St. Just would have given much to be back in his lonely squalid lodgings
now. Too late did he realise how wise had been the dictum which had
warned him against making or renewing friendships in France.
Men had changed with the times. How terribly they had changed! Personal
safety had become a fetish with most--a goal so difficult to attain that
it had to be fought for and striven for, even at the expense of humanity
and of self-respect.
Selfishness--the mere, cold-blooded insistence for
self-advancement--ruled supreme. De Batz, surfeited with foreign money,
used it firstly to ensure his own immunity, scattering it to right and
left to still the ambition of the Public Prosecutor or to satisfy the
greed of innumerable spies.
What was left over he used for the purpose of pitting the bloodthirsty
demagogues one against the other, making of the National Assembly a
gigantic bear-den, wherein wild beasts could rend one another limb from
limb.
In the meanwhile, what cared he--he said it himself--whether hundreds
of innocent martyrs perished miserably and uselessly? They were the
necessary food whereby the Revolution was to be satiated and de Batz’
schemes enabled to mature. The most precious life in Europe even was
only to be saved if its price went to swell the pockets of de Batz, or
to further his future ambitions.
Times had indeed changed an entire nation. St. Just felt as sickened
with this self-seeking Royalist as he did with the savage brutes who
struck to right or left for their own delectation. He was meditating
immediate flight back to his lodgings, with a hope of finding there
a word for him from the chief--a word to remind him that men did live
nowadays who had other aims besides their own advancement--other ideals
besides the deification of self.
The curtain had descended on the first act, and traditionally, as the
works of M. de Moliere demanded it, the three knocks were heard again
without any interval. St. Just rose ready with a pretext for parting
with his friend. The curtain was being slowly drawn up on the second
act, and disclosed Alceste in wrathful conversation with Celimene.
Alceste’s opening speech is short. Whilst the actor spoke it Armand had
his back to the stage; with hand outstretched, he was murmuring what
he hoped would prove a polite excuse for thus leaving his amiable host
while the entertainment had only just begun.
De Batz--vexed and impatient--had not by any means finished with his
friend yet. He thought that his specious arguments--delivered with
boundless conviction--had made some impression on the mind of the young
man. That impression, however, he desired to deepen, and whilst Armand
was worrying his brain to find a plausible excuse for going away, de
Batz was racking his to find one for keeping him here.
Then it was that the wayward demon Chance intervened. Had St. Just
risen but two minutes earlier, had his active mind suggested the
desired excuse more readily, who knows what unspeakable sorrow, what
heartrending misery, what terrible shame might have been spared both
him and those for whom he cared? Those two minutes--did he but know
it--decided the whole course of his future life. The excuse hovered on
his lips, de Batz reluctantly was preparing to bid him good-bye,
when Celimene, speaking common-place words enough in answer to her
quarrelsome lover, caused him to drop the hand which he was holding out
to his friend and to turn back towards the stage.
It was an exquisite voice that had spoken--a voice mellow and tender,
with deep tones in it that betrayed latent power. The voice had caused
Armand to look, the lips that spoke forged the first tiny link of that
chain which riveted him forever after to the speaker.
It is difficult to say if such a thing really exists as love at first
sight. Poets and romancists will have us believe that it does; idealists
swear by it as being the only true love worthy of the name.
I do not know if I am prepared to admit their theory with regard to
Armand St. Just. Mlle. Lange’s exquisite voice certainly had charmed
him to the extent of making him forget his mistrust of de Batz and his
desire to get away. Mechanically almost he sat down again, and leaning
both elbows on the edge of the box, he rested his chin in his hand, and
listened. The words which the late M. de Moliere puts into the mouth
of Celimene are trite and flippant enough, yet every time that Mlle.
Lange’s lips moved Armand watched her, entranced.
There, no doubt, the matter would have ended: a young man fascinated
by a pretty woman on the stage--‘tis a small matter, and one from which
there doth not often spring a weary trail of tragic circumstances.
Armand, who had a passion for music, would have worshipped at the shrine
of Mlle. Lange’s perfect voice until the curtain came down on the last
act, had not his friend de Batz seen the keen enchantment which the
actress had produced on the young enthusiast.
Now de Batz was a man who never allowed an opportunity to slip by, if
that opportunity led towards the furtherance of his own desires. He
did not want to lose sight of Armand just yet, and here the good demon
Chance had given him an opportunity for obtaining what he wanted.
He waited quietly until the fall of the curtain at the end of Act II.;
then, as Armand, with a sigh of delight, leaned back in his chair,
and closing his eyes appeared to be living the last half-hour all over
again, de Batz remarked with well-assumed indifference:
“Mlle. Lange is a promising young actress. Do you not think so, my
friend?”
“She has a perfect voice--it was exquisite melody to the ear,” replied
Armand. “I was conscious of little else.”
“She is a beautiful woman, nevertheless,” continued de Batz with a
smile. “During the next act, my good St. Just, I would suggest that you
open your eyes as well as your ears.”
Armand did as he was bidden. The whole appearance of Mlle. Lange
seemed in harmony with her voice. She was not very tall, but eminently
graceful, with a small, oval face and slender, almost childlike figure,
which appeared still more so above the wide hoops and draped panniers of
the fashions of Moliere’s time.
Whether she was beautiful or not the young man hardly knew. Measured
by certain standards, she certainly was not so, for her mouth was not
small, and her nose anything but classical in outline. But the eyes
were brown, and they had that half-veiled look in them--shaded with long
lashes that seemed to make a perpetual tender appeal to the masculine
heart: the lips, too, were full and moist, and the teeth dazzling white.
Yes!--on the whole we might easily say that she was exquisite, even
though we did not admit that she was beautiful.
Painter David has made a sketch of her; we have all seen it at the Musee
Carnavalet, and all wondered why that charming, if irregular, little
face made such an impression of sadness.
There are five acts in “Le Misanthrope,” during which Celimene is almost
constantly on the stage. At the end of the fourth act de Batz said
casually to his friend:
“I have the honour of personal acquaintanceship with Mlle. Lange. An you
care for an introduction to her, we can go round to the green-room after
the play.”
Did prudence then whisper, “Desist”? Did loyalty to the leader murmur,
“Obey”? It were indeed difficult to say. Armand St. Just was not
five-and-twenty, and Mlle. Lange’s melodious voice spoke louder than the
whisperings of prudence or even than the call of duty.
He thanked de Batz warmly, and during the last half-hour, while the
misanthropical lover spurned repentant Celimene, he was conscious of a
curious sensation of impatience, a tingling of his nerves, a wild, mad
longing to hear those full moist lips pronounce his name, and have those
large brown eyes throw their half-veiled look into his own.