Dating from that night Jean Servien spent his days in translating
_Myrrha_ bit by bit, with an infinity of pains. The task having
taught him something of verse-making, he composed an ode, which
he sent by post to his mistress. The poem was writ in tears of
blood, yet it was as cold and insipid as a schoolboy's exercise.
Still, he did get something said of the fair vision of a woman
that hovered for ever before his eyes, and of the door he had
kissed in a night of frenzy.
Monsieur Servien was disturbed to note how his son had grown
heedless, absent-minded, and hollow-eyed, coming back late at
night, and hardly up before noon. Before the mute reproach in
his father's eyes the boy hung his head. But his home-life was
nothing now; his whole thoughts were abroad, hovering around
the unknown, in regions he pictured as resplendent with poetry,
wealth and pleasure.
Occasionally, at a street corner, he would meet the Marquis Tudesco
again. He had found it impossible to replace his waistcoat of
ticking. Moreover, he now advised Jean to pay his addresses to
shop-girls.
When the summer came, the theatrical posters announced in quick
succession _Mithridate, Adrienne Lecouvreur, Rodogune, les
Enfants d'Edouard, la Fiammina_. Jean, having secured the money
to pay for a seat by hook or by crook, by some bit of trickery or
falsehood, by cajoling his aunt or by a surreptitious raid on
the cash-box, would watch from an orchestra stall the startling
metamorphoses of the woman he loved. He saw her now girt with
the white fillet of the virgins of Hellas, like those figures
carved with such an exquisite purity in the marble of the Greek
bas-reliefs that they seem clad in inviolate innocence, now in a
flowered gown, with powdered ringlets sweeping her naked shoulders,
that had an inexpressible charm in their spare outlines suggestive
of the bitter-sweet taste of an unripe fruit. She reminded him
in this attire of some old-time pastel of gallant ladies such
as the bookbinder's son had pored over in the dealers' shops
on the _Quai Voltaire_. Anon she would be crowned with a
hawk's crest, girdled with plaques of gold on which were traced
magic symbols in clustered rubies, clad in the barbaric splendour
of an Eastern queen; presently she would be wearing the black
hood, pointed above the brow, and the dusky velvet robe of a
Royal widow, like the portraits to be seen guarded as holy relics
in a chamber of the Louvre; last travesty of all (and it was in
this guise he found her most adorable), as a modern horsewoman,
clothed from neck to heel in a close-fitting habit, a man's hat
set rakishly on her dainty head. He would fain spend his life in
these romantic dreams, and devoured Racine, the Greek tragedians,
Corneille, Shakespeare, Voltaire's verses on the death of Adrienne
Lecouvreur, and whatever in modern literature appealed to him
as elegant or fraught with passion. But in all these creations
it was one image, and one only, that he saw.
Going one evening to the dram-shop with the Marquis Tudesco,
who had given up all idea of discarding his checked waistcoat,
he made the acquaintance of an old man whose white hair lay in
ringlets on his shoulders and who still had the blue eyes of a
child. He was an architect fallen to ruin along with the little
Gothic erections he had raised at great expense in the Paris
suburbs about 1840. His name was Théroulde, and the old fellow,
whose smiling face belied his wretched condition, overflowed
with anecdotes of artists and pretty women.
In his prosperous days he had built country villas for actresses
and attended many a joyous house-warming, the fun and frolic of
which were still fresh in the light-hearted veteran's memory. He
had long ceased to care who heard him, and primed with maraschino,
he would unfold his reminiscences like some sumptuous tapestry
gone to tatters. The bookseller's son, meeting an artist for the
first time, listened to the old Bohemian with rapt enthusiasm.
All these forgotten celebrities, or half-celebrities, all these
old young beauties of whom Théroulde spoke, came to life again
for him, fascinated him with an unexpected charm and a piquant
sense of familiarity. Servien pictured them as he had seen them
represented in the old foxed lithographs that litter the second-hand
bookstalls along the _Quais_, wearing the hair in flat bandeaux
with a jewel on a gold chain in the middle of the forehead, or
else in heavy ringlets _à l'Anglaise_ brushing the cheeks. Obsessed
by his one idea, he endeavoured to recall one who seemed so well
acquainted with ladies of the stage to the present day. He spoke
of tragedy, but Théroulde said he thought that sort of plays
ridiculous, and repeated a number of parodies. Jean mentioned
Gabrielle T----.
"T----," exclaimed the artist-architect; "I knew her mother well."
Never in all his life had Jean heard a sentence that interested
him so profoundly.
"I knew her in 1842," Théroulde went on, "at Nantes, where she
created fourteen rôles in six weeks. And folks imagine actresses
have nothing to do! A fine thing, the stage! But the mischief is,
there's not a single architect capable of building a playhouse
with any sense. As to scenery, it is simply puerile, even at the
Opera--so childish it might make a South Sea Islander blush.
I have thought out a system of rollers in the flies so as to
get rid of those long top-cloths that represent the sky without
a pretence at deceiving anyone. I have likewise invented an
arrangement of lamps and reflectors so placed as to light the
characters on the stage from above downwards, as the sun does,
which is the rational way, and not from below upwards, as the
footlights do, which is absurd."
"Of course it is," agreed Servien. "But you were speaking of
Gabrielle T----'s mother."
"She was a fine woman," replied the architect; "tall, dark, with
a little moustache that became her to perfection.... You see the
effect of my roller contrivance--a vast sky shedding an equal
illumination over the actors and giving every object its natural
shadows. _La Muette_ is being played, we will say; the famous
_cavatina_, the slumber-song, is heard beneath a transparent
sky, vaulted like the real thing and giving the impression of
boundless space. The effect of the music is doubled! Fenella
wakes, crosses the boards with cadenced tread; her shadow, which
follows her on the floor, is cadenced like her steps; it is nature
and art both together. That is my invention! As for putting it
in execution, why, the means are childishly simple."
Thereupon he entered upon endless explanations, using technical
terms and illustrating his meaning with everything he could lay
hands on--glasses, saucers, matches. His frayed sleeves, as they
swept to and fro, wiped the marble top of the table and set the
glasses rattling. Disturbed by the noise, the Marquis Tudesco,
who was asleep, half opened his eyes mechanically.
Servien kept nodding his approval and repeating that he quite
understood, to stop the old man's babble. Then he advised the
architect to try and put his invention in practice; but he only
shrugged his shoulders--it was years since he had left off trying
anything. After all, what did it matter to him whether his system
was applied or no? He was an inventor!
Recalled for the third time by his young listener to Gabrielle
T----'s mother:
"She never had any great success on the stage," he declared;
"but she was a careful woman and saved money. She was near on
fifty when I came upon her again in Paris living with Adolphe, a
very handsome young fellow of twenty-five or twenty-six, nephew
of a stockbroker. It was the most loving couple, the merriest,
happiest household in the world. Never once did I breakfast at their
little flat, fifth floor of a house in the _Rue Taitbout_,
without being melted to tears. 'Eat, my kitten,' 'Drink, my lamb!'
and such looks and endearments, and each so pleased with the
other! One day he said to her: 'My kitten, your money does not
bring you in what it ought; give me your scrip and in forty-eight
hours I shall have doubled your capital.' She went softly to her
cupboard and opening the glass doors, handed him her securities
one by one with hands that trembled a little.
"He took them unconcernedly and brought her a receipt the same
evening bearing his uncle's signature. Three months after she
was pocketing a very handsome income. The sixth month Adolphe
disappeared. The old girl goes straight to the uncle with her
screed of paper. 'I never signed that,' says the stockbroker, 'and
my nephew never deposited any securities with me.' She flies like
a mad-woman to the Commissary of Police, to learn that Adolphe,
hammered at the Bourse, is off to Belgium, carrying with him
a hundred and twenty thousand francs he had done another old
woman out of. She never got over the blow; but we must say this
of her, she brought up her daughter mighty strictly, and showed
herself a very dragon of virtue. Poor Gabrielle must feel her
cheeks burn to this day only to think of her years at the
Conservatoire; for in those days her mother used to smack them
soundly for her, morning and evening. Gabrielle, why I can see
her now, in her sky-blue frock, running to lessons nibbling
coffee-berries between her teeth. She was a good girl, that."
"You knew her!" cried Jean, for whom these confidences formed
the most exciting love adventure he had ever known.
The old man assured him:
"We used to have fine rides with her and a lot of artists in old
days on horseback and donkey-back in the woods of Ville d'Avray;
she used to dress as a man, and I remember one day..." He finished
his story in a whisper,--it was just as well. He went on to say
he hardly ever saw her now that she was with Monsieur Didier,
of the Crédit Bourguignon. The financier had sent the artists
to the right-about; he was a conceited, narrow-minded fellow,
a dull, tiresome prig.
Jean was neither surprised nor excessively shocked to hear that
she had a lover, because having studied the ways of the ladies
of the theatre in the proverbs in verse of Alfred de Musset, he
pictured the life of Parisian actresses without exception as
one continual feast of wit and gallantry. He loved her; with or
without Didier, he loved her. She might have had three hundred
lovers, like Lesbia,--he would have loved her just as much. Is
it not always so with men's passions? They are in love because
they are in love, and in spite of everything.
As for feeling jealousy of Monsieur Didier, he never so much
as thought of it. The infatuation of the lad! He was jealous
of the men and women who saw her pass to and fro in the street,
of the scene-shifters and workmen whom the business of the stage
brought into contact with her. For the present these were his only
rivals. For the rest, he trusted to the future, the ineffable
future big whether with bliss or torment. Indeed, the literature
of romance had inspired him with no small esteem of courtesans,
if only their attitude was as it should be--leaning pensively
on the balcony-rail of their marble palace.
What did shock him in the rapscallion architect's stories, what
wounded his love without weakening it, was all the rather squalid
elements these narratives implied in the actress's young days.
Of all things in the world he thought anything sordid the most
repugnant.
Monsieur Tudesco, feeling sure his brandy-cherries would be paid
for, did not trouble himself to talk, and the conversation was
languishing when the architect remarked casually:
"By-the-by! As I was going to Bellevue yesterday on business
of my own, I came upon that actress of yours, young man, at her
gate... oh! a rubbishy little villa, run up to last through a
love affair, standing in six square yards of garden, meant to
give a stock-broker some sort of notion what the country's like.
She invited me in--but what was the use?"...
She was at Bellevue! Jean forgot all the humiliating details
the old man had told him, retaining the one fact only, that she
was at Bellevue and it was possible to see her there in the sweet
intimacy of the country.
He got up to go. Monsieur Tudesco caught him by the skirt of his
jacket to detain him:
"My young friend, you have my admiration; for I see you rise
on daring pinions above the hindrances of a lowly station to
the realms of beauty, fame and wealth. You will yet cull the
splendid blossom that fascinates you, at least I hope so. But how
much better had you loved a simple work-girl, whose affections
you could have beguiled by offering her a penn'orth of fried
potatoes and a seat among the gods to see a melodrama. I fear you
are a dupe of men's opinion, for one woman is not very different
from another, and it is opinion, that mistress of the world, and
nothing else, which sets a high price on some and a low one on
others. Do you profit, my young and very dear friend, by the
experience afforded me by the vicissitudes of fortune, which
are such that I am obliged at this present moment to borrow of
you the modest sum of two and a half francs."
So spake the Marquis Tudesco.