EDGAR DE MEILHAN _to the_ PRINCE DE MONBERT,
Saint Dominique street, Paris.
RICHEPORT, May 31st, 18--.
Now that you are a sort of Amadis de Gaul, striking attitudes upon a
barren rock, as a sign of your lovelorn condition, you have probably
forgotten, my dear Roger, my encounter upon the cars with an ideal
grisette, who saved me from the horrors of starvation by generously
dividing with me a bag of sugar-plums. But for this unlooked-for aid, I
should have been reduced, like a famous handful of shipwrecked mariners,
to feed upon my watch-chain and vest-buttons. To a man so absorbed in
his grief, as you are, the news of the death from starvation of a friend
upon the desert island of a railway station, would make very little
impression; but I not being in love with any Irene de Chateaudun, have
preserved a pleasant recollection of this touching scene, translated
from the Æneid in modern and familiar prose.
I wrote immediately,--for my beauty, of an infinitely less exalted rank
than yours, lodges with the post-mistress,--several fabulous letters to
problematic people, in countries which do not exist, and are only
designated upon the map by a dash.
Madame Taverneau has conceived a profound respect for a young man who
has correspondents in unknown lands, barely sighted in 1821 at the
Antarctic pole, and in 1819 at the Arctic pole, so she invited me to a
little soirée musicale et dansante, of which I was to be the bright
particular star. An invitation to an exclusive ball, given at an
inaccessible house, never gave a woman with a doubtful past or an
uncertain position, half the pleasure that I felt from the entangled
sentences of Madame Taverneau in which she did not dare to hope, but
would be happy if--.
Apart from the happiness of seeing Madame Louise Guérin (my charmer's
name), I looked forward to an entirely new recreation, that of studying
the manners of the middle class in their intimate relations with each
other. I have lived with the aristocracy and with the canaille; in the
highest and lowest conditions of life are found entire absence of
pretension; in the highest, because their position is assured; in the
lowest, because it is simply impossible to alter it. None but poets are
really unhappy because they cannot climb to the stars. A half-way
position is the most false.
I thought I would go early to have some talk with Louise, but the circle
was already completed when I arrived; everybody had come first.
The guests were assembled in a large, gloomy room, gloriously called a
drawing-room, where the servant never enters without first taking off
her shoes at the door, like a Turk in a mosque, and which is only opened
on the most solemn occasions. As it is doubtful whether you have ever
set foot in a like establishment, I will give you, in imitation of the
most profound of our novel-writers (which one? you will say; they are
all profound now-a-days), a detailed description of Madame Taverneau's
salon.
Two windows, hung in red calico, held up by some black ornaments, a
complication of sticks, pegs and all sorts of implements on stamped
copper, gave light to this sanctuary, which commanded through them an
animated look-out--in the language of the commonalty--upon the
scorching, noisy highway, bordered by sickly elms sprinkled with dust,
from the constant passage of vehicles which shake the house to its
centre; wagons loaded with noisy iron, and droves of hogs, squeaking
under the drover's whip.
The floor was painted red and polished painfully bright, reminding one
of a wine-merchant's sign freshly varnished; the walls were concealed
under frightful velvet paper which so religiously catches the fluff and
dust. The mahogany furniture stood round the room, a reproach against
the discovery of America, covered with sanguinary cloth stamped in black
with subjects taken from Fontaine's fables. When I say subjects I
basely flatter the sumptuous taste of Madame Taverneau; it was the same
subject indefinitely repeated--the Fox and the Stork. How luxurious it
was to sit upon a stork's beak! In front of each chair was spread a
piece of carpet, to protect the splendor of the floor, so that the
guests when seated bore a vague resemblance to the bottles and decanters
set round the plated centrepiece of a banquet given to a deputy by his
grateful constituents.
An atrocious troubadour clock ornamented the mantel-piece representing
the templar Bois-Guilbert bearing off a gilded Rebecca upon a silver
horse. On either side of this frightful time-piece were placed two
plated lamps under globes.
This magnificence filled with secret envy more than one housekeeper of
Pont de l'Arche, and even the maid trembled as she dusted. We will not
speak of the spun-glass poodles, little sugar St. Johns, chocolate
Napoleons, a cabinet filled with common china, occupying a conspicuous
place, engravings representing the Adieux to Fontainebleau, Souvenirs
and Regrets, The Fisherman's Family, The Little Poachers, and other
hackneyed subjects. Can you imagine anything like it? For my part, I
never could understand this love for the common-place and the hideous. I
know that every one does not dwell in Alhambras, Louvres, or Parthenons,
but it is so easy to do without a clock to leave the walls bare, to
exist without Manrin's lithographs or Jazet's aquatints!
The people filling the room, seemed to me, in point of vulgarity, the
queerest in the world; their manner of speaking was marvellous,
imitating the florid style of the defunct Prudhomme, the pupil of Brard
and St. Omer. Their heads spread out over their white cravats and
immense shirt collars recalled to mind certain specimens of the gourd
tribe. Some even resemble animals, the lion, the horse, the ass; these,
all things considered, had a vegetable rather than an animal look. Of
the women I will say nothing, having resolved never to ridicule that
charming sex.
Among these human vegetables, Louise appeared like a rose in a cabbage
patch. She wore a simple white dress fastened at the waist by a blue
ribbon; her hair arranged in bandeaux encircled her pure brow and wound
in massive coils about her head. A Quakeress could have found no fault
with this costume, which placed in grotesque and ridiculous contrast the
hearselike trappings of the other women. It was impossible to be dressed
in better taste. I was afraid lest my Infanta should seize this
opportunity to display some marvellous toilette purchased expressly for
the occasion. That plain muslin gown which never saw India, and was
probably made by herself, touched and fascinated me. Dress has very
little weight with me. I once admired a Granada gypsy whose sole costume
consisted of blue slippers and a necklace of amber beads; but nothing
annoys me more than a badly made dress of an unbecoming shade.
The provincial dandies much preferring the rubicund gossips, with their
short necks covered with gold chains, to Madame Taverneau's young and
slender guest, I was free to talk with her under cover of Louisa
Pugett's ballads and sonatas executed by infant phenomena upon a cracked
piano hired from Rouen for the occasion.
Louisa's wit was charming. How mistaken it is to educate instinct out of
women! To replace nature by a school-mistress! She committed none of
those terrible mistakes which shock one; it was evident that she formed
her sentences herself instead of repeating formulae committed to memory.
She had either never read a novel or had forgotten it, and unless she is
a wonderful actress she remains as the great fashioner, Nature, made
her--a perfect woman. We remained a greater part of the evening seated
together in a corner like beings of another race. Profiting by the great
interest betrayed by the company in one of those _soi-disant_ innocent
games where a great deal of kissing is done, the fair girl, doubtless
fearing a rude salute on her delicate cheek, led me into her room, which
adjoins the parlor and opens into the garden by a glass door.
On a table in the room, feebly lighted by a lamp which Louisa modestly
turned up, were scattered pell-mell, screens, boxes from Spa, alabaster
paper-weights and other details of the art of illuminating, which
profession my beauty practises; and which explains her occasional
aristocratic airs, unbecoming an humble seamstress. A bouquet just
commenced showed talent; with some lessons from St. Jean or Diaz she
would easily make a good flower painter. I told her so. She received my
encomiums as a matter of course, evincing none of that mock-modesty
which I particularly detest.
She showed me a bizarre little chest that she was making, which at
first-sight seemed to be carved out of coral; it was constructed out of
the wax-seals cut from old letters pasted together. This new mosaic was
very simple, and yet remarkably pretty. She asked me to give her, in
order to finish her box, all the striking seals I possessed, emblazoned
in figures and devices. I gave her five or six letters that I had in my
pocket, from which she dexterously cut the seals with her little
scissors. While she was thus engaged I strolled about the garden--a
Machiavellian manoeuvre, for, in order to return me my letters, she must
come in search of me.
The gardens of Madame Taverneau are not the gardens of Armida; but it is
not in the power of the commonalty to spoil entirely the work of God's
hands; trees, by the moonbeams of a summer-night, although only a few
steps from red-cotton curtains and a sanhedrim of merry tradespeople,
are still trees. In a corner of the garden stood a large acacia tree, in
full bloom, waving its yellow hair in the soft night-breeze, and
mingling its perfume with that of the flowers of the marsh iris, poised
like azure butterflies upon their long green stems.
The porch was flooded with silver light, and when Louise, having secured
her seals, appeared upon the threshold, her pure and elegant form stood
out against the dark background of the room like an alabaster statuette.
Her step, as she advanced towards me, was undulating and rhythmical like
a Greek strophe. I took my letters, and we strolled along the path
towards an arbor.
So glad was I to get away from the templar Bois-Guilbert carrying off
Rebecca, and the plated lamps, that I developed an eloquence at once
persuasive and surprising. Louise seemed much agitated; I could almost
see the beatings of her heart--the accents of her pure voice were
troubled--she spoke as one just awakened from a dream. Tell me, are not
these the symptoms, wherever you have travelled, of a budding love?
I took her hand; it was moist and cool, soft as the pulp of a magnolia
flower,--and I thought I felt her fingers faintly return my pressure.
I am delighted that this scene occurred by moonlight and under the
acacia's perfumed branches, for I affect poetical surroundings for my
love scenes. It would be disagreeable to recall a lovely face relieved
against wall-paper covered with yellow scrolls; or a declaration of love
accompanied, in the distance, by the Grace de Dieu; my first significant
interview with Louise will be associated in my thoughts with moonbeams,
the odor of the iris and the song of the cricket in the summer grass.
You, no doubt, pronounce me, dear Roger, a pitiable Don Juan, a
common-place Amilcar, for not profiting by the occasion. A young man
strolling at night in a garden with a screen painter ought at least to
have stolen a kiss! At the risk of appearing ridiculous, I did nothing
of the kind. I love Louise, and besides she has at times such an air of
hauteur, of majestic disdain that the boldest commercial traveller
steeped to the lips in Pigault-Lebrun, a sub-lieutenant wild with
absinthe would not venture such a caress--she would almost make one
believe in virtue, if such a thing were possible. Frankly, I am afraid
that I am in earnest this time. Order me a dove-colored vest,
apple-green trowsers, a pouch, a crook, in short the entire outfit of a
Lignon shepherd. I shall have a lamb washed to complete the pastoral.
How I reached the château, whether walking or flying, I cannot tell.
Happy as a king, proud as a god, for a new love was born in my heart.