“Take your places for the first act!”
The cry of the stage-manager, standing with his hand raised to his
mouth to form a trumpet, at the foot of the staircase behind the scenes,
echoes under the roof, rises and rolls along, to be lost in the depths
of corridors full of the noise of doors banging, of hasty steps, of
desperate calls to the _coiffeur_ and the dressers; while there appear
one by one on the landings of the various floors, slow and majestic,
without moving their heads for fear of disturbing the least detail
of their make-up, all the personages of the first act of _Revolt_, in
elegant modern ball costumes, with the creaking of new shoes, the silken
rustle of the trains, the jingling of rich bracelets pushed up the arm
while gloves are being buttoned. All these people seem excited, nervous,
pale beneath their paint, and under the skilfully prepared satin-like
surface of the shoulders, tremors flutter like shadows. Dry-mouthed,
they speak little. The least nervous, while affecting to smile, have
in their eyes and voice the hesitation that marks an absent mind--that
apprehension of the battle behind the foot-lights which is ever one of
the most powerful attractions of the comedian’s art, its piquancy, its
freshness.
The stage is encumbered by the passage to and fro of machinists and
scene-builders hastening about, running into one another in the dim,
pallid light falling from above, which will give place directly, as soon
as the curtain rises, to the dazzling of the foot-lights. Cardailhac is
there in his dress-coat and white tie, his opera hat on one side, giving
a final glance to the arrangement of the scenery, hurrying the workmen,
complimenting the _ingenue_ who is waiting dressed and ready, beaming,
humming an air, looking superb. To see him no one would ever guess the
terrible worries which distract him. He is compromised by the fall of
the Nabob--which entails the loss of his directorate--and is risking his
all on the piece of this evening, obliged, if it be not a success, to
leave the cost of this marvellous scenery, these stuffs at a hundred
francs the yard, unpaid. It is a fourth bankruptcy that stares him in
the face. But, bah! our manager is confident. Success, like all the
monsters that feed on men, loves youth; and this unknown author, whose
name is appearing for the first time on a theatre bill, flatters the
gambler’s superstitions.
Andre Maranne feels less confident. As the hour for the production of
the piece approaches he loses faith in his work, terrified by the sight
of the house, at which he looks through the hole in the curtain as
through the narrow lens of a stereoscope.
A splendid house, crammed to the roof, notwithstanding the late period
of the spring and the fashionable taste for early departure to the
country; a house that Cardailhac, a declared enemy of nature and the
country, endeavouring always to keep Parisians in Paris till the latest
possible date, has succeeded in crowding and making as brilliant as in
midwinter. Fifteen hundred heads are swarming beneath the great central
chandelier, erect--bent forward--turning round--questioning amid a great
play of shadows and reflections; some massed in the obscure corners of
the floor, others in a bright light reflected through the open doors of
the boxes from the white walls of the corridor; the first-night public
which is always the same, that brigand-like _tout Paris_ which goes
everywhere, carrying those envied places by storm when a favour or a
claim by right of some official position fails to secure them.
In the stalls are low-cut waistcoats, clubmen, shining bald heads, wide
partings in scanty hair, light-coloured gloves, big opera-glasses raised
and directed towards various points. In the galleries a mixture of
different social sets and all kinds of dress, all the people well known
as figuring at this kind of solemnity, and the embarrassing promiscuity
which places the modest smile of the virtuous woman along-side of the
black-ringed eyes, the vermilion-painted lips of her who belongs to
another category. White hats, pink hats, diamonds and paint. Above, the
boxes present the same confusion; actresses and women of the demi-monde,
ministers, ambassadors, famous authors, critics--these last wearing a
grave air and frowning brow, sitting crosswise in their _fauteuils_ with
the impassive haughtiness of judges whom nothing can corrupt. The boxes
near the stage especially stand out in the general picture brilliantly
lighted, occupied by celebrities of the financial world, the women
_decollete_ and with bare arms, glittering with jewels like the Queen of
Sheba on her visit to the King of Judea. But on the left, one of these
large boxes, entirely empty, attracts attention by reason of its curious
decoration, lighted from the back by a Moorish lantern. Over the whole
assembly is an impalpable and floating dust, the flickering of the gas,
that odour that mingles with all the pleasures of Paris, its little
sputterings, sharp and quick like the breaths drawn by a consumptive,
accompanying the movement of opened fans. And then, too, _ennui_, a
gloomy _ennui_, the _ennui_ of seeing the same faces always in the
same places, with their defects or their poses, that uniformity of
fashionable gatherings which ends by establishing in Paris each winter
a spiteful and gossiping provincialism more petty than that of the
provinces themselves.
Maranne observed this ill-humour, this lassitude of the public, and
thinking of all the changes which the success of his play might bring
about in his simple life, he asked himself, full of a great anxiety,
what he could do to bring his ideas home to those thousands of people,
to pluck them away from their preoccupation, and to send through
this crowd a single current which should draw to himself those absent
glances, those minds of every different calibre, so difficult to move to
unison. Instinctively his eyes sought friendly faces, a box facing the
stage occupied by the Joyeuse family; Elise and the younger girls seated
in the front, Aline and the father in the row behind--a charming family
group, like a bouquet wet with dew amid a display of artificial flowers.
And while all Paris was disdainfully asking, “Who are those people
there?” the poet instrusted his fate to those little fairy hands, new
gloved for the occasion, which very soon would boldly give the signal
for applause.
The curtain is going up! Maranne has barely time to spring into the
wings; and suddenly he hears as from far, very far away, the first words
of his play, which rise, like a flight of timid birds, into the silence
and immensity of the theatre. A terrible moment. Where should he go?
What should he do? Remain there leaning against a wing, with straining
ear and beating heart? Encourage the actors when he himself stood in so
much need of encouragement? He prefers rather to look the peril in the
face; and by the little door communicating with the corridor behind the
boxes he slips out to a corner box, which he orders to be opened for him
softly. “Sh! It is I.” Some one is seated in the shadow--a woman, she
whom all Paris knows and who is hiding herself from the public gaze.
Andre sits down by her side, and so, close to one another, mother and
son tremblingly watch the progress of the play.
It astonished the audience at first. This Theatre des Nouveautes,
situated in the very heart of the boulevard, where its portico glitters
all illuminated among the great restaurants of the smart clubs; this
theatre, to which people were accustomed to come in parties after a
luxurious dinner to listen until supper-time to an act or two of some
suggestive piece, had become in the hands of its clever manager the most
fashionable of all Parisian entertainments, without any very precise
character of its own, and partaking something of all, from the
fairy-operetta which exhibits undressed women, to the serious modern
drama. Cardailhac was especially anxious to justify his title of
“Manager of the Nouveautes,” and, since the Nabob’s millions had been
at the back of the undertaking, had made a point of preparing for
the boulevardiers the most dazzling surprises. That of this evening
surpassed them all; the piece was in verse--and moral.
A moral play!
The old rogue had realized that the moment had arrived to try that
effect, and he was trying it. After the astonishment of the first
minutes, a few disappointed exclamations here and there in the boxes,
“Why, it is in verse!” the house began to feel the charm of this
invigorating and healthy piece, as if there had been sprinkled on it,
in its rarefied atmosphere, some fresh and pungent essence, an elixir of
life perfumed with thyme from the hillside.
“Ah! this is nice--it is restful.”
Such was the general sense, a thrill of ease, a spasm of pleasure
accompanying each line. That fat old Hemerlingue found it restful,
puffing in his stage-box on the ground floor as in a trough of cerise
satin. It was restful also to that tall Suzanne Bloch, her hair dressed
in the antique way, ringlets flowing over a diadem of gold; and
near her, Amy Ferat, all in white like a bride and with sprigs of
orange-blossom in her fluffy hair, it was restful to her also, you may
be sure.
A crowd of demi-mondaines were present, some very fat, with a dirty
greasiness acquired in a hundred seraglios, three chins, and an air of
stupidity; others absolutely green in spite of their paint, as if they
had been dipped in a bath of that arsenate of copper which is called
in the shops “Paris green.” These were wrinkled, faded to such a degree
that they hid in the back of their boxes, only allowing a portion of
a white arm to be seen, a rounded shoulder protruding. Then there were
young men about town, flabby and without backbone, those who at
that time used to be called _petits creves_, creatures worn out by
dissipation, with stooping necks and drooping lids, incapable of
standing erect or of articulating a single word perfectly. And all these
people exclaimed with one accord: “This is nice--it is restful.” The
handsome Moessard murmured it like a refrain beneath his little fair
mustache, while his queen in the stage-box translated it into the
barbarism of her foreign tongue. Positively they found it restful. They
did not say after what--after what heart-breaking labour, after what
forced, idle and useless task.
All these friendly murmurs, united and mingled, began to give to the
house an eventful appearance. Success was felt in the air, faces
became serene again, the women seemed the more beautiful for reflecting
enthusiasm, for being moved to glances that were as exciting as
applause. Andre, at his mother’s side, thrilled with such an unknown
pleasure, with that proud delight which a man feels when he stirs the
multitude, be he only a singer in a suburban back-yard, with a patriotic
refrain and two pathetic notes in his voice. Suddenly the whisperings
redoubled, were transformed into a tumult. People were chuckling and
fidgeting with excitement. What had happened? Some accident on the
stage? Andre, leaning terrified towards the actors as astonished as
himself, saw every opera-glass turned towards the big stage-box which
had remained empty until then, and which some one had just entered, who
sat down immediately with both his elbows on the velvet ledge, and
with his opera-glass drawn from its case, taking his place in gloomy
solitude.
In ten days the Nabob had aged twenty years. Violent southern natures
like his, if they are rich in enthusiasms, become also more utterly
prostrate than others. Since his unseating the unfortunate man had shut
himself up in his bedroom, with drawn curtains, no longer wishing even
to see the light of day nor to cross over the threshold beyond which
life was waiting for him, with the engagements he had undertaken,
the promises he had made, a mass of protested bills and writs. The
Levantine, gone off to some spa accompanied by her _masseur_ and her
negress, was totally indifferent to the ruin of the establishment;
Bompain--the man in the fez--in frightened bewilderment amid the demands
for money, not knowing how to approach his ill-starred master, who
persistently kept his bed and turned his face to the wall as soon as
business matters were mentioned. His old mother alone remained behind to
face the disaster, with the knowledge born of her narrow and straitened
experience as a village woman, who knows what a stamped document--a
signature--is, and thinks honour is the greatest and best thing in
the world. Her peasant’s cap made its appearance on every floor of
the mansion, examining bills, reforming the domestic arrangements, and
fearing neither outcries or humiliation. At all hours the good woman
might be seen striding about the Place Vendome, gesticulating, talking
to herself, and saying aloud: “_Te_, I will go and see the bailiff.”
And never did she consult her son about anything save when it was
indispensable, and then only in a few discreet words, while avoiding
even a glance at him. To rouse Jansoulet from his torpor it had required
de Gery’s telegram, dated from Marseilles, announcing that he was on his
way back, bringing ten million francs. Ten millions!--that is to say,
bankruptcy averted, the possibility of recovering his position--of
starting life afresh. And behold our southerner rebounding from the
depth of his fall, intoxicated with joy, and full of hope. He ordered
the windows to be opened and newspapers to be brought to him. What a
magnificent opportunity was this first night of _Revolt_ to show himself
to the Parisians, who were believing him to have gone under, to enter
the great whirlpool once more through the swing door of his box at the
Nouveautes! His mother, warned by some instinct, did indeed try to hold
him back. Paris now terrified her. She would have liked to carry off her
child to some unknown corner of the Midi, to nurse him along with his
elder brother--stricken down both of them by the great city. But he was
the master. Resistance was impossible to that will of a man spoiled by
wealth. She helped him to dress for the occasion, “made him look nice,”
as she said laughing, and watched him not without a certain pride as
he departed, dignified, full of new life, having almost got over the
prostration of the preceding days.
After his arrival at the theatre, Jansoulet quickly perceived the
commotion which his presence caused in the house. Accustomed to similar
curious ovations, he acknowledged them ordinarily without the least
embarrassment, with a frank display of his wide and good-natured smile;
but this time the manifestation was hostile, almost indignant.
“What! It is he?”
“There he is.”
“What impudence!”
Such exclamations from the stalls confusedly rose among many others. The
retirement in which he had taken refuge for some days past had left him
in ignorance of the public exasperation, of the homilies, the statements
broadcast in the newspapers, with the corrupting influence of his wealth
as their text--articles written for effect, hypocritical phraseology
by the aid of which opinion avenges itself from time to time on the
innocent for all its own concessions to the guilty. It was a terribly
embarrassing exhibition, which gave him at first more sorrow than anger.
Deeply moved, he hid his emotion behind his opera-glass, fixing his
attention on the least details of the stage arrangements, giving a
three-quarters view of his back to the house, but unable to escape the
scandalous observation of which he was the victim and which made his
ears buzz, his temples beat, the dulled lenses of his opera-glass
become full of those whirling multi-coloured circles which are the first
symptom of brain disorder.
When the curtain fell at the end of the first act he remained
motionless, in the same attitude of embarrassment; the whisperings, now
more distinct when they were no longer held in check by the dialogue on
the stage, the pertinacity of certain inquisitive people changing their
places in order to get a better view of him, obliged him to leave his
box and to beat a hurried retreat into the corridors, like a wild beast
escaping across a circus from the arena. Beneath the low ceiling in
the narrow circular passage of the theatre corridors, he found
himself suddenly in the midst of a dense crowd of emasculate youths,
journalists, tightly laced women wearing their hats, laughing as part
of their trade, their backs against the wall. From box-doors opened for
air, mixed and disjointed fragments of conversation were escaping:
“A delightful piece. It is fresh; it is good.”
“That Nabob! What impudence!”
“Yes, indeed, it is restful. One feels better for it.”
“How is it that he has not yet been arrested?”
“Quite a young man, it seems. It is his first play.”
“Bois l’Hery at Mazas! It is impossible. Why, there is the marquise
opposite, in the balcony, with a new hat.”
“What does that prove? She is at her business as a stager of new
fashions. It is very pretty, that hat. In Desgrange’s racing colours.”
“And Jenkins? What is Jenkins doing?”
“At Tunis, with Felicia. Old Brahim has seen them both. It seems that
the Bey has begun to take the pearls.”
“The deuce he has!”
Farther along, soft voices were murmuring:
“Yes, father, do, do go speak to him. See how lonely he looks, poor
man!”
“But, children, I do not know him.”
“Never mind. Just a bow. Something to show him that he is not utterly
deserted.”
Thereupon the little old gentleman, very red in the face and wearing
a white tie, stepped quickly in front of the Nabob, and ceremoniously
raised his hat to him with great respect. With what gratitude, what
a smile of eager good-will was that solitary greeting returned, that
greeting from a man whom Jansoulet did not know, whom he had never seen,
and who had yet exerted a weighty influence upon his destiny; for, but
for the _pere_ Joyeuse, the chairman of the board of the Territorial
would probably have shared the fate of the Marquis de Bois l’Hery. Thus
it is that in the tangle of modern society, that great web of interests,
ambitions, services accepted and rendered, all the various worlds are
connected, united beneath the surface, from the highest existences
to the most humble; this it is that explains the variegation, the
complexity of this study of manners, the collection of the scattered
threads of which the writer who is careful of truth is bound to make the
background of his story.
In ten minutes the Nabob had been subjected to every manifestation
of the terrible ostracism of that Paris world to which he had neither
relationship nor serious ties, and whose contempt isolated him more
surely than a visiting monarch is isolated by respect--the averted look,
the apparently aimless step aside, the hat suddenly put on and pulled
down over the eyes. Overcome by embarrassment and shame, he stumbled.
Some one said quite loudly, “He is drunk,” and all that the poor man
could manage to do was to return and shut himself up in the salon at the
back of his box. Ordinarily, this little retreat was crowded during
the intervals between the acts by stock-brokers and journalists. They
laughed and smoked and made a great noise; the manager would come to
greet his sleeping partner. But on this evening there was nobody. And
the absence of Cardailhac, with his keen nose for success, signified
fully to Jansoulet the measure of his disgrace.
“What have I done? Why will Paris have no more of me?”
Thus he questioned himself amid a solitude that was accentuated by the
noises around, the abrupt turning of keys in the doors of the boxes, the
thousand exclamations of an amused crowd. Then suddenly, the freshness
of his luxurious surroundings, the Moorish lantern casting strange
shadows on the brilliant silks of the divan and walls, reminded him of
the date of his arrival. Six months! Only six months since he came to
Paris! Completely done for and ruined in six months! He sank into a
kind of torpor, from which he was roused by the sound of applause
and enthusiastic bravos. It was decidedly a great success--this play
_Revolt_. There were some passages of strength and satire, and the
violent tirades, a trifle over-emphatic but written with youth and
sincerity, excited the audience after the idyllic calm of the opening.
Jansoulet in his turn wished to hear and see. This theatre belonged to
him after all. His place in that stage-box had cost him over a million
francs; the very least he could do was to occupy it.
So he seated himself in the front of his box. In the theatre the heat
was suffocating in spite of the fans which were vigorously at work,
throwing reflections from their bright spangles through the impalpable
atmosphere of silence. The house was listening religiously to an
indignant and lofty denunciation of the scamps who occupied exalted
positions, after having robbed their fellows in those depths from which
they were sprung. Certainly, Maranne when he wrote these fine lines
had been far from having the Nabob in his mind. But the public saw
an allusion in them; and while a triple salvo of applause greeted the
conclusion of the speech, all heads were turned towards the stage-box on
the left with an indignant, openly offensive movement. The poor wretch,
pilloried in his own theatre! A pillory which had cost him so dear!
This time he made no attempt to escape the insult, but settled himself
resolutely in his seat, with arms folded, and braved the crowd that was
staring at him--those hundreds of faces raised in mockery, that virtuous
_tout Paris_ which had seized upon him as a scapegoat and was driving
him into the wilderness, after having laden him with the burden of all
its own crimes.
A pretty gang, truly, for a manifestation of that kind! Opposite, the
box of a bankrupt banker, the wife and her lover sitting next each
other in the front row, the husband behind in the shadow, voluntarily
inconspicuous and solemn. Near them the frequent trio of a mother who
has married her daughter in accordance with the personal inclination
of her own heart, in order to make a son-in-law of her lover. Then
irregular households, courtesans exhibiting the price of shame, diamonds
like circlets of fire riveted around arms and neck. And those groups of
emasculate youths, with their open collars and painted eyebrows, whose
shirts of embroidered cambric and white satin corsets people used to
admire in the guest-chambers at Compiegne; those _mignons_, of the time
of Agrippa, calling each other among themselves: “My heart--My
dear girl.” An assemblage of all the scandals, all the turpitudes,
consciences sold or for sale, the vice of an epoch devoid of greatness
and without originality, intent on making trial of the caprices of every
other age.
And these were the people who were insulting him and crying: “Away with
thee, thou art unworthy!”
“Unworthy--I! But my worth is a hundred times greater than that of any
among you, wretches that you are! You make my millions a reproach to
me, but who has helped me to spend them? Thou, cowardly and treacherous
comrade, who hidest thy sick pasha-like obesity in the corner of thy
stage-box! I made thy fortune along with my own in the days when we
shared all things in brotherly community. Thou, pale marquis--I paid a
hundred thousand francs at the club in order to save thee from shameful
expulsion!
“Thee I covered with jewels, hussy, letting thee pass for my mistress,
because that kind of thing makes a good impression in our world--but
without ever asking thee anything in return. And thou, brazen-faced
journalist, who for brain hast all the dirty sediment of thy inkstand,
and on thy conscience as many spots as thy queen has on her skin, thou
thinkest that I have not paid thee thy price and that is why thy insults
are heaped on me. Yes, yes; stare at me, you vermin! I am proud. My
worth is above yours.”
All that he was thus saying to himself mentally, in an ungovernable
rage, visible in the quivering of his pale, thick lips. The unfortunate
man, who was nearly mad, was about perhaps to shout it aloud in the
silence, to denounce that insulting crowd--who knows?--to spring into
the midst of it, kill one of them--ah! kill _one_ of them--when he
felt a light tap on his shoulder, and a fair head came before his eyes,
serious and frank, two hands held out, which he grasped convulsively,
like a drowning man.
“Ah! dear friend, dear--” the poor man stammered. But he had not the
strength to say more. This emotion of joy coming suddenly in the midst
of his fury melted him into a sobbing torrent of tears, and stifled
words. His face became purple. He motioned “Take me away.” And,
stumbling in his walk, leaning on de Gery’s arm, he only managed to
cross the threshold of his box before he fell prostrate in the corridor.
“Bravo! Bravo!” cried the house in reply to the speech which the actor
had just finished; and there was a noise like a hailstorm, and stamping
of enthusiastic feet while the great lifeless body, raised with
difficulty by the scene-shifters, was carried through the brightly
lighted wings, crowded with people pressing in their curiosity round the
stage, excited by the atmosphere of success and who hardly noticed the
passage of the inert and vanquished man, borne on men’s arms like
some victim of a riot. They laid him on a couch in the room where the
properties were stored, Paul de Gery at his side, with a doctor and two
porters who eagerly lent all the assistance in their power. Cardailhac,
extremely busy over his play, had sent word that he should come to hear
the news “directly, after the fifth act.”
Bleeding after bleeding, cuppings, mustard leaves--nothing brought even
a quiver to the skin of the patient, insensible apparently to all the
remedies usually employed in cases of apoplexy. The whole being seemed
to be surrendering to death, to be preparing the way for the rigidity
of the corpse; and this in the most sinister place in the world, this
chaos, lighted by a lantern merely, amid which there lie about pell-mell
in the dust all the remains of former plays--gilt furniture, curtains
with gay fringes, coaches, boxes, card-tables, dismantled staircases
and balusters, among ropes and pulleys, a confusion of out-of-date
theatrical properties, thrown down, broken, and damaged. Bernard
Jansoulet, as he lay among this wreckage, his shirt opened over his
chest, pale and covered with blood, was indeed a man come to the
shipwreck of his life, bruised and tossed aside along with the pitiful
ruins of his artificial luxury dispersed and broken up, in the whirlpool
of Paris. Paul, with aching heart, contemplated the scene sadly, that
face with its short nose, preserving in its inertia the savage yet
kindly expression of an inoffensive creature that tried to defend itself
before it died and had not time to bite. He reproached himself bitterly
with his inability to be of any service to him. Where was that fine
project of leading Jansoulet across the bogs, of guarding him against
ambushes? All that he had been able to do had been to save a few
millions for him, and even these had come too late.
The windows had just been thrown open upon the curved balcony over
the boulevard, now at the height of its noisy and brilliant stir. The
theatre was surrounded by, as it were, a plinth of gas-jets, a zone of
fire which brought the gloomiest recesses into light, pricked out with
revolving lanterns, like stars journeying through a dark sky. The play
was over. People were coming out. The black and dense crowd on the steps
was dispersing over the white pavements, on its way to spread through
the town the news of a great success and the name of an unknown author
who to-morrow would be triumphant and famous. A splendid evening, so
that the windows of the restaurants were lighted up in gaiety and files
of carriages passed through the streets at a late hour. This tumult of
festivity which the poor Nabob had loved so keenly, which seemed to go
so well with the dizzy whirl of his existence, roused him to life for
a moment. His lips moved, and into his dilated eyes, turned towards
de Gery, there came before he died a pained expression, beseeching and
protesting, as though to call upon him as witness of one of the greatest
and most cruel acts of injustice that Paris has ever committed.