‘Let us go to the _Bal de l’Opéra_; now is just the right time, half-past
one,’ I said, getting up from the table in a little room of the Café
Anglais, to a Russian artist who was always coughing and never quite
sober. I had a longing for the open air and bustle. And besides, I
dreaded a long _tête-à-tête_ with my Claude Lorraine from the Neva.
‘Let us go,’ he said, and poured out another glass of brandy.
This was at the beginning of 1849, at that moment of delusive
convalescence between two bouts of sickness when one still sometimes
thought that one wanted to play the fool and be merry.
Strolling about the opera-hall, we stopped before a particularly pretty
quadrille of powdered _débardeurs_ and pierrots with chalked faces.
All the four girls were very young, eighteen or nineteen, charming and
graceful, dancing and enjoying themselves with all their hearts, and
unconsciously passing from the quadrille to the _cancan_. We had hardly
admired it enough when suddenly the quadrille was disturbed ‘owing to
circumstances in no way connected with the dancers,’ as our journalists
used to express it in the happy days of the censorship. One of the
dancing girls, and alas! the handsomest, so skilfully, or so unskilfully,
dropped her shoulder that her shift slipped down, displaying half
her bosom and part of her back—a little more than is done by elderly
Englishwomen (who have nothing with which they can attract except their
shoulders) at the most decorous receptions and in the most conspicuous
boxes at Covent Garden. (So that it is absolutely impossible in the
second tier to listen to _Casta Diva_ or _Sul Salice_ with befitting
modesty.) I had scarcely had time to say to the chilled artist: ‘If only
Michael Angelo or Titian were here! Seize your brush or she will pull it
up again,’ when an immense black hand, not that of Michael Angelo nor
Titian, but of a _gardien de Paris_, seized her by the collar, tore her
away from the quadrille, and dragged her off. The girl would not go,
and struggled as children do when they are to be washed in cold water,
but order and human justice gained the upper hand and were satisfied.
The other girls and their pierrots exchanged glances, found a fresh
_débardeur_, and began again kicking above their heads and darting apart
from each other in order to rush together with the more fury, taking
scarcely any notice of the rape of Proserpine. ‘Let us go and see what
the policeman does to her,’ I said to my companion. I noticed the door
through which he had led her.
We went down by a side-staircase. Any one who has seen and remembers a
certain dog in bronze looking attentively and with some excitement at a
tortoise can easily picture the scene which we came upon. The luckless
girl in her light attire was sitting on a stone step in the piercing wind
in floods of tears; facing her stood a dry, tall _municipal_ in full
uniform with a predatory and earnestly stupid expression, with a comma of
hair on his chin and half-grey moustaches.
He was standing in a dignified attitude with folded arms, looking
intently for the end of these tears and urging: ‘_Allons, allons_.’
To complete the effect, the girl, whimpering, was saying through her
tears: ‘_... Et ... et on dit ... on dit que ... que ... nous sommes en
République ... et ... on ne peut danser comme l’on veut!..._’
All this was so absurd, and in reality so pathetic, that I resolved to
go to the rescue of the captive and to the restoration in her eyes of the
republican form of government.
‘_Mon brave_,’ I said with calculated and insinuating courtesy to the
policeman, ‘what will you do with mademoiselle?’
‘I shall put her _au violon_ till to-morrow,’ he answered grimly. The
wails were redoubled. ‘To teach her to take off her shift,’ added the
guardian of order and of public morality.
‘It was an accident, _brigadier_, you should pardon her.’
‘I can’t. _La consigne_....’
‘After all, at a fête....’
‘But what is it to do with you? _Êtes-vous son réciproque?_’
‘It is the first time I have seen her in my life, _parole d’honneur_.
I don’t know her name, ask her yourself. We are foreigners, and are
surprised to see you in Paris so stern with a weak girl, _avec un être
frêle_. We always thought the police here were so kind.... How is it
that they are allowed to dance the _cancan_, for if they are allowed,
_monsieur le brigadier_, sometimes without meaning it a foot will be
kicked too high or a blouse will slip too low.’
‘That may be so,’ the _municipal_ observed, impressed by my eloquence,
and still more stung by my observation that foreigners have such a
flattering opinion of the Parisian police.
‘Besides,’ I said, ‘look what you are doing. You are giving her a
cold—how can you bring the child, half-naked, out of the heated room and
sit her down in the biting wind?’
‘It is her own fault, she won’t come. But there, I’ll tell you what: if
you will give me your word of honour that she shan’t go back into the
dancing-room to-night, I’ll let her off.’
‘Bravo! Though, indeed, I expected no less of you, _monsieur le
brigadier_, I thank you with all my heart.’
I had now to enter into negotiations with the rescued victim. ‘Excuse
me for interfering on your behalf without having the pleasure of being
personally acquainted with you.’ She held out a warm, moist little hand
to me and looked at me with still moister and warmer eyes. ‘You heard
what was said? I can’t answer for you if you won’t give me your word, or
better still if you won’t come away at once. It is not a great sacrifice
really; I expect it is half-past three by now.’
‘I am ready. I’ll go and get my cloak.’
‘No,’ said the implacable guardian of order, ‘not a step from here.’
‘Where is your cloak and hat?’ ‘In _loge_ so-and-so, row so-and-so.’ The
artist was rushing off, but he stopped to ask: ‘But will they give them
to me?’
‘Only tell them what has happened and that you come from “Little
Leontine.” ... Here’s a ball!’ she added with the expression with which
people say in a graveyard: ‘Sleep in peace.’
‘Would you like me to take a _fiacre_?’
‘I am not alone.’
‘With whom then?’
‘With a friend.’
The artist returned, his cold worse than ever, with a hat and cloak, and
a young shopman or _commis-voyageur_.
‘Very much obliged,’ he said to me, touching his hat, then to her:
‘Always making scandals!’ He seized her by the arm almost as roughly as
the policeman had by the collar, and vanished into the big vestibule of
the Opéra.... Poor girl ... she will catch it ... and what taste ... she
... and he!
I felt positively vexed. I suggested to the artist a drink. He did not
refuse.
A month passed. Six of us, the Vienna agitator Tauzenau, General Haug,
Müller, S., and another, agreed to go once more to a ball. Neither Haug
nor Müller had ever been to one. We stood together in a group. All at
once a masked figure pressed forward through the crowd straight up to me,
almost threw herself on my neck, and said to me: ‘I had not time to thank
you then.’
‘Ah, Mademoiselle Leontine ... delighted to meet you. I can see before
me now your tear-stained face, your pouting lips—you were awfully
charming—that does not mean that you are not charming now.’ The sly
little rogue looked at me, smiling, knowing quite well that that was true.
‘Didn’t you catch cold then?’
‘Not a bit.’
‘In memory of your captivity, you ought, if you would be very, very
kind....’
‘Well what? _Soyez bref._’
‘You might have supper with us.’
‘With pleasure, _ma parole_, only not now.’
‘Where shall I find you then?’
‘Don’t trouble. I’ll come and find you myself at four o’clock; but I say,
I am not alone here....’
‘With your friend again...?’ and a shiver ran down my back.
She burst out laughing. ‘Not a very dangerous one,’ and she led up to me
a fair-haired, blue-eyed girl of seventeen. ‘This is my friend.’