WHAT IT IS TO BE A CAVALIERE SERVENTE.
"Everye white will have its blacke,
And everye sweet its sowere."
_Old Ballad_.
Neither the example of Oscar Dalrymple nor the broadcloth of the great
Michaud, achieved half so much for my education as did the
apprenticeship I was destined to serve to Madame de Marignan. Having
once made up her mind to civilize me, she spared no pains for the
accomplishment of that end, cost what it might to herself--or me. Before
I had been for one week her subject, she taught me how to bow; how to
pick up a pocket-handkerchief; how to present a bouquet; how to hold a
fan; how to pay a compliment; how to turn over the leaves of a
music-book--in short, how to obey and anticipate every imperious wish;
and how to fetch and carry, like a dog. My vassalage began from the very
day when I first ventured to call upon her. Her house was small, but
very elegant, and she received me in a delicious little room overlooking
the Champs Elysées--a very nest of flowers, books, and birds. Before I
had breathed the air of that fatal boudoir for one quarter of an hour, I
was as abjectly her slave as the poodle with the rose-colored collar
which lay curled upon a velvet cushion at her feet.
"I shall elect you my _cavaliere servente_," said she, after I had twice
nervously risen to take my leave within the first half hour, and twice
been desired to remain a little longer. "Will you accept the office?"
I thought it the greatest privilege under heaven. Perhaps I said so.
"The duties of the situation are onerous," added she, "and I ought not
to accept your allegiance without setting them before you. In the first
place, you will have to bring me every new novel of George Sand,
Flaubert, or About, on the day of publication."
"I will move heaven and earth to get them the day before, if that be
all!" I exclaimed.
Madame de Marignan nodded approvingly, and went on telling off my
duties, one by one, upon her pretty fingers.
"You will have to accompany me to the Opera at least twice a week, on
which occasions you will bring me a bouquet--camellias being my
favorite flowers."
"Were they the flowers that bloom but once in a century," said I, with
more enthusiasm than sense, "they should be yours!"
Madame de Marignan smiled and nodded again.
"When I drive in the Bois, you will sometimes take a seat in my
carriage, and sometimes ride beside it, like an attentive cavalier."
I was just about to avow that I had no horse, when I remembered that I
could borrow Dalrymple's, or hire one, if necessary; so I checked
myself, and bowed.
"When I go to an exhibition," said Madame de Marignan, "it will be your
business to look out the pictures in the catalogue--when I walk, you
will carry my parasol--when I go into a shop, you will take care of my
dog--when I embroider, you will wind off my silks, and look for my
scissors--when I want amusement, you must make me laugh--and when I am
sleepy, you must read to me. In short, my _cavaliere servente_ must be
my shadow."
"Then, like your shadow, Madame," said I, "his place is ever at your
feet, and that is all I desire!"
Madame de Marignan laughed outright, and showed the loveliest little
double row of pearls in all the world.
"Admirable!" said she. "Quite an elegant compliment, and worthy of an
accomplished lady-killer! _Allons_! you are a promising scholar."
"In all that I have dared to say, Madame, I am, at least, sincere," I
added, abashed by the kind of praise.
"Sincere? Of course you are sincere. Who ever doubted it? Nay, to blush
like that is enough to spoil the finest compliment in the world.
There--it is three o'clock, and at half-past I have an engagement, for
which I must now make my _toilette_. Come to-morrow evening to my box at
the _Italiens_, and so adieu. Stay--being my _cavaliere_, I permit you,
at parting, to kiss my hand."
Trembling, breathless, scarcely daring to touch it with mine, I lifted
the soft little hand to my lips, stammered something which was, no
doubt, sufficiently foolish, and hurried away, as if I were treading on
air and breathing sunshine.
All the rest of that day went by in a kind of agreeable delirium. I
walked about, almost without knowledge where I went. I talked, without
exactly knowing what I said. I have some recollection of marching to and
fro among the side-alleys of the Bois de Boulogne, which at that time
was really a woody park, and not a pleasure-garden--of lying under a
tree, and listening to the birds overhead, and indulging myself in some
idiotic romance about love, and solitude, and Madame de Marignan--of
wandering into a _restaurant_ somewhere about seven o'clock, and sitting
down to a dinner for which I had no appetite--of going back, sometime
during the evening, to the Rue Castellane, and walking to and fro on the
opposite side of the way, looking up for ever so long at the darkened
windows where my divinity did not show herself--of coming back to my
lodgings, weary, dusty, and not a bit more sober, somewhere about
eleven o'clock at night, driven to-bed by sheer fatigue, and, even then,
too much in love to go to sleep!
The next day I went through my duties at Dr. Chéron's, and attended an
afternoon lecture at the hospital; but mechanically, like one dreaming.
In the evening I presented myself at the Opera, where Madame de Marignan
received me very graciously, and deigned to accept a superb bouquet for
which I had paid sixteen francs. I found her surrounded by elegant men,
who looked upon me as nobody, and treated me accordingly. Driven to the
back of the box where I could neither speak to her, nor see the stage,
nor achieve even a glimpse of the house, I spent an evening which
certainly fell short of my anticipations. I had, however, the
gratification of seeing my bouquet thrown to Grisi at the end of the
second act, and was permitted the privilege of going in search of Madame
de Marignan's carriage, while somebody else handed her downstairs, and
assisted her with her cloak. A whispered word of thanks, a tiny pressure
of the hand, and the words "come early to-morrow," compensated me,
nevertheless, for every disappointment, and sent me home as blindly
happy as ever.
The next day I called upon her, according to command, and was
transported to the seventh heaven by receiving permission to accompany
her to a morning concert, whereby I missed two lectures, and spent
ten francs.
On the Sunday, having hired a good horse for the occasion, I had the
honor of riding beside her carriage till some better-mounted
acquaintance came to usurp my place and her attention; after which I was
forced to drop behind and bear the eclipse of my glory as
philosophically as I could.
Thus day after day went by, and, for the delusive sake of Madame de
Marignan's bright eyes, I neglected my studies, spent my money, wasted
my time, and incurred the displeasure of Dr. Chéron. Led on from folly
to folly, I was perpetually buoyed up by coquetries which meant nothing,
and as perpetually mortified, disappointed, and neglected. I hoped; I
feared; I fretted; I lost my sleep and my appetite; I felt dissatisfied
with all the world, sometimes blaming myself, and sometimes her--yet
ready to excuse and forgive her at a moment's notice. A boy in
experience even more than in years, I loved with a boy's headlong
passion, and suffered with all a boy's acute susceptibility. I was
intensely sensitive--abashed by a slight, humbled by a glance, and so
easily wounded that there were often times when, seeing myself
forgotten, I could with difficulty drive back the tears that kept rising
to my eyes. On the other hand, I was as easily elated. A kind word, an
encouraging smile, a lingering touch upon my sleeve, was enough at any
time to make me forget all my foregone troubles. How often the mere gift
of a flower sent me home rejoicing! How the tiniest show of preference
set my heart beating! How proud I was if mine was the arm chosen to lead
her to her carriage! How more than happy, if allowed for even one
half-hour in the whole evening to occupy the seat beside her own! To
dangle after her the whole day long--to traverse all Paris on her
errands--to wait upon her pleasure like a slave, and this, too, without
even expecting to be thanked for my devotion, seemed the most natural
thing in the world. She was capricious; but caprice became her. She was
exacting; but her exactions were so coquettish and attractive, that one
would not have wished her more reasonable. She was, at least, ten or
twelve years my senior; but boys proverbially fall in love with women
older than themselves, and this one was in all respects so charming,
that I do not, even now, wonder at my infatuation.
After all, there are few things under heaven more beautiful, or more
touching, than a boy's first love.
Passionate is it as a man's--pure as a woman's--trusting
as a child's--timid, through the very excess of its
unselfishness--chivalrous, as though handed down direct from the days of
old romance--poetical beyond the utterances of the poet. To the
boy-lover, his mistress is only something less than a divinity. He
believes in her truth as in his own; in her purity, as in the sun at
noon. Her practised arts of voice and manner are, in his eyes, the
unstudied graces that spring as naturally from her beauty as the scent
from the flower. Single-hearted himself, it seems impossible that she
whom he adores should trifle with the most sacred sentiment he has ever
known. Conscious of his own devotion, he cannot conceive that his wealth
is poured forth in vain, and that he is but the plaything of her idle
hours. Yet it is so. The boy's first love is almost always misplaced;
seldom rated at its true value; hardly ever productive of anything but
disappointment. Aspirant of the highest mysteries of the soul, he passes
through the ordeal of fire and tears, happy if he keep his faith
unshaken and his heart pure, for the wiser worship hereafter. We all
know this; and few know it better than myself. Yet, with all its
suffering, which of us would choose to obliterate all record of his
first romance? Which of us would be without the memory of its smiles and
tears, its sunshine and its clouds? Not I for one.