At eighteen he took his bachelor's degree. The evening after the
examination Monsieur Servien uncorked a bottle with a special
seal, which he had hoarded for years in anticipation of this
domestic solemnity, and the contents of which had turned from
red to pink as they slowly fined.
"A young man who carries his diploma in his pocket can enter
every door," Monsieur Servien observed, as he imbibed the wine
with fitting respect; it had been good stuff once, but was past
its prime.
Jean polished off the family repast rapidly and hurried away to
the theatre. His only ideas as yet of what a play was like were
derived from the posters he had seen. He selected for tonight
one of the big theatres where a tragedy was on the bill. He took
his ticket for the pit with a vague idea it would be the talisman
admitting him to a new wonder-world of passion and emotion. Every
trifle is disconcerting to a troubled spirit, and on his entrance
he was surprised and sobered to see how few spectators there were
in the stalls and boxes. But at the first scraping of the violins
as the orchestra tuned up, he glued his eyes to the curtain,
which rose at last.
Then, then he saw, in a Roman palace, leaning on the back of a
chair of antique shape, a woman who wore over her robe of white
woollen the saffron-hued _palla_. Amid the trampling of feet, the
rustle of dresses and the shifting of stools, she was reciting
a long soliloquy, accompanied by slow, deliberate gestures. He
felt, as he gazed, a strange, unknown pleasure, that grew more
and more acute till it was almost pain. As scene followed scene,
there entered a confidante, then a hero, then a crowd of supers.
But he saw nothing but the apparition that had first fascinated
him. His eyes fastened greedily on her beauty, caressing the two
bare arms, encircled with rings of metal, gliding along the curve
of the hips below the high girdle, plunging amid the brown locks
that waved above the brow and were tied back with three white
fillets; they clung to the moving lips and the white, moist teeth
that ever and anon flashed in the glare of the footlights. He
longed to feel, to seize, to hold this lovely, living thing that
moved before his eyes; in imagination he enfolded and embraced
the beautiful vision.
The wait between the acts (for the tragedy involved a change of
scenery) was intolerably tedious. His neighbours were talking
politics and passing one another quarters of orange across him;
the newspaper boy and the man who hired out opera-glasses deafened
him with their bawling. He was in terror of some sudden catastrophe
that might interrupt the play.
The curtain rose once more, on a succession of scenes of political
intrigue à la Corneille which had no meaning for Servien. To
his joy the lovely being in the white robe came on again. But
he had strained his sight too hard; he could see nothing; by
dint of riveting his gaze on the long gold pendants that hung
from the actress's ears, he was dazzled; his eyes swam and closed
involuntarily, and he could hear no sound but the beating of
the blood in his temples.
By a supreme effort, in the last scene, he saw and heard her again
clearly and distinctly, yet not as with his ordinary senses, for
she wore for him the elemental guise of a supernatural vision.
When the prompter's bell tinkled and the curtain descended for the
last time, he had a feeling as though the universe had collapsed
in irretrievable ruin.
_Tartuffe_ was the after-piece; but neither the spirit and perfection
of the acting, nor the pretty face and plump shoulders of Elmire,
nor the _soubrette_'s dimpled arms, nor the _ingénue_'s innocent
eyes, nor the noble, witty lines that filled the theatre and
roused the audience to fresh attention, could stir his spirit
that hung entranced on the lips of a tragic heroine.
As he stepped out into the street, the first breath of the cool
night air on his face blew away his intoxication. His senses came
back to him and he could think again; but his thoughts never left
the object of his infatuation, and her image was the only thing
he saw distinctly. He was entranced, possessed; but the feeling
was delicious, and he roamed far and wide in the dark streets,
making long detours by the river-side quays to lengthen out his
reveries, his heart full, overfull of passionate, voluptuous
imaginings. He was content because he was weary; his soul lay
drowned in a delicious languor that no pang of desire troubled;
to look and long was more than sufficient as yet to still the
cravings of his virgin appetites.
He threw himself half dressed on his bed, overjoyed to cherish
the picture of her beauty in his heart. All he wanted was to
lose himself in the enchanted sleep that weighed down his boyish
lids.
On waking, he gazed about him for something--he knew not what.
Was he in love? He could not tell, but there was a void somewhere.
Still, he felt no overmastering impulse, except to read the verses
he had heard the actress declaim. He took down from his shelves
a volume of Corneille and read through Émilie's part. Every line
enchanted him, one as much as another, for did they not all evoke
the same memory for him?
His father and his aunt, with whom he passed his days, had grown
to be only vague, meaningless shapes to him. Their broadest
pleasantries failed to raise a smile, and the coarse realities of
a narrow, penurious existence had no power to disturb his happy
serenity. All day long, in the back-shop where the penetrating
smell of paste mingled with the fumes of the cabbage-soup, he
lived a life of his own, a life of incomparable splendours. His
little Corneille, scored thickly with thumb-nail marks at every
couplet of Émilie's, was all he needed to foster the fairest
of illusions. A face and the tones of a voice were his world.
In a few days he knew the whole tragedy by heart. He would declaim
the lines in a slow, pompous voice, and his aunt would remark
after each speech, as she shredded the vegetables for dinner:
"So you're for being a _curé_, are you, that you preach like they
do in church?"
But in the main she approved of these exercises, and when Monsieur
Servien scratched his head doubtfully and complained that his
son would not make up his mind to any way of earning a living,
she always took up the cudgels for the "little lad" and silenced
the bookbinder by telling him roundly he knew nothing about it--or
about anything else.
So the worthy man went back to his calf-skins. All the same,
albeit he could form no very clear idea of what was in his son's
head, for the latter having become a "gentleman" was beyond his
purview, he felt some disquietude to see a holiday, legitimate
enough no doubt after a successful examination, dragging out to
such a length. He was anxious to see his son earning money in
some department of administration or other. He had heard speak
of the _Hôtel de Ville_ and the Government Offices, and he
racked his brains to think of someone among his customers who
might interest himself in his son's future. But he was not the
man to act precipitately.
One day, when Jean Servien was out on one of the long walks he had
got into the habit of taking, he read on a poster that his Émilie,
Mademoiselle Gabrielle T----, was appearing in that evening's
piece. This time, ignoring his aunt's disapproval, he donned his
Sunday clothes, had his hair frizzed and curled, and took his
seat in the orchestra stalls.
He saw her again! For the first few moments she did not seem
so beautiful as he had pictured her. So long had he laboured
and lain awake over the first image he had carried away of her
that the impression had become blurred, and the type that had
originally imprinted it on his heart no longer corresponded with
the result created by his mind's unconscious working. Then he
was disconcerted to see neither the white _stola_ and saffron
mantle nor the bracelets and fillets that had seemed to him part
and parcel of the beauty they adorned. Now she wore the turban
of Roxana and the wide muslin trousers caught in at the ankle.
It was only by degrees he could grow reconciled to the change.
He realized that her arms were a trifle thin, and that a tooth
stood back behind the rest in the row of pearls. But in the end
her very defects pleased him, because they were hers, and he loved
her the better for them. This time, by the law of change which is
of the very essence of life, and by virtue of the imperfection
that characterizes all living creatures, she made a physical
appeal to his senses and called up the idea of a human being of
flesh and blood, a creature you could cling to and make one with
yourself. His admiration was lost in a flood of tenderness and
infinite sadness--and he burst into tears.
The next day he conceived a great desire to see her as she was
in everyday life, dressed for the streets. It would be a sort of
intimacy merely to pass her on the pavement. One evening, when she
was playing, he watched for her at the stage-door, through which
emerged one after the other scene-shifters, actors, constables,
firemen, dressers, and actresses. At last she appeared, muffled
in her fur cloak, a bouquet in her hand, tall and pale--so pale
in the dusk her face seemed to him as if illumined by an inward
light. She stood waiting on the doorstep till a carriage was
called.
He clasped both hands on his breast and thought he was going to
die.
When he found himself alone on the deserted _Quai_, he plucked
a leaf from the overhanging bough of a plane tree. Then, setting
his elbows on the parapet of the bridge, he tossed the leaf into
the river and watched it borne away by the current of the stream
that lay silvery in the moonlight, spangled with quivering lights.
He watched it till he could see it no longer. Was it not the
emblem of himself? He, too, was abandoning himself to the waters
of a passion that shone bright and which he thought profound.
X
That year the _Champs de Mars_ was occupied by one of the
series of _Expositions Universelles_. Under the trees, in
the heat and dust, crowds were swarming towards the entrance.
Jean passed the turnstiles and entered the palace of glass and
iron. He was still pursuing his passion, for he associated the
being he loved with all manifestations of art and luxury. He
made for the park and went straight to the Egyptian pavilion.
Egypt had filled his dreams from the day when all his thoughts
had been centred on one woman. In the avenue of sphinxes and
before the painted temple he fell under the glamour that women
of olden days and strange lands exercise on the senses,--on those
of lovers with especial force. The sanctuary was venerable in
his eyes, despite the vulgar use it was put to as part of the
Exhibition. Looking at the jewels of Queen Aahotep, who lived
and was lovely in the days of the Patriarchs, he pondered sadly
over all that had been in the world and was no more. He pictured
in fancy the black locks that had scented this diadem with the
sphinx's head, the slim brown arms these, beads of gold and lapis
lazuli had touched, the shoulders that had worn these vulture's
wings, the peaked bosoms these chains and gorgets had confined,
the breast that had once communicated its warmth to yonder gold
scarabæus with the blue wing-cases, the little royal hand that
once held that poniard by the hilt wrought over with flowers
and women's faces. He could not conceive how what was a dream to
him had been a reality for other men. Vainly he tried to follow
the lapse of ages. He told himself that another living shape
would vanish in its turn, and it would be for nothing then that
it had been so passionately desired. The thought saddened and
calmed him. He thought, as he stood before these gewgaws from
the tomb, of all these men who, in the abyss of bygone time,
had in turn loved, coveted, enjoyed, suffered, whom death had
taken, hungry or satiated, and made an end of the appetites of
all alike. A placid melancholy swept over him and held him
motionless, his face buried in his hands.