Yes, it was a sad and rending farewell! I must, too, have been plunged
into the depths of melancholy in my heart, for as I wrote the account of
it I sprinkled the paper with my tears; and now I feel that I have
hardly the strength to take up my pen again to add to this real romance
the sinister epilogue, the suggestive irony of which alone decided me to
write these pages. Twenty-five months and an absence of that length have
not healed my secret wound. It is still open and bleeding at the
recollection simply of Camille’s cheek moist with those vain tears
beneath my farewell kiss, the first and last I ever placed on that
charming face which was now profaned for ever. Yet if absence and
silence are the two great remedies for those passions without hope and
desire, one of which my strange sentiment for this poor girl was, I can
do myself the justice to say that I sincerely practised them. Those
twenty-five months appeared to me so short, so short when compared with
those few weeks spent in following hour by hour the fatal march of the
deceived mistress towards despair, and the rest without trying to
prevent it.
But let us run through those two years from memory, and also to prove
that I have not much to regret in their employment. First of all, that
same evening came my hurried flight to Marseilles, then the following
day I sailed for Tuscany by one of the boats which call at Bastia
eighteen hours later and then at Leghorn. I have always preferred this
way of entering dear Italy without halts by the way, besides which this
journey did away with the possibility of telegrams or letters for at
least half a week, from Sunday to Thursday. Would Camille Favier leave
Tournade and resume her position as Jacques’ mistress or not? Would the
latter follow up his absurd project of a duel with his new rival? Would
he not extend the folly of his humiliated self-conceit to the length of
having an affair with Pierre de Bonnivet as well? So weary was I that I
no longer wished to set myself these problems. O God, how weary I was!
In parenthesis, I was very wrong in setting myself these problems, for
to talk like my friend Claude, who used to quote with such delight a
phrase from Beyle upon the execution of one of his heroes: “Everything
went off simply and decently.”
I found out that detail afterwards, but much later. At the time I
remained in an uncertainty which I had the wisdom to prolong. But four
months later, opening by chance a French paper in a hotel in Perugia, I
saw that Mademoiselle Camille Favier was to replace Mademoiselle Berthe
Vigneau in the chief part of a comedy by Dorsenné; that Molan was
publishing a collection of his own plays; that a horse of M. Tournade’s,
Butterfly, had won some big race; that at a very select gathering at M.
de Senneterre’s Madam X——, Madam Y——, Madam Z——, and Madam de Bonnivet
were noticed. All this news was packed into this one issue of the paper
like raisins in a pudding. It sufficed to prove to me that this corner
of the world, like all corners of the world, was still itself, and that
there was a reassuring lack of important events. But on my part, was I
not imitating myself by copying first a part of the fresco of Spinello
Aretino on Saint Ephése, then the Salomé of Fra Filippo Lippo at Prato,
and going on with a study after the Piero della Francesca by Arezzo?
Then I was preparing to go to Ancona; afterwards to Brindisi; to visit
Athens and Olympia, to feast with new visions the most sterile and
insatiable of dilettantisms. When I think of that furious work of vain
culture, I repeat to myself another phrase which Dorsenné was always
quoting, the exclamation of the dying Bolivar so poignant with
lassitude: “Those who have served the Revolution have ploughed the sea!”
Have those who have served art as I have served it accomplished more
useful work? Then what is it?
Then what? I think that Bonaparte, Talleyrand, Bernadotte and many
others would have smiled a smile of the most profound contempt for the
dying revolutionary who had caught no treasure in the great troubled sea
of politics, and I have only to think of the two little scenes which
fixed the bitter crisis in my memory to smile a no less contemptuous
smile at myself. However, after my tour in Greece, I returned to prepare
for a longer stay in the Orient, and a visit to Egypt and Asia Minor in
the month of October, to begin there that series of pictures upon our
Lord, conceived in their natural environment, which would have been the
definitive work of my maturity if another had not anticipated me.
Chance had prevented me meeting Jacques and Camille between these two
trips. I only know that the latter was more celebrated than ever and the
former had married. He had decided at last to pluck the ripe pear, and
he had done so under the wisest conditions. He had married a widow of
about his own age who was very rich and without children, with
sufficient to provide him in his maturity with a luxurious home without
the aid of his copy. But as he had not deigned to add a friendly word to
the wedding card he sent me I had not written to him. That absolute
suppression of intercourse between us hardly allowed me to expect to see
him enter, as he did the other day, my studio, looking a little older,
but with as clear an eye, as satirical a mouth, and as well-dressed and
smart a person as ever. Had we met on the previous evening he could not
have shaken hands with gayer cordiality, and at once without waiting to
hear my news began—
“You don’t know the pleasure I feel in seeing you again. When will you
come and dine and be presented to Madam Molan? You shall see that I have
been lucky in the marriage lottery. I am sure you will be very pleased
with her. She knows, too, how I like you. Yes, we have not met lately,
but that is no reason for forgetting. What have you been doing since we
had our last chat? It is two years ago; how time passes! I knew that you
had gone to the Orient. I heard of you through Laurens, the Consul at
Cairo. You see, I followed your movements from afar. But tell me,” he
went on, after I had replied to him in some embarrassment. These subtle
cordialities after such indifference still disconcerted me a little.
“Yes, tell me. Have you seen Camille Favier?”
“Me?” I cried, and I felt that I was blushing under his indulgent,
ironical look, “never. Why do you ask that?”
“Ah, my dear boy,” he said laughing, and this time with a gay laugh
which displayed his white teeth, which had remained quite sound though
he was forty, “you were born simple and simple you will remain.”
“I understand you less and less,” I replied somewhat impatiently.
“Why? She pleased you. You pleased her. She has had lover after lover
since Tournade—Philippe de Vardes, Machault, Roland de Bréves—every one,
in fact, ending by the little Duke of Lautrec, who spends 200,000 francs
a year on her, and yet you did not return! It is said,” he continued
with more malice still in his eyes, “that you will never see her again
except under my chaperonage! Do you recall our last conversation, how I
asked you to act as my ambassador to her and you refused? Ah, well, I
want you to undertake another mission to her. Are you going to refuse
again?”
“That depends upon the mission,” I replied in the same jesting tone.
“Alas! it is quite a literary one,” he went on gaily. “It is not that I
fear my wife’s jealousy. We are not lovers, she and I. We are associates
for life, and she is intelligent enough to understand that the
infidelities of a man like myself are of no consequence. But I have in
all things a horror of going back, and particularly in love! Briefly
this is what it is. You remember Madam de Bonnivet and her jealousy of
Camille?”
“Queen Anne!” I interrupted; “do you want to send me to her too? That
would crown everything.”
“No!” he said, “that is all over, and a very good thing, too. Do you
know that she has been left a widow. There is a report that she is going
to get married again. But the whole story, Camille’s jealousy, the scene
at my rooms, and the scene in the drawing-room, were all so well suited
to a play that I have written one. It is a kind of _Adrienne
Lecouvreur_, but modern. I have read it to a few friends and they are
all of the same opinion, that it is the best thing I have done. We shall
see whether his accession of wealth has spoiled Jacques Molan. It is a
fact that I swore to write no more, and this is the only exception I
shall make to that rule. After the age of forty, however great a genius
a man may be, he repeats himself, then he has outlived his day. When a
man cannot surpass himself it is better for him to be silent. I dream of
an end like Shakespeare and Rossini, the end of a very little Rossini
and an even smaller Shakespeare. But I have done what I can and I wish
to let my twenty volumes rest. But this opportunity was too strong for
me. The subject took possession of me, and the play is written. I repeat
it is the last!”
“You have written a play upon that story?” I interrupted. “What will
Madam de Bonnivet say?”
“That I am not clever,” he said. “With women of the world it is very
simple. You figure in their drawing-rooms and you are a great man. You
no longer appear there and your plays are not worth seeing. My wife has
already recognized three of our friends as the principal character in
the play. Besides people like the Bonnivets are very common now and they
will not be recognized in it.”
“But Camille, whose romance, a sad and true romance, this adventure was,
have you not thought of what you were doing to her by transporting her
adventure warm with life to the stage?”
“That is precisely it,” he replied nodding his head; “it is her life and
her personality. She is the only one who can play the part, and I do not
know how to negotiate with her. She is a strange creature. She never
forgets. Would you believe that three weeks ago she spoke bitterly of me
to one of our mutual friends! If I write to her she is quite capable of
leaving my letter unopened. Some one must go and suggest the part to
her, some one before whom she has no self-conceit. I thought of
Fomberteau. But we have not been very friendly since my marriage. He
reproached me with selling myself. What foolishness! Camille and he have
quarrelled, too, over some article. Oh, she has become a great actress
now. That is the reason I have come to you to ask for your assistance.”
“Me!” I cried. “You want me to go with your manuscript and beg that poor
girl not only to forgive you for writing the play, but also on your
behalf to take the part herself! Come, let me look you straight in the
face! But you are not a fool. You are a man like another. Yet you do not
realize what a monstrous thing you are proposing to me!”
“Ah, well!” he replied with his usual smile, which he had already
employed to laugh at my _naïveté_, “will you undertake simply to convey
our conversation to her as far as your indignant exit just now? I
authorize you to do so. That does not make you into the accomplice of
any infamy. You are going to see an old friend you have somewhat
neglected. Nothing can be more natural, can it? You talk of the rain and
the fine weather. My name is mentioned and you repeat our conversation
exactly, beginning like this: What do you think Jacques dared to ask me?
You will then see what answer she will give.”
Was it the continuation of the habitual empire his vitality had
exercised from our college days over my doubts? Was there concealed
within me a secret desire to see Camille again, a curiosity to know what
the Blue Duchess of two years ago had become? Did I also feel curious to
know her reply to Jacques’ outrageous proposal? But whatever the reason,
I accepted this mission which I considered and still consider monstrous.
I called upon Camille, everybody’s Camille, to take her the horrible
words of her old lover. I saw once more the face I loved so well, but
now it was framed in ignoble luxury which contrasted so cruelly to my
mind with the proud and humble simplicity of the Rue de la Barouillére!
Not one of those pieces of furniture in those former apartments in that
old street but told of a noble act of her who did not wish to sell her
beauty, or of her mother who had saved the honour of their name by the
heroic sacrifice of her fortune. There was not a room in the sumptuous
house, that home of infamy where she lived now in the Avenue de
Villiers, like my fashionable colleagues, which did not tell of one of
her prostitutions.
Was it indeed the woman who, when I last saw her, had not dared to raise
her veil, as if she were afraid I should see the traces on her pale
cheeks of Tournade’s caresses? Yes, it was the same woman who now
received me laughing in insolent bravado with not a trace of
embarrassment; and she was still beautiful, adorably beautiful, with her
fine and delicate beauty, which I believe would never have deserted her
whatever her surroundings; but she was now so provoking, so shameless!
Not a word, not a blush, not a falter betrayed that she felt any emotion
at seeing in me the witness of what must remain to her a perpetual
memory. She lit, while she listened to me, an Egyptian cigarette of
tobacco the colour of her hair, and smoked it, exhaling the bluish smoke
through her delicate nostrils, with wide open eyes between her eyelashes
which had been slightly eaten away by the crayon she used. Her mouth
looked too red from the rouge of the night before; her cheeks were
fuller and her throat was larger; and her more opulent lips were defined
by a dressing-gown which was a costume of blue stuff worked and
embroidered with silver. I began as a matter of politeness by giving her
a brief account of my travels, my work and my return; then I broached
the real object of my visit, and I conveyed to her brutally, without
evasion, Molan’s proposal.
“Is he cad enough!” she said shrugging her supple shoulders. “Is he cad
enough!” For a moment I hoped that a nausea of disgust would prove to me
that the old Camille was not dead. But no, she went on after a brief
silence: “If there is really a fine part for me, tell him to send or
bring me the play. He is so very clever when he is clever! Have you read
the play? Is he satisfied with it? You know I am really in need of a
fine part. So is he, for since he has become wealthy, he is allowing
himself to be forgotten. Between the two of us I will answer for its
success: his prose is so tender and I interpret it so well!”
Not a vestige of indignation did she feel, that indignation I had felt
at knowing that the sorrowful romance of her irreparable downfall was
profaned! Hardly a vestige of malice did she show against Jacques, that
malice he himself expected! From her clear eyes which retained the
colour, the transparent purity, of the days of her innocence, I now saw
her smile at the fine part, as I had seen Jacques smile on the subject
of the play. Then it was I really understood the reason I should never
be a great artist. For them—for him as I have always known him, for her
as she has become after her first experience, their entire life, hearts
included, is only an opportunity for producing the special act they have
to produce, the precious secretion which they make, as the bee does
honey, as the spider does its web, by an instinct blind and ferocious as
all instincts are.
Love, hate, joy and sorrow is the soil to make the flower of their
talent grow, this flower of delicacy and of passion, for which they do
not hesitate a moment to kill in themselves all real delicacy and living
passion. For a word to speak on the stage, for a phrase to write in a
book, this woman and this man would sell their father and their
mother—Camille had not even mentioned hers; they would sell their
friend, their child, and their sweetest memory. I, who have spent my
life in feeling what they express so well, he in black and white, she by
gestures and in moving accents, only succeed in paralysing myself with
that which exalts these expressive natures; in exhausting myself with
that which nourishes these souls of prey. Does destiny then will it that
artists, little or great, be of necessity distributed between the two
classes, those who transcribe marvellously without feeling the passions
which the other class feels without power to transcribe? Was Jacques
right in saying that his cruelty to Camille by giving her memories would
also give her talent? A fine part! A good play! Really we do not
complain at remaining obscure and mediocre, if this obscurity and
mediocrity are the condition for real feeling. Besides we have no
choice.
THE END.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.
○ Phrase corrected: “Une Épopée de ce temps” instead of “Une Épopée
de a temps”
○ Unbalanced quotation marks were left as the author intended.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Spelling was made consistent when a predominant form was found in
this book; otherwise it was not changed.
▪ Miraut instead of Mirant.
○ Inconsistent accents in French words were corrected and
regularized.
▪ Barouillére instead of Barcuellère or Bareuillère.
▪ Champmeslé instead of Champmeslè.
▪ Bressoré instead of Bressorè.
▪ Odéon instead of Odeôn or Odeòn.
▪ Théâtre instead of Théatre in names of places.
▪ Éthorel instead of Ethorel.
▪ Élysées instead of Elysées.
○ Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_); text in
bold by “equal” signs (=bold=).