"Madame Juliette Roux, if you please?"
"Will Monsieur please come in?" the maid asked.
Without demanding my name or waiting for my answer, she made me cross a
small, dark antechamber, and led me into a room where at first I could
only distinguish a lamp covered by a large lamp-shade, which burned low
in a corner. The maid raised the flame of the lamp and carried out an
otter skin cape which had been thrown on the sofa.
"I will go tell madame," she said.
And she disappeared, leaving me alone in the room.
So I was at her house! For eight days the thought of this visit
had tortured me. I had no special business, I simply wanted to see
Juliette; some kind of keen curiosity, which I did not stop to analyze,
drew me to her. Several times I had gone to the Rue Saint Petersbourg
with the firm intention of calling on her, but at the last moment my
nerve failed me, and I left without mustering sufficient courage to
cross her threshold. And now I was the most embarrassed being in the
world, and I regretted my foolish step, for obviously it was a foolish
step. How would she receive me? What should I say? What caused me the
greatest uneasiness was that after I had made a thorough search in my
brain I found not a single phrase, not a single word with which to
begin our conversation when Juliette entered. What if words should fail
me and I should be left standing here with gaping mouth! How ridiculous
that would be!
I examined the room into which Juliette was presently to come. It
was a dressing room which also served as a parlor. It made a rather
unfavorable impression on me. The toilet table, ostentatiously
displayed with its two wash basins of cracked, pink cut glass, shocked
me. The walls and ceiling, hung with loud red satin, the furniture,
bordered with elaborate plush hangings, the knick-knacks, costly and
ugly, placed here and there on the furniture, the queer tables serving
no apparent purpose, consols weighed down with heavy ornaments--all
this bespoke a vulgar taste. I noticed in the center of the
mantlepiece, between two massive vases of onyx, a terra cotta statuette
of Cupid, smiling with a sort of grimace and offering a flower held
at the tips of his outspread fingers. Every detail revealed, on the
one hand, a love of expensive and unrefined luxury, and on the other a
regrettable predilection for romance and puerile affection. It was at
once distressing and sentimental. Nevertheless, and that was a relief
to me, I saw here no evidence of that incongruity, that transitory air,
that severity of aspect so characteristic of ladies' boarding houses,
those apartments where one is made aware of a haggard existence, where
by the number of knick-knacks one can count the number of lovers who
have passed there, lovers for an hour, a night, a year; where every
chair tells of the lack of decency, the unfaithfulness; where on the
glass one can see the tragedy of fortune's fickleness; on the marble,
traces of a tear still warm; on the candlestick, blood drops still
moist. The door opened and Juliette appeared wearing a white, long
flowing dress. I trembled, color came to my face; but she recognized
me and, smiling that smile of hers which at last I found again, she
stretched out her hand.
"Ah! Monsieur Mintié!" she said, "how nice of you not to have
forgotten me! Has it been long since you saw that eccentric Lirat?"
"Why, yes, Madame, I have not seen him since the day I had the honor of
meeting you at his place."
"Ah, my God, I thought you two never separated at all."
"It is true," I replied, "that I see him quite often. But I have been
working all these days."
As I thought I detected a note of irony in the sound of her voice, I
added, to provoke her:
"What a great artist, isn't he?"
Juliette let this remark pass unanswered.
"So you are always working?" She took up the subject again. "For the
rest, I am told you live like a regular recluse. Really, one sees very
little of you, Monsieur Mintié!"
The conversation took a quite ordinary turn, the theatre furnishing
food for nearly all of it. A remark which I made seemed to astound her,
and she was rather scandalized.
"What, you don't like the theatre? Is it possible--and you an artist? I
am passionately fond of it. The theatre is so amusing! We are going to
the Varieté tonight, for the fourth time, mind you."
A feeble yelp came from behind the door.
"Ah, my God!" Juliette exclaimed, hurriedly rising. "My Spy whom I left
in my room! Shall I present Spy to you, Monsieur Mintié? Don't you know
Spy?"
She opened the door, drew aside the hangings, which were very wide.
"Come, Spy!" she said coaxingly. "Where have you been, Spy? Come over
here, poor thing!"
And I saw a diminutive little animal, with a pointed snout, long ears,
advancing, dancing on its thin paws that resembled a spider's legs and
whose whole body, bent and skinny, quivered as though in fever. A
ribbon of red silk, carefully tied on the side, encircled its neck in
place of a collar.
"Come on, Spy. Say hello to Monsieur Mintié!"
Spy turned on me his round, stupid and cruel eyes which were on a level
with his head, and barked viciously.
"That's right, Spy. Now give your paw. Will you give me your paw? Come,
now!"
Juliette bent down and threatened the dog with her finger. Spy finally
put his paw in his mistress' hand. She picked him up, patted and
embraced him.
"Oh! the dear little dog! Oh, darling dog! Oh, my love, my dearest Spy!"
She sat up again, still holding the dog in her arms like a child,
rubbing her cheek against the snout of the frightful beast, whispering
caressing and endearing words into his ears.
"Now show us that you are pleased, Spy! Show it to your little mammy!"
Spy barked again, then licked the lips of Juliette who joyously
abandoned herself to these odious caresses.
"Ah, what a dear you are, Spy! Ah, how very, very nice you are!"
And addressing herself to me, whom she seemed to have forgotten
completely since Spy's unfortunate entry, she suddenly asked:
"Do you like dogs, Monsieur Mintié?"
"Very much, Madame," I answered.
Then she told me, with a wealth of childish detail, the history of
Spy, his habits, his urgent needs, his tricks, the scraps with the
housekeeper who could not stand him.
"But you ought to see him when he is asleep," she said to me. "You know
he has a bed, sheets, an eiderdown coverlet, like a real person. Every
night I put him to bed. And his little head looks so funny on it, all
black. Aren't you very funny, Monsieur Spy?"
Spy chose a comfortable place on Juliette's dress, and, after turning
several times, rolled himself into a black lump, almost entirely lost
in the cloth's silken folds.
"That's it! By-by, Spy, my little baby!"
During this long conversation with Spy, I had a chance to observe
Juliette at leisure. She was indeed very beautiful, even more beautiful
than I had dreamed she was under her veil. Her face was truly radiant.
It had such freshness, such an aurora-like clearness, that the very
air about her seemed illumined. Whenever she turned or bent forward
I saw her thick hair, very dark, descending along her dress in an
enormous tress, which added something peculiarly virginal and youthful
to her appearance. I thought I saw a perpendicular, wilful wrinkle
furrowed in the middle of her forehead, at the root of her hair, but
it was visible only in certain instances of light reflection, and the
luminous sweetness of her eyes, the extremely graceful curve of her
mouth tempered its rigid aspect. One felt that under her ample garments
quivered a supple, nervous body of passionate pliancy; what delighted
me most were her hands, delicate, deft and of surprising agility, whose
every movement, even of indifference or anger, was a caress.
It was hard for me to form a definite opinion of her. There was in this
woman a mixture of innocence and voluptuousness, of shrewdness and
stupidity, of kindness and malevolence, which was disconcerting. And
a curious thing! At one moment I saw the horrible image of the singer
at the Bouffes taking shape near her. And this image formed Juliette's
shadow, so to speak. Far from vanishing, this image, as I looked at
it, was assuming in some way a fixed corporeal form. It grimaced,
wriggled, leaped with lurid contortions, its foul, obscene lips
distended toward Juliette, who seemed to draw the image toward herself
and whose hand sank in its hair and passed tremblingly along its body,
happy to sully herself with its impure contact. And the sordid juggler
was removing Juliette's clothes and showing her to me in a swoon, in
the wretched splendor of sin! I had to shut my eyes and make a painful
effort to dispel this abominable image, and Juliette immediately
assumed her expression of enigmatic, candid tenderness.
"And above all, come to see me, often, very often," she said, seeing
me to the door, while Spy, who had followed her into the antechamber,
barked and danced on his thin, spider legs.
Outside, I felt the return of a sudden and passionate affection for
Lirat and, reproaching myself for being sulky with him, I resolved
to ask him to dine with me that very evening. On my way from the Rue
Saint Petersbourg to the Boulevard de Courcelles where Lirat lived, I
made some bitter reflections. The visit had disillusioned me, I was no
longer under the spell of a dream and I quickly returned to desolate
reality, to the denial of love. What I had imagined about Juliette was
quite vague.
My spirit, exalted by her beauty, was ascribing to her moral qualities
and mental attainments which I could not define and which I assumed
were extraordinary, the more so since Lirat, by attributing to her,
without reason, a dishonorable existence and shameful proclivities,
had made her a veritable martyr in my eyes, and my heart was moved.
Pushing this folly still further, I thought that by some sort of
irresistible sympathy she would confide her suffering to me, the grave
and sorrowful secrets of her soul; I already saw myself consoling her,
speaking to her of duty, virtue, resignation. I looked forward to a
series of solemn and touching things.
Instead of all this poesy--a frightful dog who barked at my feet and a
woman just like others, without brains, without ideas, occupied solely
with pleasures, confining her enthusiasm to the Théâtre des Varietés
and the caressing of her Spy, her Spy!... Ha! Ha! Ha!... Her Spy whom
she loved with the tenderness and devotion of a porter! And on my way
I kicked the air, at an imaginary Spy and, imitating Juliette's voice,
was saying: "Come, dear! Oh, dear little dog! Oh, my love, my dearest
Spy!" Shall I admit it, I also had a grudge against her for not having
said a word about my book. That no one spoke about it in ordinary life
was almost a matter of indifference to me. But a compliment from her
would have delighted me! I would have felt so happy to know that she
had been moved by some page, provoked by another, as I hoped she had
been. And instead--nothing! Not even an allusion! Yet, I remember, I
had cleverly furnished her with an opportunity for such consideration.
"Decidedly, she is a goose!" I said to myself as I rapped at Lirat's
door.
Lirat received me with open arms.
"Ah! my little Mintié!" he exclaimed, "it's very nice of you to come to
dine with me. And you have come just in time, I tell you. We are going
to have cabbage soup."
He rubbed his hands, and seemed very happy. He wanted to help me remove
my overcoat and hat and, dragging me into the small room which served
as his parlor, he repeated:
"My little Mintié, I am so glad to see you. Will you come tomorrow to
the studio?"
"Surely."
"Well, you shall see! You shall see! First of all, I am going to give
up painting, do you understand?"
"Are you going into business?"
"Listen to me! Painting is humbug, my little Mintié."
He grew animated, moved about the room briskly, waving his arms.
"Giotto! Mantegna! Velasques! Rembrandt! Well, Rembrandt! Watteau!
Delacroix! Ingres! Yes and then who? No, that is not true? Painting
depicts nothing, expresses nothing, it's all humbug! It's all right
for the art critics, bankers, and generals who have their portraits
on horseback with a howitzer shell exploding in the foreground. But
to render a glimpse of the sky, the shade of a flower, the ripple of
the water, the air,--you understand? The air--all this impalpable and
invisible nature, with a paste of paint colors! With a paste of paint
colors?"
Lirat shrugged his shoulders.
"With a paste of paint colors coming out of tubes, with a paste of
paint colors made by the dirty hands of chemists, with a paste of paint
colors, heavy, opaque and which sticks to the fingers like jelly! Tell
me ... painting ... what humbug! No, but you will admit, my little
Mintié, that it is humbug! A drawing, an engraving, a two-tone piece
... that's the thing! That does not deceive, it's honest ... the
amateurs sneer at that kind of work and don't presume to bother you
about it ... it evokes no empty enthusiasm in their 'salons'! But real
art, majestic art, artistic art is there. Sculpture ... yes ... when it
is beautiful, it shakes you.... But next to it is the art of drawing,
drawing ... my little Mintié, without Prussian blue, just plain
drawing! Will you come to my studio tomorrow?"
"Certainly."
He continued to chop his phrases, fumble his words, excited by their
very sound.
"I am beginning a series of etchings. You'll see! A nude woman, coming
out of a deep shadow, carried upward on the wings of a beast. Scattered
about, in unnatural positions, are parts of human corpses with dirty
folds and swellings of decaying flesh ... a belly cut open and losing
its viscera, a belly of terrible outline, hideous and true! A dead
head, but a living dead head, you understand? Greedy, gluttonous, all
lips. She is rising in front of a crowd of old men in tall hats, silk
coats and white cravats. She is rising and the old men bend toward her
panting, with hanging jaws, watering mouths, contracted eyes ... all
have lewd faces!"
Stopping before me with an air of defiance, he continued:
"And do you know what I am going to call it? Do you know? I am going to
call it Love, my little Mintié. What do you think of it?..."
"That seems to me a little bit too symbolic," I ventured.
"Symbolic!" interrupted Lirat. "You are talking nonsense, my little
Mintié! Symbolic! Why that's life itself! Let's go out and eat."
Our dinner was a very gay affair; Lirat displayed a charming
disposition; he was full of original ideas, without extremes or
paradoxes, on art. He had again found his normal self, as in the better
days of his life. Several times I had a notion to tell him that I had
seen Juliette. A kind of shame held me back; I had not the courage.
"Work, work, my little Mintié," he said to me, when we were parting.
"To create, always to create, to draw from one's sinews or from one's
brains no matter what ... be it only a pair of rubbers. There is
nothing outside of that!"
Six days later I went again to Juliette and gradually I formed the
habit of calling regularly and spending an hour before dinner. The
disagreeable impression left on me at the time of my first visit had
vanished. Little by little, without suspecting it, I grew so used to
the red tapestry in her parlor, to the terra cotta statue of Cupid, to
Juliette's childish prating, even to Spy who had become my friend, that
whenever I passed a day without seeing her, it seemed as though a great
void had been created in my life.
Not only did the things which at first had shocked me no longer do so,
but, on the contrary, they now moved me, and each time Juliette talked
to Spy or attended to him with exaggerated care, it was a positive
pleasure to me, appearing as an added proof of the simplicity and
affectionate qualities of her heart. In the end I, too, began to speak
this dog language. One evening, when Spy was sick, I grew uneasy and,
removing the covers and quilts which covered him, I gently murmured:
"Baby Spy has a hurt; where does it hurt our little baby?" Only the
image of the singer, rising near Juliette, somewhat disturbed the
tranquility of our meetings, but I only had to close my eyes for a
moment or turn away my head, and the image would instantly disappear.
I persuaded Juliette to tell me her life. Until now she had always
refused.
"No! no!" she would say.
And she would add with a smile, looking at me with her large, sad eyes:
"What will we gain, my friend?"
I insisted, I begged.
"It is your duty to reveal it to me and my duty to know it."
At last, conquered by this argument which I never tired of using in
various and appealing forms, she consented. Oh, with what sadness!
Her home was in Liverdun. Her father was a physician and her mother,
who led a frivolous life, had left her husband. As for Juliette, she
had been placed in the home of the Sisters. Her father came home
drunk every evening, and there were terrible scenes, for he was very
ill-natured. The scandal grew to such proportions that the Sisters sent
Juliette away, not wishing to keep the daughter of a wicked woman and
a drunkard in their house. Ah, what a miserable life it was! Always
locked up in her room and sometimes beaten by her father for no cause
whatever! One night, very late, the father entered Juliette's room.
"How shall I express it to you!" Juliette said blushing. "Oh, well, you
understand...." She jumped out of bed, shouted, opened the window. But
the father was frightened and went away. The next morning Juliette left
for Nancy, planning to live by working. It was here she had met Charles.
While she was talking in a gentle, even voice I took her hand, her
beautiful hand which I pressed with feeling, at the sad points of
the story. I was indignant over the action of her father. And I
cursed the mother for abandoning her child. I felt the stirrings of
a self-sacrificing devotion, and a vindictive desire to avenge her
wrongs. When she had finished I wept with burning tears.... It was an
exquisite hour.
Juliette received very few people; some of Malterre's friends, and
two or three of Malterre's feminine friends. One of them, Gabrielle
Bernier, a tall, pretty blonde woman, always entered the house in the
same fashion.
"Good morning, Monsieur, good morning, dearie. Don't trouble yourself,
I'll be gone in a minute."
And she would sit down on the brace of the armchair, smoothing her muff
with a brusque motion of her hand.
"Just think of it, I have just had another scene with Robert. If you
only knew what sort of a man he is! He comes to my house and says
whimpering: 'My dear little Gabrielle, I must leave you, my mother told
me so this morning, she won't give me any more money.' 'Your mother! I
wish I had a chance to answer her. Well, you can tell your mother in my
name, that whenever she is ready to give up her lovers, I'll quit you
that very day. But in the meantime, she'll have to dig into her pockets
alright.' And I don't believe it's true either--a dirty trick like
that! I think it's Robert who has cooked it up! We are going to the
Ambigu tonight. Are you going?"
"Thank you."
"Well, I must be off! Don't trouble yourself. Good day, Monsieur; good
day, dearie."
Gabrielle Bernier irritated me very much.
"Why do you receive such women?" I would say to Juliette.
"What harm is there, my friend? She amuses me."
Malterre's friends, on the other hand, spoke of races and high life;
they always had club and women stories to tell and never tired of
discussing theatrical matters. It seemed to me that Juliette took
an exaggerated pleasure in these conversations, but I excused her,
ascribing it to excessive politeness. Jesselin, a very rich young man,
considered a serious fellow, was the leader of the circle and all
bowed before his evident superiority. "What will Jesselin say? We must
ask Jesselin. Jesselin did not advise that." He was very much sought
after. He had traveled widely and knew better than anyone else the
best hotels. Having been in Afghanistan, he remembered one particular
thing of the entire trip through Central Asia, namely that the Emir of
Caboul, with whom he had had the honor of playing chess one day, played
as fast as the French. "Why that Emir certainly amazed me." Quite
often he would also offer this information: "You know how much I enjoy
travel. Well, I can say this much. In sleeping cars, in cabins, in a
Russian telega, no matter how or where I was, at half past seven every
evening I was in my dress suit!"
Malterre did not like me, friendly though he was. Having a quiet, timid
nature, he dared not show his aversion for me, for fear of displeasing
Juliette, but I could see it flaring up in his smiling look which was
like that of a good-natured but frightened dog, and in his handshake I
felt it clamoring for an outlet.
I was happy only when alone with Juliette. There, in the red parlor,
under the ægis of the terra cotta statuette of Cupid, we sometimes sat
for hours, without uttering a word. I would look at her, she would
droop her head, pensively playing with the trimming of her dress or the
lacework of her waist. Often my eyes for some reason unknown, filled
with tears, which rolled down my cheeks like some perfume, flooding
my soul with its magic liquid. And my whole being felt a sensation of
satiety and delicious torpor.
"Ah! Juliette! Juliette!"
"Come, come my friend, be sensible."
Those were the only words of love that escaped us.
Some time after this, Juliette gave a dinner to celebrate Charles'
birthday. During the whole evening she appeared nervous and irritated.
To Charles who offered a timid remark, she replied harshly and curtly,
in a manner which seemed foreign to her. It was two o'clock in the
morning before the crowd left. I alone remained in the parlor. Near
the door, Malterre stood with his back to me, talking to Jesselin who
was putting on his overcoat in the vestibule. And I saw Juliette, her
elbows resting on the piano, looking fixedly at me. A gleam of fierce
passion flashed in her eyes, suddenly turned dark, almost terrible,
marking them as with a novel flame. The wrinkle on her forehead
deepened, her nostrils quivered; a strange expression of something
unchaste wandered on her lips. I leaped toward her. My knees sought
her own, my body cleaved to hers, my mouth pressed against her own, I
clasped her in a furious embrace.
She abandoned herself to me entirely and in a very low, choking voice:
"Come tomorrow!" she said.