It was during one of those sudden changes of the electric light, which
at one time throws rays of exquisite pale pink, of a liquid gold
filtered through the light hair of a woman, and at another, rays of
bluish hue with strange tints, such as the sky assumes at twilight, in
which the women with their bare shoulders looked like living
flowers--it was, I say, on the night of the first of January at
Montonirail's, the dainty painter of tall, undulating figures, of
bright dresses, of Parisian prettiness--that tall Pescarelle, whom some
called "Pussy," though I do not know why, suddenly said in a low voice:
"Well, people were not altogether mistaken, in fact, were only half
wrong when they coupled my name with that of pretty Lucy Plonelle. She
had caught me, just as a birdcatcher on a frosty morning catches an
imprudent wren on a limed twig--in fact, she might have done whatever
she liked with me.
"I was under the charm of her enigmatical and mocking smile, that smile
in which her teeth gleamed cruelly between her red lips, and glistened
as if they were ready to bite and to heighten the pleasure of the most
delightful, the most voluptuous, kiss by pain.
"I loved everything in her--her feline suppleness, her languid looks
which emerged from her half-closed lids, full of promises and
temptation, her somewhat extreme elegance, and her hands, those long,
delicate white hands, with blue veins, like the bloodless hands of a
female saint in a stained glass window, and her slender fingers, on
which only the large blood-drop of a ruby glittered.
"I would have given her all my remaining youth and vigor to have laid
my burning hands upon the back of her cool, round neck, and to feel
that bright, silk, golden mane enveloping me and caressing my skin. I
was never tired of hearing her disdainful, petulant voice, those
vibrations which sounded as if they proceeded from clear glass, whose
music, at times, became hoarse, harsh, and fierce, like the loud,
sonorous calls of the Valkyries.
"Good heavens! to be her lover, to be her chattel, to belong to her, to
devote one's whole existence to her, to spend one's last half-penny and
to sink in misery, only to have the glory and the happiness of
possessing her splendid beauty, the sweetness of her kisses, the pink
and the white of her demonlike soul all to myself, if only for a few
months!
"It makes you laugh, I know, to think that I should have been caught
like that--I who give such good, prudent advice to my friends--I who
fear love as I do those quicksands and shoals which appear at low tide
and in which one may be swallowed up and disappear!
"But who can answer for himself, who can defend himself against such a
danger, as the magnetic attraction that inheres in such a woman?
Nevertheless, I got cured and perfectly cured, and that quite
accidentally. This is how the enchantment, which was apparently so
infrangible, was broken.
"On the first night of a play, I was sitting in the stalls close to
Lucy, whose mother had accompanied her, as usual. They occupied the
front of a box, side by side. From some unsurmountable attraction, I
never ceased looking at the woman whom I loved with all the force of my
being. I feasted my eyes on her beauty, I saw nobody except her in the
theater, and did not listen to the piece that was being performed on
the stage.
"Suddenly, however, I felt as if I had received a blow from a dagger in
my heart, and I had an insane hallucination. Lucy had moved, and her
pretty head was in profile, in the same attitude and with the same
lines as her mother. I do not know what shadow or what play of light
had hardened and altered the color of her delicate features, effacing
their ideal prettiness, but the more I looked at them both, at the one
who was young and the one who was old, the greater the distressing
resemblance became.
"I saw Lucy growing older and older, striving against those
accumulating years which bring wrinkles in the face, produce a double
chin and crow's-feet, and spoil the mouth. THEY ALMOST LOOKED LIKE
TWINS.
"I suffered so, that I thought I should go mad. Yet in spite of myself,
instead of shaking off this feeling and making my escape out of the
theater, far away into the noise and life of the boulevards, I
persisted in looking at the other, at the old one, in examining her, in
judging her, in dissecting her with my eyes. I got excited over her
flabby cheeks, over those ridiculous dimples, that were half filled up,
over that treble chin, that dyed hair, those lusterless eyes, and that
nose, which was a caricature of Lucy's beautiful, attractive little
nose.
"I had a prescience of the future. I loved her, and I should love her
more and more every day, that little sorceress who had so despotically
and so quickly conquered me. I should not allow any participation or
any intrigue from the day she gave herself to me, and once intimately
connected, who could tell whether, just as I was defending myself
against it most, the legitimate termination--marriage--might not come?
"Why not give one's name to a woman whom one loves, and whom one
trusts? The reason was that I should be tied to a disfigured, ugly
creature, with whom I should not venture to be seen in public. My
friends would leer at her with laughter in their eyes, and with pity in
their hearts for the man who was accompanying those remains.
"And so, as soon as the curtain had fallen, without saying good day or
good evening, I had myself driven to the Moulin Rouge."
* * * * *
"Well," Florise d'Anglet exclaimed, "I shall never take mamma to the
theater with me again, for the men are really going crazy!"