evidence upon the spot by watching her in the distance
talking, while I was making my way towards the spot where she was
laughing with Jacques, though my progress was interrupted at intervals
by Machault, further on by Miraut, and then by Bonnivet.
The first of the three said to me: “I have not seen you at the school of
arms lately. You missed the Italian fencer, San Giobbe. He is really
wonderful.”
“You did not tell me the other day,” the second said, “that you were
painting Camille Favier’s portrait. It is very underhand of you to treat
your old master in that way!”
“Ah well, M. La Croix,” Bonnivet asked, “are you going to hang anything
at the next exhibition?”
I felt inclined to answer the incorrigible fencer: “It is not a question
of assaults, parade and laughable combats; do you not see that there is
a prospect of a real duel, actual sword thrusts, and the sacrifice of
some one’s life?” To my dear master I felt inclined to say: “I shall not
make you sell a picture more, shall I? Why play the part with me of a
protector who is interested in the work of one of his pupils? Spare me
this comedy, and let me try to prevent a catastrophe.” To the husband I
would like to have said: “If you had watched over your wife more
carefully in the beginning she would not be what she is, and this drama
would not be enacted in your drawing-room.” In place of those replies,
in each case I uttered a few vain, untruthful words. My desire was to
reach Jacques soon enough at least to prevent him being in the vicinity
of Madam de Bonnivet while the acting was going on. Perhaps I should
succeed, as I was only a couple of paces away from him, when Queen Anne,
as if she had guessed that I was this time bearing a message from her
rival and should deliver it, decided to call me, and said in a tone of
imperceptible raillery—
“Let me present you to the woman in Paris who knows most about the
primitive Italians about whom you were talking to me the other evening.”
“Really, sir,” the person to whom I was to be thus linked, an
insupportable blue stocking, whose name, if my memory does not deceive
me, was Madam de Sermoise, said, “do you admire those idealist masters
who are so little appreciated in our days of gross realism? But we shall
return to them, and to a noble and lofty art. You have been to Pisa, of
course, to Sienna, to San Gemigorano and Perugia?”
O sweet little red and golden towns of lovely green Tuscany, which
indent with your towers the heights of the slopes planted with vines and
olives! O generous artists with whom I lived so long, and whose visions
are to me still my soul’s daily bread! Pardon me if I blasphemed your
memory and your cult in replying as I did to the odious pedant. I
declared to her that her hostess was making fun of her. I told her that
I was a member of the grotesquely modern school of art. But my
indignation did not last. Madam de Bonnivet had just asked Camille
Favier and Bressoré to begin. She gave the signal for the guests to take
their seats before the space reserved for the two actors who were to
play; and she made Jacques Molan sit by her side, saying loud enough for
me to hear—
“Every honour shall be shown to the author!”
Then followed a few moments of general disturbance of couches and
chairs, the occupation of the seats by the women, leaving almost all the
men to stand, and the gradual establishment of silence. In the midst of
the last of the whispering came the sudden sound of the voices of the
two performers, the dialogue, and the discreet applause of the audience
of people of leisure; but I hardly noticed the details so did my heart
beat, and does still to-day, at the recollection of that long-past hour.
Knowing as I did the minutest expressions of Camille’s mobile face, the
slightest shades of her gestures, the most tenuous inflections of her
voice, I had realized from the first words of the scene that she had
lost control of herself. Madam de Bonnivet had seen it too. She
affected, while bowing her head at the fine points and being the first
to applaud, to lean towards Jacques a little too far, to speak to him in
low tones, and render him that public homage which was the simple
politeness of an admirer of the fashionable author! But to Camille, the
wronged and desperate mistress, the insolence of this attitude was too
atrocious, and it was impossible for the actress to bear it without
taking her revenge. I believed at first that she would try to humiliate
her formidable rival by her success, so much eloquence and passion did
she display in the short scene she was acting.
After that was ended, when she was asked to recite one or two pieces, I
thought she would restrict her vengeance to sharing a little of her
success with two of Jacques’ colleagues, of whom he is jealous, unless
she chose these two poems because in reciting them she was also solacing
her own poor deserted heart. One of these poems was by René Vincy, and
the other was an unpublished sonnet by Claude Larcher which I had copied
for her. Dear Claude! How beautiful Camille was while she recited this
elegy which had for me so many moving souvenirs of my dead friend’s
sorrow. She recited one or two other pieces, and then quickly and in a
joking way which reassured me for a second, she began to give those
imitations which are always ignoble and sometimes vulgar. The divine
Julia Bartet, the suffering and finely vibrating Tanagra in _Antigone_,
the supple and poignant Réjane in _Germinie Lacerteux_, the pathetic
Jane Hading in _Sapho_, the sprightly Jeanne Granier and the tragic
Marthe Brandés were in turn the pretext for a mimicry which testified to
a study of the art of these famous artists so profound as to be almost a
science, and to that monkeyish frolic of which Molan had spoken, till
having announced Sarah Bernhardt in _Phédre_, a shiver went through my
whole frame.
She began and I suddenly recalled _Adrienne Lecouvreur_ and the scene in
which the actress, seeing Maurice de Saxe, whom she loved, flirting with
the Duchess de Bouillon during a drawing-room performance, recited those
same lines of Racine’s and ended by applying to her in a loud voice the
imprecation of the poet’s incestuous queen. Had Camille, an actress like
Adrienne, in love, too, like her, like her betrayed under circumstances
which I suddenly realized were very similar, coolly premeditated the
same vengeance? Or did the excess of her anger inspire her all at once
with this manner of outraging her unworthy lover and his mistress? I
could distinctly see now upon her face a terrible intention, and I
listened to her with my eyes fixed upon Jacques as she uttered that
admirable line—
“The heart is full of sighs it has not uttered.”
But her overpowering emotion already prevented from imitating the accent
of the admirable Sarah. She pronounced in her own way and on her own
behalf the poet’s lines, and advanced to the edge of the little stage
with the denunciatory gesture which is in _Adrienne Lecouvreur_. Her
arms were pointed towards Madam de Bonnivet. She darted at her enemy a
look of mad jealousy as she uttered the irreparable words—
“I know my wickedness Œnone, and am not one of those bold women who,
enjoying in crime a shameful peace, have learned to keep an unblushing
face.”
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