One late afternoon in April, nineteen thirteen, when the trees in the
garden were all feathery and soft with the first green of the Gallic
springtime, Madame Gigon sat in her chair by the door of the long
drawing-room bidding her guests good-by, one by one, as they left her
usual Thursday _salon_. The drawing-room, owing to the sharp slope of
the ground upon which the house was built, lay below the surface of the
Rue Raynouard on the garden side of the house so that the guests leaving
were forced to climb a long flight of stairs that led up to the street
door. The stairway, opening directly into the drawing-room, provided a
long, high vista leading up to a door, itself noticeable by its very
insignificance. It was one of the charming features of the house that on
the street side it was but one story high with a single door and a row
of high windows which betrayed no hint of the beauty and space within
its walls. On the garden side, however, the house presented a beautiful
façade some three stories high, constructed of Caen stone and designed
in the best manner of the eighteenth century. Lenôtre himself was said
to have had a hand in the planning of the terraces and the pavilion that
stood at a little distance completely embowered by shrubs and covered by
a canopy made of the broad green leaves of plane trees. The house, after
a fashion, turned its back upon the world, concealing its beauties from
the eye of the random passerby, preserving them for the few who were
admitted by the humble and unpretentious door that swung open upon the
cobble stones of the Rue Raynouard. To the world it showed the face of a
_petite bourgeoise_. To its friends it revealed the countenance of an
eighteenth century marquise. And this fact had influenced for more than
a century and a half the character of its tenants. The prosperous
chocolate manufacturer abandoned it for the German palace in the Avenue
de Jena for the very reason that Lily Shane seized it the moment it
fell vacant. It was no sort of a house for one who desired the world to
recognize his success and the character of his life, but it was an
excellent house in which to live quietly, even secretly. It stood
isolated in the very midst of Paris.
Madame Gigon sat in a high-backed chair, her small, withered body
propped among cushions, her feet resting on a footstool. Since her eyes
had grown dim she used her ears as a means of watching her guests; and
these, after the fashion of such organs, had become sharper and sharper
with the failure of her sight.
A fat and dowdy woman dressed all in white and wearing an extravagant
white veil moved up to her.
“Good-by, Madame Gigon,” she said. “You come to me on Friday. Don’t
forget. The Prince himself will be there.”
Madame Gigon, instead of peering at the white lady, leaned back. “Ah,
it’s you, Héloise.... Yes, I will be there on Friday. But you are
leaving early.”
“No,” replied the white lady, who was a countess and possessed a fine
collection of armor. “No. Others have gone before me. I am dining out in
the Boulevard St. Germain.”
Madame Gigon smiled. “With your Jewish friends?”
“Yes. It is a long way.”
“They say her eldest daughter is to marry a rich American ... millions.
He is called Blumenthal.”
“Oui ... a very nice gentleman and the Good God alone knows how rich.”
“Well, money is a great thing ... the foundation of everything,
Héloise.”
“Yes ... Good-by ... On Friday then. And fetch Madame Shane if she cares
to come.”
And the plump white lady made her way with effort up the long polished
stairway to the unpretentious doorway.
Madame Gigon, holding Michou on her lap, began fondling the dog’s ears.
She leaned back and listened. Most of the guests had gone. Her sharp
ears constructed the scene for her. A shrill and peevish voice in the
far corner betrayed Madame de Cyon. The old woman saw her, fat, with
dyed black hair and a round face well made up to conceal the ravages of
time. A Russian woman, married to a French diplomat ... Bonapartist of
course. She translated American novels into French to amuse herself and
to help keep up the household in Neuilly. Yet she was rich, for her fat
pig’s hands were covered with rings and the sable of her cloak was the
best.
A man’s voice, ill-tempered and gruff, rose through the shadowy room.
Captain Marchand, who did not get on with his wife. Tactless of Madame
de Cyon to have led them to the bridge table to play with each other.
Bridge-mad ... was Madame de Cyon ... bridge-mad, and she hated like the
Devil to lose. To lose five francs was like losing one of her fat legs.
Strange game ... this bridge. It put every one into a bad temper. Not at
all like piquet.
“Deux pique!” announced Madame de Cyon.
“Passe!” ... “Passe!” ... “Passe!”
From the dining-room issued the sound of two voices in dispute, the one
high-pitched, old and somewhat shrill, and the other rather deep and
gentle, almost conciliatory. They drifted to Madame Gigon across the
murmurous spaces of the drawing-room. Madame Blaise and “Mees Ellen’s”
friend, Schneiderman. Madame Blaise was a Gasconne, old, shrill and
vituperatory, yet somehow amusing and stimulating ... a little cracked
perhaps but still full of spirit, and mysterious in the fashion of those
whose existence has its foundations in a world of fanciful, half-mad
unreality. She was tall and thin, with a mass of dyed red hair (it must
have gone gray ten years earlier) under an old-fashioned purple bonnet
trimmed with purple plumes and perched high on her head in the fashion
of the eighties. Madame Gigon knew she was by the gateaux ... eating ...
eating ... eating ... as if she starved herself at home. Yet she too was
rich.
“Ah, you don’t know the Germans as I do!” came the high-pitched voice.
“My fine young fellow! I tell you I have lived with them. I have been on
business for the government. They are capable of anything. You will
see....”
And then the voice of Schneidermann, mild and a little amused by the old
lady. “Ah ...,” gently. “Perhaps ... perhaps. But I do not think that
war is any longer possible.”
“Nevertheless,” persisted the voice. “One fine day you will go marching
away like the rest.”