[Illustration: A select reception, at the Padovani mansion 102]
It was the evening of a great dinner, to be followed by a select
reception, at the Padovani mansion. The Grand-Duke Leopold was
entertaining at the table of his ‘respected friend,’ as he called the
Duchess, some members selected from the various departments of the
Institute, and so making his return to the five Académies for their
courteous reception of him and for the complimentary harangue of the
President. Diplomatic society was, as usual, well represented at the
house of a lady whose husband had been Ambassador; but the Institute had
the chief place, and the arrangement of the guests showed the object
of the dinner. The Grand-Duke, seated opposite the hostess, had Madame
Astier on his right, and on his left the Countess Foder, wife of the
First Secretary of the Finnish Embassy, acting as Ambassador. On the
right of the Duchess sat Léonard Astier, and on her left Monsignor
Adriani, the Papal Nuncio. Then came successively Baron Huchenard,
representing the Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres; Mourad Bey, the
Ambassador of the Porte; Delpech the chemist, Member of the Académie des
Sciences; the Belgian Minister; Landry the musician, of the Beaux-Arts;
Danjou the dramatist, one of Picherals ‘Players’; and, lastly, the
Prince d’Athis, whose twofold claims to distinction as diplomatist and
Member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques combined the
characteristics of the two sets in the circle. At the ends of the table
were the General acting as Aide-de-camp to His Highness, the young
Count Adriani, nephew of the Nuncio, and Lavaux, whose presence was
indispensable at every social gathering.
The feminine element was lacking in charm. The Countess Foder,
red-haired, small, and lively, enveloped in lace to the tip of her
little pointed nose, looked like a squirrel with a cold in its head.
Baroness Huchenard, a lady of no particular age and with a moustache,
produced the effect of a very fat old gentleman in a low dress. Madame
Astier, in a velvet dress partly open at the neck, a present from the
Duchess, had sacrificed on the altar of friendship the pleasure she
would have had in displaying her arms and shoulders, the remains of her
beauty; and thanks to this delicate attention the Duchess Padovani
looked as if she were the only woman at dinner. The Duchess is elegantly
dressed, tall and fair, with a tiny head and fine eyes of a golden hazel
colour--eyes whose shifting haughty glance, from under long dark brows
almost meeting, shows their power of expressing kindness, affection,
or anger. Her nose is short, her mouth emotional and sensitive, and her
complexion has the brilliancy of a young woman’s, owing to her custom
of sleeping in the afternoon when she is going out in the evening or
receiving friends at her own house. A long residence abroad at Vienna,
St. Petersburg, and Constantinople, where as the wife of the French
Ambassador it had been her duty to set the fashion to French society,
has left in her manners a certain air of superior information, which the
ladies of Paris find it hard to forgive. She talks graciously to them
as though they were foreigners, and explains things to them which they
understand as well as she. In her house in the Rue de Poitiers the
Duchess still acts as though representing Paris among the Kurds. It is
the sole defect of this noble and splendid lady.
Though there were, so to speak, no women, no bright dresses showing arms
and shoulders and breaking the monotony of black coats with a blaze of
jewels and flowers, still the table was not without colour. There was
the violet cassock of the Nuncio with his broad silk sash, the purple
_Chechia_ of Mourad Bey, and the red tunic of the Papal Guard with its
gold collar, blue embroideries, and gold braid on the breast, decorated
also with the huge brilliant cross of the Legion of Honour, which the
young Italian had received that very morning, the President thinking
it proper to reward the successful delivery of the Cardinal’s hat.
Scattered about, too, were ribbons green, blue, and red, and the silvery
gleam and sparkling stars of decorations and orders.
Ten o’clock. The dinner is almost over, but not one of the flowers
elaborately arranged round plates and dishes has been disturbed,
there have been no raised voices or animated gestures. Yet the fare is
excellent at the Padovani mansion, one of the few houses in Paris where
they still have wine. The dinner betrays the presence in the house of
an epicure, and the epicure is not the Duchess, who, like all leaders
of French fashion, thinks the dinner good if she has on a becoming dress
and the table is carefully and tastefully decorated. No; the epicure
is the lady’s humble servant, the Prince d’Athis, a man of cultivated
palate and fastidious appetite, spoilt by club cooking and not to
be satisfied by silver plate or the sight of fine liveries and
irreproachable white calves. It is for his sake that the fair Antonia
admits among her occupations the care of the _menu_, it is for him that
she provides highly seasoned dishes and fiery wines of Burgundy, which
it must be admitted have not on this particular occasion dispelled the
coldness of the guests.
At dessert there is the same deadness, stiffness, and restraint that
marked the first course; hardly has a tinge of colour touched
the ladies’ cheeks or noses. It is a dinner of wax dolls,
official,-magnificent, with the magnificence which comes chiefly of
ample room, lofty ceilings, and seats placed so far apart as to preclude
all friendly touching of chairs. A gloomy chilly underground feeling
separates the guests, in spite of the soft breath of the June night
floating in from the gardens through the half-open shutters and gently
swelling the silk blinds. The conversation is distant and constrained,
the lips scarcely move and have an unmeaning smile. Not a remark is
real, not one makes its way to the mind of the hearer; they are as
perfectly artificial as the sweetmeats among which they are dropped. The
speeches, like the faces, are masked, and it is lucky they are, for
if at this moment the mask were to be taken off, and the true thoughts
disclosed, how dismayed the noble company would be!
The Grand-Duke, who has a broad pale face framed by extra-black trim
round whiskers, just such a royal personage as you see in an illustrated
paper, is questioning Baron Huchenard with much interest about his
recent book, and thinking to himself: ‘Oh dear, how this learned
gentleman does bore me with his primitive dwellings! How much better
off I should be at _Roxelane_, where sweet little Déa is dancing in
the ballet! The author of _Roxelane_ is here, I understand, but he is a
middle-aged man, very ugly and very dull. And to think of the ankles of
little Déa!’
The Nuncio, who has an intellectual face of the Roman type, large nose,
thin lips, black eyes and sallow complexion, has leant on one side to
listen to the history of the habitations of Man. He is looking at his
nails, which shine like shells, and is thinking: ‘At the Embassy this
morning I ate a delicious _misto fritto_ and I haven’t got rid of it.
Gioachimo has pulled my sash too tight; I wish I could get away from the
table.’
The Turkish Ambassador, thick-lipped, yellow, and coarse, with his fez
over his eyes and a poke in his neck, is filling the glass of Baroness
Huchenard and saying, ‘How disgusting in these Westerns to bring their
women into society, when they are as dilapidated as this! I had rather
be impaled right off than exhibit that fat creature as my wife.’ The
Baroness is thanking His Excellency with a mincing smile, which covers
the thought ‘This Turk is a revolting beast.’
Nor are Madame Astier’s spoken thoughts any more in harmony with her
internal reflections: ‘I only hope Paul will not have forgotten to go
for grandpapa. It will be an effective scene when the old man comes in,
supported on the arm of his great-grandson. Perhaps we may get an order
out of His Highness.’ Then, as she looks affectionately at the Duchess,
she thinks: ‘She is looking very handsome this evening. Some good news
no doubt about the promised Embassy. Make the best of your time, my
dear; in a month Sammy will be married.’
Madame Astier is not mistaken. The Grand-Duke on arriving announced to
his ‘respected friend’ the President’s promise to appoint D’Athis within
the next few days. The Duchess is filled with à repressed delight, which
shines through as it were, and gives her a marvellous brilliance. To
this height she has raised the man of her choice! And already she is
making plans for removing her own establishment to St. Petersburg, to
a mansion not too far from the Embassy; while the Prince, with his pale
sunk cheeks and rapt look--the look whose penetration Bismarck could
never sustain--checks upon his contemptuous lips the smile at once
mysterious and dogmatic, compounded of diplomacy and learning, and
thinks to himself: ‘Now Colette must make up her mind. She could come
out there, we could be married quietly at the Chapelle des Pages, and
all would be done and past recall before the Duchess heard of it.’
And thus many a reflection ludicrously inappropriate to the occasion
passes from guest to guest under the same safe wrapper. Here you have
the pleased beatitude of Léonard Astier, who has this very morning
received the order of Stanislas (second class), as a return for
presenting to His Highness a copy of his speech with the autograph
letter of Catherine pinned to the first page and very ingeniously worked
into the complimentary address. This letter was the great thing at the
meeting, had been mentioned in the papers two days running, and heard of
all over Europe, giving to the name of Astier, to his collection, and to
his work, that astounding and disproportionate echo with which the Press
now multiplies any passing event. Now Baron Huchenard might do his best
to bite, might mumble as he pleased in his insinuating tones, ‘I ask
you, my dear colleague, to observe.’ But no one would listen. And the
‘first collector in France’ was perfectly aware of it. See what a savage
look he casts at his dear colleague in the pauses of his scientific
harangue! What venom is in every deeply graven hollow of his porous,
pumice-stone face!
Handsome Danjou is also furious, but for other reasons than the Baron.
The Duchess has not asked his wife. The exclusion is painful to his
feelings as a husband, a part of a man no less sensitive than the
original _ego_; and in spite of his wish to shine before the Grand-Duke,
the witticisms as good as new, which he was prepared with, will not go
off. Another who does not feel comfortable is Delpech the chemist, whom
His Highness, when he was presented, congratulated on his interpretation
of the cuneiform character, confounding him with his colleague of the
Académie des Inscriptions. It should be said that, with the exception
of Danjou, whose comedies are popular abroad, the Grand-Duke has never
heard of any of the Academic celebrities introduced to him at this
dinner. Lavaux this very morning, in concert with the Aide-de-camp,
arranged a set of cards bearing each the name of a guest with the titles
of his principal works. The fact that His Highness did not get more
confused among the list than he did proves much presence of mind and
an Imperial memory. But the evening is not over, and other stars of
learning are about to appear. Already may be heard the muffled rolling
of wheels and the slamming of carriages putting down at the door. The
Prince will have more chances yet.
Meanwhile, in a weak, slow voice, seeking for words and losing half of
them in his nose, His Highness is discussing with Astier-Réhu a point
of history suggested by the letter of Catherine II. The ewers have long
completed the round, no one is eating or drinking any more, no one
is even breathing, for fear of interrupting the conversation; all
the company are in a hypnotic trance, and--a remarkable effect of
lévitation--are literally hanging upon the Imperial lips. Suddenly
the august nose is silent, and Léonard Astier, who has made a show of
resistance in order to improve the effect of his opponent’s victory,
throws up his arms like broken foils and says with an air of surrender,
‘Ah, Your Highness has mated me!’ The charm is broken, the company
feel the ground under them again, everyone rises in a slight flutter of
applause, the doors are thrown open, the Duchess takes the arm of the
Grand-Duke, Mourad Bey that of the Baroness, and while, with a sound of
sweeping-dresses and chairs pushed Lack, the assembly files out, Firmin,
the _maître d’hôtel_, solemn and dignified, is privately doing a sum.
‘In any other house this dinner would have been worth to me forty
pounds: with her, I’ll warrant, it won’t be a dozen;’ to which he adds
aloud, as if he would spit his anger upon Her Grace’s train, ‘Grr! you
hag!’
‘With Your Highness’s permission--my grandfather, M. Jean Réhu, the
oldest member in the whole Institute.’
The high notes of Madame Astier’s voice ring in the great drawing-room,
not nearly filled, though the guests invited to the reception have
already arrived.
She speaks very loud to make grandpapa understand to whom he is being
introduced and answer accordingly. Old Réhu looks grand, drawing up his
tall figure and still carrying high his little Creole face darkened and
cracked with age. Paul, graceful and pleasing, supports him on one side,
his granddaughter on the other; Astier-Réhu is behind. The family makes
a sentimental group in the style of Greuze. It would look well on one
of the pale-coloured tapestries with which the room is decorated,
tapestries--a strange thing to think of--scarcely older than Réhu
himself. The Grand-Duke, much affected, tries to say something happy,
but the author of the Letters to Urania is not upon his cards. He gets
out of it by a few vague complimentary phrases, in answer to which old
Réhu, supposing that he is being asked as usual about his age, says,
‘Ninety-eight years in a fortnight, Sir.’ His next attempt does not fit
much better with His Highness’s gracious congratulations. ‘Not since
1803, Sir; the town must be much changed.’ During the progress of this
singular dialogue, Paul is whispering to his mother, ‘You may see him
home if you like; I won’t have anything more to do with him; he’s in
an awful temper. In the carriage he was kicking me all the time in the
legs, to work off his fidgets, he said.’ The young man himself had an
unpleasant ring in his voice this evening, and in his charming face
something set and hard, which his mother knew well, and noticed
immediately on coming into the room. What is the matter? She watched
him, trying to read the meaning in his light eyes, which, however,
harder and keener than usual, revealed nothing.
But the chill, the ceremonious chill, prevailed here no less than at
the dinner-table. The guests kept apart in groups, the few ladies in a
circle upon low chairs, the gentlemen standing or walking about with a
pretence of serious conversation, but obviously engaged in attracting
His Highness’s attention. It was for His Highness that Landry the
musician stood pensive by the chimney-piece, gazing upward with his
inspired brow and his apostolic beard; for him that on the other side
Delpech the chemist stood meditative with his chin upon his hand, poring
intently with gathered brows as if watching the precipitation of a
compound.
Laniboire the philosopher, famous for his likeness to Pascal, was
wandering round, perpetually passing before the sofa, where, unable
to escape from Jean Réhu, sat the Prince. The hostess had forgotten to
present him, and his fine nose looked longer than usual and seemed to
be making a desperate appeal: ‘Cannot you see that this is the nose of
Pascal?’
At the same sofa Madame Eviza was shooting between her scarcely parted
eyelids a look which asked His Highness to name his own price if he
would but be seen at her reception next Monday. Ah! change the scene
as you will, it is always the same performance--pretension, meanness,
readiness to bow down, the courtier’s appetite for self-humiliation
and self-abasement. We need not decline the visits of majesty; we are
provided with all the properties required for the occasion.
‘General.’
‘Your Highness.’
‘I shall never be in time for the ballet.’
‘But why are we staying, Sir?’
‘I don’t know; there’s to be a surprise when the Nuncio is gone.’
While these few words passed in an undertone between the pair, they
neither looked at each other nor changed a muscle of their ceremonial
countenances. The Aide-de-camp had copied from his master the nasal
intonation, the absence of gesture, the fixed attitude on the edge of
the seat with the bowed arm against the side. He was rigid as on parade
or in the Imperial box at the Théâtre Michel. Old Réhu stood before
them, he would not sit down; he was still talking, still exhibiting the
dusty stores of his memory, the people he had known, the many fashions
in which he had dressed. The more distant the time, the clearer his
recollection. ‘That is a thing I have seen,’ says he, as he pauses at
the end of a story, with his eyes fixed, as it were, upon the flying
past, and then off upon a fresh subject. He had been with Talma at
Brunoy, he had been in the drawing-room of Josephine, full of musical
boxes and artificial humming-birds covered with jewels, which sang and
clapped their wings.
Out of doors on the terrace, in the warm darkness of the garden, was
heard low conversation and stifled laughter, coming from the place
where the cigars were visible as a ring of red dots. Lavaux was amusing
himself by getting the young Guardsman to tell Danjou and Paul Astier
the story of the Cardinal’s hat. ‘And the lady, Count--the lady at
the station.’ ‘Cristo, qu’elle était bella!’ said the Italian in a
low voice, and added correctively, ‘sim-patica, surtout, simpatica.’
Charming and responsive--this was his general idea of the ladies of
Paris. He only wished he need not go back. The French wine had loosed
his tongue, and he began describing his life in the Guards, the
advantages of the profession, the hope which they all had on entering
it that they might find a rich wife--that at one of His Holiness’s
audiences they would dazzle some wealthy English Catholic or a fanatical
Spaniard from South America come to bring her offering to the Vatican.
‘L’ouniforme est zouli, comprenez; et pouis les en-fortounes del
Saint Père, cela nous donne à nous autres ses soldats oun prestigio
roumanesque, cava-leresque, qualque sose qui plaît aux dames
zénérale-menté.’ It must be allowed that with his youthful manly face,
his gold braid shining softly in the moonlight, and his white leather
breeches, he did recall the heroes of Artosto or Tasso.
‘Well, my dear Pepino,’ said fat Lavaux, in his mocking and disagreeable
tone, ‘if you want a good match, here it is at your elbow.’
‘How so? Where?’
Paul Astier started and became attentive. The mention of a good match
always made him fear that some one was stealing his.
‘The Duchess, of course. Old Padovani can’t stand another stroke.’
‘But the Prince d’Athis?’
‘He’ll never marry her.’
Lavaux was a good authority, being the friend of the Prince, and of the
Duchess, too, for that matter; though, seeing that the establishment
must shortly split, he stood on the side which he thought the safest
‘Go in boldly, my dear Count; there’s money, lots of it, and a fine
connection, and a lady still well enough.’
‘Cristo, qu’elle est bella!’ said the Italian, with a sigh.
‘E simpatica,’ said Danjou, with a sneer. At which the Guardsman after
a moment’s amazement, delighted to find an Academician with so much
perception, exclaimed: ‘Si, simpatica, précisamenté!’
‘And then,’ continued Lavaux, ‘if you are fond of dyes, and enamel, and
padding, you’ll get it. I believe she’s a marvel of construction, the
best customer that Charrière has.’
He spoke out loud and quite freely, right in front of the dining-room.
The garden door was slightly open, and through the crack the light
fell upon the broad red impudent face of the parasite, and the warm air
floated laden with the rich smell of the dinner which he had eaten and
was repaying in mean dirty slanders. There’s for your _truffes farcies_;
there’s for your _gelinottes_, and your ‘_chateaux_’ at fifteen
shillings a glass! Danjou and he have got together on purpose to play
this popular game of running-down; and a great deal they know and a
great deal they tell. Lavaux serves the ball and Danjou returns. And the
simple Guardsman, not knowing how much to believe, tries to laugh, with
a horrid fear lest the Duchess should catch them, and is much relieved
when he hears his uncle calling him from the other end of the terrace.
The Papal Embassy shuts up early, and since his little misfortune he has
been kept strictly to hours.
‘Good night, gentlemen.’
‘Good luck to you, young man.’
The Nuncio is gone; now for the surprise. At a signal from the Duchess,
the author of _Roxelane_ took his place at the piano and swept his beard
over the keys as he struck two penetrating chords. Immediately at the
far end of the rooms the curtains were drawn from the door, and down the
vista of brilliant apartments, tripping along on the tips of her little
gilt slippers, came a charming brunette in the close bodice and puffed
skirts of the ballet, conducted at arm’s-length by a gloomy person
with hair in rolls and a cadaverous countenance divided by a dead black
moustache. It is Déa! Déa, the folly of the hour, the fashionable toy,
accompanied by her instructor, Valère, the ballet-master at the opera.
_Roxelane_ was taken first this evening; and the girl, warm from her
triumphant performance, had come to give her dance again for the
benefit of the Duchess’s Imperial guest. A more delightful surprise his
respected friend could not have devised. What more exquisite than to
have all to yourself, close to yourself, and within an inch of your
face, the pretty whirl of muslin and the panting of the fresh young
breath, and to hear the sinews of the little creature strain like the
sheets of a sail! His Highness was not alone in this opinion. The moment
the dance began the men drew together, selfishly making a close ring of
black coats and leaving the few ladies present to see what they could
from outside. Even the Grand-Duke is hustled and shoved in the press:
for as the dance quickens the circle narrows, till there is scarcely
room for the movement. Men of letters and of politics, breathing
hard, thrust their heads forward, while their decorations swing like
cow-bells, and grinning from ear to ear show their watery lips and
toothless jaws with grotesque animal cachinnations. Even the Prince
d’Athis stoops with less contempt for humanity, as he gazes upon this
marvel of youth and fairy grace, who with the tips of her toes takes off
the masks of convention; and the Turk, Mourad Bey, who has sat the
whole evening without a word in the depths of an armchair, is now
gesticulating in the front row with open nostrils and staring eyes.
[Illustration: Seem as easy as the hovering of a dragon-fly 120]
In the midst of the wild shouts of applause the girl springs and leaps
with so harmonious a concealment of the muscular working of her frame,
that her dance might seem as easy as the hovering of a dragon-fly, but
for the few drops on her firm rounded neck and the smile, forced,
tense, and almost painful, at the corner of her mouth, which betray the
exhausting effort of the exquisite little creature, Paul Astier, who did
not care for dancing, had stayed on the terrace to smoke. The applause
and the thin sounds of the piano, audible in the distance, made an
accompaniment to his reflections, which took shape little by little,
even as his outward eyes, growing accustomed to the dark, made out
by degrees in the garden the trunks of the trees and their quivering
leaves, and far away at the end the delicate tracery of an old-fashioned
trellis against the wall. It was so hard to succeed; one must hold on
so long to reach the desired point, always close at hand and always
receding. Why was it that Colette seemed every moment on the point of
falling into his arms, and yet when he went back he had to begin
again from the beginning? It looked as if in his absence some one for
amusement pulled down his work. Who was it? It was that dead fellow,
confound him! He ought to be at her side from morning to night; but how
could he, with the perpetual necessity of running after money?
There came a light step, a soft sound of velvet. It was his mother
looking for him. Why did he not come into the drawing-room with all the
rest? She leaned over the balustrade beside him and wanted to know what
he was thinking about.
‘Oh, nothing, nothing.’ But further pressed he came out with it. Well,
the fact was--the fact was--that he had had enough of starving. Dun,
dun, dun. One hole stopped and another opened. He would not stand any
more of it, so there!
From the drawing-room came loud exclamations and wild laughter, together
with the expressionless voice of Valère, directing the dancer in the
imitation of an old-fashioned ballet figure.
‘How much do you want?’ whispered the mother trembling. She had never
seen him like this before.
‘No, it’s no use; it’s more than you could possibly manage.’
‘How much?’ she asked again.
‘Eight hundred.’ And the agent must have it tomorrow by five o’clock,
or else he would take possession. There would be a sale and all sorts
of horrors. Sooner than that--and here he ground his cigar between
his teeth as he said the last words--‘better make a hole in my
frontispiece.’
The mother had heard enough. ‘Hush! hush!’ she said. ‘By five o’clock
to-morrow? Hush!’ And she flung herself upon him, and she pressed her
hands in agony upon his lips, as if she would arrest there the appalling
sentence of death.