CHAPTER I

A DUEL OF HEARTS

Broad daylight streamed down into the vast studio through a skylight

in the ceiling, which showed a large square of dazzling blue, a bright

vista of limitless heights of azure, across which passed flocks of birds

in rapid flight. But the glad light of heaven hardly entered this severe

room, with high ceilings and draped walls, before it began to grow soft

and dim, to slumber among the hangings and die in the portieres, hardly

penetrating to the dark corners where the gilded frames of portraits

gleamed like flame. Peace and sleep seemed imprisoned there, the peace

characteristic of an artist's dwelling, where the human soul has

toiled. Within these walls, where thought abides, struggles, and becomes

exhausted in its violent efforts, everything appears weary and overcome

as soon as the energy of action is abated; all seems dead after the

great crises of life, and the furniture, the hangings, and the portraits

of great personages still unfinished on the canvases, all seem to rest

as if the whole place had suffered the master's fatigue and had toiled

with him, taking part in the daily renewal of his struggle. A vague,

heavy odor of paint, turpentine, and tobacco was in the air, clinging to

the rugs and chairs; and no sound broke the deep silence save the sharp

short cries of the swallows that flitted above the open skylight, and

the dull, ceaseless roar of Paris, hardly heard above the roofs. Nothing

moved except a little cloud of smoke that rose intermittently toward the

ceiling with every puff that Olivier Bertin, lying upon his divan, blew

slowly from a cigarette between his lips.

With gaze lost in the distant sky, he tried to think of a new subject

for a painting. What should he do? As yet he did not know. He was by

no means resolute and sure of himself as an artist, but was of an

uncertain, uneasy spirit, whose undecided inspiration ever hesitated

among all the manifestations of art. Rich, illustrious, the gainer of

all honors, he nevertheless remained, in these his later years, a man

who did not know exactly toward what ideal he had been aiming. He had

won the _Prix_ of Rome, had been the defender of traditions, and

had evoked, like so many others, the great scenes of history; then,

modernizing his tendencies, he had painted living men, but in a way that

showed the influence of classic memories. Intelligent, enthusiastic, a

worker that clung to his changing dreams, in love with his art, which

he knew to perfection, he had acquired, by reason of the delicacy of his

mind, remarkable executive ability and great versatility, due in some

degree to his hesitations and his experiments in all styles of his art.

Perhaps, too, the sudden admiration of the world for his works, elegant,

correct, and full of distinctions, influenced his nature and prevented

him from becoming what he naturally might have been. Since the triumph

of his first success, the desire to please always made him anxious,

without his being conscious of it; it influenced his actions and

weakened his convictions. This desire to please was apparent in him in

many ways, and had contributed much to his glory.

His grace of manner, all his habits of life, the care he devoted to

his person, his long-standing reputation for strength and agility as

a swordsman and an equestrian, had added further attractions to his

steadily growing fame. After his _Cleopatra_, the first picture that

had made him illustrious, Paris suddenly became enamored of him,

adopted him, made a pet of him; and all at once he became one of those

brilliant, fashionable artists one meets in the Bois, for whose presence

hostesses maneuver, and whom the Institute welcomes thenceforth. He had

entered it as a conqueror, with the approval of all Paris.

Thus Fortune had led him to the beginning of old age, coddling and

caressing him.

Under the influence of the beautiful day, which he knew was glowing

without, Bertin sought a poetic subject. He felt somewhat dreamy,

however, after his breakfast and his cigarette; he pondered awhile,

gazing into space, in fancy sketching rapidly against the blue sky the

figures of graceful women in the Bois or on the sidewalk of a street,

lovers by the water--all the pleasing fancies in which his thoughts

reveled. The changing images stood out against the bright sky, vague and

fleeting in the hallucination of his eye, while the swallows, darting

through space in ceaseless flight, seemed trying to efface them as if

with strokes of a pen.

He found nothing. All these half-seen visions resembled things that

he had already done; all the women appeared to be the daughters or the

sisters of those that had already been born of his artistic fancy; and

the vague fear, that had haunted him for a year, that he had lost the

power to create, had made the round of all subjects and exhausted

his inspiration, outlined itself distinctly before this review of his

work--this lack of power to dream anew, to discover the unknown.

He arose quietly to look among his unfinished sketches, hoping to find

something that would inspire him with a new idea.

Still puffing at his cigarette, he proceeded to turn over the sketches,

drawings, and rough drafts that he kept in a large old closet; but, soon

becoming disgusted with this vain quest, and feeling depressed by the

lassitude of his spirits, he tossed away his cigarette, whistled a

popular street-song, bent down and picked up a heavy dumb-bell that lay

under a chair. Having raised with the other hand a curtain that draped a

mirror, which served him in judging the accuracy of a pose, in verifying

his perspectives and testing the truth, he placed himself in front of it

and began to swing the dumb-bell, meanwhile looking intently at himself.

He had been celebrated in the studios for his strength; then, in the gay

world, for his good looks. But now the weight of years was making him

heavy. Tall, with broad shoulders and full chest, he had acquired the

protruding stomach of an old wrestler, although he kept up his fencing

every day and rode his horse with assiduity. His head was still

remarkable and as handsome as ever, although in a style different from

that of his earlier days. His thick and short white hair set off

the black eyes beneath heavy gray eyebrows, while his luxuriant

moustache--the moustache of an old soldier--had remained quite dark, and

it gave to his countenance a rare characteristic of energy and pride.

Standing before the mirror, with heels together and body erect, he went

through the usual movements with the two iron balls, which he held out

at the end of his muscular arm, watching with a complacent expression

its evidence of quiet power.

But suddenly, in the glass, which reflected the whole studio, he saw

one of the portieres move; then appeared a woman's head--only a head,

peeping in. A voice behind him asked:

“Anyone here?”

“Present!” he responded promptly, turning around. Then, throwing his

dumb-bell on the floor, he hastened toward the door with an appearance

of youthful agility that was slightly affected.

A woman entered attired in a light summer costume. They shook hands.

“You were exercising, I see,” said the lady.

“Yes,” he replied; “I was playing peacock, and allowed myself to be

surprised.”

The lady laughed, and continued:

“Your concierge's lodge was vacant, and as I know you are always alone

at this hour I came up without being announced.”

He looked at her.

“Heavens, how beautiful you are! What chic!”

“Yes, I have a new frock. Do you think it pretty?”

“Charming, and perfectly harmonious. We can certainly say that nowadays

it is possible to give expression to the lightest textiles.”

He walked around her, gently touching the material of the gown,

adjusting its folds with the tips of his fingers, like a man that knows

a woman's toilet as the modiste knows it, having all his life employed

his artist's taste and his athlete's muscles in depicting with slender

brush changing and delicate fashions, in revealing feminine grace

enclosed within a prison of velvet and silk, or hidden by snowy laces.

He finished his scrutiny by declaring: “It is a great success, and it

becomes you perfectly!”

The lady allowed herself to be admired, quite content to be pretty and

to please him.

No longer in her first youth, but still beautiful, not very tall,

somewhat plump, but with that freshness which lends to a woman of forty

an appearance of having only just reached full maturity, she seemed like

one of those roses that flourish for an indefinite time up to the moment

when, in too full a bloom, they fall in an hour.

Beneath her blonde hair she possessed the shrewdness to preserve all the

alert and youthful grace of those Parisian women who never grow old; who

carry within themselves a surprising vital force, an indomitable

power of resistance, and who remain for twenty years triumphant and

indestructible, careful above all things of their bodies and ever

watchful of their health.

She raised her veil and murmured:

“Well, you do not kiss me!”

“I have been smoking.”

“Pooh!” said the lady. Then, holding up her face, she added, “So much

the worse!”

Their lips met.

He took her parasol and divested her of her spring jacket with the

prompt, swift movement indicating familiarity with this service. As she

seated herself on the divan, he asked with an air of interest:

“Is all going well with your husband?”

“Very well; he must be making a speech in the House at this very

moment.”

“Ah! On what, pray?”

“Oh--no doubt on beets or on rape-seed oil, as usual!”

Her husband, the Comte de Guilleroy, deputy from the Eure, made a

special study of all questions of agricultural interest.

Perceiving in one corner a sketch that she did not recognize, the lady

walked across the studio, asking, “What is that?”

“A pastel that I have just begun--the portrait of the Princesse de

Ponteve.”

“You know,” said the lady gravely, “that if you go back to painting

portraits of women I shall close your studio. I know only too well to

what that sort of thing leads!”

“Oh, but I do not make twice a portrait of Any!” was the answer.

“I hope not, indeed!”

She examined the newly begun pastel sketch with the air of a woman that

understands the technic of art. She stepped back, advanced, made a shade

of her hand, sought the place where the best light fell on the sketch,

and finally expressed her satisfaction.

“It is very good. You succeed admirably with pastel work.”

“Do you think so?” murmured the flattered artist.

“Yes; it is a most delicate art, needing great distinction of style. It

cannot be handled by masons in the art of painting.”

For twelve years the Countess had encouraged the painter's leaning

toward the distinguished in art, opposing his occasional return to

the simplicity of realism; and, in consideration of the demands of

fashionable modern elegance, she had tenderly urged him toward an ideal

of grace that was slightly affected and artificial.

“What is the Princess like?” she asked.

He was compelled to give her all sorts of details--those minute details

in which the jealous and subtle curiosity of women delights, passing

from remarks upon her toilet to criticisms of her intelligence.

Suddenly she inquired: “Does she flirt with you?”

He laughed, and declared that she did not.

Then, putting both hands on the shoulders of the painter, the Countess

gazed fixedly at him. The ardor of her questioning look caused a quiver

in the pupils of her blue eyes, flecked with almost imperceptible black

points, like tiny ink-spots.

Again she murmured: “Truly, now, she is not a flirt?”

“No, indeed, I assure you!”

“Well, I am quite reassured on another account,” said the Countess. “You

never will love anyone but me now. It is all over for the others. It is

too late, my poor dear!”

The painter experienced that slight painful emotion which touches

the heart of middle-aged men when some one mentions their age; and he

murmured: “To-day and to-morrow, as yesterday, there never has been in

my life, and never will be, anyone but you, Any.”

She took him by the arm, and turning again toward the divan made him sit

beside her.

“Of what were you thinking?” she asked.

“I am looking for a subject to paint.”

“What, pray?”

“I don't know, you see, since I am still seeking it.”

“What have you been doing lately?”

He was obliged to tell her of all the visits he had received, about

all the dinners and soirees he had attended, and to repeat all the

conversations and chit-chat. Both were really interested in all these

futile and familiar details of fashionable life. The little rivalries,

the flirtations, either well known or suspected, the judgments, a

thousand times heard and repeated, upon the same persons, the same

events and opinions, were bearing away and drowning both their minds in

that troubled and agitated stream called Parisian life. Knowing everyone

in all classes of society, he as an artist to whom all doors were open,

she as the elegant wife of a Conservative deputy, they were experts

in that sport of brilliant French chatter, amiably satirical, banal,

brilliant but futile, with a certain shibboleth which gives a particular

and greatly envied reputation to those whose tongues have become supple

in this sort of malicious small talk.

“When are you coming to dine?” she asked suddenly.

“Whenever you wish. Name your day.”

“Friday. I shall have the Duchesse de Mortemain, the Corbelles, and

Musadieu, in honor of my daughter's return--she is coming this evening.

But do not speak of it, my friend. It is a secret.”

“Oh, yes, I accept. I shall be charmed to see Annette again. I have not

seen her in three years.”

“Yes, that is true. Three years!”

Though Annette, in her earliest years, had been brought up in Paris in

her parents' home, she had become the object of the last and passionate

affection of her grandmother, Madame Paradin, who, almost blind,

lived all the year round on her son-in-law's estate at the castle of

Roncieres, on the Eure. Little by little, the old lady had kept the

child with her more and more, and as the De Guilleroys passed almost

half their time in this domain, to which a variety of interests,

agricultural and political, called them frequently, it ended in taking

the little girl to Paris on occasional visits, for she herself preferred

the free and active life of the country to the cloistered life of the

city.

For three years she had not visited Paris even once, the Countess having

preferred to keep her entirely away from it, in order that a new taste

for its gaieties should not be awakened in her before the day fixed for

her debut in society. Madame de Guilleroy had given her in the country

two governesses, with unexceptionable diplomas, and had visited her

mother and her daughter more frequently than before. Moreover, Annette's

sojourn at the castle was rendered almost necessary by the presence of

the old lady.

Formerly, Olivier Bertin had passed six weeks or two months at Roncieres

every year; but in the past three years rheumatism had sent him to

watering-places at some distance, which had so much revived his love for

Paris that after his return he could not bring himself to leave it.

As a matter of custom, the young girl should not have returned home

until autumn, but her father had suddenly conceived a plan for her

marriage, and sent for her that she might meet immediately the Marquis

de Farandal, to whom he wished her to be betrothed. But this plan was

kept quite secret, and Madame de Guilleroy had told only Olivier Bertin

of it, in strict confidence.

“Then your husband's idea is quite decided upon?” said he at last.

“Yes; I even think it a very happy idea.”

Then they talked of other things.

She returned to the subject of painting, and wished to make him decide

to paint a Christ. He opposed the suggestion, thinking that there

was already enough of them in the world; but she persisted, and grew

impatient in her argument.

“Oh, if I knew how to draw I would show you my thought: it should be

very new, very bold. They are taking him down from the cross, and the

man who has detached the hands has let drop the whole upper part of the

body. It has fallen upon the crowd below, and they lift up their arms to

receive and sustain it. Do you understand?”

Yes, he understood; he even thought the conception quite original; but

he held himself as belonging to the modern style, and as his fair friend

reclined upon the divan, with one daintily-shod foot peeping out,

giving to the eye the sensation of flesh gleaming through the almost

transparent stocking, he said: “Ah, that is what I should paint! That is

life--a woman's foot at the edge of her skirt! Into that subject one may

put everything--truth, desire, poetry. Nothing is more graceful or more

charming than a woman's foot; and what mystery it suggests: the hidden

limb, lost yet imagined beneath its veiling folds of drapery!”

Sitting on the floor, _a la Turque_, he seized her shoe and drew it off,

and the foot, coming out of its leather sheath, moved about quickly,

like a little animal surprised at being set free.

“Isn't that elegant, distinguished, and material--more material than the

hand? Show me your hand, Any!”

She wore long gloves reaching to the elbow. In order to remove one she

took it by the upper edge and slipped it down quickly, turning it inside

out, as one would skin a snake. The arm appeared, white, plump, round,

so suddenly bared as to produce an idea of complete and bold nudity.

She gave him her hand, which drooped from her wrist. The rings sparkled

on her white fingers, and the narrow pink nails seemed like amorous

claws protruding at the tips of that little feminine paw.

Olivier Bertin handled it tenderly and admiringly. He played with the

fingers as if they were live toys, while saying:

“What a strange thing! What a strange thing! What a pretty little

member, intelligent and adroit, which executes whatever one

wills--books, laces, houses, pyramids, locomotives, pastry, or caresses,

which last is its pleasantest function.”

He drew off the rings one by one, and as the wedding-ring fell in its

turn, he murmured smilingly:

“The law! Let us salute it!”

“Nonsense!” said the Countess, slightly wounded.

Bertin had always been inclined to satirical banter, that tendency of

the French to mingle irony with the most serious sentiments, and he had

often unintentionally made her sad, without knowing how to understand

the subtle distinctions of women, or to discern the border of sacred

ground, as he himself said. Above all things it vexed her whenever he

alluded with a touch of familiar lightness to their attachment, which

was an affair of such long standing that he declared it the most

beautiful example of love in the nineteenth century. After a silence,

she inquired:

“Will you take Annette and me to the varnishing-day reception?”

“Certainly.”

Then she asked him about the best pictures to be shown in the next

exposition, which was to open in a fortnight.

Suddenly, however, she appeared to recollect something she had

forgotten.

“Come, give me my shoe,” she said. “I am going now.”

He was playing dreamily with the light shoe, turning it over

abstractedly in his hands. He leaned over, kissed the foot, which

appeared to float between the skirt and the rug, and which, a little

chilled by the air, no longer moved restlessly about; then he slipped

on the shoe, and Madame de Guilleroy, rising, approached the table,

on which were scattered papers, open letters, old and recent, beside

a painter's inkstand, in which the ink had dried. She looked at it all

with curiosity, touched the papers, and lifted them to look underneath.

Bertin approached her, saying:

“You will disarrange my disorder.”

Without replying to this, she inquired:

“Who is the gentleman that wishes to buy your _Baigneuses_?”

“An American whom I do not know.”

“Have you come to an agreement about the _Chanteuse des rues_?”

“Yes. Ten thousand.”

“You did well. It was pretty, but not exceptional. Good-by, dear.”

She presented her cheek, which he brushed with a calm kiss; then she

disappeared through the portieres, saying in an undertone:

“Friday--eight o'clock. I do not wish you to go with me to the door--you

know that very well. Good-by!”

When she had gone he first lighted another cigarette, then he began

to pace slowly to and fro in his studio. All the past of this liaison

unrolled itself before him. He recalled all its details, now long

remote, sought them and put them together, interested in this solitary

pursuit of reminiscences.

It was at the moment when he had just risen like a star on the horizon

of artistic Paris, when the painters were monopolizing the favor of the

public, and had built up a quarter with magnificent dwellings, earned by

a few strokes of the brush.

After his return from Rome, in 1864, he had lived for some years without

success or renown; then suddenly, in 1868, he exhibited his _Cleopatra_,

and in a few days was being praised to the skies by both critics and

public.

In 1872, after the war, and after the death of Henri Regnault had made

for all his brethren, a sort of pedestal of glory, a _Jocaste_ a bold

subject, classed Bertin among the daring, although his wisely original

execution made him acceptable even to the Academicians. In 1873 his

first medal placed him beyond competition with his _Juive d'Alger_,

which he exhibited on his return from a trip to Africa, and a portrait

of the Princesse de Salia, in 1874, made him considered by the

fashionable world the first portrait painter of his day. From that time

he became the favorite painter of Parisian women of that class, the most

skilful and ingenious interpreter of their grace, their bearing, and

their nature. In a few months all the distinguished women in Paris

solicited the favor of being reproduced by his brush. He was hard to

please, and made them pay well for that favor.

After he had become the rage, and was received everywhere as a man of

the world he saw one day, at the Duchesse de Mortemain's house, a young

woman in deep mourning, who was just leaving as he entered, and who, in

this chance meeting in a doorway, dazzled him with a charming vision of

grace and elegance.

On inquiring her name, he learned that she was the Comtesse de

Guilleroy, wife of a Normandy country squire, agriculturist and deputy;

that she was in mourning for her husband's father; and that she was very

intellectual, greatly admired, and much sought after.

Struck by the apparition that had delighted his artist's eye, he said:

“Ah, there is some one whose portrait I should paint willingly!”

This remark was repeated to the young Countess the next day; and that

evening Bertin received a little blue-tinted note, delicately perfumed,

in a small, regular handwriting, slanting a little from left to right,

which said:

“MONSIEUR:

“The Duchesse de Mortemain, who has just left my house, has assured

me that you would be disposed to make, from my poor face, one of your

masterpieces. I would entrust it to you willingly if I were certain that

you did not speak idly, and that you really see in me something that you

could reproduce and idealize.

“Accept, Monsieur, my sincere regards.

“ANNE DE GUILLEROY.”

He answered this note, asking when he might present himself at the

Countess's house, and was very simply invited to breakfast on the

following Monday.

It was on the first floor of a large and luxurious modern house in the

Boulevard Malesherbes. Traversing a large salon with blue silk walls,

framed in white and gold, the painter was shown into a sort of boudoir

hung with tapestries of the last century, light and coquettish, those

tapestries _a la Watteau_, with their dainty coloring and graceful

figures, which seem to have been designed and executed by workmen

dreaming of love.

He had just seated himself when the Countess appeared. She walked so

lightly that he had not heard her coming through the next room, and was

surprised when he saw her. She extended her hand in graceful welcome.

“And so it is true,” said she, “that you really wish to paint my

portrait?”

“I shall be very happy to do so, Madame.”

Her close-fitting black gown made her look very slender and gave her a

youthful appearance though a grave air, which was belied, however,

by her smiling face, lighted up by her bright golden hair. The Count

entered, leading by the hand a little six-year-old girl.

Madame de Guilleroy presented him, saying, “My husband.”

The Count was rather short, and wore no moustache; his cheeks were

hollow, darkened under the skin by his close-shaven beard. He had

somewhat the appearance of a priest or an actor; his hair was long and

was tossed back carelessly; his manner was polished, and around the

mouth two large circular lines extended from the cheeks to the chin,

seeming to have been acquired from the habit of speaking in public.

He thanked the painter with a flourish of phrases that betrayed the

orator. He had wished for a long time to have a portrait of his wife,

and certainly he would have chosen M. Olivier Bertin, had he not feared

a refusal, for he well knew that the painter was overwhelmed with

orders.

It was arranged, then, with much ceremony on both sides, that the Count

should accompany the Countess to the studio the next day. He asked,

however, whether it would not be better to wait, because of the

Countess's deep mourning; but the painter declared that he wished to

translate the first impression she had made upon him, and the striking

contrast of her animated, delicate head, luminous under the golden hair,

with the austere black of her garments.

She came, then, the following day, with her husband, and afterward

with her daughter, whom the artist seated before a table covered with

picture-books.

Olivier Bertin, following his usual custom, showed himself very

reserved. Fashionable women made him a little uneasy, for he hardly knew

them. He supposed them to be at once immoral and shallow, hypocritical

and dangerous, futile and embarrassing. Among the women of the

demi-monde he had had some passing adventures due to his renown, his

lively wit, his elegant and athletic figure, and his dark and animated

face. He preferred them, too; he liked their free ways and frank speech,

accustomed as he was to the gay and easy manners of the studios and

green-rooms he frequented. He went into the fashionable world for the

glory of it, but his heart was not in it; he enjoyed it through his

vanity, received congratulations and commissions, and played the gallant

before charming ladies who flattered him, but never paid court to any.

As he did not allow himself to indulge in daring pleasantries and spicy

jests in their society, he thought them all prudes, and himself was

considered as having good taste. Whenever one of them came to pose at

his studio, he felt, in spite of any advances she might make to please

him, that disparity of rank which prevents any real unity between

artists and fashionable people, no matter how much they may be thrown

together. Behind the smiles and the admiration which among women are

always a little artificial, he felt the indefinable mental reserve of

the being that judges itself of superior essence. This brought about in

him an abnormal feeling of pride, which showed itself in a bearing of

haughty respect, dissembling the vanity of the parvenu who is treated

as an equal by princes and princesses, who owes to his talent the

honor accorded to others by their birth. It was said of him with slight

surprise: “He is really very well bred!” This surprise, although it

flattered him, also wounded him, for it indicated a certain social

barrier.

The admirable and ceremonious gravity of the painter a little annoyed

Madame de Guilleroy, who could find nothing to say to this man, so cold,

yet with a reputation for cleverness.

After settling her little daughter, she would come and sit in an

armchair near the newly begun sketch, and tried, according to the

artist's recommendation, to give some expression to her physiognomy.

In the midst of the fourth sitting, he suddenly ceased painting and

inquired:

“What amuses you more than anything else in life?”

She appeared somewhat embarrassed.

“Why, I hardly know. Why this question?”

“I need a happy thought in those eyes, and I have not seen it yet.”

“Well, try to make me talk; I like very much to chat.”

“Are you gay?”

“Very gay.”

“Well, then, let us chat, Madame.”

He had said “Let us chat, Madame,” in a very grave tone; then, resuming

his painting, he touched upon a variety of subjects, seeking something

on which their minds could meet. They began by exchanging observations

on the people that both knew; then they talked of themselves--always the

most agreeable and fascinating subject for a chat.

When they met again the next day they felt more at ease, and Bertin,

noting that he pleased and amused her, began to relate some of the

details of his artist life, allowing himself to give free scope to his

reminiscences, in a fanciful way that was peculiar to him.

Accustomed to the dignified presence of the literary lights of the

salons, the Countess was surprised by this almost wild gaiety, which

said unusual things quite frankly, enlivening them with irony; and

presently she began to answer in the same way, with a grace at once

daring and delicate.

In a week's time she had conquered and charmed him by her good humor,

frankness, and simplicity. He had entirely forgotten his prejudices

against fashionable women, and would willingly have declared that they

alone had charm and fascination. As he painted, standing before his

canvas, advancing and retreating, with the movements of a man fighting,

he allowed his fancy to flow freely, as if he had known for a long

time this pretty woman, blond and black, made of sunlight and mourning,

seated before him, laughing and listening, answering him gaily with so

much animation that she lost her pose every moment.

Sometimes he would move far away from her, closing one eye, leaning over

for a searching study of his model's pose; then he would draw very near

to her to note the slightest shadows of her face, to catch the most

fleeting expression, to seize and reproduce that which is in a woman's

face beyond its more outward appearance; that emanation of ideal beauty,

that reflection of something indescribable, that personal and intimate

charm peculiar to each, which causes her to be loved to distraction by

one and not by another.

One afternoon the little girl advanced, and, planting herself before the

canvas, inquired with childish gravity:

“That is mamma, isn't it?”

The artist took her in his arms to kiss her, flattered by that naïve

homage to the resemblance of his work.

Another day, when she had been very quiet, they suddenly heard her say,

in a sad little voice:

“Mamma, I am so tired of this!”

The painter was so touched by this first complaint that he ordered a

shopful of toys to be brought to the studio the following day.

Little Annette, astonished, pleased, and always thoughtful, put them in

order with great care, that she might play with them one after another,

according to the desire of the moment. From the date of this gift,

she loved the painter as little children love, with that caressing,

animal-like affection which makes them so sweet and captivating.

Madame de Guilleroy began to take pleasure in the sittings. She was

almost without amusement or occupation that winter, as she was in

mourning; so that, for lack of society and entertainments, her chief

interest was within the walls of Bertin's studio.

She was the daughter of a rich and hospitable Parisian merchant, who had

died several years earlier, and of his ailing wife, whose lack of health

kept her in bed six months out of the twelve, and while still very young

she had become a perfect hostess, knowing how to receive, to smile, to

chat, to estimate character, and how to adapt herself to everyone; thus

she early became quite at her ease in society, and was always far-seeing

and compliant. When the Count de Guilleroy was presented to her as her

betrothed, she understood at once the advantages to be gained by such a

marriage, and, like a sensible girl, admitted them without constraint,

knowing well that one cannot have everything and that in every situation

we must strike a balance between good and bad.

Launched in the world, much sought because of her beauty and brilliance,

she was admired and courted by many men without ever feeling the least

quickening of her heart, which was as reasonable as her mind.

She possessed a touch of coquetry, however, which was nevertheless

prudent and aggressive enough never to allow an affair to go too far.

Compliments pleased her, awakened desires, fed her vanity, provided she

might seem to ignore them; and when she had received for a whole evening

the incense of this sort of homage, she slept quietly, as a woman who

has accomplished her mission on earth. This existence, which lasted

seven years, did not weary her nor seem monotonous, for she adored the

incessant excitement of society, but sometimes she felt that she

desired something different. The men of her world, political advocates,

financiers, or wealthy idlers, amused her as actors might; she did not

take them too seriously, although she appreciated their functions, their

stations, and their titles.

The painter pleased her at first because such a man was entirely a

novelty to her. She found the studio a very amusing place, laughed

gaily, felt that she, too, was clever, and felt grateful to him for the

pleasure she took in the sittings. He pleased her, too, because he was

handsome, strong, and famous, no woman, whatever she may pretend, being

indifferent to physical beauty and glory. Flattered at having been

admired by this expert, and disposed, on her side, to think well of him,

she had discovered in him an alert and cultivated mind, delicacy, fancy,

the true charm of intelligence, and an eloquence of expression that

seemed to illumine whatever he said.

A rapid friendship sprang up between them, and the hand-clasp exchanged

every day as she entered seemed more and more to express something of

the feeling in their hearts.

Then, without deliberate design, with no definite determination, she

felt within her heart a growing desire to fascinate him, and yielded to

it. She had foreseen nothing, planned nothing; she was only coquettish

with added grace, as a woman always is toward a man who pleases her more

than all others; and in her manner with him, in her glances and smiles,

was that seductive charm that diffuses itself around a woman in whose

breast has awakened a need of being loved.

She said flattering things to him which meant “I find you very

agreeable, Monsieur;” and she made him talk at length in order to show

him, by her attention, how much he aroused her interest. He would cease

to paint and sit beside her; and in that mental exaltation due to an

intense desire to please, he had crises of poetry, of gaiety or of

philosophy, according to his state of mind that day.

She was merry when he was gay; when he became profound she tried to

follow his discourse, though she did not always succeed; and when her

mind wandered to other things, she appeared to listen with so perfect

an air of comprehension and such apparent enjoyment of this initiation,

that he felt his spirit exalted in noting her attention to his words,

and was touched to have discovered a soul so delicate, open, and docile,

into which thought fell like a seed.

The portrait progressed, and was likely to be good, for the painter had

reached the state of emotion that is necessary in order to discover all

the qualities of the model, and to express them with that convincing

ardor which is the inspiration of true artists.

Leaning toward her, watching every movement of her face, all the tints

of her flesh, every shadow of her skin, all the expression and the

translucence of her eyes, every secret of her physiognomy, he had

become saturated with her personality as a sponge absorbs water; and, in

transferring to canvas that emanation of disturbing charm which his eye

seized, and which flowed like a wave from his thought to his brush,

he was overcome and intoxicated by it, as if he had drunk deep of the

beauty of woman.

She felt that he was drawn toward her, and was amused by this game, this

victory that was becoming more and more certain, animating even her own

heart.

A new feeling gave fresh piquancy to her existence, awaking in her a

mysterious joy. When she heard him spoken of her heart throbbed faster,

and she longed to say--a longing that never passed her lips--“He is in

love with me!” She was glad when people praised his talent, and perhaps

was even more pleased when she heard him called handsome. When she was

alone, thinking of him, with no indiscreet babble to annoy her, she

really imagined that in him she had found merely a good friend, one that

would always remain content with a cordial hand-clasp.

Often, in the midst of a sitting, he would suddenly put down his palette

on the stool and take little Annette in his arms, kissing her tenderly

on her hair, and his eyes, while gazing at the mother, said, “It is you,

not the child, that I kiss in this way.”

Occasionally Madame de Guilleroy did not bring her daughter, but came

alone. On these days he worked very little, and the time was spent in

talking.

One afternoon she was late. It was a cold day toward the end of

February. Olivier had come in early, as was now his habit whenever she

had an appointment with him, for he always hoped she would arrive before

the usual hour. While waiting he paced to and fro, smoking, and asking

himself the question that he was surprised to find himself asking for

the hundredth time that week: “Am I in love?” He did not know, never

having been really in love. He had had his caprices, certainly, some of

which had lasted a long time, but never had he mistaken them for love.

To-day he was astonished at the emotion that possessed him.

Did he love her? He hardly desired her, certainly, never having dreamed

of the possibility of possessing her. Heretofore, as soon as a woman

attracted him he had desired to make a conquest of her, and had held out

his hand toward her as if to gather fruit, but without feeling his heart

affected profoundly by either her presence or her absence.

Desire for Madame de Guilleroy hardly occurred to him; it seemed to be

hidden, crouching behind another and more powerful feeling, which was

still uncertain and hardly awakened. Olivier had believed that love

began with reveries and with poetic exaltations. But his feeling, on the

contrary, seemed to come from an indefinable emotion, more physical

than mental. He was nervous and restless, as if under the shadow of

threatening illness, though nothing painful entered into this fever of

the blood which by contagion stirred his mind also. He was quite aware

that Madame de Guilleroy was the cause of his agitation; that it was due

to the memories she left him and to the expectation of her return. He

did not feel drawn to her by an impulse of his whole being, but he

felt her always near him, as if she never had left him; she left to

him something of herself when she departed--something subtle and

inexpressible. What was it? Was it love? He probed deep in his heart in

order to see, to understand. He thought her charming, but she was not

at all the type of ideal woman that his blind hope had created. Whoever

calls upon love has foreseen the moral traits and physical charms of her

who will enslave him; and Madame de Guilleroy, although she pleased him

infinitely, did not appear to him to be that woman.

But why did she thus occupy his thought, above all others, in a way so

different, so unceasing? Had he simply fallen into the trap set by her

coquetry, which he had long before understood, and, circumvented by his

own methods, was he now under the influence of that special fascination

which gives to women the desire to please?

He paced here and there, sat down, sprang up, lighted cigarettes and

threw them away, and his eyes every instant looked at the clock, whose

hands moved toward the usual hour in slow, unhurried fashion.

Several times already he had almost raised the convex glass over the

two golden arrows turning so slowly, in order to push the larger one on

toward the figure it was approaching so lazily. It seemed to him that

this would suffice to make the door open, and that the expected one

would appear, deceived and brought to him by this ruse. Then he smiled

at this childish, persistent, and unreasonable desire.

At last he asked himself this question: “Could I become her lover?”

This idea seemed strange to him, indeed hardly to be realized or even

pursued, because of the complications it might bring into his life. Yet

she pleased him very much, and he concluded: “Decidedly I am in a very

strange state of mind.”

The clock struck, and this reminder of the hour made him start, striking

on his nerves rather than his soul. He awaited her with that impatience

which delay increases from second to second. She was always prompt, so

that before ten minutes should pass he would see her enter. When the ten

minutes had elapsed, he felt anxious, as at the approach of some grief,

then irritated because she had made him lose time; finally, he realized

that if she failed to come it would cause him actual suffering. What

should he do? Should he wait for her? No; he would go out, so that if,

by chance, she should arrive very late, she would find the studio empty.

He would go out, but when? What latitude should he allow her? Would

it not be better to remain and to make her comprehend, by a few coldly

polite words, that he was not one to be kept waiting. And suppose she

did not come? Then he would receive a despatch, a card, a servant or

a messenger. If she did not come, what should he do? It would be a day

lost; he could not work. Then? Well, then he would go to seek news of

her, for see her he must!

It was quite true; he felt a profound, tormenting, harassing necessity

for seeing her. What did it mean? Was it love? But he felt no mental

exaltation, no intoxication of the senses; it awakened no reverie of

the soul, when he realized that if she did not come that day he should

suffer keenly.

The door-bell rang on the stairway of the little hotel, and Olivier

Bertin suddenly found himself somewhat breathless, then so joyous that

he executed a pirouette and flung his cigarette high in the air.

She entered; she was alone! Immediately he was seized with a great

audacity.

“Do you know what I asked myself while waiting for you?”

“No, indeed, I do not.”

“I asked myself whether I were not in love with you?”

“In love with me? You must be mad!”

But she smiled, and her smile said: That is very pretty; I am glad to

hear it! However, she said: “You are not serious, of course; why do you

make such a jest?”

“On the contrary, I am absolutely serious,” he replied. “I do not

declare that I am in love with you; but I ask myself whether I am not

well on the way to become so.”

“What has made you think so?”

“My emotion when you are not here; my happiness when you arrive.”

She seated herself.

“Oh, don't disturb yourself over anything so trifling! As long as you

sleep well and have an appetite for dinner, there will be no danger!”

He began to laugh.

“And if I lose my sleep and no longer eat?”

“Let me know of it.”

“And then?”

“I will allow you to recover yourself in peace.”

“A thousand thanks!”

And on the theme of this uncertain love they spun theories and fancies

all the afternoon. The same thing occurred on several successive days.

Accepting his statement as a sort of jest, of no real importance, she

would say gaily on entering: “Well, how goes your love to-day?”

He would reply lightly, yet with perfect seriousness, telling her of the

progress of his malady, in all its intimate details, and of the depth of

the tenderness that had been born and was daily increasing. He analyzed

himself minutely before her, hour by hour, since their separation the

evening before, with the air of a professor giving a lecture; and she

listened with interest, a little moved, and somewhat disturbed by this

story which seemed that in a book of which she was the heroine. When

he had enumerated, in his gallant and easy manner, all the anxieties of

which he had become the prey, his voice sometimes trembled in expressing

by a word, or only by an intonation, the tender aching of his heart.

And she persisted in questioning him, vibrating with curiosity, her eyes

fixed upon him, her ear eager for those things that are disturbing to

know but charming to hear.

Sometimes when he approached her to alter a pose he would seize her

hand and try to kiss it. With a swift movement she would draw away her

fingers from his lips, saying, with a slight frown:

“Come, come--work!”

He would begin his work again, but within five minutes she would ask

some adroit question that led him back to the sole topic that interested

them.

By this time she began to feel some fear deep in her heart. She longed

to be loved--but not too much! Sure of not being led away, she yet

feared to allow him to venture too far, thereby losing him, since

then she would be compelled to drive him to despair after seeming to

encourage him. Yet, should it become necessary to renounce this tender

and delicate friendship, this stream of pleasant converse which rippled

along bearing nuggets of love like a river whose sand is full of gold,

it would cause her great sorrow--a grief that would be heart-breaking.

When she set out from her own home to go to the painter's studio, a wave

of joy, warm and penetrating, overflowed her spirit, making it light and

happy. As she laid her hand on Olivier's bell, her breast throbbed with

impatience, and the stair-carpet seemed the softest her feet ever had

pressed. But Bertin became gloomy, a little nervous, often irritable. He

had his moments of impatience, soon repressed, but frequently recurring.

One day, when she had just entered, he sat down beside her instead of

beginning to paint, saying:

“Madame, you can no longer ignore the fact that what I have said is not

a jest, and that I love you madly.”

Troubled by this beginning and seeing that the dreaded crisis had

arrived, she tried to stop him, but he listened to her no longer.

Emotion overflowed his heart, and she must hear him, pale, trembling,

and anxious as she listened. He spoke a long time, demanding nothing,

tenderly, sadly, with despairing resignation; and she allowed him to

take her hands, which he kept in his. He was kneeling before her without

her taking any notice of his attitude, and with a far-away look upon

his face he begged her not to work him any harm. What harm? She did not

understand nor try to understand, overcome by the cruel grief of seeing

him suffer, yet that grief was almost happiness. Suddenly she saw tears

in his eyes and was so deeply moved that she exclaimed: “Oh!”--ready to

embrace him as one embraces a crying child. He repeated in a very soft

tone: “There, there! I suffer too much;” then, suddenly, won by his

sorrow, by the contagion of tears, she sobbed, her nerves quivering, her

arms trembling, ready to open.

When she felt herself suddenly clasped in his embrace and kissed

passionately on the lips, she wished to cry out, to struggle, to repulse

him; but she judged herself lost, for she consented while resisting, she

yielded even while she struggled, pressing him to her as she cried: “No,

no, I will not!”

Then she was overcome with the emotion of that moment; she hid her face

in her hands, then she suddenly sprang to her feet, caught up her hat

which had fallen to the floor, put it on her head and rushed away, in

spite of the supplications of Olivier, who held a fold of her skirt.

As soon as she was in the street, she had a desire to sit down on the

curbstone, her limbs were so exhausted and powerless. A cab was passing;

she called to it and said to the driver: “Drive slowly, and take me

wherever you like.” She threw herself into the carriage, closed the

door, sank back in one corner, feeling herself alone behind the raised

windows--alone to think.

For some minutes she heard only the sound of the wheels and the jarring

of the cab. She looked at the houses, the pedestrians, people in cabs

and omnibuses, with a blank gaze that saw nothing; she thought of

nothing, as if she were giving herself time, granting herself a respite

before daring to reflect upon what had happened.

Then, as she had a practical mind and was not lacking in courage, she

said to herself: “I am a lost woman!” For some time she remained under

that feeling of certainty that irreparable misfortune had befallen her,

horror-struck, like a man fallen from a roof, knowing that his legs are

broken but dreading to prove it to himself.

But, instead of feeling overwhelmed by the anticipation of suffering,

her heart remained calm and peaceful after this catastrophe; it beat

slowly, softly, after the fall that had terrified her soul, and seemed

to take no part in the perturbation of her mind.

She repeated aloud, as if to understand and convince herself: “Yes, I am

a lost woman.” No echo of suffering responded from her heart to this cry

of her conscience.

She allowed herself to be soothed for some time by the movement of the

carriage, putting off a little longer the necessity of facing this cruel

situation. No, she did not suffer. She was afraid to think, that was

all; she feared to know, to comprehend, and to reflect; on the contrary,

in that mysterious and impenetrable being created within us by the

incessant struggle between our desires and our will, she felt an

indescribable peace.

After perhaps half an hour of this strange repose, understanding at

last that the despair she had invoked would not come, she shook off her

torpor and murmured: “It is strange: I am hardly sorry even!”

Then she began to reproach herself. Anger awakened within her against

her own blindness and her weakness. How had she not foreseen this, not

comprehended that the hour for that struggle must come; that this man

was so dear to her as to render her cowardly, and that sometimes in

the purest hearts desire arises like a gust of wind, carrying the will

before it?

But, after she had judged and reprimanded herself severely, she asked

herself what would happen next?

Her first resolve was to break with the painter and never to see him

again. Hardly had she formed this resolution before a thousand reasons

sprang up as quickly to combat it. How could she explain such a break?

What should she say to her husband? Would not the suspected truth be

whispered, then spread abroad?

Would it not be better, for the sake of appearances, to act, with

Olivier Bertin himself, the hypocritical comedy of indifference and

forgetfulness, to show him that she had effaced that moment from her

memory and from her life?

But could she do it? Would she have the audacity to appear to recollect

nothing, to assume a look of indignant astonishment in saying: “What

would you with me?” to the man with whom she had actually shared that

swift and ardent emotion?

She reflected a long time, and decided that any other solution was

impossible.

She would go to him courageously the next day, and make him understand

as soon as she could what she desired him to do. She must not use a

word, an allusion, a look, that could recall to him that moment of

shame.

After he had suffered--for assuredly he would have his share of

suffering, as a loyal and upright man--he would remain in future that

which he had been up to the present.

As soon as this new resolution was formed, she gave her address to the

coachman and returned home, profoundly depressed, with a desire to take

to her bed, to see no one, to sleep and forget. Having shut herself up

in her room, she remained there until the dinner hour, lying on a couch,

benumbed, not wishing to agitate herself longer with that thought so

full of danger.

She descended at the exact hour, astonished to find herself so calm, and

awaited her husband with her ordinary demeanor. He appeared, carrying

their little one in his arms; she pressed his hand and kissed the child,

and felt no pang of anguish.

Monsieur de Guilleroy inquired what she had been doing. She replied

indifferently that she had been posing, as usual.

“And the portrait--is it good?” he asked.

“It is coming on very well.”

He spoke of his own affairs, in his turn; he enjoyed talking, while

dining, of the sitting of the Chamber, and of the discussion of the

proposed law on the adulteration of food-stuffs.

This rather tiresome talk, which she usually endured amiably, now

irritated her, and made her look with closer attention at the man who

was vulgarly loquacious in his interest in such things; but she smiled

as she listened, and replied pleasantly, more gracious even than

usual, more indulgent toward these banalities. As she looked at him she

thought: “I have deceived him! He is my husband, and I have deceived

him! How strange it is! Nothing can change that fact, nothing can

obliterate it! I closed my eyes. I submitted for a few seconds, a few

seconds only, to a man's kisses, and I am no longer a virtuous woman. A

few seconds in my life--seconds that never can be effaced--have brought

into it that little irreparable fact, so grave, so short, a crime, the

most shameful one for a woman--and yet I feel no despair! If anyone had

told me that yesterday, I should not have believed it. If anyone had

convinced me that it would indeed come to pass, I should have thought

instantly of the terrible remorse that would fill my heart to-day.”

Monsieur de Guilleroy went out after dinner, as he did almost every

evening. Then the Countess took her little daughter on her lap, weeping

over her and kissing her; the tears she shed were sincere, coming from

her conscience, not from her heart.

But she slept very little. Amid the darkness of her room, she tormented

herself afresh as to the dangers of the attitude toward the painter that

she purposed to assume; she dreaded the interview that must take place

the following day, and the things that he must say to her, looking her

in the face meanwhile.

She arose early, but remained lying on her couch all the morning,

forcing herself to foresee what it was she had to fear and what she must

say in reply, in order to be ready for any surprise.

She went out early, that she might yet think while walking.

He hardly expected her, and had been asking himself, since the evening

before, what he should do when he met her.

After her hasty departure--that flight which he had not dared to

oppose--he had remained alone, still listening, although she was already

far away, for the sound of her step, the rustle of her skirt, and the

closing of the door, touched by the timid hand of his goddess.

He remained standing, full of deep, ardent, intoxicating joy. He had

won her, _her_! That had passed between them! Was it possible? After the

surprise of this triumph, he gloated over it, and, to realize it more

keenly, he sat down and almost lay at full length on the divan where he

had made her yield to him.

He remained there a long time, full of the thought that she was his

mistress, and that between them, between the woman he had so much

desired and himself, had been tied in a few moments that mysterious bond

which secretly links two beings to each other. He retained in his still

quivering body the piercingly sweet remembrance of that wild, fleeting

moment when their lips had met, when their beings had united and

mingled, thrilling together with the deepest emotion of life.

He did not go out that evening, in order to live over again that

rapturous moment; he retired early, his heart vibrating with happiness.

He had hardly awakened the next morning before he asked himself what he

should do. To a _cocotte_ or an actress he would have sent flowers

or even a jewel; but he was tortured with perplexity before this new

situation.

He wished to express, in delicate and charming terms, the gratitude of

his soul, his ecstasy of mad tenderness, his offer of a devotion that

should be eternal; but in order to intimate all these passionate

and high-souled thoughts he could find only set phrases, commonplace

expressions, vulgar and puerile.

Assuredly, he must write--but what? He scribbled, erased, tore up and

began anew twenty letters, all of which seemed to him insulting, odious,

ridiculous.

He gave up the idea of writing, therefore, and decided to go to see her,

as soon as the hour for the sitting had passed, for he felt very sure

that she would not come.

Shutting himself up in his studio, he stood in mental exaltation before

the portrait, his lips longing to press themselves on the painting,

whereon something of herself was fixed; and again and again he looked

out of the window into the street. Every gown he saw in the distance

made his heart throb quickly. Twenty times he believed that he saw her;

then when the approaching woman had passed he sat down again, as if

overcome by a deception.

Suddenly he saw her, doubted, then took his opera-glass, recognized her,

and, dizzy with violent emotion, sat down once more to await her.

When she entered he threw himself on his knees and tried to take her

hands, but she drew them away abruptly, and, as he remained at her feet,

filled with anguish, his eyes raised to hers, she said haughtily:

“What are you doing, Monsieur? I do not understand that attitude.”

“Oh, Madame, I entreat you--”

She interrupted him harshly:

“Rise! You are ridiculous!”

He rose, dazed, and murmured:

“What is the matter? Do not treat me in this way--I love you!”

Then, in a few short, dry phrases, she signified her wishes, and decreed

the situation.

“I do not understand what you wish to say. Never speak to me of your

love, or I shall leave this studio never to return. If you forget for a

single moment this condition of my presence here, you never will see me

again.”

He looked at her, crushed by this unexpected harshness; then he

understood, and murmured:

“I shall obey, Madame.”

“Very well,” she rejoined; “I expected that of you! Now work, for you

are long in finishing that portrait.”

He took up his palette and began to paint, but his hand trembled, his

troubled eyes looked without seeing; he felt a desire to weep, so deeply

wounded was his heart.

He tried to talk to her; she barely answered him. When he attempted to

pay her some little compliment on her color, she cut him short in a tone

so brusque that he felt suddenly one of those furies of a lover that

change tenderness to hatred. Through soul and body he felt a nervous

shock, and in a moment he detested her. Yes, yes, that was, indeed,

woman! She, too, was like all the others! Why not? She, too, was false,

changeable, and weak, like all of them. She had attracted him, seduced

him with girlish ruses, trying to overcome him without intending to

give him anything in return, enticing him only to refuse him, employing

toward him all the tricks of cowardly coquettes who seem always on the

point of yielding so long as the man who cringes like a dog before them

dares not carry out his desire.

But the situation was the worse for her, after all; he had taken her,

he had overcome her. She might try to wash away that fact and answer

him insolently; she could efface nothing, and he--he would forget it!

Indeed, it would have been a fine bit of folly to embarrass himself

with this sort of mistress, who would eat into his artist life with the

capricious teeth of a pretty woman.

He felt a desire to whistle, as he did in the presence of his models,

but realized that his nerve was giving way and feared to commit

some stupidity. He cut short the sitting under pretense of having an

appointment. When they bowed at parting they felt themselves farther

apart than the day they first met at the Duchesse de Mortemain's.

As soon as she had gone, he took his hat and topcoat and went out. A

cold sun, in a misty blue sky, threw over the city a pale, depressing,

unreal light.

After he had walked a long time, with rapid and irritated step, elbowing

the passers-by that he need not deviate from a straight line, his great

fury against her began to change into sadness and regret. After he

had repeated to himself all the reproaches he had poured upon her, he

remembered, as he looked at the women that passed him, how pretty and

charming she was. Like many others who do not admit it, he had always

been waiting to meet the “impossible she,” to find the rare, unique,

poetic and passionate being, the dream of whom hovers over our hearts.

Had he not almost found it? Was it not she who might have given him

this almost impossible happiness? Why, then, is it true that nothing

is realized? Why can one seize nothing of that which he pursues, or can

succeed only in grasping a phantom, which renders still more grievous

this pursuit of illusions?

He was no longer resentful toward her; it was life itself that made him

bitter. Now that he was able to reason, he asked himself what cause

for anger he had against her? With what could he reproach her, after

all?--with being amiable, kind, and gracious toward him, while she

herself might well reproach him for having behaved like a villain!

He returned home full of sadness. He would have liked to ask her pardon,

to devote himself to her, to make her forget; and he pondered as to how

he might enable her to comprehend that henceforth, until death, he would

be obedient to all her wishes.

The next day she arrived, accompanied by her daughter, with a smile so

sad, an expression so pathetic, that the painter fancied he could see in

those poor blue eyes, that had always been so merry, all the pain, all

the remorse, all the desolation of that womanly heart. He was moved to

pity, and, in order that she might forget, he showed toward her with

delicate reserve the most thoughtful attentions. She acknowledged them

with gentleness and kindness, with the weary and languid manner of a

woman who suffers.

And he, looking at her, seized again with a mad dream of loving and

of being loved, asked himself why she was not more indignant at his

conduct, how she could still come to his studio, listen to him and

answer him, with that memory between them.

Since she could bear to see him again, however, could endure to hear

his voice, having always in her mind the one thought which she could not

escape, it must be that this thought had not become intolerable to her.

When a woman hates the man who has conquered her thus, she cannot remain

in his presence without showing her hatred, but that man never can

remain wholly indifferent to her. She must either detest him or pardon

him. And when she pardons that transgression, she is not far from love!

While he painted slowly, he arrived at this conclusion by small

arguments, precise, clear, and sure; he now felt himself strong,

steady, and master of the situation. He had only to be prudent, patient,

devoted, and one day or another she would again be his.

He knew how to wait. In order to reassure her and to conquer her once

more, he practised ruses in his turn; he assumed a tenderness restrained

by apparent remorse, hesitating attentions, and indifferent attitudes.

Tranquil in the certainty of approaching happiness, what did it matter

whether it arrived a little sooner, a little later? He even experienced

a strange, subtle pleasure in delay, in watching her, and saying to

himself, “She is afraid!” as he saw her coming always with her child.

He felt that between them a slow work of reconciliation was going

on, and thought that in the Countess's eyes was something strange:

constraint, a sweet sadness, that appeal of a struggling soul, of a

faltering will, which seems to say: “But--conquer me, then!”

After a while she came alone once more, reassured by his reserve. Then

he treated her as a friend, a comrade; he talked to her of his life, his

plans, his art, as to a brother.

Deluded by this attitude, she assumed joyfully the part of counselor,

flattered that he distinguished her thus above other women, and

convinced that his talent would gain in delicacy through this

intellectual intimacy. But, from consulting her and showing deference to

her, he caused her to pass naturally from the functions of a counselor

to the sacred office of inspirer. She found it charming to use her

influence thus over the great man, and almost consented that he should

love her as an artist, since it was she that gave him inspiration for

his work!

It was one evening, after a long talk about the loves of illustrious

painters, that she let herself glide into his arms. She rested there

this time, without trying to escape, and gave him back his kisses.

She felt no remorse now, only the vague consciousness of a fall; and to

stifle the reproaches of her reason she attributed it to fatality.

Drawn toward him by her virgin heart and her empty soul, the flesh

overcome by the slow domination of caresses, little by little she

attached herself to him, as do all tender women who love for the first

time.

With Olivier it was a crisis of acute love, sensuous and poetic. It

seemed to him sometimes that one day he had taken flight, with hands

extended, and that he had been able to clasp in full embrace that winged

and magnificent dream which is always hovering over our hopes.

He had finished the Countess's portrait, the best, certainly, that

he ever had painted, for he had discovered and crystallized

that inexpressible something which a painter seldom succeeds in

unveiling--that reflection, that mystery, that physiognomy of the soul,

which passes intangibly across a face.

Months rolled by, then years, which hardly loosened the tie that united

the Comtesse de Guilleroy and the painter, Olivier Bertin. With him

it was no longer the exaltation of the beginning, but a calm, deep

affection, a sort of loving friendship that had become a habit.

With her, on the contrary, the passionate, persistent attachment of

certain women who give themselves to a man wholly and forever was always

growing. Honest and straight in adulterous love as they might have been

in marriage, they devote themselves to a single object with a tenderness

from which nothing can turn them. Not only do they love the lover, but

they wish to love him, and, with eyes on him alone, they so fill their

hearts with thoughts of him that nothing strange can thenceforth enter

there. They have bound their lives resolutely, as one who knows how to

swim, yet wishes to die, ties his hands together before leaping from a

high bridge into the water.

But from the moment when the Countess had yielded, she was assailed by

fears for Bertin's constancy. Nothing held him but his masculine will,

his caprice, his passing fancy for a woman he had met one day just as

he had already met so many others! She realized that he was so free,

so susceptible to temptation--he who lived without duties, habits, or

scruples, like all men! He was handsome, celebrated, much sought after,

having, to respond to his easily awakened desires, fashionable women,

whose modesty is so fragile, women of the demi-monde of the theater,

prodigal of their favors with such men as he. One of them, some evening

after supper, might follow him and please him, take him and keep him.

Thus she lived in terror of losing him, watching his manner, his

attitudes, startled by a word, full of anguish when he admired another

woman, praised the charm of her countenance or her grace of bearing. All

of which she was ignorant in his life made her tremble, and all of which

she was cognizant alarmed her. At each of their meetings she questioned

him ingeniously, without his perceiving it, in order to make him express

his opinion on the people he had seen, the houses where he had dined, in

short, the lightest expression of his mind. As soon as she fancied

she detected the influence of some other person, she combated it with

prodigious astuteness and innumerable resources.

Oh, how often did she suspect those brief intrigues, without depth,

lasting perhaps a week or two, from time to time, which come into the

life of every prominent artist!

She had, as it were, an intuition of danger, even before she detected

the awakening of a new desire in Olivier, by the look of triumph in his

eyes, the expression of a man when swayed by a gallant fancy.

Then she would suffer; her sleep would be tortured by doubts. In order

to surprise him, she would appear suddenly in his studio, without giving

him notice of her coming, put questions that seemed naïve, tested his

tenderness while listening to his thoughts, as we test while listening

to detect hidden illness in the body. She would weep as soon as she

found herself sure that some one would take him from her this time,

robbing her of that love to which she clung so passionately because

she had staked upon it all her will, her strength of affection, all her

hopes and dreams.

Then, when she saw that he came back to her, after these brief

diversions, she experienced, as she drew close to him again, took

possession of him as of something lost and found, a deep, silent

happiness which sometimes, when she passed a church, urged her go in and

thank God.

Her preoccupation in ever making herself pleasing to him above all

others, and of guarding him against all others, had made her whole life

become a combat interrupted by coquetry. She had ceaselessly struggled

for him, and before him, with her grace, her beauty and elegance. She

wished that wherever he went he should hear her praised for her charm,

her taste, her wit, and her toilets. She wished to please others for his

sake, and to attract them so that he should be both proud and jealous of

her. And every time that she succeeded in arousing his jealousy, after

making him suffer a little, she allowed him the triumph of winning her

back, which revived his love in exciting his vanity. Then, realizing

that it was always possible for a man to meet in society a woman whose

physical charm would be greater than her own, being a novelty, she

resorted to other means: she flattered and spoiled him. Discreetly

but continuously she heaped praises upon him; she soothed him with

admiration and enveloped him in flattery, so that he might find all

other friendship, all other love, even, a little cold and incomplete,

and that if others also loved him he would perceive at last that she

alone of them all understood him.

She made the two drawing-rooms in her house, which he entered so often,

a place as attractive to the pride of the artist as to the heart of the

man, the place in all Paris where he liked best to come, because there

all his cravings were satisfied at the same time.

Not only did she learn to discover all his tastes, in order that,

while gratifying them in her own house, she might give him a feeling of

well-being that nothing could replace, but she knew how to create new

tastes, to arouse appetites of all kinds, material and intellectual,

habits of little attentions, of affections, of adoration and flattery!

She tried to charm his eye with elegance, his sense of smell with

perfumes, and his taste with delicate food.

But when she had planted in the soul and in the senses of a selfish

bachelor a multitude of petty, tyrannical needs, when she had become

quite certain that no mistress would trouble herself as she did to watch

over and maintain them, in order to surround him with all the little

pleasures of life, she suddenly feared, as she saw him disgusted with

his own home, always complaining of his solitary life, and, being

unable to come into her home except under all the restraints imposed

by society, going to the club, seeking every means to soften his lonely

lot--she feared lest he thought of marriage.

On some days she suffered so much from all these anxieties that she

longed for old age, to have an end of this anguish and rest in a cooler

and calmer affection.

Years passed, however, without disuniting them. The chain wherewith she

had attached him to her was heavy, and she made new links as the old

ones wore away. But, always solicitous, she watched over the painter's

heart as one guards a child crossing a street full of vehicles, and

day by day she lived in expectation of the unknown danger, the dread of

which always hung over her.

The Count, without suspicion or jealousy, found this intimacy of his

wife with a famous and popular artist a perfectly natural thing. Through

continually meeting, the two men, becoming accustomed to each other,

finally became excellent friends.

CHAPTER II

TWIN ROSES FROM A SINGLE STEM

When Bertin entered, on Friday evening, the house of his friend, where

he was to dine in honor of the return of Antoinette de Guilleroy, he

found in the little Louis XV salon only Monsieur de Musadieu, who had

just arrived.

He was a clever old man, who perhaps might have become of some

importance, and who now could not console himself for not having

attained to something worth while.

He had once been a commissioner of the imperial museums, and had found

means to get himself reappointed Inspector of Fine Arts under the

Republic, which did not prevent him from being, above all else, the

friend of princes, of all the princes, princesses, and duchesses of

European aristocracy, and the sworn protector of artists of all sorts.

He was endowed with an alert mind and quick perceptions, with great

facility of speech that enabled him to say agreeably the most ordinary

things, with a suppleness of thought that put him at ease in any

society, and a subtle diplomatic scent that gave him the power to judge

men at first sight; and he strolled from salon to salon, morning and

evening, with his enlightened, useless, and gossiping activity.

Apt at everything, as he appeared, he would talk on any subject with

an air of convincing competence and familiarity that made him greatly

appreciated by fashionable women, whom he served as a sort of traveling

bazaar of erudition. As a matter of fact, he knew many things without

ever having read any but the most indispensable books; but he stood very

well with the five Academies, with all the savants, writers, and learned

specialists, to whom he listened with clever discernment. He knew how to

forget at once explanations that were too technical or were useless to

him, remembered the others very well, and lent to the information thus

gleaned an easy, clear, and good-natured rendering that made them as

readily comprehensible as the popular presentation of scientific facts.

He gave the impression of being a veritable storehouse of ideas, one of

those vast places wherein one never finds rare objects but discovers

a multiplicity of cheap productions of all kinds and from all sources,

from household utensils to the popular instruments for physical culture

or for domestic surgery.

The painters, with whom his official functions brought him in continual

contact, made sport of him but feared him. He rendered them some

services, however, helped them to sell pictures, brought them in contact

with fashionable persons, and enjoyed presenting them, protecting them,

launching them. He seemed to devote himself to a mysterious function of

fusing the fashionable and the artistic worlds, pluming himself on

his intimate acquaintance with these, and of his familiar footing with

those, on breakfasting with the Prince of Wales, on his way through

Paris, or dining, the same evening, with Paul Adelmant, Olivier Bertin,

and Amaury Maldant.

Bertin, who liked him well enough, found him amusing, and said of him:

“He is the encyclopedia of Jules Verne, bound in ass's skin!”

The two men shook hands and began to talk of the political situation and

the rumors of war, which Musadieu thought alarming, for evident reasons

which he explained very well, Germany having every interest in crushing

us and in hastening that moment for which M. de Bismarck had been

waiting eighteen years; while Olivier Bertin proved by irrefutable

argument that these fears were chimerical, it being impossible for

Germany to be foolish enough to risk her conquest in an always doubtful

venture, or for the Chancelor to be imprudent enough to risk, in the

latter years of his life, his achievements and his glory at a single

blow.

M. de Musadieu, however, seemed to know something of which he did not

wish to speak. Furthermore, he had seen a Minister that morning and had

met the Grand Duke Vladimir, returning from Cannes, the evening before.

The artist was unconvinced by this, and with quiet irony expressed doubt

of the knowledge of even the best informed. Behind all these rumors was

the influence of the Bourse! Bismarck alone might have a settled opinion

on the subject.

M. de Guilleroy entered, shook hands warmly, excusing himself in

unctuous words for having left them alone.

“And you, my dear Deputy,” asked the painter, “what do you think of

these rumors of war?”

M. de Guilleroy launched into a discourse. As a member of the Chamber,

he knew more of the subject than anyone else, though he held an opinion

differing from that of most of his colleagues. No, he did not believe in

the probability of an approaching conflict, unless it should be provoked

by French turbulence and by the rodomontades of the self-styled patriots

of the League. And he painted Bismarck's portrait in striking colors, a

portrait a la Saint-Simon. The man Bismarck was one that no one wished

to understand, because one always lends to others his own ways of

thinking, and credits them with a readiness to do that which he would

do were he placed in their situation. M. de Bismarck was not a false and

lying diplomatist, but frank and brutal, always loudly proclaiming the

truth and announcing his intentions. “I want peace!” said he. That was

true; he wanted peace, nothing but peace, and everything had proved it

in a blinding fashion for eighteen years; everything--his arguments,

his alliances, that union of peoples banded together against our

impetuosity. M. de Guilleroy concluded in a tone of profound conviction:

“He is a great man, a very great man, who desires peace, but who has

faith only in menaces and violent means as the way to obtain it. In

short, gentlemen, a great barbarian.”

“He that wishes the end must take the means,” M. de Musadieu replied. “I

will grant you willingly that he adores peace if you will concede to me

that he always wishes to make war in order to obtain it. But that is

an indisputable and phenomenal truth: In this world war is made only to

obtain peace!”

A servant announced: “Madame la Duchesse de Mortemain.”

Between the folding-doors appeared a tall, large woman, who entered with

an air of authority.

Guilleroy hastened to meet her, and kissed her hand, saying:

“How do you do, Duchess?”

The other two men saluted her with a certain distinguished familiarity,

for the Duchess's manner was both cordial and abrupt.

She was the widow of General the Duc de Mortemain, mother of an only

daughter married to the Prince de Salia; daughter of the Marquis de

Farandal, of high family and royally rich, and received at her mansion

in the Rue de Varenne all the celebrities of the world, who met and

complimented one another there. No Highness passed through Paris without

dining at her table; no man could attract public attention that she did

not immediately wish to know him. She must see him, make him talk

to her, form her own judgment of him. This amused her greatly, lent

interest to life, and fed the flame of imperious yet kindly curiosity

that burned within her.

She had hardly seated herself when the same servant announced:

“Monsieur le Baron and Madame la Baronne de Corbelle.”

They were young; the Baron was bald and fat, the Baroness was slender,

elegant, and very dark.

This couple occupied a peculiar situation in the French aristocracy due

solely to a scrupulous choice of connections. Belonging to the polite

world, but without value or talent, moved in all their actions by an

immoderate love of that which is select, correct, and distinguished;

by dint of visiting only the most princely houses, of professing

their royalist sentiments, pious and correct to a supreme degree; by

respecting all that should be respected, by condemning all that should

be condemned, by never being mistaken on a point of worldly dogma or

hesitating over a detail of etiquette, they had succeeded in passing

in the eyes of many for the finest flower of high life. Their opinion

formed a sort of code of correct form and their presence in a house gave

it a true title of distinction.

The Corbelles were relatives of the Comte de Guilleroy.

“Well,” said the Duchess in astonishment, “and your wife?”

“One instant, one little instant,” pleaded the Count. “There is a

surprise: she is just about to come.”

When Madame de Guilleroy, as the bride of a month, had entered

society, she was presented to the Duchesse de Mortemain, who loved her

immediately, adopted her, and patronized her.

For twenty years this friendship never had diminished, and when the

Duchess said, “_Ma petite_,” one still heard in her voice the tenderness

of that sudden and persistent affection. It was at her house that the

painter and the Countess had happened to meet.

Musadieu approached the group. “Has the Duchess been to see the

exposition of the Intemperates?” he inquired.

“No; what is that?”

“A group of new artists, impressionists in a state of intoxication. Two

of them are very fine.”

The great lady murmured, with disdain: “I do not like the jests of those

gentlemen.”

Authoritative, brusque, barely tolerating any other opinion than

her own, and founding hers solely on the consciousness of her social

station, considering, without being able to give a good reason for it,

that artists and learned men were merely intelligent mercenaries charged

by God to amuse society or to render service to it, she had no other

basis for her judgments than the degree of astonishment or of pleasure

she experienced at the sight of a thing, the reading of a book, or the

recital of a discovery.

Tall, stout, heavy, red, with a loud voice, she passed as having the

air of a great lady because nothing embarrassed her; she dared to say

anything and patronized the whole world, including dethroned princes,

with her receptions in their honor, and even the Almighty by her

generosity to the clergy and her gifts to the churches.

“Does the Duchess know,” Musadieu continued, “that they say the assassin

of Marie Lambourg has been arrested?”

Her interest was awakened at once.

“No, tell me about it,” she replied.

He narrated the details. Musadieu was tall and very thin; he wore

a white waistcoat and little diamond shirt-studs; he spoke without

gestures, with a correct air which allowed him to say the daring

things which he took delight in uttering. He was very near-sighted, and

appeared, notwithstanding his eye-glass, never to see anyone; and when

he sat down his whole frame seemed to accommodate itself to the shape

of the chair. His figure seemed to shrink into folds, as if his spinal

column were made of rubber; his legs, crossed one over the other, looked

like two rolled ribbons, and his long arms, resting on the arms of the

chair, allowed to droop his pale hands with interminable fingers. His

hair and moustache, artistically dyed, with a few white locks cleverly

forgotten, were a subject of frequent jests.

While he was explaining to the Duchess that the jewels of the murdered

prostitute had been given as a present by the suspected murderer to

another girl of the same stamp, the door of the large drawing-room

opened wide once more, and two blond women in white lace, a creamy

Mechlin, resembling each other like two sisters of different ages, the

one a little too mature, the other a little too young, one a trifle

too plump, the other a shade too slender, advanced, clasping each other

round the waist and smiling.

The guests exclaimed and applauded. No one, except Olivier Bertin, knew

of Annette de Guilleroy's return, and the appearance of the young girl

beside her mother, who at a little distance seemed almost as fresh

and even more beautiful--for, like a flower in full bloom, she had

not ceased to be brilliant, while the child, hardly budding, was only

beginning to be pretty--made both appear charming.

The Duchess, delighted, clapped her hands, exclaiming: “Heavens!

How charming and amusing they are, standing beside each other! Look,

Monsieur de Musadieu, how much they resemble each other!”

The two were compared, and two opinions were formed. According to

Musadieu, the Corbelles, and the Comte de Guilleroy, the Countess and

her daughter resembled each other only in coloring, in the hair, and

above all in the eyes, which were exactly alike, both showing tiny black

points, like minute drops of ink, on the blue iris. But it was their

opinion that when the young girl should have become a woman they would

no longer resemble each other.

According to the Duchess, on the contrary, and also Olivier Bertin, they

were similar in all respects, and only the difference in age made them

appear unlike.

“How much she has changed in three years!” said the painter. “I should

not have recognized her, and I don't dare to _tutoyer_ the young lady!”

The Countess laughed. “The idea! I should like to hear you say 'you' to

Annette!”

The young girl, whose future gay audacity was already apparent under an

air of timid playfulness, replied: “It is I who shall not dare to say

'thou' to Monsieur Bertin.”

Her mother smiled.

“Yes, continue the old habit--I will allow you to do so,” she said. “You

will soon renew your acquaintance with him.”

But Annette shook her head.

“No, no, it would embarrass me,” she said.

The Duchess embraced her, and examined her with all the interest of a

connoisseur.

“Look me in the face, my child,” she said. “Yes, you have exactly the

same expression as your mother; you won't be so bad by-and-by, when you

have acquired more polish. And you must grow a little plumper--not very

much, but a little. You are very thin.”

“Oh, don't say that!” exclaimed the Countess.

“Why not?”

“It is so nice to be slender. I intend to reduce myself at once.”

But Madame de Mortemain took offense, forgetting in her anger the

presence of a young girl.

“Oh, of course, you are all in favor of bones, because you can dress

them better than flesh. For my part, I belong to the generation of fat

women! To-day is the day of thin ones. They make me think of the lean

kine of Egypt. I cannot understand how men can admire your skeletons. In

my time they demanded more!”

She subsided amid the smiles of the company, but added, turning to

Annette:

“Look at your mamma, little one; she does very well; she has attained

the happy medium--imitate her.”

They passed into the dining-room. After they were seated, Musadieu

resumed the discussion.

“For my part, I say that men should be thin, because they are formed

for exercises that require address and agility, incompatible with

corpulency. But the women's case is a little different. Don't you think

so, Corbelle?”

Corbelle was perplexed, the Duchess being stout and his own wife more

than slender. But the Baroness came to the rescue of her husband, and

resolutely declared herself in favor of slimness. The year before that,

she declared, she had been obliged to struggle with the beginning of

_embonpoint_, over which she soon triumphed.

“Tell us how you did it,” demanded Madame de Guilleroy.

The Baroness explained the method employed by all the fashionable women

of the day. One must never drink while eating; but an hour after the

repast a cup of tea may be taken, boiling hot. This method succeeded

with everyone. She cited astonishing cases of fat women who in three

months had become more slender than the blade of a knife. The Duchess

exclaimed in exasperation:

“Good gracious, how stupid to torture oneself like that! You like

nothing any more--nothing--not even champagne. Bertin, as an artist,

what do you think of this folly?”

“_Mon Dieu_, Madame, I am a painter and I simply arrange the drapery, so

it is all the same to me. If I were a sculptor I might complain.”

“But as a man, which do you prefer?”

“I? Oh, a certain rounded slimness--what my cook calls a nice little

corn-fed chicken. It is not fat, but plump and delicate.”

The comparison caused a laugh; but the incredulous Countess looked at

her daughter and murmured:

“No, it is very much better to be thin; slender women never grow old.”

This point also was discussed by the company; and all agreed that a very

fat person should not grow thin too rapidly.

This observation gave place to a review of women known in society and

to new discussions on their grace, their chic and beauty. Musadieu

pronounced the blonde Marquise de Lochrist incomparably charming,

while Bertin esteemed as a beauty Madame Mandeliere, with her brunette

complexion, low brow, her dusky eyes and somewhat large mouth, in which

her teeth seemed to sparkle.

He was seated beside the young girl, and said suddenly, turning to her:

“Listen to me, Nanette. Everything that we have just been saying you

will hear repeated at least once a week until you are old. In a week you

will know all that society thinks about politics, women, plays, and

all the rest of it. Only an occasional change of names will be

necessary--names of persons and titles of works. When you have heard us

all express and defend our opinions, you will quietly choose your own

among those that one must have, and then you need never trouble yourself

to think of anything more, never. You will only have to rest in that

opinion.”

The young girl, without replying, turned upon him her mischievous eyes,

wherein sparkled youthful intelligence, restrained, but ready to escape.

But the Duchess and Musadieu, who played with ideas as one tosses a

ball, without perceiving that they continually exchanged the same ones,

protested in the name of thought and of human activity.

Then Bertin attempted to show how the intelligence of fashionable

people, even the brightest of them, is without value, foundation,

or weight; how slight is the basis of their beliefs, how feeble and

indifferent is their interest in intellectual things, how fickle and

questionable are their tastes.

Warmed by one of those spasms of indignation, half real, half assumed,

aroused at first by a desire to be eloquent, and urged on by the sudden

prompting of a clear judgment, ordinarily obscured by an easy-going

nature, he showed how those persons whose sole occupation in life is to

pay visits and dine in town find themselves becoming, by an irresistible

fatality, light and graceful but utterly trivial beings, vaguely

agitated by superficial cares, beliefs, and appetites.

He showed that none of that class has either depth, ardor, or sincerity;

that, their intellectual culture being slight and their erudition a

simple varnish, they must remain, in short, manikins who produce the

effect and make the gesture of the enlightened beings that they are not.

He proved that, the frail roots of their instincts having been nourished

on conventionalities instead of realities, they love nothing sincerely,

that even the luxury of their existence is a satisfaction of vanity and

not the gratification of a refined bodily necessity, for usually their

table is indifferent, their wines are bad and very dear.

They live, as he said, beside everything, but see nothing and study

nothing; they are near science, of which they are ignorant; nature, at

which they do not know how to look; outside of true happiness, for they

are powerless to enjoy it; outside of the beauty of the world and the

beauty of art, of which they chatter without having really discovered

it, or even believing in it, for they are ignorant of the intoxication

of tasting the joys of life and of intelligence. They are incapable

of attaching themselves in anything to that degree that existence is

illumined by the happiness of comprehending it.

The Baron de Corbelle thought that it was his duty to come to the

defense of society. This he did with inconsistent and irrefutable

arguments, which melt before reason as snow before the fire, yet which

cannot be disproved--the absurd and triumphant arguments of a country

curate who would demonstrate the existence of God. In concluding, he

compared fashionable people to race-horses, which, in truth, are good

for nothing, but which are the glory of the equine race.

Bertin, irritated by this adversary, preserved a politely disdainful

silence. But suddenly the Baron's imbecilities exasperated him, and,

interrupting him adroitly, he recounted the life of a man of fashion

from his rising to his going to rest, without omitting anything. All the

details, cleverly described, made up an irresistibly amusing silhouette.

Once could see the fine gentleman dressed by his valet, first expressing

a few general ideas to the hairdresser that came to shave him; then,

when taking his morning stroll, inquiring of the grooms about the health

of the horses; then trotting through the avenues of the Bois, caring

only about saluting and being saluted; then breakfasting opposite his

wife, who in her turn had been out in her coupe, speaking to her only to

enumerate the names of the persons he had met that morning; then

passing from drawing-room to drawing-room until evening, refreshing his

intelligence by contact with others of his circle, dining with a prince,

where the affairs of Europe were discussed, and finishing the evening

behind the scenes at the Opera, where his timid pretensions at being a

gay dog were innocently satisfied by the appearance of being surrounded

by naughtiness.

The picture was so true, although its satire wounded no one present,

that laughter ran around the table.

The Duchess, shaken by the suppressed merriment of fat persons, relieved

herself by discreet chuckles.

“Really, you are too funny!” she said at last; “you will make me die of

laughter.”

Bertin replied, with some excitement:

“Oh, Madame, in the polite world one does not die of laughter! One

hardly laughs, even. We have sufficient amiability, as a matter of

good taste, to pretend to be amused and appear to laugh. The grimace

is imitated well enough, but the real thing is never done. Go to the

theaters of the common people--there you will see laughter. Go among the

_bourgeoisie_, when they are amusing themselves; you will see them laugh

to suffocation. Go to the soldiers' quarters, you will see men choking,

their eyes full of tears, doubled up on their beds over the jokes of

some funny fellow. But in our drawing-rooms we never laugh. I tell you

that we simulate everything, even laughter.”

Musadieu interrupted him:

“Permit me to say that you are very severe. It seems to me that you

yourself, my dear fellow, do not wholly despise this society at which

you rail so bitterly.”

Bertin smiled.

“I? I love it!” he declared.

“But then----”

“I despise myself a little, as a mongrel of doubtful race.”

“All that sort of talk is nothing but a pose,” said the Duchess.

And, as he denied having any intention of posing, she cut short the

discussion by declaring that all artists try to make people believe that

chalk is cheese.

The conversation then became general, touching upon everything, ordinary

and pleasant, friendly and critical, and, as the dinner was drawing

toward its end, the Countess suddenly exclaimed, pointing to the full

glasses of wine that were ranged before her plate:

“Well, you see that I have drunk nothing, nothing, not a drop! We shall

see whether I shall not grow thin!”

The Duchess, furious, tried to make her swallow some mineral water, but

in vain; then she exclaimed:

“Oh, the little simpleton! That daughter of hers will turn her head. I

beg of you, Guilleroy, prevent your wife from committing this folly.”

The Count, who was explaining to Musadieu the system of a

threshing-machine invented in America, had not been listening.

“What folly, Duchess?”

“The folly of wishing to grow thin.”

The Count looked at his wife with an expression of kindly indifference.

“I never have formed the habit of opposing her,” he replied.

The Countess had risen, taking the arm of her neighbor; the Count

offered his to the Duchess, and they passed into the large drawing-room,

the boudoir at the end being reserved for use in the daytime.

It was a vast and well lighted room. On the four walls the large and

beautiful panels of pale blue silk, of antique pattern, framed in white

and gold, took on under the light of the lamps and the chandelier a

moonlight softness and brightness. In the center of the principal one,

the portrait of the Countess by Olivier Bertin seemed to inhabit, to

animate the apartment. It had a look of being at home there, mingling

with the air of the salon its youthful smile, the grace of its pose, the

bright charm of its golden hair. It had become almost a custom, a sort

of polite ceremony, like making the sign of the cross on entering a

church, to compliment the model on the work of the painter whenever

anyone stood before it.

Musadieu never failed to do this. His opinion as a connoisseur

commissioned by the State having the value of that of an official

expert, he regarded it as his duty to affirm often, with conviction, the

superiority of that painting.

“Indeed,” said he, “that is the most beautiful modern portrait I know.

There is prodigious life in it.”

The Comte de Guilleroy, who, through hearing this portrait continually

praised, had acquired a rooted conviction that he possessed a

masterpiece, approached to join him, and for a minute or two they

lavished upon the portrait all the art technicalities of the day in

praise of the apparent qualities of the work, and also of those that

were suggested.

All eyes were lifted toward the portrait, apparently in a rapture of

admiration, and Olivier Bertin, accustomed to these eulogies, to which

he paid hardly more attention than to questions about his health when

meeting some one in the street, nevertheless adjusted the reflector lamp

placed before the portrait in order to illumine it, the servant having

carelessly set it a little on one side.

Then they seated themselves, and as the Count approached the Duchess,

she said to him:

“I believe that my nephew is coming here for me, and to ask you for a

cup of tea.”

Their wishes, for some time, had been mutually understood and agreed,

without either side ever having exchanged confidences or even hints.

The Marquis de Farandal, who was the brother of the Duchesse de

Mortemain, after almost ruining himself at the gaming table, had died

of the effects of a fall from his horse, leaving a widow and a son. This

young man, now nearly twenty-eight years of age, was one of the most

popular leaders of the cotillion in Europe, for he was sometimes

requested to go to Vienna or to London to crown in the waltz some

princely ball. Although possessing very small means, he remained,

through his social station, his family, his name, and his almost royal

connections, one of the most popular and envied men in Paris.

It was necessary to give a solid foundation to this glory of his youth,

and after a rich, a very rich marriage, to replace social triumphs by

political success. As soon as the Marquis should become a deputy, he

would become also, by that attainment alone, one of the props of the

future throne, one of the counselors of the King, one of the leaders of

the party.

The Duchess, who was well informed, knew the amount of the enormous

fortune of the Comte de Guilleroy, a prudent hoarder of money, who lived

in a simple apartment when he was quite able to live like a great lord

in one of the handsomest mansions of Paris. She knew about his always

successful speculations, his subtle scent as a financier, his share in

the most fruitful schemes of the past ten years, and she had cherished

the idea of marrying her nephew to the daughter of the Norman deputy, to

whom this marriage would give an immense influence in the aristocratic

society of the princely circle. Guilleroy, who had made a rich marriage,

and had thereby increased a large personal fortune, now nursed other

ambitions.

He had faith in the return of the King, and wished, when that event

should come, to be so situated as to derive from it the largest personal

profit.

As a simple deputy, he did not cut a prominent figure. As a

father-in-law of the Marquis of Farandal, whose ancestors had been the

faithful and chosen familiars of the royal house of France, he might

rise to the first rank.

The friendship of the Duchess for his wife lent to this union an element

of intimacy that was very precious; and, for fear some other young girl

might appear who would please the Marquis, he had brought about the

return of his own daughter in order to hasten events.

Madame de Mortemain, foreseeing and divining his plans, lent him her

silent complicity; and on that very day, although she had not been

informed of the sudden return of the young girl, she had made an

appointment with her nephew to meet her at the Guilleroys, so that he

might gradually become accustomed to visit that house frequently.

For the first time, the Count and the Duchess spoke of their mutual

desires in veiled terms; and when they parted, a treaty of alliance had

been concluded.

At the other end of the room everyone was laughing at a story M. de

Musadieu was telling to the Baroness de Corbelle about the presentation

of a negro ambassador to the President of the Republic, when the Marquis

de Farandal was announced.

He appeared in the doorway and paused. With a quick and familiar

gesture, he placed a monocle on his right eye and left it there, as if

to reconnoiter the room he was about to enter, but perhaps to give those

that were already there the time to see him and to observe his entrance.

Then by an imperceptible movement of cheek and eyebrow, he allowed to

drop the bit of glass at the end of a black silk hair, and advanced

quickly toward Madame de Guilleroy, whose extended hand he kissed,

bowing very low. He saluted his aunt likewise, then shook hands with

the rest of the company, going from one to another with easy elegance of

manner.

He was a tall fellow, with a red moustache, and was already slightly

bald, with the figure of an officer and the gait of an English

sportsman. It was evident, at first sight of him, that all his limbs

were better exercised than his head, and that he cared only for such

occupations as developed strength and physical activity. He had some

education, however, for he had learned, and was learning every day, by

much mental effort, a great deal that would be useful to him to know

later: history, studying dates unweariedly, but mistaking the lesson to

be learned from facts and the elementary notions of political economy

necessary to a deputy, the A B C of sociology for the use of the ruling

classes.

Musadieu esteemed him, saying: “He will be a valuable man.” Bertin

appreciated his skill and his vigor. They went to the same fencing-hall,

often hunted together, and met while riding in the avenues of the Bois.

Between them, therefore, had been formed a sympathy of similar tastes,

that instinctive free-masonry which creates between two men a subject of

conversation, as agreeable to one as to the other.

When the Marquis was presented to Annette de Guilleroy, he immediately

had a suspicion of his aunt's designs, and after saluting her he ran his

eyes over her, with the rapid glance of a connoisseur.

He decided that she was graceful, and above all full of promise, for

he had led so many cotillions that he knew young girls well, and could

predict almost to a certainty the future of their beauty, as an expert

who tastes a wine as yet too new.

He exchanged only a few unimportant words with her, then seated himself

near the Baroness de Corbelle, so that he could chat with her in an

undertone.

Everyone took leave at an early hour, and when all had gone, when the

child was in her bed, the lamps were extinguished, the servants gone

to their own quarters, the Comte de Guilleroy, walking across the

drawing-room, lighted now by only two candles, detained for a long time

the Countess, who was half asleep in an armchair, to tell her of his

hopes, to suggest the attitude for themselves to assume, to forecast all

combinations, the chances and the precautions to be taken.

It was late when he retired, charmed, however, with this evening, and

murmuring, “I believe that that affair is a certainty.”

CHAPTER III

A FLAME REKINDLED

“_When will you come, my friend? I have not seen you for three days, and

that seems a long time to me. My daughter occupies much of my time, but

you know that I can no longer do without you._”

The painter, who was drawing sketches, ever seeking a new subject

re-read the Countess's note, then, opening the drawer of a writing-desk,

he deposited it on a heap of other letters, which had been accumulating

there since the beginning of their love-affair.

Thanks to the opportunities given them by the customs of fashionable

society, they had grown used to seeing each other almost every day. Now

and then she visited him, and sat for an hour or two in the armchair in

which she had posed, while he worked. But, as she had some fear of the

criticisms of the servants, she preferred to receive him at her own

house, or to meet him elsewhere, for that daily interview, that small

change of love.

These meetings would be agreed upon beforehand, and always seemed

perfectly natural to M. de Guilleroy.

Twice a week at least the painter dined at the Countess's house, with

a few friends; on Monday nights he visited her in her box at the Opera;

then they would agree upon a meeting at such or such a house, to which

chance led them at the same hour. He knew the evenings that she did

not go out, and would call then to have a cup of tea with her, feeling

himself very much at home even near the folds of her robe, so tenderly

and so surely settled in that ripe affection, so fixed in the habit of

finding her somewhere, of passing some time by her side, or exchanging

a few words with her and of mingling a few thoughts, that he felt,

although the glow of his passion had long since faded, an incessant need

of seeing her.

The desire for family life, for a full and animated household, for the

family table, for those evenings when one talks without fatigue with

old friends, that desire for contact, for familiarity, for human

intercourse, which dwells dormant in every human heart, and which every

old bachelor carries from door to door to his friends, where he installs

something of himself, added a strain of egoism to his sentiments of

affection. In that house, where he was loved and spoiled, where he found

everything, he could still rest and nurse his solitude.

For three days he had not seen his friends, who must be very much

occupied by the return of the daughter of the house; and he was already

feeling bored, and even a little offended because they had not sent for

him sooner, but not wishing, as a matter of discretion, to be the first

to make an approach.

The Countess's letter aroused him like the stroke of a whip. It was

three o'clock in the afternoon. He decided to go immediately to her

house, that he might find her before she went out.

The valet appeared, summoned by the sound of Olivier's bell.

“What sort of weather is it, Joseph?”

“Very fine, Monsieur.”

“Warm?”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

“White waistcoat, blue jacket, gray hat.”

He always dressed with elegance, but although his tailor turned him out

in correct styles, the very way in which he wore his clothes, his manner

of walking, his comfortable proportions encased in a white waistcoat,

his high gray felt hat, tilted a little toward the back of his head,

seemed to reveal at once that he was both an artist and a bachelor.

When he reached the Countess's house, he was told that she was dressing

for a drive in the Bois. He was a little vexed at this, and waited.

According to his habit, he began to pace to and fro in the drawing-room,

going from one seat to another, or from the windows to the wall, in the

large drawing-room darkened by the curtains. On the light tables with

gilded feet, trifles of various kinds, useless, pretty, and costly, lay

scattered about in studied disorder. There were little antique boxes of

chased gold, miniature snuff-boxes, ivory statuettes, objects in dull

silver, quite modern, of an exaggerated severity, in which English taste

appeared: a diminutive kitchen stove, and upon it a cat drinking from a

pan, a cigarette-case simulating a loaf of bread, a coffee-pot to hold

matches, and in a casket a complete set of doll's jewelry--necklaces,

bracelets, rings, brooches, ear-rings set with diamonds, sapphires,

rubies, emeralds, a microscopic fantasy that seemed to have been

executed by Lilliputian jewelers.

From time to time he touched some object, given by himself on some

anniversary; he lifted it, handled it, examining it with dreamy

indifference, then put it back in its place.

In one corner some books that were luxuriously bound but seldom

opened lay within easy reach on a round table with a single leg for a

foundation, which stood before a little curved sofa. The _Revue des Deux

Mondes_ lay there also, somewhat worn, with turned-down pages, as if it

had been read and re-read many times; other publications lay near it,

some of them uncut: the _Arts modernes_, which is bought only because of

its cost, the subscription price being four hundred francs a year; and

the _Feuille libre_, a thin volume between blue covers, in which appear

the more recent poets, called “_les enerves_.”

Between the windows stood the Countess's writing-desk, a coquettish

piece of furniture of the last century, on which she wrote replies to

those hurried questions handed to her during her receptions. A few books

were on that, also, familiar books, index to the heart and mind of a

woman: Musset, Manon Lescaut, Werther; and, to show that she was not a

stranger to the complicated sensations and mysteries of psychology,

_Les Fleurs du Mal_, _Le Rouge et le Noir_, _La Femme au XVIII Siecle_,

_Adolphe_.

Beside the books lay a charming hand-mirror, a masterpiece of the

silversmith's art, the glass being turned down upon a square of

embroidered velvet, in order to allow one to admire the curious gold and

silver workmanship on the back. Bertin took it up and looked at his

own reflection. For some years he had been growing terribly old

in appearance, and although he thought that his face showed more

originality than when he was younger, the sight of his heavy cheeks and

increasing wrinkles saddened him.

A door opened behind him.

“Good morning, Monsieur Bertin,” said Annette.

“Good morning, little one; are you well?”

“Very well; and you?”

“What, are you not saying 'thou' to me, then, after all?”

“No, indeed! It would really embarrass me.”

“Nonsense!”

“Yes, it would. You make me feel timid.”

“And why, pray?”

“Because--because you are neither young enough nor old enough--”

The painter laughed.

“After such a reason as that I will insist no more.”

She blushed suddenly, up to the white brow, where the waves of hair

began to ripple, and resumed, with an air of slight confusion:

“Mamma told me to say to you that she will be down immediately, and to

ask you whether you will go to the Bois de Boulogne with us.”

“Yes, certainly. You are alone?”

“No; with the Duchesse de Mortemain.”

“Very well; I will go.”

“Then will you allow me to go and put on my hat?”

“Yes, go, my child.”

As Annette left the room the Countess entered, veiled, ready to set

forth. She extended her hands cordially.

“We never see you any more. What are you doing?” she inquired.

“I did not wish to trouble you just at this time,” said Bertin.

In the tone with which she spoke the word “Olivier!” she expressed all

her reproaches and all her attachment.

“You are the best woman in the world,” he said, touched by the tender

intonation of his name.

This little love-quarrel being finished and settled, the Countess

resumed her light, society tone.

“We shall pick up the Duchess at her hotel and then make a tour of the

Bois. We must show all that sort of thing to Nanette, you know.”

The landau awaited them under the porte-cochere.

Bertin seated himself facing the two ladies, and the carriage

departed, the pawing of the horses making a resonant sound against the

over-arching roof of the porte-cochere.

Along the grand boulevard descending toward the Madeleine all the gaiety

of the springtime seemed to have fallen upon the tide of humanity.

The soft air and the sunshine lent to the men a festive air, to the

women a suggestion of love; the bakers' boys deposited their baskets on

the benches to run and play with their brethren, the street urchins; the

dogs appeared in a great hurry to go somewhere; the canaries hanging in

the boxes of the concierges trilled loudly; only the ancient cab-horses

kept their usual sedate pace.

“Oh, what a beautiful day! How good it is to live!” murmured the

Countess.

The painter contemplated both mother and daughter in the dazzling light.

Certainly, they were different, but at the same time so much alike that

the latter was veritably a continuation of the former, made of the same

blood, the same flesh, animated by the same life. Their eyes, above all,

those blue eyes flecked with tiny black drops, of such a brilliant blue

in the daughter, a little faded in the mother, fixed upon him a look so

similar that he expected to hear them make the same replies. And he was

surprised to discover, as he made them laugh and talk, that before him

were two very distinct women, one who had lived and one who was about

to live. No, he did not foresee what would become of that child when her

young mind, influenced by tastes and instincts that were as yet dormant,

should have expanded and developed amid the life of the world. This was

a pretty little new person, ready for chances and for love, ignored and

ignorant, who was sailing out of port like a vessel, while her mother

was returning, having traversed life and having loved!

He was touched at the thought that she had chosen himself, and that she

preferred him still, this woman who had remained so pretty, rocked in

that landau, in the warm air of springtime.

As he expressed his gratitude to her in a glance, she divined it, and he

thought he could feel her thanks in the rustle of her robe.

In his turn he murmured: “Oh, yes, what a beautiful day!”

When they had taken up the Duchess, in the Rue de Varenne, they spun

along at a swift pace toward the Invalides, crossed the Seine, and

reached the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, going up toward the Arc de

triomphe de l'Etoile in the midst of a sea of carriages.

The young girl was seated beside Olivier, riding backward, and she

opened upon this stream of equipages wide and wondering eager eyes.

Occasionally, when the Duchess and the Countess acknowledged a

salutation with a short movement of the head, she would ask “Who is

that?” Bertin answered: “The Pontaiglin,” “the Puicelci,” “the Comtesse

de Lochrist,” or “the beautiful Madame Mandeliere.”

Now they were following the Avenue of the Bois de Boulogne, amid the

noise and the rattling of wheels. The carriages, a little less crowded

than below the Arc de Triomphe, seemed to struggle in an endless race.

The cabs, the heavy landaus, the solemn eight-spring vehicles, passed

one another over and over again, distanced suddenly by a rapid victoria,

drawn by a single trotter, bearing along at a reckless pace, through

all that rolling throng, _bourgeois_ and aristocratic, through all

societies, all classes, all hierarchies, an indolent young woman, whose

bright and striking toilette diffused among the carriages it touched in

passing a strange perfume of some unknown flower.

“Who is that lady?” Annette inquired.

“I don't know,” said Bertin, at which reply the Duchess and the Countess

exchanged a smile.

The leaves were opening, the familiar nightingales of that Parisian

garden were singing already among the tender verdure, and when, as the

carriage approached the lake, it joined the long file of other vehicles

at a walk, there was an incessant exchange of salutations, smiles, and

friendly words, as the wheels touched. The procession seemed now like

the gliding of a flotilla in which were seated very well-bred ladies and

gentlemen. The Duchess, who was bowing every moment before raised hats

or inclined heads, appeared to be passing them in review, calling

to mind what she knew, thought, or supposed of these people, as they

defiled before her.

“Look, dearest, there is the lovely Madame Mandeliere again--the beauty

of the Republic.”

In a light and dashing carriage, the beauty of the Republic allowed to

be admired, under an apparent indifference to this indisputable glory,

her large dark eyes, her low brow beneath a veil of dusky hair, and her

mouth, which was a shade too obstinate in its lines.

“Very beautiful, all the same,” said Bertin.

The Countess did not like to hear him praise other women. She shrugged

her shoulders slightly, but said nothing.

But the young girl, in whom the instinct of rivalry suddenly awoke,

ventured to say: “I do not find her beautiful at all.”

“What! You do not think her beautiful?” said the painter.

“No; she looks as if she had been dipped in ink.”

The Duchess, delighted, burst into laughter.

“Bravo, little one!” she cried. “For the last six years half the men

in Paris have been swooning at the feet of that negress! I believe that

they sneer at us. Look at the Comtesse de Lochrist instead.”

Alone, in a landau with a white poodle, the Countess, delicate as a

miniature, a blond with brown eyes, whose grace and beauty had served

for five or six years as the theme for the admiration of her partisans,

bowed to the ladies, with a fixed smile on her lips.

But Nanette exhibited no greater enthusiasm than before.

“Oh,” she said, “she is no longer young!”

Bertin, who usually did not at all agree with the Countess in the daily

discussions of these two rivals, felt a sudden irritation at the stupid

intolerance of this little simpleton.

“Nonsense!” he said. “Whether one likes her or not, she is charming; and

I only hope that you may become as pretty as she.”

“Pooh! pooh!” said the Duchess. “You notice women only after they have

passed the thirtieth year. The child is right. You admire only _passee_

beauty.”

“Pardon me!” he exclaimed; “a woman is really beautiful only after

maturing, when the expression of her face and eyes has become fully

developed!”

He enlarged upon this idea that the first youthful freshness is only the

gloss of riper beauty; he demonstrated that men of the world were wise

in paying but little attention to young girls in their first season, and

that they were right in proclaiming them beautiful only when they passed

into their later period of bloom.

The Countess, flattered, murmured: “He is right; he speaks as an artist.

The youthful countenance is very charming, but it is always a trifle

commonplace.”

The painter continued to urge his point, indicating at what moment a

face that was losing, little by little, the undecided grace of youth,

really assumed its definite form, its true character and physiognomy.

At each word the Countess said “Yes,” with a little nod of conviction;

and the more he affirmed, with all the heat of a lawyer making a plea,

with the animation of the accused pleading his own cause, the more she

approved, by glance and gesture, as if they two were allied against

some danger, and must defend themselves against some false and menacing

opinion. Annette hardly heard them, she was so engrossed in looking

about her. Her usually smiling face had become grave, and she said no

more, carried away by the pleasure of the rapid driving. The sunlight,

the trees, the carriage, this delightful life, so rich and gay--all this

was for her!

Every day she might come here, recognized in her turn, saluted and

envied; and perhaps the men, in pointing her out to one another, would

say that she was beautiful. She noticed all those that appeared to

her distinguished among the throng and inquired their names, without

thinking of anything beyond the mere sound of the syllables, though

sometimes they awoke in her an echo of respect and admiration, when she

realized that she had seen them often in the newspapers or heard stories

concerning them. She could not become accustomed to this long procession

of celebrities; it seemed unreal to her, as if she were a part of some

stage spectacle. The cabs filled her with disdain mingled with disgust;

they annoyed and irritated her, and suddenly she said:

“I think they should not allow anything but private carriages to come

here.”

“Indeed, Mademoiselle!” said Bertin; “and then what becomes of our

equality, liberty and fraternity?”

Annette made a moue that signified “Don't talk about that!” and

continued:

“They should have a separate drive for cabs--that of Vincennes, for

instance.”

“You are behind the times, little one, and evidently do not know that we

are swimming in the full tide of democracy. But, if you wish to see this

place free from any mingling of the middle class, come in the morning,

and then you will find only the fine flower of society.”

He proceeded to describe graphically, as he knew well how to do, the

Bois in the morning hours with its gay cavaliers and fair Amazons, that

club where everyone knows everyone else by their Christian names, their

pet names, their family connections, titles, qualities, and vices, as if

they all lived in the same neighborhood or in the same small town.

“Do you come here often at that hour?” Annette inquired.

“Very often; there is no more charming place in Paris.”

“Do you come on horseback in the mornings?”

“Yes.”

“And in the afternoon you pay visits?”

“Yes.”

“Then, when do you work?”

“Oh, I work--sometimes; and besides, you see, I have chosen a special

entertainment suited to my tastes. As I paint the portraits of

beautiful women, it is necessary that I should see them and follow them

everywhere.”

“On foot and on horseback!” murmured Annette, with a perfectly serious

face.

He threw her a sidelong glance of appreciation, which seemed to say:

“Ah! you are witty, even now! You will do very well.”

A breath of cold air from far away, from the country that was hardly

awake as yet, swept over the park, and the whole Bois, coquettish,

frivolous, and fashionable, shivered under its chill. For some seconds

it caused the tender leaves to tremble on the trees, and garments on

shoulders. All the women, with a movement almost simultaneous, drew up

over their arms and chests their wraps lying behind them; and the horses

began to trot, from one end of the avenue to the other, as if the keen

wind had flicked them like a whip.

The Countess's party returned quickly, to the silvery jingle of the

harness, under the slanting red rays of the setting sun.

“Shall you go home?” inquired the Countess of Bertin, with whose habits

she was familiar.

“No, I am going to the club.”

“Then, shall we set you down there in passing?”

“Thank you, that will be very convenient.”

“And when shall you invite us to breakfast with the Duchess?”

“Name your day.”

This painter in ordinary to the fair Parisians, whom his admirers

christened “a Watteau realist” and his detractors a “photographer

of gowns and mantles,” often received at breakfast or at dinner the

beautiful persons whose feature he had reproduced, as well as the

celebrated and the well known, who found very amusing these little

entertainments in a bachelor's establishment.

“The day after to-morrow, then. Will the day after to-morrow suit you,

my dear Duchess?” asked Madame de Guilleroy.

“Yes, indeed; you are charming! Monsieur Bertin never thinks of me

when he has his little parties. It is quite evident that I am no longer

young.”

The Countess, accustomed to consider the artist's home almost the same

as her own, replied:

“Only we four, the four of the landau--the Duchess, Annette, you and I,

eh, great artist?”

“Only ourselves,” said he, alighting from the carriage, “and I will have

prepared for you some crabs _a l'alsacienne_.”

“Oh, you will awaken a desire for luxury in the little one!”

He bowed to them, standing beside the carriage door, then entered

quickly the vestibule of the main entrance to the club, threw his

topcoat and cane to a group of footmen, who had risen like soldiers at

the passing of an officer; mounted the broad stairway, meeting another

brigade of servants in knee-breeches, pushed open a door, feeling

himself suddenly as alert as a young man, as he heard at the end of the

corridor a continuous clash of foils, the sound of stamping feet, and

loud exclamations: _“Touche!” “A moi.” “Passe!” “J'en ai!” “Touche!” “A

vous!”_

In the fencing-hall the swordsmen, dressed in gray linen, with leather

vests, their trousers tight around the ankles, a sort of apron falling

over the front of the body, one arm in the air, with the hand thrown

backward, and in the other hand, enormous in a large fencing-glove, the

thin, flexible foil, extended and recovered with the agile swiftness of

mechanical jumping-jacks.

Others rested and chatted, still out of breath, red and perspiring, with

handkerchief in hand to wipe off faces and necks; others, seated on

a square divan that ran along the four sides of the hall, watched the

fencing--Liverdy against Landa, and the master of the club, Taillade,

against the tall Rocdiane.

Bertin, smiling, quite at home, shook hands with several men.

“I choose you!” cried the Baron de Baverie.

“I am with you, my dear fellow,” said Bertin, passing into the

dressing-room to prepare himself.

He had not felt so agile and vigorous for a long time, and, guessing

that he should fence well that day, he hurried as impatiently as a

schoolboy ready for play. As soon as he stood before his adversary he

attacked him with great ardor, and in ten minutes he had touched him

eleven times and had so fatigued him that the Baron cried for quarter.

Then he fenced with Punisimont, and with his colleague, Amaury Maldant.

The cold douche that followed, freezing his palpitating flesh, reminded

him of the baths of his twentieth year, when he used to plunge head

first into the Seine from the bridges in the suburbs, in order to amaze

the bourgeois passers-by.

“Shall you dine here?” inquired Maldant.

“Yes.”

“We have a table with Liverdy, Rocdiane, and Landa; make haste; it is a

quarter past seven.”

The dining-room was full, and there was a continuous hum of men's

voices.

There were all the nocturnal vagabonds of Paris, idlers and workers, all

those who from seven o'clock in the evening know not what to do and dine

at the club, ready to catch at anything or anybody that chance may offer

to amuse them.

When the five friends were seated the banker Liverdy, a vigorous and

hearty man of forty, said to Bertin:

“You were in fine form this evening.”

“Yes, I could have done surprising things to-day,” Bertin replied.

The others smiled, and the landscape painter, Amaury Maldant, a thin

little bald-headed man with a gray beard, said, with a sly expression:

“I, too, always feel the rising of the sap in April; it makes me bring

forth a few leaves--half a dozen at most--then it runs into sentiment;

there never is any fruit.”

The Marquis de Rocdiane and the Comte Landa sympathized with him. Both

were older than he, though even a keen eye could not guess their age;

clubmen, horsemen, swordsmen, whose incessant exercise had given them

bodies of steel, they boasted of being younger in every way than the

enervated good-for-nothings of the new generation.

Rocdiane, of good family, with the entree to all salons, though

suspected of financial intrigues of many kinds (which, according

to Bertin, was not surprising, since he had lived so much in the

gaming-houses), married, but separated from his wife, who paid him an

annuity, a director of Belgian and Portuguese banks, carried boldly upon

his energetic, Don Quixote-like face the somewhat tarnished honor of a

gentleman, which was occasionally brightened by the blood from a thrust

in a duel.

The Comte de Landa, a good-natured colossus, proud of his figure and

his shoulders, although married and the father of two children, found it

difficult to dine at home three times a week; he remained at the club on

the other days, with his friends, after the session in the fencing-hall.

“The club is a family,” he said, “the family of those who as yet have

none, of those who never will have one, and of those who are bored by

their own.”

The conversation branched off on the subject of women, glided from

anecdotes to reminiscences, from reminiscences to boasts, and then to

indiscreet confidences.

The Marquis de Rocdiane allowed the names of his inamoratas to be

guessed by unmistakable hints--society women whose names he did not

utter, so that their identity might be the better surmised. The banker

Liverdy indicated his flames by their first names. He would say: “I was

at that time the best of friends with the wife of a diplomat. Now,

one evening when I was leaving her, I said to her, 'My little

Marguerite'”--then he checked himself, amid the smiles of his fellows,

adding “Ha! I let something slip. One should form a habit of calling all

women Sophie.”

Olivier Bertin, very reserved, was accustomed to declare, when

questioned:

“For my part, I content myself with my models.”

They pretended to believe him, and Landa, who was frankly a libertine,

grew quite excited at the idea of all the pretty creatures that walked

the streets and all the young persons who posed undraped before the

painter at ten francs an hour.

As the bottle became empty, all these gray-beards, as the younger

members of the club called them, acquired red faces, and their kindling

ardor awakened new desires.

Rocdiane, after the coffee, became still more indiscreet, and forgot the

society women to celebrate the charms of simple cocottes.

“Paris!” said he, a glass of kummel in his hand, “The only city where

a man never grows old, the only one where, at fifty, if he is sound and

well preserved, he will always find a young girl, as pretty as an angel,

to love him.”

Landa, finding again his Rocdiane after the liqueurs, applauded him

enthusiastically, and mentioned the young girls who still adored him

every day.

But Liverdy, more skeptical, and pretending to know exactly what women

were worth, murmured: “Yes, they tell you that they adore you!”

“They prove it to me, my dear fellow,” exclaimed Landa.

“Such proofs don't count.”

“They suffice me!”

“But, _sacrebleu!_ they do mean it,” cried Rocdiane. “Do you believe

that a pretty little creature of twenty, who has been going the rounds

in Paris for five or six years already, where all our moustaches have

taught her kisses and spoiled her taste for them, still knows how to

distinguish a man of thirty from a man of sixty? Pshaw! what nonsense!

She has seen and known too many of them. Now, I'll wager that, down in

the bottom of her heart, she actually prefers an old banker to a young

stripling. Does she know or reflect upon that? Have men any age here?

Oh, my dear fellow, we grow young as we grow gray, and the whiter our

hair becomes the more they tell us they love us, the more they show it,

and the more they believe it.”

They rose from the table, their blood warmed and lashed by alcohol,

ready to make any conquest; and they began to deliberate how to spend

the evening, Bertin mentioning the Cirque, Rocdiane the Hippodrome,

Maldant the Eden, and Landa the Folies-Bergere, when a light and distant

sound of the tuning of violins reached their ears.

“Ah, there is music at the club to-day, it seems,” said Rocdiane.

“Yes,” Bertin replied. “Shall we listen for ten minutes before going

out?”

“Agreed.”

They crossed a salon, a billiard-room, a card-room, and finally reached

a sort of box over the gallery of the musicians. Four gentlemen,

ensconced in armchairs, were waiting there already, in easy attitudes,

while below, among rows of empty seats, a dozen others were chatting,

sitting or standing.

The conductor tapped his desk with his bow; the music began.

Olivier adored music as an opium-eater adores opium. It made him dream.

As soon as the sonorous wave from the instruments reached him he felt

himself borne away in a sort of nervous intoxication, which thrilled

body and mind indescribably. His imagination ran riot, made drunk

by melody, and carried him along through sweet dreams and charming

reveries. With closed eyes, legs crossed, and folded arms, he listened

to the strains, and gave himself up to the visions that passed before

his eyes and into his mind.

The orchestra was playing one of Haydn's symphonies, and when Bertin's

eyelids drooped over his eyes, he saw again the Bois, the crowd of

carriages around him, and facing him in the landau the Countess and her

daughter. He heard their voices, followed their words, felt the movement

of the carriage, inhaled the air, filled with the odor of young leaves.

Three times, his neighbor, speaking to him, interrupted this vision,

which three times he began again, as the rolling of the vessel seems to

continue when, after crossing the ocean, one lies motionless in bed.

Then it extended itself to a long voyage, with the two women always

seated before him, sometimes on the railway, again at the table

of strange hotels. During the whole execution of the symphony they

accompanied him, as if, while driving with him in the sunshine, they had

left the image of their two faces imprinted on his vision.

Silence followed; then came a noise of seats being moved and chattering

of voices, which dispelled this vapor of a dream, and he perceived,

dozing around him, his four friends, relaxed from a listening attitude

to the comfortable posture of sleep.

“Well, what shall we do now?” he asked, after he had roused them.

“I should like to sleep here a little longer,” replied Rocdiane frankly.

“And I, too,” said Landa.

Bertin rose.

“Well, I shall go home,” he said. “I am rather tired.”

He felt very animated, on the contrary, but he wished to go, fearing

the end of the evening around the baccarat-table of the club, which

unfortunately he knew so well.

He went home, therefore, and the following day, after a nervous night,

one of those nights that put artists in that condition of cerebral

activity called inspiration, he decided not to go out, but to work until

evening.

It was an excellent day, one of those days of facile production, when

ideas seem to descend into the hands and fix themselves upon the canvas.

With doors shut, far from the world, in the quiet of his own dwelling,

closed to everyone, in the friendly peace of his studio, with clear eye,

lucid mind, enthusiastic, alert, he tasted that happiness given only

to artists, the happiness of bringing forth their work in joy. Nothing

existed any more for him in such hours of work except the piece of

canvas on which was born an image under the caress of his brush; and he

experienced, in these crises of productiveness, a strange and delicious

sensation of abounding life which intoxicated him. When evening came he

was exhausted as by healthful fatigue, and went to sleep with agreeable

anticipation of his breakfast the next morning.

The table was covered with flowers, the menu was carefully chosen, for

Madame de Guilleroy's sake, as she was a refined epicure; and in spite

of strong but brief resistance, the painter compelled his guests to

drink champagne.

“The little one will get intoxicated,” protested the Countess.

“Dear me! there must be a first time,” replied the indulgent Duchess.

Everyone, as the party returned to the studio, felt stirred by that

light gaiety which lifts one as if the feet had wings.

The Duchess and the Countess, having an engagement at a meeting of the

Committee of French Mothers, were to take Annette home before going to

the meeting; but Bertin offered to take her for a walk, and then to the

Boulevard Malesherbes; so both ladies left them.

“Let us take the longest way,” said Annette.

“Would you like to stroll about the Monceau Park?” asked Bertin. “It is

a very pretty place; we will look at the babies and nurses.”

“Yes, I should like that.”

They passed through the Avenue Velasquez and entered the gilded and

monumental gate that serves as a sign and an entrance to that exquisite

jewel of a park, displaying in the heart of Paris its verdant and

artificial beauty, surrounded by a belt of princely mansions.

Along the wide walks, which unroll their massive and artistic curves

through grassy lawns, throngs of people, sitting on iron chairs, watch

the passers; while in the little paths, deep in shade and winding like

streams, groups of children crawl in the sand, run about, or jump the

rope under the indolent eyes of nurses or the anxious watchfulness

of mothers. Two enormous trees, rounded into domes, like monuments of

leaves, the gigantic horse-chestnuts, whose heavy verdure is lighted up

by red and white clusters, the showy sycamores, the graceful plane-trees

with their trunks designedly polished, set off in a charming perspective

the tall, undulating grass.

The weather was warm, the turtle-doves were cooing among the branches,

and flying to meet one another from the tree-tops, while the sparrows

bathed in the rainbow formed by the sunshine and the spray thrown over

the smooth turf. White statues on their pedestals seemed happy in the

midst of the green freshness. A little marble boy was drawing from his

foot an invisible thorn, as if he had just pricked himself in running

after the Diana fleeing toward the little lake, imprisoned by the woods

that screened the ruins of a temple.

Other statues, amorous and cold, embraced one another on the borders of

the groves, or dreamed there, holding one knee in the hand. A cascade

foamed and rolled over the pretty rocks; a tree, truncated like a

column, supported an ivy; a tombstone bore an inscription. The stone

shafts erected on the lawns hardly suggest better the Acropolis than

this elegant little park recalled wild forests. It is the charming

and artificial place where city people go to look at flowers grown in

hot-houses, and to admire, as one admires the spectacle of life at the

theater, that agreeable representation of the beauties of nature given

in the heart of Paris.

Olivier Bertin had come almost every day for years to this favorite spot

to look at the fair Parisians moving in their appropriate setting. “It

is a park made for toilettes,” he would say; “Badly dressed people are

horrible in it.” He would rove about there for hours, knowing all the

plants and all the habitual visitors.

He now strolled beside Annette along the avenues, his eye distracted by

the motley and animated crowd in the gardens.

“Oh, the little love!” exclaimed Annette. She was gazing at a tiny boy

with blond curls, who was looking at her with his blue eyes full of

surprise and delight.

Then she passed all the children in review, and the pleasure she felt in

seeing those living dolls, decked out in their dainty ribbons, made her

talkative and communicative.

She walked slowly, chatting to Bertin, giving him her reflections on the

children, the nurses, and the mothers. The larger children drew from

her little exclamations of joy, while the little pale ones touched her

sympathy.

Bertin listened, more amused by her than by the little ones, and, always

remembering his work, he murmured, “That is delicious!” thinking that

he must make an exquisite picture, with one corner of this park and a

bouquet of nurses, mothers and children. Why had he never thought of it

before?

“You like those little ones?” he inquired.

“I adore them!”

He felt, from her manner of looking at them, that she longed to take

them in her arms, to hug and kiss them--the natural and tender longing

of a future mother; and he was surprised at this secret instinct hidden

in this little woman.

As she appeared ready to talk, he questioned her about her tastes. She

admitted, with pretty naivete, that she had hopes of social success and

glory, and that she desired to have fine horses, which she knew almost

as well as a horse-dealer, for a part of the farm at Roncieres was

devoted to breeding; but she appeared to trouble her head no more about

a fiance than one is concerned about an apartment, which is always to be

found among the multitude of houses to rent.

They approached the lake, where two swans and six ducks were quietly

floating, as clean and calm as porcelain birds, and they passed before

a young woman sitting in a chair, with an open book lying on her knees,

her eyes gazing upward, her soul having apparently taken flight in a

dream.

She was as motionless as a wax figure. Plain, humble, dressed as a

modest girl who has no thought of pleasing, she had gone to the land of

Dreams, carried away by a phrase or a word that had bewitched her heart.

Undoubtedly she was continuing, according to the impulse of her hopes,

the adventure begun in the book.

Bertin paused, surprised. “How beautiful to dream like that!” said he.

They had passed before her; now they turned and passed her again without

her perceiving them, so attentively did she follow the distant flight of

her thought.

“Tell me, little one,” said the painter to Annette, “would it bore you

very much to pose for me once or twice?”

“No, indeed! Quite the contrary.”

“Look well at that young lady who is roaming in the world of fancy.”

“The lady there, in that chair?”

“Yes. Well, you, too, will sit on a chair, you will have an open book

on your knee, and you will try to do as she does. Have you ever had

daydreams?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Of what?”

He tried to confess her as to her aerial flights, but she would make

no reply, evaded his questions, looked at the ducks swimming after some

bread thrown to them by a lady, and seemed embarrassed, as if he had

touched upon a subject that was a sensitive point with her.

Then, to change the conversation, she talked about her life at

Roncieres, spoke of her grandmother, to whom she read aloud a long time

every day, and who must now feel very lonely and sad.

As he listened, the painter felt as gay as a bird, gay as he never

had been. All that she had said, all the doings, the trifling everyday

details of the simple life of a young girl, amused and interested him.

“Let us sit down,” he said.

They seated themselves near the water, and the two swans came floating

toward them, expecting some fresh dainty.

Bertin felt recollections awakening within him--those faded remembrances

that are drowned in forgetfulness, and which suddenly return, one knows

not why. They surged up rapidly, of all sorts, and so numerous at the

same time that it seemed to him a hand was stirring the miry depths of

his memory.

He tried to guess the reasons of this rising up of his former life which

several times already, though never so insistently as to-day, he had

felt and remarked. A cause always existed for these sudden evocations--a

natural and simple cause, an odor, perhaps, often a perfume. How

many times a woman's draperies had thrown to him in passing, with the

evaporating breath of some essence, a host of forgotten events. At the

bottom of old perfume-bottles he had often found bits of his former

existence; and all wandering odors--of streets, fields, houses,

furniture, sweet or unsavory, the warm odors of summer evenings, the

cold breath of winter nights, revived within him far-off reminiscences,

as if odors kept embalmed within him these dead-and-gone memories, as

aromatics preserve mummies.

Was it the damp grass or the chestnut blossoms that thus reanimated the

past? No. What, then?

Was it his eye to which he owed this alertness? What had he seen?

Nothing. Among the persons he had met, perhaps one might have resembled

some one he had known, and, although he had not recognized it, it might

have rung in his heart all the chords of the past.

Was it not a sound, rather? Very often he had heard by chance a piano,

an unknown voice, even a hand-organ in the street playing some old

air, which had suddenly made him feel twenty years younger, filling his

breast with tender recollections, long buried.

But this appeal, continued, incessant, intangible, almost irritating!

What was there near him to revive thus his extinct emotions?

“It is growing a little cool; we must go home,” he said.

They rose, and resumed their walk.

He looked at the poor people sitting on benches, for whom a chair was

too great an expense.

Annette also observed them, and felt disturbed at the thought of their

lives, their occupations, surprised that they should come to lounge in

this beautiful public garden, when their own appearance was so forlorn.

More than ever was Olivier now dreaming over past years. It seemed to

him that a fly was humming in his ear, filling it with a buzzing song of

bygone days.

The young girl, observing his dreamy air, asked:

“What is the matter? You seem sad.”

His heart thrilled within him. Who had said that? She or her mother?

Not her mother with her present voice but with her voice of long ago, so

changed that he had only just recognized it.

“Nothing,” he replied, smiling. “You entertain me very much; you are

very charming, and you remind me of your mother.”

How was it that he had not sooner remarked this strange echo of a voice

once so familiar, now coming from these fresh lips?

“Go on talking,” he said.

“Of what?”

“Tell me what your teachers have taught you. Did you like them?”

She began again to chat pleasantly. He listened, stirred by a growing

anxiety; he watched and waited to detect, among the phrases of this

young girl, almost a stranger to his heart, a word, a sound, a laugh,

that seemed to have been imprisoned in her throat since her mother's

youth. Certain intonations made him tremble with astonishment. Of course

there were differences in their tones, the resemblance of which he had

not remarked immediately, and which were in some ways so dissimilar that

he had not confounded them at all; but these differences rendered all

the more striking this sudden reproduction of the maternal speech. He

had noted their facial resemblance with a friendly and curious eye, but

now the mystery of this resuscitated voice mingled them in such a way

that, turning away his head that he might no longer see the young girl,

he asked himself whether it were not the Countess who was speaking thus

to him, twelve years earlier.

Then when he had woven this hallucination, he turned toward her again,

and found, as their eyes met, a little of the shy hesitation with which

the mother's gaze had met his in the first days of their love.

They had already walked three times around the park, passing always

before the same persons, the same nurses and children.

Annette was now inspecting the buildings surrounding the garden,

inquiring the names of their owners. She wished to know all about them,

asked questions with eager curiosity, seeming to fill her feminine mind

with these details, and, with interested face, listening with her eyes

as much as with her ears.

But when they arrived at the pavilion that separates the two gates of

the outer boulevard, Bertin perceived that it was almost four o'clock.

“Oh,” he said, “we must go home.”

They walked slowly toward the Boulevard Malesherbes.

After the painter had left Annette at her home he proceeded toward the

Place de la Concorde.

He sang to himself softly, longed to run, and would have been glad to

jump over the benches, so agile did he feel. Paris seemed radiant to

him, more beautiful than ever. “Decidedly the springtime revarnishes the

whole world,” was his reflection.

He was in one of those periods of mental excitement when one understands

everything with more pleasure, when the vision is clearer and more

comprehensive, when one feels a keener joy in seeing and feeling, as if

an all-powerful hand had brightened all the colors of earth, reanimated

all living creatures, and had wound up in us, as in a watch that has

stopped, the activity of sensation.

He thought, as his glance took in a thousand amusing things: “And I said

that there were moments when I could no longer find subjects to paint!”

He felt such a sensation of freedom and clear-sightedness that all his

artistic work seemed commonplace to him, and he conceived a new way of

expressing life, truer and more original; and suddenly he was seized

with a desire to return home and work, so he retraced his steps and shut

himself up in his studio.

But as soon as he was alone, before a newly begun picture, the ardor

that had burned in his blood began to cool. He felt tired, sat down on

his divan, and again gave himself up to dreaming.

The sort of happy indifference in which he lived, that carelessness of

the satisfied man whose almost every need is gratified, was leaving his

heart by degrees, as if something were still lacking. He realized that

his house was empty and his studio deserted. Then, looking around him,

he fancied he saw pass by him the shadow of a woman whose presence was

sweet. For a long time he had forgotten the sensation of impatience

that a lover feels when awaiting the coming of his mistress, and now he

suddenly felt that she was far away, and he longed, with the ardor of a

young man, to have her near him.

He was moved in thinking how much they had loved each other; and in

that vast apartment he found once more, where she had come so often,

innumerable reminders of her, her gestures, words, and kisses. He

recalled certain days, certain hours, certain moments, and he felt

around him the sweetness of her early caresses.

He got up, unable to sit quietly any longer, and began to walk, thinking

again that, in spite of this intimacy that had so filled his life, he

still remained alone, always alone. After the long hours of work, when

he looked around him, dazed by the reawakening of the man who returns to

life, he saw and felt only walls within reach of his hand and voice.

Not having any woman in his home, and not being able to meet the one he

loved except with the precautions of a thief, he had been compelled to

spend his leisure time in public places where one finds or purchases the

means of killing time. He was accustomed to going to the club, to the

Cirque and the Hippodrome, on fixed days, to the Opera, and to all sorts

of places, so that he should not be compelled to go home, where no doubt

he would have lived in perfect happiness had he only had her beside him.

Long before, in certain hours of tender abandon, he had suffered cruelly

because he could not take her and keep her with him; then, as his ardor

cooled, he had accepted quietly their separation and his own liberty;

now he regretted them once more, as if he were again beginning to love

her. And this return of tenderness invaded his heart so suddenly, almost

without reason, because the weather was fine, and possibly because a

little while ago he had recognized the rejuvenated voice of that woman!

How slight a thing it takes to move a man's heart, a man who is growing

old, with whom remembrance turns into regret!

As in former days, the need of seeing her again came to him, entering

body and mind, like a fever; and he began to think after the fashion of

a young lover, exalting her in his heart, and feeling himself exalted in

his desire for her; then he decided, although he had seen her only that

morning, to go and ask for a cup of tea that same evening.

The hours seemed long to him, and as he set out for the Boulevard

Malesherbes he was seized with a fear of not finding her, which would

force him still to pass the evening alone, as he had passed so many

others.

To his query: “Is the Countess at home?” the servant's answer, “Yes,

Monsieur,” filled him with joy.

He said, with a radiant air: “It is I again!” as he appeared at the

threshold of the smaller drawing-room where the two ladies were working,

under the pink shade of a double lamp of English metal, on a high and

slender standard.

“What, is it you? How fortunate!” exclaimed the Countess.

“Well, yes. I feel very lonely, so I came.”

“How nice of you!”

“You are expecting someone?”

“No--perhaps--I never know.”

He had seated himself and now looked scornfully at the gray

knitting-work that mother and daughter were swiftly making from heavy

wool, working at it with long needles.

“What is that?” he asked.

“Coverlets.”

“For the poor?”

“Yes, of course.”

“It is very ugly.”

“It is very warm.”

“Possibly, but it is very ugly, especially in a Louis Fifteenth

apartment, where everything else charms the eye. If not for your poor,

you really ought to make your charities more elegant, for the sake of

your friends.”

“Oh, heavens, these men!” said the Countess, with a shrug of her

shoulders. “Why, everyone is making this kind of coverlets just now.”

“I know that; I know it only too well! Once cannot make an evening call

now without seeing that frightful gray stuff dragged over the prettiest

gowns and the most elegant furniture. Bad taste seems to be the fashion

this spring.”

To judge whether he spoke the truth, the Countess spread out her

knitting on a silk-covered chair beside her; then she assented

indifferently:

“Yes, you are right--it is ugly.”

Then she resumed her work. Upon the two bent heads fell a stream

of light; a rosy radiance from the lamp illumined their hair and

complexions, extending to their skirts and their moving fingers. They

watched their work with that attention, light but continuous, given

by women to this labor of the fingers which the eye follows without a

thought.

At the four corners of the room four other lamps of Chinese porcelain,

borne by ancient columns of gilded wood, shed upon the hangings a soft,

even light, modified by lace shades thrown over the globes.

Bertin took a very low seat, a dwarf armchair, in which he could barely

seat himself, but which he had always preferred when talking with the

Countess because it brought him almost at her feet.

“You took a long walk with Nane this afternoon in the park,” said the

Countess.

“Yes. We chatted like old friends. I like your daughter very much. She

resembles you very strongly. When she pronounces certain phrases, one

would believe that you had left your voice in her mouth.”

“My husband has already said that very often.”

He watched the two women work, bathed in the lamplight, and the thought

that had often made him suffer, which had given him suffering that day,

even--the recollection of his desolate home, still, silent, and cold,

whatever the weather, whatever fire might be lighted in chimney or

furnace--saddened him as if he now understood his bachelor's isolation

for the first time.

Oh, how deeply he longed to be the husband of this woman, and not her

lover! Once he had desired to carry her away, to take her from that man,

to steal her altogether. To-day he was jealous of him, that deceived

husband who was installed beside her forever, in the habits of her

household and under the sweet influence of her presence. In looking at

her he felt his heart full of old things revived, of which he wished

to speak. Certainly, he still loved her very much, even a little more

to-day than he had for some time; and the desire to tell her of this

return of youthful feeling, which would be sure to delight her, made him

wish that she would send the young girl to bed as soon as possible.

Obsessed by this strong desire to be alone with her, to sit near her and

lay his head on her knee, to take the hands from which would slip the

quilt for the poor, the needles, and the ball of wool, which would roll

under a sofa at the end of a long, unwound thread, he looked at the

time, relapsed into almost complete silence, and thought that it was

a great mistake to allow young girls to pass the evening with grown-up

persons.

Presently a sound of footsteps was heard in the next room, and a servant

appeared at the door announcing:

“Monsieur de Musadieu.”

Olivier Bertin felt a spasm of anger, and when he shook hands with

the Inspector of Fine Arts he had a great desire to take him by the

shoulders and throw him into the street.

Musadieu was full of news; the ministry was about to fall, and there

was a whisper of scandal about the Marquis de Rocdiane. He looked at the

young girl, adding: “I will tell you about that a little later.”

The Countess raised her eyes to the clock and saw that it was about to

strike ten.

“It is time to go to bed, my child,” she said to her daughter.

Without replying, Annette folded her knitting-work, rolled up her ball

of wool, kissed her mother on the cheeks, gave her hand to the

two gentlemen, and departed quickly, as if she glided away without

disturbing the air as she went.

“Well, what is your scandal?” her mother demanded, as soon as she had

gone.

It appeared that rumor said that the Marquis de Rocdiane, amicably

separated from his wife, who paid to him an allowance that he considered

insufficient, had discovered a sure if singular means to double it.

The Marquise, whom he had had watched, had been surprised _in flagrante

delictu_, and was compelled to buy off, with an increased allowance, the

legal proceedings instituted by the police commissioner.

The Countess listened with curious gaze, her idle hands holding the

interrupted needle-work on her knee.

Bertin, who was still more exasperated by Musadieu's presence since

Annette had gone, was incensed at this recital, and declared, with the

indignation of one who had known of the scandal but did not wish to

speak of it to anyone, that the story was an odious falsehood, one of

those shameful lies which people of their world ought neither to listen

to nor repeat. He appeared greatly wrought up over the matter, as he

stood leaning against the mantelpiece and speaking with the excited

manner of a man disposed to make a personal question of the subject

under discussion.

Rocdiane was his friend, he said; and, though he might be criticised for

frivolity in certain respects, no one could justly accuse him or even

suspect him of any really unworthy action. Musadieu, surprised and

embarrassed, defended himself, tried to explain and to excuse himself.

“Allow me to say,” he remarked at last, “that I heard this story just

before I came here, in the drawing-room of the Duchesse de Mortemain.”

“Who told it to you? A woman, no doubt,” said Bertin.

“No, not at all; it was the Marquis de Farandal.”

The painter, irritated still further, retorted: “That does not astonish

me--from him!”

There was a brief silence. The Countess took up her work again.

Presently Olivier said in a calmer voice: “I know for a fact that that

story is false.”

In reality, he knew nothing whatever about it, having heard it mentioned

then for the first time.

Musadieu thought it wise to prepare the way for his retreat, feeling

the situation rather dangerous; and he was just beginning to say that

he must pay a visit at the Corbelles' that evening when the Comte de

Guilleroy appeared, returning from dining in the city.

Bertin sat down again, overcome, and despairing now of getting rid of

the husband.

“You haven't heard, have you, of the great scandal that is running all

over town this evening?” inquired the Count pleasantly.

As no one answered, he continued: “It seems that Rocdiane surprised

his wife in a criminal situation, and has made her pay dearly for her

indiscretion.”

Then Bertin, with his melancholy air, with grief in voice and gesture,

placing one hand on Guilleroy's shoulder, repeated in a gentle and

amicable manner all that he had just said so roughly to Musadieu.

The Count, half convinced, annoyed to have allowed himself to repeat

so lightly a doubtful and possibly compromising thing, pleaded his

ignorance and his innocence. The gossips said so many false and wicked

things!

Suddenly, all agreed upon this statement: the world certainly accused,

suspected, and calumniated with deplorable facility! All four appeared

to be convinced, during the next five minutes, that all the whispered

scandals were lies; that the women did not have the lovers ascribed to

them; that the men never committed the sins they were accused of; and,

in short, that the outward appearance of things was usually much worse

than the real situation.

Bertin, who no longer felt vexed with Musadieu since De Guilleroy's

arrival, was now very pleasant to him, led him to talk on his favorite

subjects, and opened the sluices of his eloquence. The Count wore the

contented air of a man who carries everywhere with him an atmosphere of

peace and cordiality.

Two servants noiselessly entered the drawing-room, bearing the

tea-table, on which the boiling water steamed in a pretty, shining

kettle over the blue flame of an alcohol lamp.

The Countess rose, prepared the hot beverage with the care and

precaution we have learned from the Russians, then offered a cup to

Musadieu, another to Bertin, following this with plates containing

sandwiches of _pate de foies gras_ and little English and Austrian

cakes.

The Count approached the portable table, where was also an assortment of

syrups, liqueurs, and glasses; he mixed himself a drink, then discreetly

disappeared into the next room.

Bertin found himself again facing Musadieu, and felt once more the

sudden desire to thrust outside this bore, who, now put on his mettle,

talked at great length, told stories, repeated jests, and made some

himself. The painter glanced continually at the clock, the hands of

which approached midnight. The Countess noticed his glances, understood

that he wished to speak to her alone, and, with that ability of a clever

woman of the world to change by indescribable shades of tone the whole

atmosphere of a drawing-room, to make it understood, without saying

anything, whether one is to remain or to go, she diffused about her,

by her attitude alone, by the bored expression of her face and eyes, a

chill as if she had just opened a window.

Musadieu felt this chilly current freezing his flow of ideas; and,

without asking himself the reason, he felt a sudden desire to rise and

depart.

Bertin, as a matter of discretion, followed his example. The two men

passed through both drawing-rooms together, followed by the Countess,

who talked to the painter all the while. She detained him at the

threshold of the ante-chamber to make some trifling explanation, while

Musadieu, assisted by a footman, put on his topcoat. As Madame de

Guilleroy continued to talk to Bertin, the Inspector of Fine Arts,

having waited some seconds before the front door, held open by another

servant, decided to depart himself rather than stand there facing the

footman any longer.

The door was closed softly behind him, and the Countess said to the

artist in a perfectly easy tone:

“Why do you go so soon? It is not yet midnight. Stay a little longer.”

They reentered the smaller drawing-room together and seated themselves.

“My God! how that animal set my teeth on edge!” said Bertin.

“Why, pray?”

“He took you away from me a little.”

“Oh, not very much.”

“Perhaps not, but he irritated me.”

“Are you jealous?”

“It is not being jealous to find a man a bore.”

He had taken his accustomed armchair, and seated close beside her now

he smoothed the folds of her robe with his fingers as he told her of the

warm breath of tenderness that had passed through his heart that day.

The Countess listened, surprised, charmed, and gently laid her hand on

his white locks, which she caressed tenderly, as if to thank him.

“I should like so much to live always near you!” he sighed.

He was thinking of her husband, who had retired to rest, asleep, no

doubt, in some neighboring chamber, and he continued:

“It is undoubtedly true that marriage is the only thing that really

unites two lives.”

“My poor friend!” she murmured, full of pity for him and also for

herself.

He had laid his cheek against the Countess's knees, and he looked up at

her with a tenderness touched with sadness, less ardently than a short

time before, when he had been separated from her by her daughter, her

husband, and Musadieu.

“Heavens! how white your hair has grown!” said the Countess with a

smile, running her fingers lightly over Olivier's head. “Your last black

hairs have disappeared.”

“Alas! I know it. Everything goes so soon!”

She was concerned lest she had made him sad.

“Oh, but your hair turned gray very early, you know,” she said. “I have

always known you with pepper-and-salt locks.”

“Yes, that is true.”

In order to dispel altogether the slight cloud of regret she had evoked,

she leaned over him and, taking his head between her hands, kissed him

slowly and tenderly on the forehead, with long kisses that seemed as if

they never would end. Then they gazed into each other's eyes, seeking

therein the reflection of their mutual fondness.

“I should like so much to pass a whole day with you,” Bertin continued.

He felt himself tormented obscurely by an inexpressible necessity

for close intimacy. He had believed, only a short time ago, that the

departure of those who had been present would suffice to realize the

desire that had possessed him since morning; and now that he was alone

with his mistress, now that he felt on his brow the touch of her hands,

and, against his cheek, through the folds of her skirt, the warmth of

her body, he felt the same agitation reawakened, the same longing for

a love hitherto unknown and ever fleeing him. He now fancied that, away

from that house--perhaps in the woods where they would be absolutely

alone--this deep yearning of his heart would be calmed and satisfied.

“What a boy you are!” said the Countess. “Why, we see each other almost

every day.”

He begged her to devise a plan whereby she might breakfast with him, in

some suburb of Paris, as she had already done four or five times.

The Countess was astonished at his caprice, so difficult to realize now

that her daughter had returned. She assured him that she would try to

do it as soon as her husband should go to Ronces; but that it would be

impossible before the varnishing-day reception, which would take place

the following Saturday.

“And until then when shall I see you?” he asked.

“To-morrow evening at the Corbelles'. Come over here Thursday, at three

o'clock, if you are free; and I believe that we are to dine together

with the Duchess on Friday.”

“Yes, exactly.”

He arose.

“Good-by!”

“Good-by, my friend.”

He remained standing, unable to decide to go, for he had said almost

nothing of all that he had come to say, and his mind was still full of

unsaid things, his heart still swelled with vague desires which he could

not express.

“Good-bye!” he repeated, taking her hands.

“Good-by, my friend!”

“I love you!”

She gave him one of those smiles with which a woman shows a man, in a

single instant, all that she has given him.

With a throbbing heart he repeated for the third time, “Good-by!” and

departed.

CHAPTER IV

A DOUBLE JEALOUSY

One would have said that all the carriages in Paris were making a

pilgrimage to the Palais de l'Industrie that day. As early as nine

o'clock in the morning they began to drive, by way of all streets,

avenues, and bridges, toward that hall of the fine arts where all

artistic Paris invites all fashionable Paris to be present at the

pretended varnishing of three thousand four hundred pictures.

A long procession of visitors pressed through the doors, and, disdaining

the exhibition of sculpture, hastened upstairs to the picture gallery.

Even while mounting the steps they raised their eyes to the canvases

displayed on the walls of the staircase, where they hang the special

category of decorative painters who have sent canvases of unusual

proportions or works that the committee dare not refuse.

In the square salon a great crowd surged and rustled. The artists,

who were in evidence until evening, were easily recognized by their

activity, the sonorousness of their voices, and the authority of their

gestures. They drew their friends by the sleeve toward the pictures,

which they pointed out with exclamations and mimicry of a connoisseur's

energy. All types of artists were to be seen--tall men with long hair,

wearing hats of mouse-gray or black and of indescribable shapes,

large and round like roofs, with their turned-down brims shadowing

the wearer's whole chest. Others were short, active, slight or stocky,

wearing foulard cravats and round jackets, or the sack-like garment of

the singular costume peculiar to this class of painters.

There was the clan of the fashionables, of the curious, and of artists

of the boulevard; the clan of Academicians, correct, and decorated

with red rosettes, enormous or microscopic, according to individual

conception of elegance and good form; the clan of bourgeois painters,

assisted by the family surrounding the father like a triumphal chorus.

On the four great walls the canvases admitted to the honor of the

square salon dazzled one at the very entrance by their brilliant tones,

glittering frames, the crudity of new color, vivified by fresh varnish,

blinding under the pitiless light poured from above.

The portrait of the President of the Republic faced the entrance; while

on another wall a general bedizened with gold lace, sporting a hat

decorated with ostrich plumes, and wearing red cloth breeches, hung in

pleasant proximity to some naked nymphs under a willow-tree, and near

by was a vessel in distress almost engulfed by a great wave. A bishop

of the early Church excommunicating a barbarian king, an Oriental street

full of dead victims of the plague, and the Shade of Dante in Hell,

seized and captivated the eye with irresistible fascination.

Other paintings in the immense room were a charge of cavalry;

sharpshooters in a wood; cows in a pasture; two noblemen of the

eighteenth century fighting a duel on a street corner; a madwoman

sitting on a wall; a priest administering the last rites to a dying man;

harvesters, rivers, a sunset, a moonlight effect--in short, samples of

everything that artists paint, have painted, and will paint until the

end of the world.

Olivier, in the midst of a group of celebrated brother painters, members

of the Institute and of the jury, exchanged opinions with them. He

was oppressed by a certain uneasiness, a dissatisfaction with his own

exhibited work, of the success of which he was very doubtful, in spite

of the warm congratulations he had received.

Suddenly he sprang forward; the Duchesse de Mortemain had appeared at

the main entrance.

“Hasn't the Countess arrived yet?” she inquired of Bertin.

“I have not seen her.”

“And Monsieur de Musadieu?”

“I have not seen him either.”

“He promised me to be here at ten o'clock, at the top of the stairs, to

show me around the principal galleries.”

“Will you permit me to take his place, Duchess?”

“No, no. Your friends need you. We shall see each other again very soon,

for I shall expect you to lunch with us.”

Musadieu hastened toward them. He had been detained for some minutes in

the hall of sculpture, and excused himself, breathless already.

“This way, Duchess, this way,” said he. “Let us begin at the right.”

They were just disappearing among the throng when the Comtesse de

Guilleroy, leaning on her daughter's arm, entered and looked around in

search of Olivier Bertin.

He saw them and hastened to meet them. As he greeted the two ladies, he

said:

“How charming you look to-day. Really, Nanette has improved very much.

She has actually changed in a week.”

He regarded her with the eye of a close observer, adding: “The lines of

her face are softer, yet more expressive; her complexion is clearer.

She is already something less of a little girl and somewhat more of a

Parisian.”

Suddenly he bethought himself of the grand affair of the day.

“Let us begin at the right,” said he, “and we shall soon overtake the

Duchess.”

The Countess, well informed on all matters connected with painting, and

as preoccupied as if she were herself on exhibition, inquired: “What do

they say of the exposition?”

“A fine one,” Bertin replied. “There is a remarkable Bonnat, two

excellent things by Carolus Duran, an admirable Puvis de Chavannes, a

very new and astonishing Roll, an exquisite Gervex, and many others, by

Beraud, Cazin, Duez--in short, a heap of good things.”

“And you?” said the Countess.

“Oh, they compliment me, but I am not satisfied.”

“You never are satisfied.”

“Yes, sometimes. But to-day I really feel that I am right.”

“Why?”

“I do not know.”

“Let us go to see it.”

When they arrived before Bertin's picture--two little peasant-girls

taking a bath in a brook--they found a group admiring it. The Countess

was delighted, and whispered: “It is simply a delicious bit--a jewel!

You never have done anything better.”

Bertin pressed close to her, loving her and thanking her for every word

that calmed his suffering and healed his aching heart. Through his mind

ran arguments to convince him that she was right, that she must judge

accurately with the intelligent observation of an experienced Parisian.

He forgot, so desirous was he to reassure himself, that for at least

twelve years he had justly reproached her for too much admiring the

dainty trifles, the elegant nothings, the sentimentalities and nameless

trivialities of the passing fancy of the day, and never art, art alone,

art detached from the popular ideas, tendencies, and prejudices.

“Let us go on,” said he, drawing them away from his picture. He led them

for a long time from gallery to gallery, showing them notable canvases

and explaining their subjects, happy to be with them.

“What time is it?” the Countess asked suddenly.

“Half after twelve.”

“Oh, let us hasten to luncheon then. The Duchess must be waiting for us

at Ledoyen's, where she charged me to bring you, in case we should not

meet her in the galleries.”

The restaurant, in the midst of a little island of trees and shrubs,

seemed like an overflowing hive. A confused hum of voices, calls, the

rattling of plates and glasses came from the open windows and large

doors. The tables, set close together and filled with people eating,

extended in long rows right and left of a narrow passage, up and down

which ran the distracted waiters, holding along their arms dishes filled

with meats, fish, or fruit.

Under the circular gallery there was such a throng of men and women as

to suggest a living pate. Everyone there laughed, called out, drank and

ate, enlivened by the wines and inundated by one of those waves of joy

that sweep over Paris, on certain days, with the sunshine.

An attendant showed the Countess, Annette, and Bertin upstairs into

a reserved room, where the Duchess awaited them. As they entered, the

painter observed, beside his aunt, the Marquis de Farandal, attentive

and smiling, and extending his hand to receive the parasols and wraps of

the Countess and her daughter. He felt again so much displeasure that he

suddenly desired to say rude and irritating things.

The Duchess explained the meeting of her nephew and the departure of

Musadieu, who had been carried off by the Minister of the Fine Arts, and

Bertin, at the thought that this insipidly good-looking Marquis might

marry Annette, that he had come there only to see her, and that he

regarded her already as destined to share his bed, unnerved and revolted

him, as if some one had ignored his own rights--sacred and mysterious

rights.

As soon as they were at table, the Marquis, who sat beside the young

girl, occupied himself in talking to her with the devoted air of a man

authorized to pay his addresses.

He assumed a curious manner, which seemed to the painter bold and

searching; his smiles were satisfied and almost tender, his gallantry

was familiar and officious. In manner and word appeared already

something of decision, as if he were about to announce that he had won

the prize.

The Duchess and the Countess seemed to protect and approve this attitude

of a pretender, and exchanged glances of complicity.

As soon as the luncheon was finished the party returned to the

Exposition. There was such a dense crowd in the galleries, it seemed

impossible to penetrate it. An odor of perspiring humanity, a stale

smell of old gowns and coats, made an atmosphere at once heavy and

sickening. No one looked at the pictures any more, but at faces and

toilets, seeking out well-known persons; and at times came a great

jostling of the crowd as it was forced to give way before the high

double ladder of the varnishers, who cried: “Make way, Messieurs! Make

way, Mesdames!”

At the end of ten minutes, the Countess and Olivier found themselves

separated from the others. He wished to find them immediately, but,

leaning upon him, the Countess said: “Are we not very well off as it

is? Let them go, since it is quite natural that we should lose sight of

them; we will meet them again in the buffet at four o'clock.”

“That is true,” he replied.

But he was absorbed by the idea that the Marquis was accompanying

Annette and continuing his attempts to please her by his fatuous and

affected gallantry.

“You love me always, then?” murmured the Countess.

“Yes, certainly,” he replied, with a preoccupied air, trying to catch a

glimpse of the Marquis's gray hat over the heads of the crowd.

Feeling that he was abstracted, and wishing to lead him back to her own

train of thought, the Countess continued:

“If you only knew how I adore your picture of this year! It is certainly

your _chef-d'oeuvre_.”

He smiled, suddenly, forgetting the young people in remembering his

anxiety of the morning.

“Do you really think so?” he asked.

“Yes, I prefer it above all others.”

With artful wheedling, she crowned him anew, having known well for a

long time that nothing has a stronger effect on an artist than tender

and continuous flattery. Captivated, reanimated, cheered by her sweet

words, he began again to chat gaily, seeing and hearing only her in that

tumultuous throng.

By way of expressing his thanks, he murmured in her ear: “I have a mad

desire to embrace you!”

A warm wave of emotion swept over her, and, raising her shining eyes to

his, she repeated her question: “You love me always, then?”

He replied, with the intonation she wished to hear, and which she had

not heard before:

“Yes, I love you, my dear Any.”

“Come often to see me in the evenings,” she said. “Now that I have my

daughter I shall not go out very much.”

Since she had recognized in him this unexpected reawakening of

tenderness, her heart was stirred with great happiness. In view of

Olivier's silvery hair, and the calming touch of time, she had not

suspected that he was fascinated by another woman, but she was terribly

afraid that, from pure dread of loneliness, he might marry. This fear,

which was of long standing, increased constantly, and set her wits

to contriving plans whereby she might have him near her as much as

possible, and to see that he should not pass long evenings alone in the

chill silence of his empty rooms. Not being always able to hold and

keep him, she would suggest amusements for him, sent him to the theater,

forced him to go into society, being better pleased to know that he was

mingling with many other women than alone in his gloomy house.

She resumed, answering his secret thought: “Ah, if I could only have you

always with me, how I should spoil you! Promise me to come often, since

I hardly go out at all now.”

“I promise it.”

At that moment a voice murmured “Mamma!” in her ear.

The Countess started and turned. Annette, the Duchess, and the Marquis

had just rejoined them.

“It is four o'clock,” said the Duchess. “I am very tired and I wish to

go now.”

“I will go, too; I have had enough of it,” said the Countess.

They reached the interior stairway which divides the galleries where

the drawings and water-colors are hung, overlooking the immense garden

inclosed in glass, where the works of sculpture are exhibited.

From the platform of this stairway they could see from one end to the

other of this great conservatory, filled with statues set up along the

pathway around large green shrubs, and below was the crowd which covered

the paths like a moving black wave. The marbles rose from this mass of

dark hats and shoulders, piercing it in a thousand places, and seeming

almost luminous in their dazzling whiteness.

As Bertin took leave of the ladies at the door of exit, Madame de

Guilleroy whispered:

“Then--will you come this evening?”

“Yes, certainly.”

Bertin reentered the Exposition, to talk with the artists over the

impressions of the day.

Painters and sculptors stood talking in groups around the statues and

in front of the buffet, upholding or attacking the same ideas that were

discussed every year, using the same arguments over works almost exactly

similar. Olivier, who usually took a lively share in these disputes,

being quick in repartee and clever in disconcerting attacks, besides

having a reputation as an ingenious theorist of which he was proud,

tried to urge himself to take an active part in the debates, but the

things he said interested him no more than those he heard, and he longed

to go away, to listen no more, to understand no more, knowing beforehand

as he did all that anyone could say on those ancient questions of art,

of which he knew all sides.

He loved these things, however, and had loved them until now in an

almost exclusive way; but to-day he was distracted by one of those

slight but persistent preoccupations, one of those petty anxieties which

are so small we ought not to allow ourselves to be troubled by them, but

which, in spite of all we do or say, prick through our thoughts like an

invisible thorn buried in the flesh.

He had even forgotten his anxiety over his little peasant bathers in the

remembrance of the displeasing idea of the Marquis approaching Annette.

What did it matter to him, after all? Had he any right? Why should he

wish to prevent this precious marriage, already arranged, and suitable

from every point of view? But no reasoning could efface that impression

of uneasiness and discontent which had seized him when he had beheld

Farandal talking and smiling like an accepted suitor, caressing with his

glances the fair face of the young girl.

When he entered the Countess's drawing-room that evening, and found her

alone with her daughter, continuing by the lamplight their knitting

for the poor, he had great difficulty in preventing himself from saying

sneering things about the Marquis, and from revealing to Annette his

real banality, veiled by a mask of elegance and good form.

For a long time, during these after-dinner evening visits, he had often

allowed himself to lapse into occasional silence that was slightly

somnolent, and was accustomed to fall into the easy attitudes of an old

friend who does not stand on ceremony. But now he seemed suddenly to

rouse himself and to show the alertness of men who do their best to be

agreeable, who take thought as to what they wish to say, and who, before

certain persons, seek for the best phrases in which to express

their ideas and render them attractive. No longer did he allow the

conversation to lag, but did his best to keep it bright and interesting;

and when he had made the Countess and her daughter laugh gaily, when he

felt that he had touched their emotions, or when they ceased to work in

order to listen to him, he felt a thrill of pleasure, an assurance of

success, which rewarded him for his efforts.

He came now every time that he knew they were alone, and never, perhaps,

had he passed such delightful evenings.

Madame de Guilleroy, whose continual fears were soothed by this

assiduity, made fresh efforts to attract him and to keep him near her.

She refused invitations to dinners in the city, she did not go to balls,

nor to the theaters, in order to have the joy of throwing into the

telegraph-box, on going out at three o'clock, a little blue despatch

which said: “Come to-night.” At first, wishing to give him earlier the

tete-a-tete that he desired, she had sent her daughter to bed as soon

as it was ten o'clock. Then after one occasion when he had appeared

surprised at this and had begged laughingly that Annette should not

be treated any longer like a naughty little girl, she had allowed her

daughter a quarter of an hour's grace, then half an hour, and finally a

whole hour. Bertin never remained long after the young girl had retired;

it was as if half the charm that held him there had departed with her.

He would soon take the little low seat that he preferred beside the

Countess and lay his cheek against her knee with a caressing movement.

She would give him one of her hands, which he clasped in his, and the

fever of his spirit would suddenly be abated; he ceased to talk, and

appeared to find repose in tender silence from the effort he had made.

Little by little the Countess, with the keenness of feminine instinct,

comprehended that Annette attracted him almost as much as she herself.

This did not anger her; she was glad that between them he could find

something of that domestic happiness which he lacked; and she imprisoned

him between them, as it were, playing the part of tender mother in such

a way that he might almost believe himself the young girl's father; and

a new bond of tenderness was added to that which had always held him to

this household.

Her personal vanity, always alert, but disturbed since she had felt in

several ways, like almost invisible pin-pricks, the innumerable attacks

of advancing age, took on a new allurement. In order to become as

slender as Annette, she continued to drink nothing, and the real

slimness of her figure gave her the appearance of a young girl. When her

back was turned one could hardly distinguish her from Annette; but

her face showed the effect of this regime. The plump flesh began to be

wrinkled and took on a yellowish tint which rendered more dazzling by

contrast the superb freshness of the young girl's complexion. Then the

Countess began to make up her face with theatrical art, and, though in

broad daylight she produced an effect that was slightly artificial, in

the evening her complexion had that charmingly soft tint obtained by

women who know how to make up well.

The realization of her fading beauty, and the employment of artificial

aid to restore it, somewhat changed her habits. As much as possible,

she avoided comparison with her daughter in the full light of day, but

rather sought it by lamplight, which, if anything, showed herself to

greater advantage. When she was fatigued, pale, and felt that she looked

older than usual, she had convenient headaches by reason of which she

excused herself from going to balls and theaters; but on days when she

knew she looked well she triumphed again and played the elder sister

with the grave modesty of a little mother. In order always to wear gowns

like those of her daughter, she made Annette wear toilettes suitable

for a fully-grown young woman, a trifle too old for her; and Annette who

showed more and more plainly her joyous and laughing disposition, wore

them with sparkling vivacity that rendered her still more attractive.

She lent herself with all her heart to the coquettish arts of her

mother, acting with her, as if by instinct, graceful little domestic

scenes; she knew when to embrace her at the effective moment, how to

clasp her tenderly round the waist, and to show by a movement, a caress,

or some ingenious pose, how pretty both were and how much they resembled

each other.

From seeing the two so much together, and from continually comparing

them, Olivier Bertin sometimes actually confused them in his own mind.

Sometimes, when Annette spoke, and he happened to be looking elsewhere,

he was compelled to ask: “Which of you said that?” He often amused

himself by playing this game of confusion when all three were alone in

the drawing-room with the Louis XV tapestries. He would close his eyes

and beg them to ask him the same question, the one after the other, and

then change the order of the interrogations, so that he might recognize

their voices. They did this with so much cleverness in imitating each

other's intonations, in saying the same phrases with the same accents,

that often he could not tell which spoke. In fact, they had come to

speak so much alike that the servants answered “Yes, Madame” to the

daughter and “Yes, Mademoiselle” to the mother.

From imitating each other's voices and movements for amusement,

they acquired such a similarity of gait and gesture that Monsieur de

Guilleroy himself, when he saw one or the other pass through the shadowy

end of the drawing-room, confounded them for an instant and asked: “Is

that you, Annette, or is it your mamma?”

From this resemblance, natural and assumed, was engendered in the mind

and heart of the painter a strange impression of a double entity, old

and young, wise yet ignorant, two bodies made, the one after the other,

with the same flesh; in fact, the same woman continued, but rejuvenated,

having become once more what she was formerly. Thus he lived near them,

shared between them, uneasy, troubled, feeling for the mother his old

ardor awakened, and for the daughter an indefinable tenderness.

PART II

CHAPTER I

A WILLING ENVOY

“Paris, July 20, 11 P. M.

“MY FRIEND: My mother has just died at Roncieres. We shall leave here at

midnight. Do not come, for we have told no one. But pity me and think of

me. YOUR ANY.”

“July 21, 12 M.

“MY POOR FRIEND: I should have gone, notwithstanding what you wrote, if

I had not become used to regarding all your wishes as commands. I have

thought of you with poignant grief ever since last night. I think of

that silent journey you made, sitting opposite your daughter and your

husband, in that dimly-lighted carriage, which bore you toward your

dead. I could see all three of you under the oil lamp, you weeping and

Annette sobbing. I saw your arrival at the station, the entrance of

the castle in the midst of a group of servants, your rush up the stairs

toward that room, toward that bed where she lies, your first look at

her, and your kiss on her thin, motionless face. And I thought of your

heart, your poor heart--that poor heart, of which half belongs to me and

which is breaking, which suffers so much, which stifles you, making me

suffer also at this moment.

“With profound pity, I kiss your eyes filled with tears.

“OLIVIER.”

“Roncieres, July 24.

“Your letter would have done me good, my friend, if anything could do me

good in the horrible situation into which I have fallen. We buried her

yesterday, and since her poor lifeless body has gone out of this house

it seems to me that I am alone in the world. We love our mothers almost

without knowing or feeling it, for such love is as natural as it is

to live, and we do not realize how deep-rooted is that love until the

moment of final separation. No other affection is comparable to that,

for all others come by chance, while this begins at birth; all the

others are brought to us later by the accidents of life, while this

has lived in our very blood since our first day on earth. And then, and

there, we have lost not only a mother but our childhood itself, which

half disappears, for our little life of girlhood belonged to her as

much as to ourselves. She alone knew it as we knew it; she knew about

innumerable things, remote, insignificant and dear, which are and which

were the first sweet emotions of our heart. To her alone I could still

say: 'Do you remember, mother, the day when--? Do you remember, mother,

the china doll that grandmother gave me?' Both of us murmured to each

other a long, sweet chapter of trifling childish memories, which no

one on earth now knows of but me. So it is a part of myself that is

dead--the older, the better. I have lost the poor heart wherein the

little girl I was once still lived. Now no one knows her any more; no

one remembers the little Anne, her short skirts, her laughter and her

faces.

“And a day will come--and perhaps it is not far away--when in my turn I

too shall go, leaving my dear Annette alone in the world, as mamma has

left me to-day. How sad all this is, how hard, and cruel! Yet one never

thinks about it; we never look about us to see death take someone every

instant, as it will soon take us. If we should look at it, if we should

think of it, if we were not distracted, rejoiced, or blinded by all that

passes before us, we could no longer live, for the sight of this endless

massacre would drive us mad.

“I am so crushed, so despairing, that I have no longer strength to do

anything. Day and night I think of my poor mamma, nailed in that box,

buried beneath that earth, in that field, under the rain, whose old

face, which I used to kiss with so much happiness, is now only a mass of

frightful decay! Oh, what horror!

“When I lost papa, I was just married, and I did not feel all these

things as I do to-day. Yes, pity me, think of me, write to me. I need

you so much just now.

“ANNE.”

“Paris, July 25.

“MY POOR FRIEND: Your grief gives me horrible pain, and life no longer

seems rosy to me. Since your departure I am lost, abandoned, without

ties or refuge. Everything fatigues me, bores me and irritates me. I am

ceaselessly thinking of you and Annette; I feel that you are both far,

far away when I need you near me so much.

“It is extraordinary how far away from me you seem to be, and how I miss

you. Never, even in my younger days, have you been my _all_, as you are

at this moment. I have foreseen for some time that I should reach this

crisis, which must be a sun-stroke in Indian summer. What I feel is so

very strange that I wish to tell you about it. Just fancy that since

your absence I cannot take walks any more! Formerly, and even during the

last few months, I liked very much to set out alone and stroll along the

street, amusing myself by looking at people and things, and enjoying

the mere sight of everything and the exercise of walking. I used to walk

along without knowing where I was going, simply to walk, to breathe, to

dream. Now, I can no longer do this. As soon as I reach the street I

am oppressed by anguish, like the fear of a blind man that has lost his

dog. I become uneasy, exactly like a traveler that has lost his way

in the wood, and I am compelled to return home. Paris seems empty,

frightful, alarming. I ask myself: 'Where am I going?' I answer myself:

'Nowhere, since I am still walking.' Well, I cannot, for I can no longer

walk without some aim. The bare thought of walking straight before me

wearies and bores me inexpressibly. Then I drag my melancholy to the

club.

“And do you know why? Only because you are no longer here. I am certain

of this. When I know that you are in Paris, my walks are no longer

useless, for it is possible that I may meet you in the first street I

turn into. I can go anywhere because you may go anywhere. If I do not

see you, I may at least find Annette, who is an emanation of yourself.

You and she fill the streets full of hope for me--the hope of

recognizing you, whether you approach me from a distance, or whether

I divine your identity in following you. And then the city becomes

charming to me, and the women whose figures resemble yours stir my heart

with all the liveliness of the streets, hold my attention, occupy my

eyes, and give me a sort of hunger to see you.

“You will consider me very selfish, my poor friend, to speak to you in

this way of the solitude of an old cooing pigeon when you are shedding

such bitter tears. Pardon me! I am so used to being spoiled by you that

I cry 'Help! Help!' when I have you no longer.

“I kiss your feet so that you may have pity on me.

“OLIVIER.”

“Roncieres, July 30.

“MY FRIEND: Thanks for your letter. I need so much to know that you

love me! I have just passed some frightful days. Indeed, I believed that

grief would kill me in my turn.

“It was like a block of suffering in my breast, growing larger and

larger, stifling me, strangling me. The physician that was called to

treat me for the nervous crisis I was enduring, which recurred four or

five times a day, injected morphine, which made me almost wild, and the

great heat we have had aggravated my condition and threw me into a state

of over-excitement that was almost delirium. I am a little more calm

since the great storm of Friday. I must tell you that since the day of

the funeral I could weep no more, but during the storm, the approach

of which upset me, I suddenly felt the tears beginning to flow from my

eyes, slow, small, burning. Oh, those first tears, how they hurt me!

They seemed to tear me, as if they had claws, and my throat was so

choked that I could hardly breathe. Then the tears came faster, larger,

cooler. They ran from my eyes as from a spring, and came so fast that my

handkerchief was saturated and I had to take another. The great block of

grief seemed to soften and to flow away through my eyes.

“From that moment I have been weeping from morning till night, and that

is saving me. One would really end by going mad or dying, if one could

not weep. I am all alone, too. My husband is making some little trips

around the country, and I insisted that he should take Annette with

him, to distract and console her a little. They go in the carriage or on

horseback as far as eight or ten leagues from Roncieres, and she returns

to me rosy with youth, in spite of her sadness, her eyes shining with

life, animated by the country air and the excursion she has had. How

beautiful it is to be at that age! I think that we shall remain here a

fortnight or three weeks longer; then, although it will be August, we

shall return to Paris for the reason you know.

“I send to you all that remains to me of my heart.

“ANY.”

“Paris, August 4th.

“I can bear this no longer, my dear friend; you must come back, for

something is certainly going to happen to me. I ask myself whether I am

not already ill, so great a dislike have I for everything I used to take

pleasure in doing, or did with indifferent resignation. For one thing,

it is so warm in Paris that every night means a Turkish bath of eight

or nine hours. I get up overcome by the fatigue of this sleep in a hot

bath, and for an hour or two I walk about before a white canvas, with

the intention to draw something. But mind, eye, and hand are all empty.

I am no longer a painter! This futile effort to work is exasperating. I

summon my models; I place them, and they give me poses, movements, and

expressions that I have painted to satiety. I make them dress again and

let them go. Indeed, I can no longer see anything new, and I suffer from

this as if I were blind. What is it? Is it fatigue of the eye or of the

brain, exhaustion of the artistic faculty or of the optic nerve? Who

knows? It seems to me that I have ceased to discover anything in the

unexplored corner that I have been permitted to visit. I no longer

perceive anything but that which all the world knows; I do the things

that all poor painters have done; I have only one subject now, and only

the observation of a vulgar pedant. Once upon a time, and not so very

long ago, either, the number of new subjects seemed to me unlimited, and

in order to express them I had such a variety of means the difficulty of

making a choice made me hesitate. But now, alas! Suddenly the world of

half-seen subjects has become depopulated, my study has become powerless

and useless. The people that pass have no more sense for me. I no longer

find in every human being the character and savor which once I liked so

much to discern and reveal. I believe, however, that I could make a very

pretty portrait of your daughter. Is it because she resembles you so

much that I confound you both in my mind? Yes, perhaps.

“Well, then, after forcing myself to sketch a man or a woman who does

not resemble any of the familiar models, I decide to go and breakfast

somewhere, for I no longer have the courage to sit down alone in my

own dining-room. The Boulevard Malesherbes seems like a forest path

imprisoned in a dead city. All the houses smell empty. On the street the

sprinklers throw showers of white rain, splashing the wooden pavement

whence rises the vapor of damp tar and stable refuse; and from one

end to the other of the long descent from the Parc Monceau to Saint

Augustin, one sees five or six black forms, unimportant passers,

tradesmen or domestics. The shade of the plane-trees spreads over the

burning sidewalks, making a curious spot, looking almost like liquid, as

if water spilled there were drying. The stillness of the leaves on the

branches, and of their gray silhouettes on the asphalt, expresses the

fatigue of the roasted city, slumbering and perspiring like a workman

asleep on a bench in the sun. Yes, she perspires, the beggar, and she

smells frightfully through her sewer mouths, the vent-holes of sinks and

kitchens, the streams through which the filth of her streets is running.

Then I think of those summer mornings in your orchard full of little

wild-flowers that flavor the air with a suggestion of honey. Then I

enter, sickened already, the restaurant where bald, fat, tired-looking

men are eating, with half-opened waistcoats and moist, shining

foreheads. The food shows the effect of heat--the melon growing soft

under the ice, the soft bread, the flabby filet, the warmed-over

vegetables, the purulent cheese, the fruits ripened on the premises. I

go out, nauseated, and go home to try to sleep a little until the hour

for dinner, which I take at the club.

“There I always find Adelmans, Maldant, Rocdiane, Landa, and many

others, who bore and weary me as much as hand-organs. Each one has his

own little tune, or tunes, which I have heard for fifteen years,

and they play them all together every evening in that club, which is

apparently a place where one goes to be entertained. Someone should

change my own generation for my benefit, for my eyes, my ears, and my

mind have had enough of it. They still make conquests, however, they

boast of them and congratulate one another on them!

“After yawning as many times as there are minutes between eight o'clock

and midnight, I go home and go to bed, and while I undress I think that

the same thing will begin over again the next day.

“Yes, my dear friend, I am at the age when a bachelor's life becomes

intolerable, because there is nothing new for me under the sun. An

unmarried man should be young, curious, eager. When one is no longer

all that, it becomes dangerous to remain free. Heavens! how I loved my

liberty, long ago, before I loved you more! How burdensome it is to me

to-day! For an old bachelor like me, liberty is an empty thing, empty

everywhere; it is the path to death, with nothing in himself to prevent

him from seeing the end; it is the ceaseless query: 'What shall I do?

Whom can I go to see, so that I shall not be alone?' And I go from one

friend to another, from one handshake to the next, begging for a little

friendship. I gather up my crumbs, but they do not make a loaf. You, I

have You, my friend, but you do not belong to me. Perhaps it is because

of you that I suffer this anguish, for it is the desire for contact with

you, for your presence, for the same roof over our heads, for the

same walls inclosing our lives, the same interests binding our hearts

together, the need of that community of hopes, griefs, pleasures,

joys, sadness, and also of material things, that fills me with so much

yearning. You do belong to me--that is to say, I steal a little of you

from time to time. But I long to breathe forever the same air that you

breathe, to share everything with you, to possess nothing that does

not belong to both of us, to feel that all which makes up my own life

belongs to you as much as to me--the glass from which I drink, the chair

on which I sit, the bread I eat and the fire that warms me.

“Adieu! Return soon. I suffer too much when you are far away.

“OLIVIER.”

“Roncieres, August 8th.

“MY FRIEND: I am ill, and so fatigued that you would not recognize me at

all. I believe that I have wept too much. I must rest a little before I

return, for I do not wish you to see me as I am. My husband sets out for

Paris the day after to-morrow, and will give you news of us. He expects

to take you to dinner somewhere, and charges me to ask you to wait for

him at your house about seven o'clock.

“As for me, as soon as I feel a little better, as soon as I have no more

this corpse-like face which frightens me, I will return to be near you.

In all the world, I have only Annette and you, and I wish to offer to

each of you all that I can give without robbing the other.

“I hold out my eyes, which have wept so much, so that you may kiss them.

“ANY.”

When he received this letter announcing the still delayed return,

Olivier was seized with an immoderate desire to take a carriage for the

railway station to catch a train for Roncieres; then, thinking that M.

de Guilleroy must return the next day, he resigned himself, and even

began to wish for the arrival of the husband with almost as much

impatience as if it were that of the wife herself.

Never had he liked Guilleroy as during those twenty-four hours of

waiting. When he saw him enter, he rushed toward him, with hands

extended, exclaiming:

“Ah, dear friend! how happy I am to see you!”

The other also seemed very glad, delighted above all things to return

to Paris, for life was not gay in Normandy during the three weeks he had

passed there.

The two men sat down on a little two-seated sofa in a corner of the

studio, under a canopy of Oriental stuffs, and again shook hands with

mutual sympathy.

“And the Countess?” asked Bertin, “how is she?”

“Not very well. She has been very much affected, and is recovering too

slowly. I must confess that I am a little anxious about her.”

“But why does she not return?”

“I know nothing about it. It was impossible for me to induce her to

return here.”

“What does she do all day?”

“Oh, heavens! She weeps, and thinks of her mother. That is not good for

her. I should like very much to have her decide to have a change of air,

to leave the place where that happened, you understand?”

“And Annette?”

“Oh, she is a blooming flower.”

Olivier smiled with joy.

“Was she very much grieved?” he asked again.

“Yes, very much, very much, but you know that the grief of eighteen

years does not last long.”

After a silence Guilleroy resumed:

“Where shall we dine, my dear fellow? I need to be cheered up, to hear

some noise and see some movement.”

“Well, at this season, it seems to me that the Cafe des Ambassadeurs is

the right place.”

So they set out, arm in arm, toward the Champs-Elysees. Guilleroy,

filled with the gaiety of Parisians when they return, to whom the city,

after every absence, seems rejuvenated and full of possible surprises,

questioned the painter about a thousand details of what people had been

doing and saying; and Olivier, after indifferent replies which betrayed

all the boredom of his solitude, spoke of Roncieres, tried to capture

from this man, in order to gather round him that almost tangible

something left with us by persons with whom we have recently been

associated, that subtle emanation of being one carries away when

leaving them, which remains with us a few hours and evaporates amid new

surroundings.

The heavy sky of a summer evening hung over the city and over the great

avenue where, under the trees, the gay refrains of open-air concerts

were beginning to sound. The two men, seated on the balcony of the Cafe

des Ambassadeurs, looked down upon the still empty benches and chairs of

the inclosure up to the little stage, where the singers, in the mingled

light of electric globes and fading day, displayed their striking

costumes and their rosy complexions. Odors of frying, of sauces, of hot

food, floated in the slight breezes from the chestnut-trees, and when

a woman passed, seeing her reserved chair, followed by a man in a black

coat, she diffused on her way the fresh perfume of her dress and her

person.

Guilleroy, who was radiant, murmured:

“Oh, I like to be here much better than in the country!”

“And I,” Bertin replied, “should like it much better to be there than

here.”

“Nonsense!”

“Heavens, yes! I find Paris tainted this summer.”

“Oh, well, my dear fellow, it is always Paris, after all.”

The Deputy seemed to be enjoying his day, one of those rare days of

effervescence and gaiety in which grave men do foolish things. He looked

at two cocottes dining at a neighboring table with three thin young men,

superlatively correct, and he slyly questioned Olivier about all the

well-known girls, whose names were heard every day. Then he murmured in

a tone of deep regret:

“You were lucky to have remained a bachelor. You can do and see many

things.”

But the painter did not agree with him, and, as a man will do when

haunted by a persistent idea, he took Guilleroy into his confidence on

the subject of his sadness and isolation. When he had said everything,

had recited to the end of his litany of melancholy, and, urged by the

longing to relieve his heart, had confessed naively how much he would

have enjoyed the love and companionship of a woman installed in his

home, the Count, in his turn, admitted that marriage had its advantages.

Recovering his parliamentary eloquence in order to sing the praises of

his domestic happiness, he eulogized the Countess in the highest terms,

to which Olivier listened gravely with frequent nods of approval.

Happy to hear her spoken of, but jealous of that intimate happiness

which Guilleroy praised as a matter of duty, the painter finally

murmured, with sincere conviction:

“Yes, indeed, you were the lucky one!”

The Deputy, flattered, assented to this; then he resumed:

“I should like very much to see her return; indeed, I am a little

anxious about her just now. Wait--since you are bored in Paris, you

might go to Roncieres and bring her back. She will listen to you, for

you are her best friend; while a husband--you know----”

Delighted, Olivier replied: “I ask nothing better. But do you think it

would not annoy her to see me arriving in that abrupt way?”

“No, not at all. Go, by all means, my dear fellow.”

“Well, then, I will. I will leave to-morrow by the one o'clock train.

Shall I send her a telegram?”

“No, I will attend to that. I will telegraph, so that you will find a

carriage at the station.”

As they had finished dinner, they strolled again up the Boulevard, but

in half an hour the Count suddenly left the painter, under the pretext

of an urgent affair that he had quite forgotten.