THE VICTIMS.
A morning at ten o’clock. The antechamber at the Ministry of Public
Instruction; a long corridor badly lighted, with dark hangings and
an oaken wainscot. The gallery is full of a crowd of office-seekers,
seated or sauntering about, who from minute to minute become more
numerous; each new arrival gives his card to the solemn clerk wearing
his chain of office, who receives it, examines and without a word
deposits it by his side on the slab of the little table where he is
writing; all this in the haggard light from a window dripping from a
gentle October rain.
One of the last arrivals, however, has the honor of stirring the august
impassiveness of this clerk. He is a great big man, weather-beaten,
sunburned and of a tarry aspect, with two little silver anchors in
his ears for rings and with the voice of a seal that has caught a
cold--just such a voice as one hears in the transparent early morning
mists in the seaports of Provence.
“Let him know that it is Cabantous, the pilot--he knows what is up; he
expects me.”
“You are not the only one,” answers the clerk, who smiles discreetly at
his own joke.
Cabantous does not appreciate the delicacy of the joke; but he laughs
in good humor, his mouth opening back as far as the silver anchors;
and, making use of his shoulders, he pushes through the crowd, which
falls aside before his wet umbrella, and installs himself on a bench
alongside a sufferer who is almost as weather-beaten as himself.
“_Té! vé!_--why, it is Cabantous. Hello, how are you?”
The pilot begs his pardon--cannot recall who it is.
“Valmajour, you remember; we used to know each other down there in the
arena.”
“That is true, by gad.--_Bé_, my good fellow, you at least can say that
Paris has changed you--”
The tabor-player has now become a gentleman with very long black hair
pushed behind his ears in the manner of the musical person, and that,
along with his swarthy complexion and his blue-black moustache, at
which he is constantly pulling, makes him look like one of the gypsies
at the Ginger-bread Fair. On top of all this a constant look of the
village cock with its crest up, a conceit like that of village beau
and musician combined, in which the exaggeration of his Southern
origin betrays itself and slops over, notwithstanding his tranquil and
ungarrulous appearance.
His lack of success at the opera has not frightened him off; like
all actors in such cases he attributes his failure to a cabal, and
for his sister and himself that word “cabal” has taken on barbaric
and extraordinary proportions, and moreover a Sanscrit spelling--the
_khabbala_--a mysterious monster which combines the traits of the
rattlesnake and the pale horse of the Apocalypse.
And so he relates to Cabantous that he is about to appear in a few days
at a great variety show in a café on the boulevard--“An _eskating-rink_
I would have you understand!” where he is to figure in some living
pictures, at two hundred francs the evening.
“Two hundred francs an evening!” The eyes of the pilot roll in his head.
“And besides that, they will cry my _bography_ in the street and my
portrait in life size will be on all the walls of Paris, _wid_ my
costume of a troubadour of the old times, which I shall put on every
evening when I do my music.”
What flatters him most in all of this is the costume. What a bore that
he is not able to put on his crenelated cap and his long-pointed shoes
in order that he might show the Minister what a splendid engagement he
has, and this time on good government stamped paper which was signed
without Roumestan’s aid! Cabantous looks at the stamped paper, smudged
on both its faces, and sighs.
“You are mighty lucky; why, look at me--it’s more than a year that I
am _’oping_ for my medal. Numa told me to send my papers on here and
I did send my papers here--after that I never heard anything more
about the medal, nor about the papers, nor about anything else. I
wrote to the Ministry of Marine; they don’t know me at the Marine. I
wrote to the Minister himself; the Minister did not answer. And what
beats me is this, that now, when I haven’t my papers with me and a
discussion arises among the mercantile captains as to pilotage, the
port councilmen won’t listen to my arguments. So, finding that was the
way of it, I put my ship in dry dock and says I to myself: Come, let’s
go and see Numa.”
He was almost in tears about it, was this wretched pilot. Valmajour
consoles and reassures him and promises to speak for him with the
Minister; he does this in an assured tone, his finger on his moustache,
like a man to whom people can refuse nothing. But after all the haughty
attitude is not peculiar to him; all these people who are waiting for
an audience--old priests of pious manners in their visiting cloaks;
methodical and authoritative professors; dudish painters with their
hair cut Russian fashion; thick-set sculptors with broad ends to their
fingers--they all have this same triumphant air--special friends of the
Minister and sure of their business. All of them, as they came in, have
said to the clerk: “He expects me.”
Each one is filled with a conviction that if only Roumestan knew that
he was there!--This it is that gives a very particular physiognomy to
the antechamber of the Ministry of Public Instruction, without a trace
of those feverish pallors, of those trembling anxieties, which one
perceives in the waiting-rooms at other Ministries.
“Who is he engaged with?” asks Valmajour in a loud voice, going up to
the little table.
“The Director of the Opera.”
“Cadaillac--all right, I know--it is about my business!”
After the failure made by the tabor-player in his theatre Cadaillac had
refused to let him appear again. Valmajour wished to bring suit, but
the Minister, who was afraid of the lawyers and the little newspapers,
had begged the musician to withdraw his plea, guaranteeing him a
round sum as damages. There is no doubt whatever with Valmajour that
they are at this moment discussing these damages and not without a
certain animation, too, for every few moments the clarion voice of Numa
penetrates the double door of his sitting room, which at last is rudely
torn open.
“She is not my protegée, she is yours!”
Big fat Cadaillac leaves the room, hurling this taunt, crosses the
antechamber with an angry gait and passes the clerk who is coming up
between two lines of solicitors.
“You have only to give my name.”
“Let him only know that I am here.”
“Tell ’im it’s Cabantous.”
The clerk listens to nobody, but marches very solemnly on with a few
visiting cards in his hand and the door which he leaves partly open
behind him shows the Minister’s sitting-room filled with light from
its three windows overlooking the garden, all of one panel of the wall
covered by the cloak turned up with ermine of M. de Fontanes, painted
standing at full length.
A trace of astonishment showing on his cadaverous face, the clerk comes
back and calls:
“Monsieur Valmajour.”
The musician is not at all astonished at passing in this way over the
heads of the others.
Since early morning his portrait has appeared placarded on all the
walls of Paris. Now he is a personage and hereafter the Minister
will no longer cause him to languish among the draughts in a railway
station. Conceited and smiling, there he stands in the centre of the
luxurious bureau where secretaries are occupied in pulling out drawers
and cardboard pigeon-holes in a frantic search for something. Roumestan
in a terrible rage scolds, thunders and curses, both hands in his
pockets:
“Come now, be done with it! those papers, what the devil!--So they have
been lost, have they, that pilot’s papers?... Really, gentlemen, there
is an absence of order here!...”
He catches sight of Valmajour: “Ha, it’s you, is it?” and he springs
upon him with one leap, the while the backs of the secretaries are
disappearing by the side doors in a state of terror, each carrying off
an armful of boxes.
“Now look here, are you never going to stop persecuting me with your
dog-at-the-fair music? Haven’t you had enough with one chance at it?
How many do you require? Now they tell me that there you are on all the
walls in your hybrid costume. And what is all this bosh that they have
brought me here?--that your biography? A mass of blunders and lies. You
know perfectly well that you are no more a Prince than I am and that
those parchments which are talked about here have never existed save in
your own imagination!”
With the brutal gesture of the man who loves argument he grabbed the
wretched fellow by the flap of his jacket with both hands and as he
talked kept shaking him. In the first place this “eskating-rink” didn’t
have a penny--perfect fakirs! They would never pay him and all he would
get would be the shame of this dirty advertisement on the strength of
_his_ name, the name of his protector. Now the newspapers could begin
their jokes again--Roumestan and Valmajour the fifer for the Ministry;
and, growing excited at the memory of these attacks, his big cheeks
quivering with the anger hereditary in his family, with a fit of rage
like those of Aunt Portal, more scaring in the solemn surroundings of
an office where the personality of a man should disappear before the
public situation, he screamed at the top of his voice:
“But for God’s sake get out of here, you wretched creature, get out of
here! We have had enough of your shepherd’s fife!”
Stunned and silly, Valmajour let the flood go on, stuttering, “All
right, all right,” and appealed to the pitying face of Méjean, the only
man whom the Master’s rage had not sent into headlong flight, and then
gazed piteously on the big portrait of Fontanes, who looked scandalized
at excesses of this sort and seemed to accentuate his grand Ministerial
air the more, in proportion as Roumestan lost his own dignity. At last,
escaping from the powerful fist which clutched him, the musician was
able to reach the door and fly half-crazed with his tickets for the
“eskating.”
“Cabantous, pilot!” said Numa, reading the name which the impassive
clerk presented to him, “There’s another Valmajour! But no, I won’t
have it; I have had enough of being their tool--enough for to-day--I am
no longer in....”
He continued to march up and down his office, trying to get rid of what
remained of that furious rage, the shock of which Valmajour had very
unfairly received. That Cadaillac, what impudence! daring to come and
reproach him about the little girl, in his own office, in the Ministry
itself, and before Méjean, before Rochemaure! “Well, certainly, I am
too weak; the nomination of that man to the directorship of the opera
was a terrible blunder!”
His chief clerk was entirely of that opinion but he would have taken
good care not to say so; for Numa was no longer the good fellow he used
to be, who was the first to laugh at his own embarrassments and took
railleries and remonstrances in good part. Having become the practical
chief of the cabinet in consequence of his speech at Chambéry and a few
other oratorical triumphs, the intoxication that comes with heights
gained, that royal atmosphere where the strongest heads are turned, had
changed him quite, had made him nervous, splenetic and irritable.
A door beneath a curtain opened and Mme. Roumestan appeared, ready to
go out, her hair fashionably dressed and a long cloak concealing her
figure. With that serene air which for five months back lit up her
pretty face: “Have you your council to-day, my dear? Good-morning,
Monsieur Méjean.”
“Why, yes, council--a meeting--everything!”
“I wanted to ask you to come as far as Mamma’s house; I am breakfasting
there; Hortense would have been so glad!”
“But you see it is impossible.” He looked at his watch: “I ought to be
at Versailles at noon.”
“Then I will wait for you and take you to the station.”
He hesitated a second, not more than a second:
“All right, I will put my signature here and then we will go.”
While he was writing Rosalie was giving Méjean news of her sister in a
low tone. The coming of winter affected her spirits; she was forbidden
to go out. Why did he not call upon her? She had need of all her
friends. Méjean gave a gesture of discouragement and woe: “Oh, so far
as I am concerned....”
“But I tell you yes, there is a good deal more chance for you. It is
only caprice on her part; I am sure that it cannot last.”
She saw everything in a rosy light and wanted to have all the world
about her as happy as she was--O, how happy! and glad with so perfect
a joy that she indulged in a certain superstition never to acknowledge
the fulness of her joy to herself. As for Roumestan, he talked about
his affair everywhere with a comical sort of pride, to indifferent
people as well as to his intimates:
“We are going to call it the child of the Ministry!” and then he would
laugh at his joke till the tears came.
And of a truth those who knew about his existence outside, the
household in the city impudently established with receptions and an
open table, this husband who was so sensitive and tender and who talked
of his coming fatherhood with tears in his eyes, appeared a character
not to be defined, perfectly at peace in his lies, sincere in his
expansiveness, putting to the rout the conclusions of those who did not
understand the dangerous complications of Southern natures.
“Certainly, I will take you there,” said he to his wife as they got
into the carriage.
“But if they are waiting for you?”
“Well, so much the worse for them; let them wait for me--we shall be
together all the longer.”
He took Rosalie’s arm under his own and pressing against her as if he
were a child:
“_Té!_ do you know that I am happy only in this place? Your gentleness
rests me, your coolness comforts me. That Cadaillac put me into such
a state of rage! He’s a fellow without any conscience, he’s a fellow
without any morality--”
“You didn’t know his character, then?”
“The way he is carrying on that theatre is a burning shame!”
“It is true that the engagement of that Mlle. Bachellery ... why did
you let him do it? A girl who is false in everything, her youth, her
voice, even her eyelashes.”
Numa felt his cheeks reddening; it was he himself who fastened them on,
now, with his own great big fingers, those eyelashes! The little girl’s
mamma had taught him how to do it.
“Whom does this little good-for-nothing belong to, anyhow? The
_Messenger_ was talking the other day of influences in high circles, of
some mysterious protection--”
“I don’t know; to Cadaillac, undoubtedly.”
He turned away in order to conceal his embarrassment and suddenly threw
himself back horrified.
“What is it?” asked Rosalie, looking out of the window too.
There was the placard of the skating-rink, enormous, printed in crying
colors which showed out under the rainy and gray sky, repeating itself
at every street corner, on every vacant space of a naked wall and
on the planks of temporary fences. It showed a gigantic troubadour
encircled with living pictures as a border--all blotches in yellow,
green and blue, with the ochre color of the tabor placed across the
figure. The long hoarding which surrounded the new building of the city
hall, past which their carriage was going at the moment, was covered
with this coarse and noisy advertisement, which was stupefying even to
Parisian idiocy.
“My executioner!” said Roumestan with an expression of comic dismay.
Rosalie found fault with him gently.
“No--your victim! and would that he were the only one! But somebody
else has caught fire from your enthusiasm--”
“Who can that be?”
“Hortense.”
Then she told him what she had finally proved to be a certainty,
notwithstanding the mysteries made by the young girl--namely, her
affection for this peasant, a thing which at first she had believed a
mere fancy, but which worried her now like a moral aberration in her
sister.
The Minister was in a state of indignation.
“How can it be possible? That hobnail, that bog-trotter!”
“She sees him with her imagination, and especially in the light of your
legends and inventions which she has not been able to put in the right
focus. That is why this advertisement and grotesque coloring which
enrage you fill me on the contrary with joy. I believe that her hero
will appear so ridiculous to her that she will no longer dare to love
him. If it were not for that, I hardly know what would become of us.
Can you imagine the despair of my father; can you imagine yourself the
brother-in-law of Valmajour?--oh, Numa, Numa! poor involuntary maker of
dupes.”
He did not put up any defence, but indulged in anger against himself,
against his “cussed Southernism” which he was not able to overcome.
“Look here, you ought to stay always just as you are, right up against
my side as my beloved councillor and my holy protection. You alone are
good and indulgent, you alone understand and love me.”
He held her little gloved hand to his lips and said this with such a
firm conviction that tears, real tears, reddened his eyelids: then,
warmed up and refreshed by this effusion, he felt better; and so, when
they reached the Place Royale and with a thousand tender precautions
he had helped his wife out of the carriage, it was with a joyous tone
and one free of all remorse that he threw the address to his coachman:
“London Street, hurry, quick!”
Moving slowly, Rosalie vaguely caught this address and it gave her
pain. Not that she had the slightest suspicion; but he had just said
that he was going to the Saint-Lazare station. Why was it that his acts
were never in accordance with his words?
In her sister’s bedroom another cause for anxiety met her: she felt on
entering that there had been a sudden stoppage of a discussion between
Hortense and Audiberte, who still kept the traces of fury on her face
while her peasant’s head-dress still quivered on her hair bristling
with rage. Rosalie’s presence kept her in bounds, that was clear enough
from her lips and eyebrows viciously drawn together. Still, as the
young wife asked her how she did, she was forced to answer and so began
to talk feverishly of the _eskating_, of the advantageous terms which
were offered them, and then, surprised at Rosalie’s calm, demanded in
an almost insolent tone:
“Aren’t you coming to hear my brother? It is something that is at least
worth while, if for nothing more than to see him in his costume!”
This ridiculous costume as it was described by her in her peasant
dialect, from the dents in the cap down to the high curving points of
the shoes, put poor Hortense in a state of agony; she did not dare
raise her eyes to her sister’s face. Rosalie asked to be excused from
going; the state of her health did not permit her to visit the theatre.
Besides, in Paris there were certain places of entertainment where all
women could not go. The peasant woman stopped her short at the first
suggestion.
“Beg your pardon, I go perfectly well and I hope I am as good as
anybody else--I have never done any wrong, I have not; _I_ have always
fulfilled my religious duties.”
She raised her voice without a trace of her old bashfulness, just as if
she had acquired rights in the house. But Rosalie was much too kind and
far too superior to this poor ignorant thing to cause her humiliation,
particularly as she was thinking about the responsibility that rested
on Numa. So, with the entire intelligence of her heart and revealing
as usual the uncommon delicacy of her mind, in those truthful words
that heal although they may sting a little, she endeavored to make
Audiberte understand that her brother had not succeeded and never would
succeed in Paris, the implacable city, and that rather than obstinately
continue a humiliating struggle, falling into the mire and mud of
artistic existence, it would be far better for them to return to their
Provence and buy their farm back again, the means to accomplish which
would be furnished them, and so, in their laborious life surrounded by
nature, forget the unhappy results of their trip to Paris.
The peasant girl let her talk to the very end without interrupting her
a single moment, merely darting at Hortense a look of irony from her
wicked eyes as though to challenge her to make some reply. At last,
seeing that the young girl did not wish to say anything more, she
coldly declared that they would not go, because her brother had all
kinds of engagements in Paris--all kinds which it was impossible for
him to break. Upon that she threw over her arm the heavy wet cloak
which had been lying on the back of a chair, made a hypocritical curtsy
to Rosalie, “Wishing you a very good day, Madame, and thanking you very
much, I am sure,” and left the room, followed by Hortense.
In the antechamber, lowering her voice on account of the servants:
“Sunday evening, _qué?_ half past ten without fail!” And in a pressing,
authoritative voice: “Come now, you certainly owe that to your _pore_
friend! Just to give him a little heart ... and to start with, what do
you risk, anyhow? I am coming to get you and I am going to bring you
back!”
Seeing that Hortense still hesitated, she added almost aloud in a tone
of menace: “Come now, I would like to know: are you his betrothed or
not?”
“I’ll come, I’ll come,” said the young girl greatly alarmed.
When she returned to the room, seeing that she looked worried and sad,
Rosalie asked her:
“What are you thinking about, my dear girl? are you still dreaming the
continuation of your novel? It ought to be getting pretty well forward
in all these months,” added she, taking her gayly around the waist.
“Oh, yes, pretty well forward--”
After a silence Hortense continued in an obscure tone of melancholy:
“But the trouble is, I can’t see my way to the close of the novel.”
* * * * *
She didn’t care for him any more: it may be that she never had loved
him. Under the transforming power of absence and that “tender glory”
which misfortune gave to the Moor Abencerage he had appeared to her
from a distance as her man of destiny. It seemed a proud act on her
part to knit her own existence with that of one who was abandoned by
everything, success and protectors together. But when she got back to
Paris, what a pitiless clearness of things! What a terror to perceive
how absolutely she had made a mistake!
To start with, Audiberte’s first visit had shocked her because of the
new manners of the girl, too familiar and free and easy, and because of
the look of an accomplice which she gave when telling her in whispers:
“Hush, don’t say anything! he’s coming to get me....”
That kind of action seemed to her rather hasty and rather bold, more
especially the idea of presenting this young man to her parents.
But the peasant girl wanted to hurry things. And then, all at once,
Hortense perceived her error when she looked upon this artist of
the variety stage with his long hair behind his ears, full of stage
movements, denting in and shifting his sombrero of Provence on his
characteristic head--always handsome, of course, but full of a plain
preoccupation to appear so.
Instead of taking a lowly manner in order to make her forgive him
for that generous spirit of interest which she had felt for him, he
preserved his air of a conqueror, his silly look of the victor, and
without saying a word--for he would hardly have known what to say--he
treated this finely organized Parisian girl just as he would in similar
conditions have treated _her_, the Des Combette girl--took her by the
waist with the motion of a soldier and troubadour and wanted to press
her to his breast. She disengaged herself with a sudden repulsion and
a letting go of all her nerves, leaving him there looking foolish and
astonished, while Audiberte quickly intervened and scolded her brother
violently. What kind of manners had he, anyhow? It must have been in
Paris that he learned such manners, in the Faubourg Saint _Germoyne_,
without a doubt, among his duchesses?
“Come now, wait at least until she is your wife!”
And turning to Hortense:
“O, he is so in love with you; his blood is parching with his love,
_pécaïré!_”
From that time on, when Valmajour came to get his sister he considered
it necessary to assume the sombre and desperate air of an illustration
to a ballad: “‘The ocean waits for me,’ the Knight _hadjured_.” In
other conditions the young girl might have been touched, but really
the poor fellow seemed too much of a nullity. All he knew how to do
was to smooth the nap of his soft hat while reciting the list of his
successes in the faubourg of the nobles, or else the rivalries of the
stage. One day he talked to her for a whole hour about the vulgarity of
handsome Mayol, who had refrained from congratulating him at the end of
a concert; and all the while he kept repeating:
“There you are with your Mayol!... _Bé!_ he is not very polite, your
Mayol isn’t!”
And all this was accompanied by Audiberte’s attitudes of watchfulness,
her severity of a policeman of morals, and this in the face of these
very cold lovers! O, if she had been able to divine what a terror
possessed the soul of Hortense, what a loathing for her frightful
mistake!
“Ho! what a capon--what a capon of a girl--” she would sometimes say
to her, trying to laugh, with her eyes brimming with rage, because she
considered that this love-affair was dragging too much and believed
that the young girl was hesitating for fear of meeting the reproaches
and anger of her parents. Just as if that would have weighed a straw
in the balance for such a free and proud nature, had there been a real
love in her heart; but how can one say: “I love him,” and buckle on
one’s armor, rouse one’s spirits and fight, when one does not love at
all?
However, she had promised, and every day she was harassed by new
demands. For instance there was that first night at the skating-rink,
to which the peasant girl insisted upon taking her, whether or no,
counting upon the singer’s success and the sympathy of the applause
to break down the last objections. After a long resistance the poor
little girl ended by consenting to skip out secretly for that one night
behind the back of her mother, making use of lies and humiliating
complications. She had given way through fear and weakness, perhaps
also with the hope of getting her first impression back again at the
theatre--that mirage which had vanished; of lighting up again, in fact,
that flame of love which was so desperately quenched.