Great misfortunes do not affect me very much, said John Bridelle, an old
bachelor who passed for a sceptic. I have seen war at quite close
quarters; I walked across corpses without any feeling of pity. The great
brutal facts of nature, or of humanity, may call forth cries of horror or
indignation, but do not cause us that tightening of the heart, that
shudder that goes down your spine at sight of certain little heartrending
episodes.
The greatest sorrow that anyone can experience is certainly the loss of a
child, to a mother; and the loss of his mother, to a man. It is intense,
terrible, it rends your heart and upsets your mind; but one is healed of
these shocks, just as large bleeding wounds become healed. Certain
meetings, certain things half perceived, or surmised, certain secret
sorrows, certain tricks of fate which awake in us a whole world of
painful thoughts, which suddenly unclose to us the mysterious door of
moral suffering, complicated, incurable; all the deeper because they
appear benign, all the more bitter because they are intangible, all the
more tenacious because they appear almost factitious, leave in our souls
a sort of trail of sadness, a taste of bitterness, a feeling of
disenchantment, from which it takes a long time to free ourselves.
I have always present to my mind two or three things that others would
surely not have noticed, but which penetrated my being like fine, sharp
incurable stings.
You might not perhaps understand the emotion that I retained from these
hasty impressions. I will tell you one of them. She was very old, but as
lively as a young girl. It may be that my imagination alone is
responsible for my emotion.
I am fifty. I was young then and studying law. I was rather sad, somewhat
of a dreamer, full of a pessimistic philosophy and did not care much for
noisy cafes, boisterous companions, or stupid girls. I rose early and one
of my chief enjoyments was to walk alone about eight o'clock in the
morning in the nursery garden of the Luxembourg.
You people never knew that nursery garden. It was like a forgotten garden
of the last century, as pretty as the gentle smile of an old lady. Thick
hedges divided the narrow regular paths,--peaceful paths between two
walls of carefully trimmed foliage. The gardener's great shears were
pruning unceasingly these leafy partitions, and here and there one came
across beds of flowers, lines of little trees looking like schoolboys out
for a walk, companies of magnificent rose bushes, or regiments of fruit
trees.
An entire corner of this charming spot was in habited by bees. Their
straw hives skillfully arranged at distances on boards had their
entrances--as large as the opening of a thimble--turned towards
the sun, and all along the paths one encountered these humming and gilded
flies, the true masters of this peaceful spot, the real promenaders of
these quiet paths.
I came there almost every morning. I sat down on a bench and read.
Sometimes I let my book fall on my knees, to dream, to listen to the life
of Paris around me, and to enjoy the infinite repose of these
old-fashioned hedges.
But I soon perceived that I was not the only one to frequent this spot as
soon as the gates were opened, and I occasionally met face to face, at a
turn in the path, a strange little old man.
He wore shoes with silver buckles, knee-breeches, a snuff-colored frock
coat, a lace jabot, and an outlandish gray hat with wide brim and
long-haired surface that might have come out of the ark.
He was thin, very thin, angular, grimacing and smiling. His bright eyes
were restless beneath his eyelids which blinked continuously. He always
carried in his hand a superb cane with a gold knob, which must have been
for him some glorious souvenir.
This good man astonished me at first, then caused me the intensest
interest. I watched him through the leafy walls, I followed him at a
distance, stopping at a turn in the hedge so as not to be seen.
And one morning when he thought he was quite alone, he began to make the
most remarkable motions. First he would give some little springs, then
make a bow; then, with his slim legs, he would give a lively spring in
the air, clapping his feet as he did so, and then turn round cleverly,
skipping and frisking about in a comical manner, smiling as if he had an
audience, twisting his poor little puppet-like body, bowing pathetic and
ridiculous little greetings into the empty air. He was dancing.
I stood petrified with amazement, asking myself which of us was crazy, he
or I.
He stopped suddenly, advanced as actors do on the stage, then bowed and
retreated with gracious smiles, and kissing his hand as actors do, his
trembling hand, to the two rows of trimmed bushes.
Then he continued his walk with a solemn demeanor.
After that I never lost sight of him, and each morning he began anew his
outlandish exercises.
I was wildly anxious to speak to him. I decided to risk it, and one day,
after greeting him, I said:
“It is a beautiful day, monsieur.”
He bowed.
“Yes, sir, the weather is just as it used to be.”
A week later we were friends and I knew his history. He had been a
dancing master at the opera, in the time of Louis XV. His beautiful cane
was a present from the Comte de Clermont. And when we spoke about dancing
he never stopping talking.
One day he said to me:
“I married La Castris, monsieur. I will introduce you to her if you wish
it, but she does not get here till later. This garden, you see, is our
delight and our life. It is all that remains of former days. It seems as
though we could not exist if we did not have it. It is old and distingue,
is it not? I seem to breathe an air here that has not changed since I was
young. My wife and I pass all our afternoons here, but I come in the
morning because I get up early.”
As soon as I had finished luncheon I returned to the Luxembourg, and
presently perceived my friend offering his arm ceremoniously to a very
old little lady dressed in black, to whom he introduced me. It was La
Castris, the great dancer, beloved by princes, beloved by the king,
beloved by all that century of gallantry that seems to have left behind
it in the world an atmosphere of love.
We sat down on a bench. It was the month of May. An odor of flowers
floated in the neat paths; a hot sun glided its rays between the branches
and covered us with patches of light. The black dress of La Castris
seemed to be saturated with sunlight.
The garden was empty. We heard the rattling of vehicles in the distance.
“Tell me,” I said to the old dancer, “what was the minuet?”
He gave a start.
“The minuet, monsieur, is the queen of dances, and the dance of queens,
do you understand? Since there is no longer any royalty, there is no
longer any minuet.”
And he began in a pompous manner a long dithyrambic eulogy which I could
not understand. I wanted to have the steps, the movements, the positions,
explained to me. He became confused, was amazed at his inability to make
me understand, became nervous and worried.
Then suddenly, turning to his old companion who had remained silent and
serious, he said:
“Elise, would you like--say--would you like, it would be very
nice of you, would you like to show this gentleman what it was?”
She turned eyes uneasily in all directions, then rose without saying a
word and took her position opposite him.
Then I witnessed an unheard-of thing.
They advanced and retreated with childlike grimaces, smiling, swinging
each other, bowing, skipping about like two automaton dolls moved by some
old mechanical contrivance, somewhat damaged, but made by a clever
workman according to the fashion of his time.
And I looked at them, my heart filled with extraordinary emotions, my
soul touched with an indescribable melancholy. I seemed to see before me
a pathetic and comical apparition, the out-of-date ghost of a former
century.
They suddenly stopped. They had finished all the figures of the dance.
For some seconds they stood opposite each other, smiling in an
astonishing manner. Then they fell on each other's necks sobbing.
I left for the provinces three days later. I never saw them again. When I
returned to Paris, two years later, the nursery had been destroyed. What
became of them, deprived of the dear garden of former days, with its
mazes, its odor of the past, and the graceful windings of its hedges?
Are they dead? Are they wandering among modern streets like hopeless
exiles? Are they dancing--grotesque spectres--a fantastic
minuet in the moonlight, amid the cypresses of a cemetery, along the
pathways bordered by graves?
Their memory haunts me, obsesses me, torments me, remains with me like a
wound. Why? I do not know.
No doubt you think that very absurd?