Paul de Gery went three times a week in the evening to take his lesson
in bookkeeping in the Joyeuses’ dining-room, not far from that little
parlour in which he had seen the family the first day, and while with
his eyes fixed on his teacher he was being initiated into all the
mysteries of “debtor and creditor,” he used to listen, in spite of
himself, for the light sounds coming from the industrious group behind
the door, with thoughts dwelling regretfully on the vision of all those
pretty brows bent in the lamplight. M. Joyeuse never said a word of his
daughters; jealous of their charms as a dragon watching over beautiful
princesses in a tower, and excited by the fantastic imaginings of his
excessive affection for them, he would answer with marked brevity the
inquiries of his pupil regarding the health of “the young ladies,” so
that at last the young man ceased to mention them.
He was surprised, however, at not once seeing that Bonne Maman whose
name was constantly recurring in the conversation of M. Joyeuse,
entering into the least details of his existence, hovering over the
household like the emblem of its perfect ordering and of its peace.
So great a reserve on the part of a venerable lady who must assuredly
have passed the age at which the interest of young men is to be feared,
seemed to him exaggerated. The lessons, however, were good ones,
given with great clearness, the teacher having an excellent system
of demonstration, and only one fault, that of becoming absorbed in
silences, broken by sudden starts and exclamations let off like rockets.
Apart from this, he was the best of masters, intelligent, patient, and
conscientious, and Paul learned to know his way through the complex
labyrinth of commercial books and resigned himself to ask nothing
beyond.
One evening, towards nine o’clock, as the young man had risen to go, M.
Joyeuse asked him if he would do him the honour of taking a cup of tea
with his family, a custom dating from the time when Mme. Joyeuse, _nee_
de Saint-Amand, was alive, she having been used to receive her friends
on Thursdays. Since her death and the change in the financial position,
the friends had become dispersed; but his little weekly function had
been kept up.
Paul having accepted, the good old fellow opened the door and called:
“Bonne Maman!”
An alert footstep in the passage, and immediately the face of a girl of
twenty, in a halo of abundant brown hair, made its appearance.
De Gery, stupefied, looked at M. Joyeuse.
“Bonne Maman?”
“Yes, it is a name that we gave her when she was a little girl. With her
frilled cap, her authority as the eldest child, she had a quaint little
air. We thought her like her grandmother. The name has clung to her.”
From the honest fellow’s tone as he spoke thus, one felt that to him
this grandparent’s title applied to such an embodiment of attractive
youth seemed the most natural thing in the world. Every one else thought
as he did on the point; both her sisters, who had hastened to their
father’s side, grouping themselves round him somewhat as in the portrait
exhibited in the window on the ground floor, and the old servant
who placed on the table in the little drawing-room a magnificent
tea-service, a relic of the former splendours of the household. Every
one called the girl “Bonne Maman” without her ever once having grown
tired of it, the influence of that sacred title touching the affection
of each one with a deference which flattered her and gave to her ideal
authority a singular gentleness of protection.
Whether or not it were by reason of this appellation of grandmother
which as a child he had learned to reverence, de Gery felt an
inexpressible attraction towards this young girl. It was not like the
sudden shock which he had received from that other, that emotional
agitation in which were mingled the desire to flee, to escape from a
possession and the persistent melancholy of the morrow of a festivity,
extinguished candles, the lost refrains of songs, perfumes vanished
into the night. In the presence of this young girl as she stood
superintending the family table, seeing if anything were wanting,
enveloping her children, her grandchildren, with the active tenderness
of her eyes, there came to him a longing to know her, to be counted
among her old friends, to confide to her things which he confessed only
to himself; and when she offered him his cup of tea without any of the
mincings of society or drawing-room affectations, he would have liked to
say with the rest a “Thank you, Bonne Maman,” in which he would have put
all his heart.
Suddenly, a cheerful knock at the door made everybody start.
“Ah, here comes M. Andre. Elise, a cup quickly. Jaia, the little cakes.”
At the same time, Mlle. Henriette, the third of M. Joyeuse’s daughters,
who had inherited from her mother, _nee_ de Saint-Amand, a certain
instinct for society, observing the number of visitors who seemed likely
to crowd their rooms that evening, rushed to light the two candles on
the piano.
“My fifth act is finished,” cried the newcomer as he entered, then he
stopped short. “Ah, pardon,” and his face assumed a rather discomfited
expression in the presence of the stranger. M. Joyeuse introduced
them to each other: “M. Paul de Gery--M. Andre Maranne,” not without
a certain solemnity. He remembered the receptions held formerly by
his wife, and the vases on the chimneypiece, the two large lamps, the
what-not; the easy chairs grouped in a circle had an air of joining in
this illusion, and seemed more brilliant by reason of this unaccustomed
throng.
“So your play is finished?”
“Finished, M. Joyeuse, and I hope to read it to you one of these
evenings.”
“Oh, yes, M. Andre. Oh, yes,” said all the girls in chorus.
Their neighbour was in the habit of writing for the stage, and no one
here doubted of his success. Photography, in any case, promised fewer
profits. Clients were very rare, passers-by little disposed to business.
To keep his hand in and to save his new apparatus from rusting, M. Andre
was accustomed to practise anew on the family of his friends on
each succeeding Sunday. They lent themselves to his experiments
with unequalled long-suffering; the prosperity of this suburban
photographer’s business was for them all an affair of _amour propre_,
and awakened, even in the girls, that touching confraternity of feeling
which draws together the destinies of people as insignificant in
importance as sparrows on a roof. Andre Maranne, with the inexhaustible
resources of his great brow full of illusion, used to explain without
bitterness the indifference of the public. Sometimes the season was
unfavourable, or, again, people were complaining of the bad state of
business generally, and he would always end with the same consoling
reflection, “When _Revolt_ is produced!” That was the title of his play.
“It is surprising all the same,” said the fourth of M. Joyeuse’s
daughters, twelve years old, with her hair in a pigtail, “it is
surprising that with such a good balcony so little business should
result.”
“And, if he were established on the Boulevard des Italiens,” remarks M.
Joyeuse thoughtfully, and he is launched forth!--riding his chimera
till it is brought to the ground suddenly with a gesture and these words
uttered sadly: “Closed on account of bankruptcy.” In the space of a
moment the terrible visionary has just installed his friend in splendid
quarters on the Boulevard, where he gains enormous sums of money, at the
same time, however, increasing his expenditure to so disproportionate an
extent that a fearful failure in a few months engulfs both photographer
and his photography. They laugh heartily when he gives this explanation;
but all agree that the Rue Saint-Ferdinand, although less brilliant, is
much more to be depended upon than the Boulevard des Italiens. Besides,
it happens to be quite near the Bois de Boulogne, and if once the
fashionable world got into the way of passing through it--That exalted
society which was so much sought by her mother, is Mlle. Henriette’s
fixed idea, and she is astonished that the thought of receiving “le
high-life” in his little apartment on the fifth floor makes their
neighbour laugh. The other week, however, a carriage with livery had
called on him. Only just now, too, he had a very “swell” visit.
“Oh, quite a great lady!” interrupts Bonne Maman. “We were at the window
on the lookout for father. We saw her alight from her carriage and look
at the show-frame; we made sure that her visit was for you.”
“It was for me,” said Andre, a little embarrassed.
“For a moment we were afraid that she was going to pass on like so many
others, on account of your five flights of stairs. So all four of us
tried to attract her without her knowing it, by the magnetism of our
four staring pairs of eyes. We drew her gently by the feathers of her
hat and the laces of her cape. ‘Come up then, madame, come up,’ and
finally she entered. There is so much magnetism in eyes that are kindly
disposed.”
Magnetism she certainly had, the dear creature, not only in her glances,
indeterminate of colour, veiled or gay like the sky of her Paris, but in
her voice, in the draping of her dress, in everything about her, even to
the long curl, falling over the neck erect and delicate as a statue’s.
Tea having been served, while the gentlemen finished their cups and
talked--old Joyeuse was always very long over everything he did, by
reason of his sudden expeditions to the moon--the girls brought out
their work, the table became covered with wicker baskets, embroideries,
pretty wools that rejuvenated with their bright tints the faded flowers
of the old carpet, and the group of the other evening gathered once
more within the bright circle defined by the lamp-shade, to the great
satisfaction of Paul de Gery. It was the first evening of the kind that
he had spent in Paris; it recalled to him others of a like sort very far
away, lulled by the same innocent laughter, the peaceful sound produced
by scissors as they are put down on the table, by a needle as it pierces
through linen, or the rustle of a page turned over, and dear faces,
disappeared for ever, gathered also around the family lamp, alas! so
abruptly extinguished.
Having been admitted to this charming intimacy, he remained in it, took
his lessons in the presence of the girls and was encouraged to chat with
them when the good old man closed his big book. Here everything rested
him after the whirl of that life into which he was thrown by the
luxurious social existence of the Nabob; he come to renew his strength
in this atmosphere of honesty, of simplicity, tried, too, to find
healing there for the wounds with which a hand more indifferent than
cruel stabbed his heart mercilessly.
“Some women have hated me, other women have loved me. She who has hurt
me most never either loved or hated me.” Paul had met that woman of whom
Henri Heine speaks. Felicia was full of welcome and cordiality for him.
There was no one whom she treated with more favour. She used to reserve
for him a special smile wherein one felt the kindliness of an artist’s
eye arrested by and dwelling on a pleasing type, and the satisfaction of
a jaded mind amused by anything new, however simple in appearance it may
be. She liked that reserve, suggestive in a southerner, the honesty
of that judgment, independent of every artistic or social formula and
enlivened by a touch of provincial accent. These things were a change
for her from the zigzag stroke of the thumb illustrating a eulogy with
its gesture of the studio, from the compliments of comrades on the way
in which she would snub some old fellow, or again from those affected
admirations, from the “char-ar-ming, very nice indeed’s” with which
young men about town, sucking the knobs of their canes, were accustomed
to regale her. This young man at any rate did not say such things as
that to her. She had nicknamed him Minerva, on account of his apparent
tranquility and the regularity of his profile; and the moment she saw
him, however far-off, she would call:
“Ah, here comes Minerva. Hail, beautiful Minerva! Put down your helmet
and let us have a chat.”
But this familiar, almost fraternal, tone convinced the young man that
he would make no further advance into that feminine comradeship in
which tenderness was wanting, and that he lost each day something of
his charm--the charm of the unforeseen--in the eyes of that woman born
weary, who seemed to have already lived her life and found in all that
she heard or saw the insipidity of a repetition. Felicia was bored.
Her art alone could distract her, carry her away, transport her into a
dazzling fairyland, whence she would fall back worn out, surprised
each time by this awakening like a physical fall. She used to draw
a comparison between herself and those jelly-fish whose transparent
brilliancy, so much alive in the cool movements of the waves, drift to
their death on the shore in little gelatinous pools. During those
times devoid of inspiration, when the artist’s hand was heavy on
his instrument, Felicia, deprived of the one moral support of her
intellectual being, became unsociable, unapproachable, a tormenting
mocker--the revenge taken of human weakness on the tired brains of
genius. After having brought tears to the eyes of every one who cared
for her, raking up painful recollections or enervating anxieties, she
reached the lowest depths of her fatigue, and as there was always some
fun in her, even in her _ennui_ in a kind of caged wild-beast’s howl,
which she called “the cry of the jackal in the desert,” and which used
to make the good Crenmitz turn pale.
Poor Felicia! That life of hers was indeed a frightful desert when art
did not beguile it with its illusions; a desert mournful and flat, where
everything was lost, reduced to one level, beneath the same monotonous
immensity, the naive love of a child of twenty, a passionate duke’s
caprice, in which all was overwhelmed by an arid sand driven by blasting
fates. Paul was conscious of that void, desired to escape it; but
something held him back, like a weight which unrolls a chain, and in
spite of the calumnies he heard, and notwithstanding the odd whims of
the strange creature, he dallied deliciously after her, at the price
of bearing away with him from this long lover’s contemplation only the
despair of a believer reduced to the adoring of images alone.
The refuge lay down there, in that remote quarter of the town where the
wind blew so hard, yet without preventing the flame from mounting white
and straight--it was the family circle presided over by Bonne Maman. Oh!
she at least was not bored, she never uttered the cry of the “jackal
in the desert.” Her life was far too full; the father to encourage, to
sustain, the children to teach, all the material cares of a home where
the mother’s hand is wanting, those preoccupations that awake with the
dawn and are put to sleep by the evening, unless indeed it bring them
back in dream, one of those devotions, tireless but without apparent
effort, very pleasant for poor human egotism, because they dispense from
all gratitude and hardly make themselves felt, so light is their hand.
She was not the courageous daughter who works to support her parents,
gives private lessons from morning to night, forgets in the excitement
of a profession all the troubles of the household. No, she had
understood her task in a different sense, a sedentary bee restricting
her cares to the hive, without once humming out of doors in the open air
among the flowers. A thousand functions: tailoress, milliner, mender
of clothes, bookkeeper also for M. Joyeuse, who, incapable of all
responsibility, left to her the free disposal of their means, to be
pianoforte-teacher, governess.
As it happens in families that have been in a good position, Aline,
as the eldest daughter, had been educated at one of the best
boarding-schools in Paris. Elise had been with her there for two years;
but the last two, born too late, and sent to small day-schools in the
locality, had all their studies yet to complete, and this was no easy
matter, the youngest laughing upon every occasion from sheer good
health, warbling like a lark intoxicated with the delight of green corn,
and flying away far out of sight of desk and exercises, while Mlle.
Henriette, ever haunted by her ideas of grandeur, her love of luxurious
things, took to work hardly less unwillingly. This young person of
fifteen, to whom her father had transmitted something of his imaginative
faculties, was already arranging her life in advance and declared
formally that she should marry one of the nobility, and would never
have more than three children: “A boy to inherit the name and two little
girls--so as to be able to dress them alike.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Bonne Maman would say, “you shall dress them alike.
In the meantime, let us attend to our participles a little.”
But the one who caused the most concern was Elise, with her examination
taken thrice without success, always failing in history and preparing
herself anew, seized by a deep fear and a mistrust of herself which
made her carry about with her everywhere and open every moment that
unfortunate history of France, in the omnibus, in the street, even at
the luncheon-table; she was already a grown girl and very pretty, and
she no longer possessed that little mechanical memory of childhood
wherein dates and events lodge themselves for the whole of one’s life.
Beset by other preoccupations, the lesson was forgotten in an instant,
despite the apparent application of the pupil, with her long lashes
fringing her eyes, her curls sweeping over the pages, and her rosy
mouth animated by a little quiver of attention, repeating ten times in
succession: “Louis, surnamed le Hutin, 1314-1316; Philip V, surnamed
the Long, 1316-1322. Ah, Bonne Maman, it’s no good; I shall never know
them.” Whereupon Bonne Maman would come to her assistance, help her
to concentrate her attention, to store up a few of those dates of the
Middle Ages, barbarous and sharp as the helmets of the warriors of the
period. And in the intervals of these occupations, of this general
and constant superintendence, she yet found time to do some pretty
needlework, to extract from her work-basket some delicate crochet lace
or a piece of tapestry on which she was engaged and to which she clung
as closely as the young Elise to her history of France. Even when she
talked, her fingers never remained unoccupied for a moment.
“Do you never take any rest?” said de Gery to her, as she counted under
her breath the stitches of her tapestry, “three, four, five,” to secure
the right variation in the shading of the colours.
“But this is a rest from work,” she answered. “You men cannot understand
how good needlework is for a woman’s mind. It gives order to the
thoughts, fixes by a stitch the moment that passes what would otherwise
pass with it. And how many griefs are calmed, anxieties forgotten,
thanks to this wholly physical act of attention, to this repetition of
an even movement, in which one finds--of necessity and very quickly--the
equilibrium of one’s whole being. It does not hinder me from following
the conversation around me, from listening to you still better than I
should if I were doing something. Three, four, five.”
Oh, yes, she listened. That was apparent in the animation of her face,
in the way in which she would suddenly straighten herself as she sat,
needle in air, the thread taut over her raised little finger. Then she
would quickly resume her work, sometimes after putting in a thoughtful
word, which agreed generally with the opinions of friend Paul.
An affinity of nature, responsibilities and duties similar in character,
drew these two young people together, interested each of them in the
other’s occupations. She knew the names of his two brothers Pierre and
Louis, his plans for their future when they should have left school.
Pierre wanted to be a sailor. “Oh, no, not a sailor,” Bonne Maman would
say, “it will be much better for him to come to Paris with you.” And
when he admitted that he was afraid of Paris for them, she laughed at
his fears, called him provincial, full of affection for the city
in which she had been born, in which she had grown to chaste young
womanhood, and that gave her in return those vivacities, those natural
refinements, that jesting good-humour which incline one to believe
that Paris, with its rain, its fogs, its sky which is no sky, is the
veritable fatherland of woman, whose nerves it heals gently and whose
qualities of intelligence and patience it develops.
Each day Paul de Gery came to appreciate Mlle. Aline better--he was the
only person in the house who so called her--and, strange circumstance,
it was Felicia who completed the cementing of their intimacy. What
relations could there exist between the artist’s daughter, moving in the
highest spheres, and this little middle-class girl buried in the
depths of a suburb? Relations of childhood and of friendship, common
recollections, the great court-yard of the Institution Belin, where
they had played together for three years. Paris is full of these
juxtapositions. A name uttered by chance in the course of a conversation
brought out suddenly the bewildered question:
“You know her then?”
“Do I know Felicia? Why, our desks were next each other in the first
form. We had the same garden. Such a nice girl, and so handsome and
clever!”
And, observing the pleasure with which she was listened to, Aline used
to recall the times which already formed a past for her, seductive and
melancholy like all pasts. She was very much alone in life, the little
Felicia. On Thursdays, when the visitors’ names were called out in the
parlour, there was no one for her; except from time to time a good but
rather absurd lady, formerly a dancer, it was said, whom Felicia called
the Fairy. In the same way she used to have pet names for all the people
she cared for and whom she transformed in her imaginations. In the
holidays they used to see each other. Mme. Joyeuse, while she refused to
allow Aline to visit the studio of M. Ruys, used to invite Felicia over
for whole days, very short days they seemed, minglings of study, music,
dual dreams, young intimate conversations. “Oh, when she used to talk to
me of her art, with that enthusiasm which she put into everything, how
delighted I was to listen to her! How many things I have understood
through her, of which I should never have had any idea. Even now when we
go to the Louvre with papa, or to the exhibition of the 1st of May,
that special feeling I have about a beautiful piece of sculpture, a good
picture, carries me back immediately to Felicia. In my early girlhood
she represented art to me, and it corresponded with her beauty. Her
nature was a little vague, but so kind, I always felt she was something
superior to myself, that bore me to great heights without frightening
me. Suddenly she stopped coming to see me. I wrote to her; no reply.
Later on, fame came to her; to me great sorrows, absorbing duties. And
of all that friendship, which was very deep, however, since I cannot
speak of it without--‘three, four, five’--nothing now remains except old
memories like dead ashes.”
Bending over her work, the brave girl made haste to count her stitches,
to imprison her regret in the capricious designs of her tapestry, while
de Gery, moved as he heard the testimony of those pure lips against the
calumnies of rejected young dandies or of jealous comrades, felt himself
raised, restored to the proud dignity of his love. This sensation was
so sweet to him that he returned in search of it very often, not only
on the evenings of the lessons, but on other evenings, too, and almost
forgot to go to see Felicia for the pleasure of hearing Aline talk about
her.
One evening, as he was leaving the Joyeuses’ home, Paul met the
neighbour, M. Andre, on the landing, who was waiting for him and took
his arm feverishly.
“Monsieur de Gery,” he said in a trembling voice, with eyes that
glittered behind their spectacles, the one feature of his face that was
visible in the darkness. “I have an explanation to ask from you. Will
you come up to my rooms for a moment?”
There had only been between this young man and himself the banal
relations of two persons accustomed to frequent the same house, whom no
tie unites, who seem ever separated by a certain antipathy of nature, of
manner of life. What explanation could there be called for between them?
He followed him with much perplexed curiosity.
The aspect of the little studio, chilly under its top-light, the empty
fireplace, the wind blowing as though they were out of doors and making
the candle flicker, the solitary light on the scene of the night’s
labour of a poor and lonely man, reflected on sheets of paper scribbled
over and scattered about, in short, this atmosphere of habitations
wherein the soul of the inhabitants lives on its own aspirations, caused
de Gery to understand the visionary air of Andre Maranne, his long hair
thrown back and streaming loose, that somewhat excessive appearance,
very excusable when it is paid for by a life of sufferings and
privations, and his sympathy immediately went out to this courageous
fellow whose intrepidity of spirit he guessed at a glance. But the
other was too deeply moved by emotion to notice the progress of these
reflections. As soon as the door was closed upon them, he said, with the
accent of a stage hero addressing the perfidious seducer, “M. de Gery, I
am not yet a Cassandra.”
And seeing the stupefaction of de Gery:
“Yes, yes,” he went on, “we understand each other. I have known
perfectly well what it is that draws you to M. Joyeuse’s house, and
the eager welcome with which you are received there has not escaped my
notice either. You are rich, you are of noble birth, there can be no
hesitation between you and the poor poet who follows a ridiculous trade
in order to give himself full time to reach a success which perhaps will
never come. But I shall not allow my happiness to be stolen from me.
We must fight, monsieur, we must fight,” he repeated, excited by the
peaceful calm of his rival. “For long I have loved Mlle. Joyeuse. That
love is the end, the joy, and the strength of an existence which is very
hard, in many respects painful. I have only it in the world, and I would
rather die than give it up.”
Strangeness of the human soul! Paul did not love the charming Aline. His
whole heart belonged to the other. He thought of her simply as a friend,
the most adorable of friends. But the idea that Maranne was interested
in her, that she no doubt returned this regard, gave him the jealous
shiver of an annoyance, and it was with some considerable sharpness that
he inquired whether Mlle. Joyeuse was aware of this sentiment of Andre’s
and had in any way authorized him thus to proclaim his rights.
“Yes, monsieur, Mlle. Elise knows that I love her, and before your
frequent visits--”
“Elise? It is of Elise you are speaking?”
“And of whom, then, should I be speaking? The two others are too young.”
He fully entered into the traditions of the family, this Andre. For him,
Bonne Maman’s age of twenty years, her triumphant grace, were obscured
by a surname full of respect and the attributes of a Providence which
seemed to cling to her.
A very brief explanation having calmed Andre Maranne’s mind, he offered
his apologies to de Gery, begged him to sit down in the arm-chair
of carved wood which was used by his sitters, and their conversation
quickly assumed an intimate and sympathetic character, brought about by
the so abrupt avowal at its opening. Paul confessed that he, too, was in
love, and that he came so often to M. Joyeuse’s only in order to speak
of her whom he loved with Bonne Maman, who had known her formerly.
“That is my case, too,” said Andre. “Bonne Maman knows all my secrets;
but we have not yet ventured to say anything to the father. My position
is too unsatisfactory. Ah, when I shall have got _Revolt_ produced!”
Then they talked of that famous drama, _Revolt_, upon which he had been
at work for six months, day and night, which had kept him warm all the
winter, a very severe winter, but whose rigours the magic of composition
had tempered in the little studio, which it transformed. It was there,
within that narrow space, that all the heroes of his piece had appeared
to his poet’s vision like familiar gnomes dropped from the roof or
riding moon-beams, and with them the gorgeous tapestries, the glittering
chandeliers, the park scenes with their gleaming flights of steps, all
the luxurious circumstance expected in stage effects, as well as
the glorious tumult of his first night, the applause of which was
represented for him by the rain beating on the glass roof and the boards
rattling in the door, while the wind, driving below over the murky
timber-yard with a noise as of far-off voices, borne near and anew
carried off into the distance, resembled the murmurs from the boxes
opened on the corridor to let the news of his success circulate among
the gossip and wonderment of the crowd. It was not only fame and money
that it was destined to procure him, this thrice-blessed play, but
something also more precious still. With what care accordingly did he
not turn over the leaves of the manuscript in five thick books, all
bound in blue, books like those that the Levantine was accustomed to
strew about on the divan where she took her siestas, and that she marked
with her managerial pencil.
Paul, having in his turn approached the table in order to examine the
masterpiece had his glance attracted by a richly framed portrait of a
woman, which, placed so near to the artist’s work, seemed to be there to
preside over it. Elise, doubtless? Oh, no, Andre had not yet the right
to bring out from its protecting case the portrait of his little friend.
This was a woman of about forty, gentle of aspect, fair, and extremely
elegant. As he perceived her, de Gery could not suppress an exclamation.
“You know her?” asked Andre Maranne.
“Why, yes. Mme. Jenkins, the wife of the Irish doctor. I have had supper
at their house this winter.”
“She is my mother.” And the young man added in a lower tone:
“Mme. Maranne made a second marriage with Dr. Jenkins. You are
surprised, are you not, to see me in these poor surroundings, while my
relatives are living in the midst of luxury? But, you know, the chances
of family life sometimes group together natures that differ very widely.
My stepfather and I have never been able to understand each other. He
wished to make me a doctor, whereas my only taste was for writing. So at
last, in order to avoid the continual discussions which were painful to
my mother, I preferred to leave the house and plough my furrow alone,
without the help of anybody. A rough business. Funds were wanting. The
whole fortune has gone to that--to M. Jenkins. The question was to
earn a livelihood, and you are aware what a difficult thing that is for
people like ourselves, supposed to be well brought-up. To think that
among all the accomplishments gained from what we are accustomed to call
a complete education, this child’s play was the only thing I could find
by which I could hope to earn my bread. A few savings, my own purse,
slender like that of most young men, served to buy my first outfit and
I installed myself here far away, in the remotest region of Paris, in
order not to embarrass my relatives. Between ourselves, I don’t expect
to make a fortune out of photography. The first days especially were
very difficult. Nobody came, or if by chance some unfortunate wight did
mount, I made a failure of him, got on my plate only an image blurred
and vague as a phantom. One day, at the very beginning, a wedding-party
came up to me, the bride all in white, the bridegroom with a
waistcoat--like that! And all the guests in white gloves, which they
insisted on keeping on for the portrait on account of the rarity of such
an event with them. No, I thought I should go mad. Those black
faces, the great white patches made by the dresses, the gloves, the
orange-blossoms, the unlucky bride, looking like a queen of Niam-niam
under her wreath merging indistinguishably into her hair. And all of
them so full of good-will, of encouragements to the artist. I began them
over again at least twenty times, and kept them till five o’clock in the
evening. And then they only left me because it was time for dinner. Can
you imagine that wedding-day passed at a photographer’s?”
While Andre was recounting to him with this good humour the troubles of
his life, Paul recalled the tirade of Felicia that day when Bohemians
had been mentioned, and all that she had said to Jenkins of their lofty
courage, avid of privations and trials. He thought also of Aline’s
passion for her beloved Paris, of which he himself was only acquainted,
for his part, with the unwholesome eccentricities, while the great city
hid in its recesses so many unknown heroisms and noble illusions. This
last impression, already experienced within the sheltered circle of the
Joyeuse’s great lamp, he received perhaps still more vividly in this
atmosphere, less warm, less peaceful, wherein art also entered to add
its despairing or glorious uncertainty; and it was with a moved heart
that he listened to Andre Maranne as he spoke to him of Elise, of
the examinations which it was taking her so long to pass, of the
difficulties of photography, of all that unforeseen element in his life
which would end certainly “when he could have secured the production
of _Revolt_,” a charming smile accompanying on the poet’s lips this so
often expressed hope, which he was wont himself to hasten to make fun
of, as though to deprive others of the right to do so.