THE INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER II.
"WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR?"
CHAPTER III.
THE THORNS OF THE ROSE
CHAPTER IV.
THE BENEFIT OF CHANGE OF SCENE
CHAPTER V.
CONSPIRACY
CHAPTER VI.
QUESTIONINGS
CHAPTER VII.
DEPRESSION
CHAPTER VIII.
NEW HOPES
CHAPTER IX.
DISILLUSION
CHAPTER X.
FLIGHT
CHAPTER XI.
LONELINESS
CHAPTER XII.
CONSOLATION
CHAPTER XIII.
MARIOLLE COPIES MME. DE BURNE
ADDENDA
THE OLIVE GROVE
REVENGE
AN OLD MAID
COMPLICATION
FORGIVENESS
THE WHITE WOLF
ILLUSTRATIONS
HENRI RENE GUY DE MAUPASSANT
"THEY WERE ALONE ... SHE WAS WEEPING"
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
Of the French writers of romance of the latter part of the nineteenth
century no one made a reputation as quickly as did Guy de Maupassant.
Not one has preserved that reputation with more ease, not only during
life, but in death. None so completely hides his personality in
his glory. In an epoch of the utmost publicity, in which the most
insignificant deeds of a celebrated man are spied, recorded, and
commented on, the author of "Boule de Suif," of "Pierre et Jean," of
"Notre Cœur," found a way of effacing his personality in his work.
Of De Maupassant we know that he was born in Normandy about 1850; that
he was the favorite pupil, if one may so express it, the literary
_protégé_, of Gustave Flaubert; that he made his _début_ late in 1880,
with a novel inserted in a small collection, published by Emile Zola
and his young friends, under the title: "The Soirées of Medan"; that
subsequently he did not fail to publish stories and romances every year
up to 1891, when a disease of the brain struck him down in the fullness
of production; and that he died, finally, in 1893, without having
recovered his reason.
We know, too, that he passionately loved a strenuous physical life
and long journeys, particularly long journeys upon the sea. He owned
a little sailing yacht, named after one of his books, "Bel-Ami," in
which he used to sojourn for weeks and months. These meager details are
almost the only ones that have been gathered as food for the curiosity
of the public.
I leave the legendary side, which is always in evidence in the case
of a celebrated man,--that gossip, for example, which avers that
Maupassant was a high liver and a worldling. The very number of his
volumes is a protest to the contrary. One could not write so large
a number of pages in so small a number of years without the virtue
of industry, a virtue incompatible with habits of dissipation. This
does not mean that the writer of these great romances had no love for
pleasure and had not tasted the world, but that for him these were
secondary things. The psychology of his work ought, then, to find an
interpretation other than that afforded by wholly false or exaggerated
anecdotes. I wish to indicate here how this work, illumined by the
three or four positive data which I have given, appears to me to demand
it.
And first, what does that anxiety to conceal his personality prove,
carried as it was to such an extreme degree? The answer rises
spontaneously in the minds of those who have studied closely the
history of literature. The absolute silence about himself, preserved by
one whose position among us was that of a Tourgenief, or of a Mérimée,
and of a Molière or a Shakespeare among the classic great, reveals, to
a person of instinct, a nervous sensibility of extreme depth. There
are many chances for an artist of his kind, however timid, or for one
who has some grief, to show the depth of his emotion. To take up again
only two of the names just cited, this was the case with the author of
"Terres Vierges," and with the writer of "Colomba."
A somewhat minute analysis of the novels and romances of Maupassant
would suffice to demonstrate, even if we did not know the nature of the
incidents which prompted them, that he also suffered from an excess of
nervous emotionalism. Nine times out of ten, what is the subject of
these stories to which freedom of style gives the appearance of health?
A tragic episode. I cite, at random, "Mademoiselle Fifi," "La Petite
Roque," "Inutile Beauté," "Le Masque," "Le Horla," "L'Épreuve," "Le
Champ d'Oliviers," among the novels, and among the romances, "Une Vie,"
"Pierre et Jean," "Fort comme la Mort," "Notre Cœur." His imagination
aims to represent the human being as imprisoned in a situation at once
insupportable and inevitable. The spell of this grief and trouble
exerts such a power upon the writer that he ends stories commenced in
pleasantry with some sinister drama. Let me instance "Saint-Antonin,"
"A Midnight Revel," "The Little Cask," and "Old Amable." You close the
book at the end of these vigorous sketches, and feel how surely they
point to constant suffering on the part of him who executed them.
This is the leading trait in the literary physiognomy of Maupassant,
as it is the leading and most profound trait in the psychology of his
work, viz., that human life is a snare laid by nature, where joy is
always changed to misery, where noble words and the highest professions
of faith serve the lowest plans and the most cruel egoism, where
chagrin, crime, and folly are forever on hand to pursue implacably our
hopes, nullify our virtues, and annihilate our wisdom. But this is not
the whole.
Maupassant has been called a literary nihilist--but (and this is the
second trait of his singular genius) in him nihilism finds itself
coexistent with an animal energy so fresh and so intense that for a
long time it deceives the closest observer. In an eloquent discourse,
pronounced over his premature grave, Emile Zola well defined this
illusion: "We congratulated him," said he, "upon that health which
seemed unbreakable, and justly credited him with the soundest
constitution of our band, as well as with the clearest mind and the
sanest reason. It was then that this frightful thunderbolt destroyed
him."
It is not exact to say that the lofty genius of De Maupassant was that
of an absolutely sane man. We comprehend it to-day, and, on re-reading
him, we find traces everywhere of his final malady. But it is exact
to say that this wounded genius was, by a singular circumstance, the
genius of a robust man. A physiologist would without doubt explain
this anomaly by the coexistence of a nervous lesion, light at first,
with a muscular, athletic temperament. Whatever the cause, the effect
is undeniable. The skilled and dainty pessimism of De Maupassant was
accompanied by a vigor and physique very unusual. His sensations are
in turn those of a hunter and of a sailor, who have, as the old French
saying expressively puts it, "swift foot, eagle eye," and who are
attuned to all the whisperings of nature.
The only confidences that he has ever permitted his pen to tell of
the intoxication of a free, animal existence are in the opening pages
of the story entitled "Mouche," where he recalls, among the sweetest
memories of his youth, his rollicking canoe parties upon the Seine,
and in the description in "La Vie Errante" of a night spent on the
sea,--"to be alone upon the water under the sky, through a warm
night,"--in which he speaks of the happiness of those "who receive
sensations through the whole surface of their flesh, as they do through
their eyes, their mouth, their ears, and sense of smell."
His unique and too scanty collection of verses, written in early youth,
contains the two most fearless, I was going to say the most ingenuous,
paeans, perhaps, that have been written since the Renaissance: "At
the Water's Edge" (Au Bord de l'Eau) and the "Rustic Venus" (La
Venus Rustique). But here is a paganism whose ardor, by a contrast
which brings up the ever present duality of his nature, ends in an
inexpressible shiver of scorn:
"We look at each other, astonished, immovable,
And both are so pale that it makes us fear."
* * * * * * * *
"Alas! through all our senses slips life itself away."
This ending of the "Water's Edge" is less sinister than the murder
and the vision of horror which terminate the pantheistic hymn of the
"Rustic Venus." Considered as documents revealing the cast of mind
of him who composed them, these two lyrical essays are especially
significant, since they were spontaneous. They explain why De
Maupassant, in the early years of production, voluntarily chose, as
the heroes of his stories, creatures very near to primitive existence,
peasants, sailors, poachers, girls of the farm, and the source of the
vigor with which he describes these rude figures. The robustness of
his animalism permits him fully to imagine all the simple sensations
of these beings, while his pessimism, which tinges these sketches of
brutal customs with an element of delicate scorn, preserves him from
coarseness. It is this constant and involuntary antithesis which gives
unique value to those Norman scenes which have contributed so much
to his glory. It corresponds to those two contradictory tendencies
in literary art, which seek always to render life in motion with the
most intense coloring, and still to make more and more subtle the
impression of this life. How is one ambition to be satisfied at the
same time as the other, since all gain in color and movement brings
about a diminution of sensibility, and conversely? The paradox of his
constitution permitted to Maupassant this seemingly impossible accord,
aided as he was by an intellect whose influence was all powerful upon
his development--the writer I mention above, Gustave Flaubert.
These meetings of a pupil and a master, both great, are indeed rare.
They present, in fact, some troublesome conditions, the first of
which is a profound analogy between two types of thought. There must
have been, besides, a reciprocity of affection, which does not often
obtain between a renowned senior who is growing old and an obscure
junior, whose renown is increasing. From generation to generation, envy
reascends no less than she redescends. For the honor of French men of
letters, let us add that this exceptional phenomenon has manifested
itself twice in the nineteenth century. Mérimée, whom I have also
named, received from Stendhal, at twenty, the same benefits that
Maupassant received from Flaubert.
The author of "Une Vie" and the writer of "Clara Jozul" resemble
each other, besides, in a singular and analogous circumstance. Both
achieved renown at the first blow, and by a masterpiece which they
were able to equal but never surpass. Both were misanthropes early in
life, and practised to the end the ancient advice that the disciple of
Beyle carried upon his seal: μεμνήσο απιστἔιν--"Remember to distrust."
And, at the same time, both had delicate, tender hearts under this
affectation of cynicism, both were excellent sons, irreproachable
friends, indulgent masters, and both were idolized by their inferiors.
Both were worldly, yet still loved a wanderer's life; both joined to
a constant taste for luxury an irresistible desire for solitude. Both
belonged to the extreme left of the literature of their epoch, but kept
themselves from excess and used with a judgment marvelously sure the
sounder principles of their school. They knew how to remain lucid and
classic, in taste as much as in form--Mérimée through all the audacity
of a fancy most exotic, and Maupassant in the realism of the most
varied and exact observation. At a little distance they appear to be
two patterns, identical in certain traits, of the same family of minds,
and Tourgenief, who knew and loved the one and the other, never failed
to class them as brethren.
They are separated, however, by profound differences, which perhaps
belong less to their nature than to that of the masters from whom
they received their impulses: Stendhal, so alert, so mobile, after a
youth passed in war and a ripe age spent in vagabond journeys, rich
in experiences, immediate and personal; Flaubert so poor in direct
impressions, so paralyzed by his health, by his family, by his theories
even, and so rich in reflections, for the most part solitary.
Among the theories of the anatomist of "Madame Bovary," there are two
which appear without ceasing in his Correspondence, under one form
or another, and these are the ones which are most strongly evident
in the art of De Maupassant. We now see the consequences which were
inevitable by reason of them, endowed as Maupassant was with a double
power of feeling life bitterly, and at the same time with so much of
animal force. The first theory bears upon the choice of personages and
the story of the romance, the second upon the character of the style.
The son of a physician, and brought up in the rigors of scientific
method, Flaubert believed this method to be efficacious in art as in
science. For instance, in the writing of a romance, he seemed to be as
scientific as in the development of a history of customs, in which the
essential is absolute exactness and local color. He therefore naturally
wished to make the most scrupulous and detailed observation of the
environment.
Thus is explained the immense labor in preparation which his stories
cost him--the story of "Madame Bovary," of "The Sentimental Education,"
and "Bouvard and Pécuchet," documents containing as much _minutiæ_
as his historical stories. Beyond everything he tried to select
details that were eminently significant. Consequently he was of the
opinion that the romance writer should discard all that lessened this
significance, that is, extraordinary events and singular heroes. The
exceptional personage, it seemed to him, should be suppressed, as
should also high dramatic incident, since, produced by causes less
general, these have a range more restricted. The truly scientific
romance writer, proposing to paint a certain class, will attain his
end more effectively if he incarnate personages of the middle order,
and, consequently, paint traits common to that class. And not only
middle-class traits, but middle-class adventures.
From this point of view, examine the three great romances of the
Master from Rouen, and you will see that he has not lost sight of this
first and greatest principle of his art, any more than he has of the
second, which was that these documents should be drawn up in prose of
absolutely perfect technique. We know with what passionate care he
worked at his phrases, and how indefatigably he changed them over and
over again. Thus he satisfied that instinct of beauty which was born of
his romantic soul, while he gratified the demand of truth which inhered
from his scientific training by his minute and scrupulous exactness.
The theory of the mean of truth on one side, as the foundation of
the subject,--"the humble truth," as he termed it at the beginning
of "Une Vie,"--and of the agonizing of beauty on the other side, in
composition, determines the whole use that Maupassant made of his
literary gifts. It helped to make more intense and more systematic
that dainty yet dangerous pessimism which in him was innate. The
middle-class personage, in wearisome society like ours, is always a
caricature, and the happenings are nearly always vulgar. When one
studies a great number of them, one finishes by looking at humanity
from the angle of disgust and despair. The philosophy of the romances
and novels of De Maupassant is so continuously and profoundly
surprising that one becomes overwhelmed by it. It reaches limitation;
it seems to deny that man is susceptible to grandeur, or that motives
of a superior order can uplift and ennoble the soul, but it does so
with a sorrow that is profound. All that portion of the sentimental and
moral world which in itself is the highest remains closed to it.
In revenge, this philosophy finds itself in a relation cruelly exact
with the half-civilization of our day. By that I mean the poorly
educated individual who has rubbed against knowledge enough to justify
a certain egoism, but who is too poor in faculty to conceive an ideal,
and whose native grossness is corrupted beyond redemption. Under his
blouse, or under his coat--whether he calls himself Renardet, as does
the foul assassin in "Petite Roque," or Duroy, as does the sly hero
of "Bel-Ami," or Bretigny, as does the vile seducer of "Mont Oriol,"
or Césaire, the son of Old Amable in the novel of that name,--this
degraded type abounds in Maupassant's stories, evoked with a ferocity
almost jovial where it meets the robustness of temperament which I
have pointed out, a ferocity which gives them a reality more exact
still because the half-civilized person is often impulsive and, in
consequence, the physical easily predominates. There, as elsewhere,
the degenerate is everywhere a degenerate who gives the impression of
being an ordinary man.
There are quantities of men of this stamp in large cities. No writer
has felt and expressed this complex temperament with more justice than
De Maupassant, and, as he was an infinitely careful observer of _milieu_
and landscape and all that constitutes a precise middle distance, his
novels can be considered an irrefutable record of the social classes
which he studied at a certain time and along certain lines. The
Norman peasant and the Provençal peasant, for example; also the small
officeholder, the gentleman of the provinces, the country squire, the
clubman of Paris, the journalist of the boulevard, the doctor at the
spa, the commercial artist, and, on the feminine side, the servant
girl, the working girl, the _demi-grisette_, the street girl, rich
or poor, the gallant lady of the city and of the provinces, and the
society woman--these are some of the figures that he has painted at
many sittings, and whom he used to such effect that the novels and
romances in which they are painted have come to be history. Just as it
is impossible to comprehend the Rome of the Cæsars without the work
of Petronius, so is it impossible to fully comprehend the France of
1850-90 without these stories of Maupassant. They are no more the whole
image of the country than the "Satyricon" was the whole image of Rome,
but what their author has wished to paint, he has painted to the life
and with a brush that is graphic in the extreme.
If Maupassant had only painted, in general fashion, the characters and
the phase of literature mentioned, he would not be distinguished from
other writers of the group called "naturalists." His true glory is in
the extraordinary superiority of his art. He did not invent it, and his
method is not alien to that of "Madame Bovary," but he knew how to give
it a suppleness, a variety, and a freedom which were always wanting in
Flaubert. The latter, in his best pages, is always strained. To use the
expressive metaphor of the Greek athletes, he "smells of the oil." When
one recalls that when attacked by hysteric epilepsy, Flaubert postponed
the crisis of the terrible malady by means of sedatives, this strained
atmosphere of labor--I was going to say of stupor--which pervades his
work is explained. He is an athlete, a runner, but one who drags at his
feet a terrible weight. He is in the race only for the prize of effort,
an effort of which every motion reveals the intensity.
Maupassant, on the other hand, if he suffered from a nervous lesion,
gave no sign of it, except in his heart. His intelligence was bright
and lively, and above all, his imagination, served by senses always on
the alert, preserved for some years an astonishing freshness of direct
vision. If his art was due to Flaubert, it is no more belittling to him
than if one call Raphael an imitator of Perugini.
Like Flaubert, he excelled in composing a story, in distributing the
facts with subtle gradation, in bringing in at the end of a familiar
dialogue something startlingly dramatic; but such composition, with
him, seems easy, and while the descriptions are marvelously well
established in his stories, the reverse is true of Flaubert's, which
always appear a little veneered. Maupassant's phrasing, however
dramatic it may be, remains easy and flowing.
Maupassant always sought for large and harmonious rhythm in his
deliberate choice of terms, always chose sound, wholesome language,
with a constant care for technical beauty. Inheriting from his master
an instrument already forged, he wielded it with a surer skill. In the
quality of his style, at once so firm and clear, so gorgeous yet so
sober, so supple and so firm, he equals the writers of the seventeenth
century. His method, so deeply and simply French, succeeds in giving an
indescribable "tang" to his descriptions. If observation from nature
imprints upon his tales the strong accent of reality, the prose in
which they are shrined so conforms to the genius of the race as to
smack of the soil.
It is enough that the critics of to-day place Guy de Maupassant among
our classic writers. He has his place in the ranks of pure French
genius, with the Regniers, the La Fontaines, the Molières. And those
signs of secret ill divined everywhere under this wholesome prose
surround it for those who knew and loved him with a pathos that is
inexpressible.
Paul Bourget
INTRODUCTION
Born in the middle year of the nineteenth century, and fated
unfortunately never to see its close, Guy de Maupassant was probably
the most versatile and brilliant among the galaxy of novelists who
enriched French literature between the years 1800 and 1900. Poetry,
drama, prose of short and sustained effort, and volumes of travel and
description, each sparkling with the same minuteness of detail and
brilliancy of style, flowed from his pen during the twelve years of his
literary life.
Although his genius asserted itself in youth, he had the patience of
the true artist, spending his early manhood in cutting and polishing
the facets of his genius under the stern though paternal mentorship of
Gustave Flaubert. Not until he had attained the age of thirty did he
venture on publication, challenging criticism for the first time with a
volume of poems.
Many and various have been the judgments passed upon Maupassant's work.
But now that the perspective of time is lengthening, enabling us to
form a more deliberate and therefore a juster, view of his complete
achievement, we are driven irresistibly to the conclusion that the
force that shaped and swayed Maupassant's prose writings was the
conviction that in life there could be no phase so noble or so mean, so
honorable or so contemptible, so lofty or so low as to be unworthy of
chronicling,--no groove of human virtue or fault, success or failure,
wisdom or folly that did not possess its own peculiar psychological
aspect and therefore demanded analysis.
To this analysis Maupassant brought a facile and dramatic pen, a
penetration as searching as a probe, and a power of psychological
vision that in its minute detail, now pathetic, now ironical, in its
merciless revelation of the hidden springs of the human heart, whether
of aristocrat, _bourgeois_, peasant, or priest, allow one to call him a
Meissonier in words.
The school of romantic realism which was founded by Mérimée and
Balzac found its culmination in De Maupassant. He surpassed his
mentor, Flaubert, in the breadth and vividness of his work, and one
of the greatest of modern French critics has recorded the deliberate
opinion, that of all Taine's pupils Maupassant had the greatest command
of language and the most finished and incisive style. Robust in
imagination and fired with natural passion, his psychological curiosity
kept him true to human nature, while at the same time his mental eye,
when fixed upon the most ordinary phases of human conduct, could see
some new motive or aspect of things hitherto unnoticed by the careless
crowd.
It has been said by casual critics that Maupassant lacked one quality
indispensable to the production of truly artistic work, viz.: an
absolutely normal, that is, moral, point of view. The answer to this
criticism is obvious. No dissector of the gamut of human passion and
folly in all its tones could present aught that could be called new, if
ungifted with a view-point totally out of the ordinary plane. Cold and
merciless in the use of this _point de vue_ De Maupassant undoubtedly
is, especially in such vivid depictions of love, both physical and
maternal, as we find in "L'histoire d'une fille de ferme" and "La
femme de Paul." But then the surgeon's scalpel never hesitates at
giving pain, and pain is often the road to health and ease. Some of
Maupassant's short stories are sermons more forcible than any moral
dissertation could ever be.
Of De Maupassant's sustained efforts "Une Vie" may bear the palm. This
romance has the distinction of having changed Tolstoi from an adverse
critic into a warm admirer of the author. To quote the Russian moralist
upon the book:
"'Une Vie' is a romance of the best type, and in my judgment
the greatest that has been produced by any French writer
since Victor Hugo penned 'Les Misérables.' Passing over the
force and directness of the narrative, I am struck by the
intensity, the grace, and the insight with which the writer
treats the new aspects of human nature which he finds in the
life he describes."
And as if gracefully to recall a former adverse criticism, Tolstoi adds:
"I find in the book, in almost equal strength, the three
cardinal qualities essential to great work, viz: moral
purpose, perfect style, and absolute sincerity....
Maupassant is a man whose vision has penetrated the
silent depths of human life, and from that vantage-ground
interprets the struggle of humanity."
"Bel-Ami" appeared almost two years after "Une Vie," that is to say,
about 1885. Discussed and criticised as it has been, it is in reality
a satire, an indignant outburst against the corruption of society
which in the story enables an ex-soldier, devoid of conscience, honor,
even of the commonest regard for others, to gain wealth and rank.
The purport of the story is clear to those who recognize the ideas
that governed Maupassant's work, and even the hasty reader or critic,
on reading "Mont Oriol," which was published two years later and is
based on a combination of the _motifs_ which inspired "Une Vie" and
"Bel-Ami," will reconsider former hasty judgments, and feel, too, that
beneath the triumph of evil which calls forth Maupassant's satiric
anger there lies the substratum on which all his work is founded, viz:
the persistent, ceaseless questioning of a soul unable to reconcile or
explain the contradiction between love in life and inevitable death.
Who can read in "Bel-Ami" the terribly graphic description of the
consumptive journalist's demise, his frantic clinging to life, and his
refusal to credit the slow and merciless approach of death, without
feeling that the question asked at Naishapur many centuries ago is
still waiting for the solution that is always promised but never comes?
In the romances which followed, dating from 1888 to 1890, a sort of
calm despair seems to have settled down upon De Maupassant's attitude
toward life. Psychologically acute as ever, and as perfect in style
and sincerity as before, we miss the note of anger. Fatality is
the keynote, and yet, sounding low, we detect a genuine subtone of
sorrow. Was it a prescience of 1893? So much work to be done, so much
work demanded of him, the world of Paris, in all its brilliant and
attractive phases, at his feet, and yet--inevitable, ever advancing
death, with the question of life still unanswered.
This may account for some of the strained situations we find in his
later romances. Vigorous in frame and hearty as he was, the atmosphere
of his mental processes must have been vitiated to produce the dainty
but dangerous pessimism that pervades some of his later work. This was
partly a consequence of his honesty and partly of mental despair. He
never accepted other people's views on the questions of life. He looked
into such problems for himself, arriving at the truth, as it appeared
to him, by the logic of events, often finding evil where he wished to
find good, but never hoodwinking himself or his readers by adapting or
distorting the reality of things to suit a preconceived idea.
Maupassant was essentially a worshiper of the eternal feminine. He was
persuaded that without the continual presence of the gentler sex man's
existence would be an emotionally silent wilderness. No other French
writer has described and analyzed so minutely and comprehensively
the many and various motives and moods that shape the conduct of a
woman in life. Take for instance the wonderfully subtle analysis of a
woman's heart as wife and mother that we find in "Une Vie." Could aught
be more delicately incisive? Sometimes in describing the apparently
inexplicable conduct of a certain woman he leads his readers to a point
where a false step would destroy the spell and bring the reproach of
banality and ridicule upon the tale. But the catastrophe never occurs.
It was necessary to stand poised upon the brink of the precipice to
realize the depth of the abyss and feel the terror of the fall.
Closely allied to this phase of Maupassant's nature was the peculiar
feeling of loneliness that every now and then breaks irresistibly forth
in the course of some short story. Of kindly soul and genial heart, he
suffered not only from the oppression of spirit caused by the lack of
humanity, kindliness, sanity, and harmony which he encountered daily in
the world at large, but he had an ever abiding sense of the invincible,
unbanishable solitariness of his own Inmost self. I know of no more
poignant expression of such a feeling than the cry of despair which
rings out in the short story called "Solitude," in which he describes
the insurmountable barrier which exists between man and man, or man and
woman, however intimate the friendship between them. He could picture
but one way of destroying this terrible loneliness, the attainment of a
spiritual--a divine--state of love, a condition to which he would give
no name utterable by human lips, lest it be profaned, but for which
his whole being yearned. How acutely he felt his failure to attain his
deliverance may be drawn from his wail that mankind has no universal
measure of happiness.
"Each one of us," writes De Maupassant, "forms for himself an illusion
through which he views the world, be it poetic, sentimental, joyous,
melancholy, or dismal; an illusion of beauty, which is a human
convention; of ugliness, which is a matter of opinion; of truth,
which, alas, is never immutable." And he concludes by asserting that
the happiest artist is he who approaches most closely to the truth of
things as he sees them through his own particular illusion.
Salient points in De Maupassant's genius were that he possessed the
rare faculty of holding direct communion with his gifts, and of writing
from their dictation as it was interpreted by his senses. He had no
patience with writers who in striving to present life as a whole
purposely omit episodes that reveal the influence of the senses. "As
well," he says, "refrain from describing the effect of intoxicating
perfumes upon man as omit the influence of beauty on the temperament of
man."
De Maupassant's dramatic instinct was supremely powerful. He seems
to select unerringly the one thing in which the soul of the scene is
prisoned, and, making that his keynote, gives a picture in words which
haunt the memory like a strain of music. The description of the ride of
Madame Tellier and her companions in a country cart through a Norman
landscape is an admirable example. You smell the masses of the colza
in blossom, you see the yellow carpets of ripe corn spotted here and
there by the blue coronets of the cornflower, and rapt by the red blaze
of the poppy beds and bathed in the fresh greenery of the landscape,
you share in the emotions felt by the happy party in the country cart.
And yet with all his vividness of description, De Maupassant is always
sober and brief. He had the genius of condensation and the reserve
which is innate in power, and to his reader could convey as much in a
paragraph as could be expressed in a page by many of his predecessors
and contemporaries, Flaubert not excepted.
Apart from his novels, De Maupassant's tales may be arranged under
three heads: Those that concern themselves with Norman peasant life;
those that deal with Government employees (Maupassant himself had
long been one) and the Paris middle classes, and those that represent
the life of the fashionable world, as well as the weird and fantastic
ideas of the later years of his career. Of these three groups the tales
of the Norman peasantry perhaps rank highest. He depicts the Norman
farmer in surprisingly free and bold strokes, revealing him in all his
caution, astuteness, rough gaiety, and homely virtue.
The tragic stage of De Maupassant's life may, I think, be set down as
beginning just before the drama of "Musotte" was issued, in conjunction
with Jacques Normand, in 1891. He had almost given up the hope of
interpreting his puzzles, and the struggle between the falsity of the
life which surrounded him and the nobler visions which possessed him
was wearing him out. Doubtless he resorted to unwise methods for the
dispelling of physical lassitude or for surcease from troubling mental
problems. To this period belong such weird and horrible fancies as
are contained in the short stories known as "He" and "The Diary of a
Madman." Here and there, we know, were rising in him inklings of a
finer and less sordid attitude 'twixt man and woman throughout the
world and of a purer constitution of existing things which no exterior
force should blemish or destroy. But with these yearningly prophetic
gleams came a period of mental death. Then the physical veil was torn
aside and for Guy de Maupassant the riddle of existence was answered.
Robert Arnot
NOTRE CŒUR
CHAPTER I.
THE INTRODUCTION
One day Massival, the celebrated composer of "Rebecca," who for fifteen
years, now, had been known as "the young and illustrious master," said
to his friend André Mariolle:
"Why is it that you have never secured a presentation to Mme. Michèle
de Burne? Take my word for it, she is one of the most interesting women
in new Paris."
"Because I do not feel myself at all adapted to her surroundings."
"You are wrong, my dear fellow. It is a house where there is a great
deal of novelty and originality; it is wide-awake and very artistic.
There is excellent music, and the conversation is as good as in the
best salons of the last century. You would be highly appreciated--in
the first place because you play so well on the violin, then because
you have been very favorably spoken of in the house, and finally
because you have the reputation of being select in your choice of
friends."
Flattered, but still maintaining his attitude of resistance, supposing,
moreover, that this urgent invitation was not given without the young
woman being aware of it, Mariolle ejaculated a "Bah! I shall not
bother my head at all about it," in which, through the disdain that he
intended to express, was evident his foregone acceptance.
Massival continued: "Would you like to have me present you some of
these days? You are already known to her through all of us who are on
terms of intimacy with her, for we talk about you often enough. She is
a very pretty woman of twenty-eight, abounding in intelligence, who
will never take a second husband, for her first venture was a very
unfortunate one. She has made her abode a rendezvous for agreeable men.
There are not too many club-men or society-men found there--just enough
of them to give the proper effect. She will be delighted to have me
introduce you."
Mariolle was vanquished; he replied: "Very well, then; one of these
days."
At the beginning of the following week the musician came to his house
and asked him: "Are you disengaged to-morrow?"
"Why, yes."
"Very well. I will take you to dine with Mme. de Burne; she requested
me to invite you. Besides, here is a line from her."
After a few seconds' reflection, for form's sake, Mariolle answered:
"That is settled!"
André Mariolle was about thirty-seven years old, a bachelor without
a profession, wealthy enough to live in accordance with his likings,
to travel, and even to indulge himself in collecting modern paintings
and ancient knickknacks. He had the reputation of being a man of
intelligence, rather odd and unsociable, a little capricious and
disdainful, who affected the hermit through pride rather than through
timidity. Very talented and acute, but indolent, quick to grasp the
meaning of things, and capable, perhaps, of accomplishing something
great, he had contented himself with enjoying life as a spectator, or
rather as a _dilettante_. Had he been poor, he would doubtless have
turned out to be a remarkable or celebrated man; born with a good
income, he was eternally reproaching himself that he could never be
anything better than a nobody.
It is true that he had made more than one attempt in the direction of
the arts, but they had lacked vigor. One had been in the direction of
literature, by publishing a pleasing book of travels, abounding in
incident and correct in style; one toward music by his violin-playing,
in which he had gained, even among professional musicians, a
respectable reputation; and, finally, one at sculpture, that art in
which native aptitude and the faculty of rough-hewing striking and
deceptive figures atone in the eyes of the ignorant for deficiencies in
study and knowledge. His statuette in terra-cotta, "Masseur Tunisien,"
had even been moderately successful at the Salon of the preceding year.
He was a remarkable horseman, and was also, it was said, an excellent
fencer, although he never used the foils in public, owing, perhaps, to
the same self-distrustful feeling which impelled him to absent himself
from society resorts where serious rivalries were to be apprehended.
His friends appreciated him, however, and were unanimous in extolling
his merits, perhaps for the reason that they had little to fear from
him in the way of competition. It was said of him that in every case he
was reliable, a devoted friend, extremely agreeable in manner, and very
sympathetic in his personality.
Tall of stature, wearing his black beard short upon the cheeks and
trained down to a fine point upon the chin, with hair that was
beginning to turn gray but curled very prettily, he looked one straight
in the face with a pair of clear, brown, piercing eyes in which lurked
a shade of distrust and hardness.
Among his intimates he had an especial predilection for artists of
every kind--among them Gaston de Lamarthe the novelist, Massival the
musician, and the painters Jobin, Rivollet, De Mandol--who seemed to
set a high value on his reason, his friendship, his intelligence,
and even his judgment, although at bottom, with the vanity that
is inseparable from success achieved, they set him down as a very
agreeable and very intelligent man who had failed to score a success.
Mariolle's haughty reserve seemed to say: "I am nothing because I have
not chosen to be anything." He lived within a narrow circle, therefore,
disdaining gallantry and the great frequented salons, where others
might have shone more brilliantly than he, and might have obliged him
to take his place among the lay-figures of society. He visited only
those houses where appreciation was extended to the solid qualities
that he was unwilling to display; and though he had consented so
readily to allow himself to be introduced to Mme. Michèle de Burne, the
reason was that his best friends, those who everywhere proclaimed his
hidden merits, were the intimates of this young woman.
She lived in a pretty _entresol_ in the Rue du Général-Foy, behind the
church of Saint Augustin. There were two rooms with an outlook on the
street--the dining-room and a salon, the one in which she received her
company indiscriminately--and two others that opened on a handsome
garden of which the owner of the property had the enjoyment. Of the
latter the first was a second salon of large dimensions, of greater
length than width, with three windows opening on the trees, the leaves
of which brushed against the awnings, a room which was embellished
with furniture and ornaments exceptionally rare and simple, in the
purest and soberest taste and of great value. The tables, the chairs,
the little cupboards or _étagères_, the pictures, the fans and the
porcelain figures beneath glass covers, the vases, the statuettes, the
great clock fixed in the middle of a panel, the entire decoration of
this young woman's apartment attracted and held attention by its shape,
its age, or its elegance. To create for herself this home, of which she
was almost as proud as she was of her own person, she had laid under
contribution the knowledge, the friendship, the good nature, and the
rummaging instinct of every artist of her acquaintance. She was rich
and willing to pay well, and her friends had discovered for her many
things, distinguished by originality, which the mere vulgar amateur
would have passed by with contempt. Thus, with their assistance,
she had furnished this dwelling, to which access was obtained with
difficulty, and where she imagined that her friends received more
pleasure and returned more gladly than elsewhere.
It was even a favorite hobby of hers to assert that the colors of the
curtains and hangings, the comfort of the seats, the beauty of form,
and the gracefulness of general effect are of as much avail to charm,
captivate, and acclimatize the eye as are pretty smiles. Sympathetic
or antipathetic rooms, she would say, whether rich or poor, attract,
hold, or repel, just like the people who live in them. They awake the
feelings or stifle them, warm or chill the mind, compel one to talk or
be silent, make one sad or cheerful; in a word, they give every visitor
an unaccountable desire to remain or to go away.
About the middle of this dimly lighted gallery a grand piano, standing
between two _jardinières_ filled with flowers, occupied the place of
honor and dominated the room. Beyond this a lofty door with two leaves
opened gave access to the bedroom, which in turn communicated with a
dressing-room, also very large and elegant, hung with chintz like a
drawing-room in summer, where Mme. de Burne generally kept herself when
she had no company.
Married to a well-mannered good-for-nothing, one of those domestic
tyrants before whom everything must bend and yield, she had at
first been very unhappy. For five years she had had to endure the
unreasonable exactions, the harshness, the jealousy, even the violence
of this intolerable master, and terrified, beside herself with
astonishment, she had submitted without revolt to this revelation of
married life, crushed as she was beneath the despotic and torturing
will of the brutal man whose victim she had become.
He died one night, from an aneurism, as he was coming home, and when
she saw the body of her husband brought in, covered with a sheet,
unable to believe in the reality of this deliverance, she looked at his
corpse with a deep feeling of repressed joy and a frightful dread lest
she might show it.
Cheerful, independent, even exuberant by nature, very flexible and
attractive, with bright flashes of wit such as are shown in some
incomprehensible way in the intellects of certain little girls of
Paris, who seem to have breathed from their earliest childhood the
stimulating air of the boulevards--where every evening, through the
open doors of the theaters, the applause or the hisses that greet the
plays come forth, borne on the air--she nevertheless retained from her
five years of servitude a strange timidity grafted upon her old-time
audacity, a great fear lest she might say too much, do too much,
together with a burning desire for emancipation and a stern resolve
never again to do anything to imperil her liberty.
Her husband, a man of the world, had trained her to receive like a mute
slave, elegant, polite, and well dressed. The despot had numbered among
his friends many artists, whom she had received with curiosity and
listened to with delight, without ever daring to allow them to see how
she understood and appreciated them.
When her period of mourning was ended she invited a few of them to
dinner one evening. Two of them sent excuses; three accepted and
were astonished to find a young woman of admirable intelligence and
charming manners, who immediately put them at their ease and gracefully
told them of the pleasure that they had afforded her in former days
by coming to her house. From among her old acquaintances who had
ignored her or failed to recognize her qualities she thus gradually
made a selection according to her inclinations, and as a widow, an
enfranchised woman, but one determined to maintain her good name, she
began to receive all the most distinguished men of Paris whom she could
bring together, with only a few women. The first to be admitted became
her intimates, formed a nucleus, attracted others, and gave to the
house the air of a small court, to which every _habitué_ contributed
either personal merit or a great name, for a few well-selected titles
were mingled with the intelligence of the commonalty.
Her father, M. de Pradon, who occupied the apartment over hers, served
as her chaperon and "sheep-dog." An old beau, very elegant and witty,
and extremely attentive to his daughter, whom he treated rather as
a lady acquaintance than as a daughter, he presided at the Thursday
dinners that were quickly known and talked of in Paris, and to which
invitations were much sought after. The requests for introductions
and invitations came in shoals, were discussed, and very frequently
rejected by a sort of vote of the inner council. Witty sayings that
had their origin in this circle were quoted and obtained currency in
the city. Actors, artists, and young poets made their _débuts_ there,
and received, as it were, the baptism of their future greatness.
Longhaired geniuses, introduced by Gaston de Lamarthe, seated
themselves at the piano and replaced the Hungarian violinists that
Massival had presented, and foreign ballet-dancers gave the company a
glimpse of their graceful steps before appearing at the Eden or the
Folies-Bergères.
Mme. de Burne, over whom her friends kept jealous watch and ward and
to whom the recollection of her commerce with the world under the
auspices of marital authority was loathsome, was sufficiently wise
not to enlarge the circle of her acquaintance to too great an extent.
Satisfied and at the same time terrified as to what might be said
and thought of her, she abandoned herself to her somewhat Bohemian
inclinations with consummate prudence. She valued her good name, and
was fearful of any rashness that might jeopardize it; she never allowed
her fancies to carry her beyond the bounds of propriety, was moderate
in her audacity and careful that no _liaison_ or small love affair
should ever be imputed to her.
All her friends had made love to her, more or less; none of them had
been successful. They confessed it, admitted it to each other with
surprise, for men never acknowledge, and perhaps they are right, the
power of resistance of a woman who is her own mistress. There was a
story current about her. It was said that at the beginning of their
married life her husband had exhibited such revolting brutality toward
her that she had been forever cured of the love of men. Her friends
would often discuss the case at length. They inevitably arrived at the
conclusion that a young girl who has been brought up in the dream
of future tenderness and the expectation of an awe-inspiring mystery
must have all her ideas completely upset when her initiation into the
new life is committed to a clown. That worldly philosopher, George de
Maltry, would give a gentle sneer and add: "Her hour will strike; it
always does for women like her, and the longer it is in coming the
louder it strikes. With our friend's artistic tastes, she will wind up
by falling in love with a singer or a pianist."
Gaston de Lamarthe's ideas upon the subject were quite different.
As a novelist, observer, and psychologist, devoted to the study of
the inhabitants of the world of fashion, of whom he drew ironical
and lifelike portraits, he claimed to analyze and know women with
infallible and unique penetration. He put Mme. de Burne down among
those flighty creatures of the time, the type of whom he had given
in his interesting novel, "Une d'Elles." He had been the first
to diagnose this new race of women, distracted by the nerves of
reasoning, hysterical patients, drawn this way and that by a thousand
contradictory whims which never ripen into desires, disillusioned of
everything, without having enjoyed anything, thanks to the times, to
the way of living, and to the modern novel, and who, destitute of all
ardor and enthusiasm, seem to combine in their persons the capricious,
spoiled child and the old, withered sceptic. But he, like the rest of
them, had failed in his love-making.
For all the faithful of the group had in turn been lovers of Mme. de
Burne, and after the crisis had retained their tenderness and their
emotion in different degrees. They had gradually come to form a sort of
little church; she was its Madonna, of whom they conversed constantly
among themselves, subject to her charm even when she was not present.
They praised, extolled, criticised, or disparaged her, according as she
had manifested irritation or gentleness, aversion or preference. They
were continually displaying their jealousy of each other, played the
spy on each other a little, and above all kept their ranks well closed
up, so that no rival might get near her who could give them any cause
for alarm.
These assiduous ones were few in number: Massival, Gaston de Lamarthe,
big Fresnel, George de Maltry, a fashionable young philosopher,
celebrated for his paradoxes, for his eloquent and involved erudition
that was always up to date though incomprehensible even to the most
impassioned of his female admirers, and for his clothes, which were
selected with as much care as his theories. To this tried band she had
added a few more men of the world who had a reputation for wit, the
Comte de Marantin, the Baron de Gravil, and two or three others.
The two privileged characters of this chosen battalion seemed to be
Massival and Lamarthe, who, it appears, had the gift of being always
able to divert the young woman by their artistic unceremoniousness,
their chaff, and the way they had of making fun of everybody, even of
herself, a little, when she was in humor to tolerate it. The care,
whether natural or assumed, however, that she took never to manifest
a marked and prolonged predilection for any one of her admirers, the
unconstrained air with which she practiced her coquetry and the real
impartiality with which she dispensed her favors maintained between
them a friendship seasoned with hostility and an alertness of wit that
made them entertaining.
One of them would sometimes play a trick on the others by presenting
a friend; but as this friend was never a very celebrated or very
interesting man, the rest would form a league against him and quickly
send him away.
It was in this way that Massival brought his comrade André Mariolle
to the house. A servant in black announced these names: "Monsieur
Massival! Monsieur Mariolle!"
Beneath a great rumpled cloud of pink silk, a huge shade that was
casting down upon a square table with a top of ancient marble the
brilliant light of a lamp supported by a lofty column of gilded bronze,
one woman's head and three men's heads were bent over an album that
Lamarthe had brought in with him. Standing between them, the novelist
was turning the leaves and explaining the pictures.
As they entered the room, one of the heads was turned toward them,
and Mariolle, as he stepped forward, became conscious of a bright,
blond face, rather tending to ruddiness, upon the temples of which the
soft, fluffy locks of hair seemed to blaze with the flame of burning
brushwood. The delicate _retroussé_ nose imparted a smiling expression
to this countenance, and the clean-cut mouth, the deep dimples in
the cheeks, and the rather prominent cleft chin, gave it a mocking
air, while the eyes, by a strange contrast, veiled it in melancholy.
They were blue, of a dull, dead blue as if they had been washed out,
scoured, used up, and in the center the black pupils shone, round and
dilated. The strange and brilliant glances that they emitted seemed to
tell of dreams of morphine, or perhaps, more simply, of the coquettish
artifice of belladonna.
Mme. de Burne arose, gave her hand, thanked and welcomed them.
"For a long time I have been begging my friends to bring you to my
house," she said to Mariolle, "but I always have to tell these things
over and over again in order to get them done."
She was tall, elegantly shaped, rather deliberate in her movements,
modestly _décolletée_, scarcely showing the tips of her handsome
shoulders, the shoulders of a red-headed woman, that shone out
marvelously under the light. And yet her hair was not red, but of the
inexpressible color of certain dead leaves that have been burned by the
frosts of autumn.
She presented M. Mariolle to her father, who bowed and shook hands.
The men were conversing familiarly together in three groups; they
seemed to be at home, in a kind of club that they were accustomed
to frequent, to which the presence of a woman imparted a note of
refinement.
Big Fresnel was chatting with the Comte de Marantin. Fresnel's frequent
visits to this house and the preference that Mme. de Burne evinced for
him shocked and often provoked her friends. Still young, but with the
proportions of a drayman, always puffing and blowing, almost beardless,
his head lost in a vague cloud of light, soft hair, commonplace,
tiresome, ridiculous, he certainly could have but one merit in the
young woman's eyes, a merit that was displeasing to the others but
indispensable to her,--that of loving her blindly. He had received the
nickname of "The Seal." He was married, but never said anything about
bringing his wife to the house. It was said that she was very jealous
in her seclusion.
Lamarthe and Massival especially evinced their indignation at the
evident sympathy of their friend for this windy person, and when they
could no longer refrain from reproaching her with this reprehensible
inclination, this selfish and vulgar liking, she would smile and answer:
"I love him as I would love a great, big, faithful dog."
George de Maltry was entertaining Gaston de Lamarthe with the most
recent discovery, not yet fully developed, of the micro-biologists.
M. de Maltry was expatiating on his theme with many subtile and
far-reaching theories, and the novelist accepted them enthusiastically,
with the facility with which men of letters receive and do not dispute
everything that appears to them original and new.
The philosopher of "high life," fair, of the fairness of linen, slender
and tall, was incased in a coat that fitted very closely about the
hips. Above, his pale, intelligent face emerged from his white collar
and was surmounted by smooth, blond hair, which had the appearance of
being glued on.
As to Lamarthe, Gaston de Lamarthe, to whom the particle that divided
his name had imparted some of the pretensions of a gentleman and man
of the world, he was first, last, and all the time a man of letters,
a terrible and pitiless man of letters. Provided with an eye that
gathered in images, attitudes, and gestures with the rapidity and
accuracy of the photographer's camera, and endowed with penetration
and the novelist's instinct, which were as innate in him as the faculty
of scent is in a hound, he was busy from morning till night storing
away impressions to be used afterward in his profession. With these
two very simple senses, a distinct idea of form and an intuitive one
of substance, he gave to his books, in which there appeared none of
the ordinary aims of psychological writers, the color, the tone, the
appearance, the movement of life itself.
Each one of his novels as it appeared excited in society curiosity,
conjecture, merriment, or wrath, for there always seemed to be
prominent persons to be recognized in them, only faintly disguised
under a torn mask; and whenever he made his way through a crowded salon
he left a wake of uneasiness behind him. Moreover, he had published a
volume of personal recollections, in which he had given the portraits
of many men and women of his acquaintance, without any clearly defined
intention of unkindness, but with such precision and severity that
they felt sore over it. Some one had applied to him the _sobriquet_,
"Beware of your friends." He kept his secrets close-locked within his
breast and was a puzzle to his intimates. He was reputed to have once
passionately loved a woman who caused him much suffering, and it was
said that after that he wreaked his vengeance upon others of her sex.
Massival and he understood each other very well, although the musician
was of a very different disposition, more frank, more expansive, less
harassed, perhaps, but manifestly more impressible. After two great
successes--a piece performed at Brussels and afterward brought to
Paris, where it was loudly applauded at the Opéra-Comique; then a
second work that was received and interpreted at the Grand Opéra as
soon as offered--he had yielded to that species of cessation of impulse
that seems to smite the greater part of our contemporary artists like
premature paralysis. They do not grow old, as their fathers did, in the
midst of their renown and success, but seem threatened with impotence
even when in the very prime of life. Lamarthe was accustomed to say:
"At the present day there are in France only great men who have gone
wrong."
Just at this time Massival seemed very much smitten with Mme. de Burne,
so that every eye was turned upon him when he kissed her hand with an
air of adoration. He inquired:
"Are we late?"
She replied:
"No, I am still expecting the Baron de Gravil and the Marquise de
Bratiane."
"Ah, the Marquise! What good luck! We shall have some music this
evening, then."
"I hope so."
The two laggards made their appearance. The Marquise, a woman perhaps a
little too diminutive, Italian by birth, of a lively disposition, with
very black eyes and eyelashes, black eyebrows, and black hair to match,
which grew so thick and so low down that she had no forehead to speak
of, her eyes even being threatened with invasion, had the reputation of
possessing the most remarkable voice of all the women in society.
The Baron, a very gentlemanly man, hollow-chested and with a large
head, was never really himself unless he had his violoncello in his
hands. He was a passionate melomaniac, and only frequented those houses
where music received its due share of honor.
Dinner was announced, and Mme. de Burne, taking André Mariolle's arm,
allowed her guests to precede her to the dining-room; then, as they
were left together, the last ones in the drawing-room, just as she was
about to follow the procession she cast upon him an oblique, swift
glance from her pale eyes with their dusky pupils, in which he thought
that he could perceive more complexity of thought and more curiosity of
interest than pretty women generally bestow upon a strange gentleman
when receiving him at dinner for the first time.
The dinner was monotonous and rather dull. Lamarthe was nervous, and
seemed ill disposed toward everyone, not openly hostile, for he made a
point of his good-breeding, but displaying that almost imperceptible
bad humor that takes the life out of conversation. Massival, abstracted
and preoccupied, ate little, and from time to time cast furtive glances
at the mistress of the house, who seemed to be in any place rather than
at her own table. Inattentive, responding to remarks with a smile and
then allowing her face to settle back to its former intent expression,
she appeared to be reflecting upon something that seemed greatly to
preoccupy her, and to interest her that evening more than did her
friends. Still she contributed her share to the conversation--very
amply as regarded the Marquise and Mariolle,--but she did it from
habit, from a sense of duty, visibly absent from herself and from her
abode. Fresnel and M. de Maltry disputed over contemporary poetry.
Fresnel held the opinions upon poetry that are current among men of
the world, and M. de Maltry the perceptions of the spinners of most
complicated verse--verse that is incomprehensible to the general public.
Several times during the dinner Mariolle had again encountered the
young woman's inquiring look, but more vague, less intent, less
curious. The Marquise de Bratiane, the Comte de Marantin, and the Baron
de Gravil were the only ones who kept up an uninterrupted conversation,
and they had quantities of things to say.
After dinner, during the course of the evening, Massival, who had
kept growing more and more melancholy, seated himself at the piano
and struck a few notes, whereupon Mme. de Burne appeared to awake and
quickly organized a little concert, the numbers of which comprised the
pieces that she was most fond of.
The Marquise was in voice, and, animated by Massival's presence, she
sang like a real artist. The master accompanied her, with that dreamy
look that he always assumed when he sat down to play. His long hair
fell over the collar of his coat and mingled with his full, fine,
shining, curling beard. Many women had been in love with him, and they
still pursued him with their attentions, so it was said. Mme. de Burne,
sitting by the piano and listening with all her soul, seemed to be
contemplating him and at the same time not to see him, and Mariolle
was a little jealous. He was not particularly jealous because of any
relation that there was between her and him, but in presence of that
look of a woman fixed so intently upon one of the Illustrious he felt
himself humiliated in his masculine vanity by the consciousness of the
rank that _They_ bestow on us in proportion to the renown that we have
gained. Often before this he had secretly suffered from contact with
famous men whom he was accustomed to meet in the presence of those
beings whose favor is by far the dearest reward of success.
About ten o'clock the Comtesse de Frémines and two Jewesses of the
financial community arrived, one after the other. The talk was of a
marriage that was on the carpet and a threatened divorce suit. Mariolle
looked at Madame de Burne, who was now seated beneath a column that
sustained a huge lamp. Her well-formed, tip-tilted nose, the dimples in
her cheeks, and the little indentation that parted her chin gave her
face the frolicsome expression of a child, although she was approaching
her thirtieth year, and something in her glance that reminded one of
a withering flower cast a shade of melancholy over her countenance.
Beneath the light that streamed upon it her skin took on tones of blond
velvet, while her hair actually seemed colored by the autumnal sun
which dyes and scorches the dead leaves.
She was conscious of the masculine glance that was traveling toward her
from the other end of the room, and presently she arose and went to
him, smiling, as if in response to a summons from him.
"I am afraid you are somewhat bored," she said. "A person who has not
got the run of a house is always bored."
He protested the contrary. She took a chair and seated herself by
him, and at once the conversation began to be animated. It was
instantaneous with both of them, like a fire that blazes up brightly
as soon as a match is applied to it. It seemed as if they had imparted
their sensations and their opinions to each other beforehand, as if a
similarity of disposition and education, of tastes and inclinations,
had predisposed them to a mutual understanding and fated them to meet.
Perhaps there may have been a little artfulness on the part of the
young woman, but the delight that one feels in encountering one who is
capable of listening, who can understand you and reply to you and whose
answers give scope for your repartees, put Mariolle into a fine glow of
spirits. Flattered, moreover, by the reception which she had accorded
him, subjugated by the alluring favor that she displayed and by the
charm which she knew how to use so adroitly in captivating men, he
did his best to exhibit to her that shade of subdued but personal and
delicate wit which, when people came to know him well, had gained for
him so many and such warm friendships.
She suddenly said to him:
"Really, it is very pleasant to converse with you, Monsieur. I had been
told that such was the case, however."
He was conscious that he was blushing, and replied at a venture:
"And _I_ had been told, Madame, that you were----"
She interrupted him:
"Say a coquette. I am a good deal of a coquette with people whom I
like. Everyone knows it, and I do not attempt to conceal it from
myself, but you will see that I am very impartial in my coquetry, and
this allows me to keep or to recall my friends without ever losing
them, and to retain them all about me."
She said this with a sly air which was meant to say: "Be easy and don't
be too presumptuous. Don't deceive yourself, for you will get nothing
more than the others."
He replied:
"That is what you might call warning your guests of the perils that
await them here. Thank you, Madame: I greatly admire your mode of
procedure."
She had opened the way for him to speak of herself, and he availed
himself of it. He began by paying her compliments and found that she
was fond of them; then he aroused her woman's curiosity by telling
her what was said of her in the different houses that he frequented.
She was rather uneasy and could not conceal her desire for further
information, although she affected much indifference as to what might
be thought of herself and her tastes. He drew for her a charming
portrait of a superior, independent, intelligent, and attractive
woman, who had surrounded herself with a court of eminent men and
still retained her position as an accomplished member of society. She
disclaimed his compliments with smiles, with little disclaimers of
gratified egotism, all the while taking much pleasure in the details
that he gave her, and in a playful tone kept constantly asking him for
more, questioning him artfully, with a sensual appetite for flattery.
As he looked at her, he said to himself, "She is nothing but a child
at heart, just like all the rest of them"; and he went on to finish a
pretty speech in which he was commending her love for art, so rarely
found among women. Then she assumed an air of mockery that he had not
before suspected in her, that playfully tantalizing manner that seems
inherent in the French. Mariolle had overdone his eulogy; she let him
know that she was not a fool.
"_Mon Dieu!_" she said, "I will confess to you that I am not quite
certain whether it is art or artists that I love."
He replied: "How could one love artists without being in love with art?"
"Because they are sometimes more comical than men of the world."
"Yes, but they have more unpleasant failings."
"That is true."
"Then you do not love music?"
She suddenly dropped her bantering tone. "Excuse me! I adore music; I
think that I am more fond of it than of anything else. And yet Massival
is convinced that I know nothing at all about it."
"Did he tell you so?"
"No, but he thinks so."
"How do you know?"
"Oh! we women guess at almost everything that we don't know."
"So Massival thinks that you know nothing of music?"
"I am sure of it. I can see it only by the way that he has of
explaining things to me, by the way in which he underscores little
niceties of expression, all the while saying to himself: 'That won't be
of any use, but I do it because you are so nice.'"
"Still he has told me that you have the best music in your house of any
in Paris, no matter whose the other may be."
"Yes, thanks to him."
"And literature, are you not fond of that?"
"I am very fond of it; and I am even so audacious as to claim to have a
very good perception of it, notwithstanding Lamarthe's opinion."
"Who also decides that you know nothing at all about it?"
"Of course."
"But who has not told you so in words, any more than the other."
"Pardon me; he is more outspoken. He asserts that certain women
are capable of showing a very just and delicate perception of the
sentiments that are expressed, of the truthfulness of the characters,
of psychology in general, but that they are totally incapable of
discerning the superiority that resides in his profession, its art.
When he has once uttered this word, Art, all that is left one to do is
to show him the door."
Mariolle smiled and asked:
"And you, Madame, what do you think of it?"
She reflected for a few seconds, then looked him straight in the face
to see if he was in a frame of mind to listen and to understand her.
"I believe that sentiment, you understand--sentiment--can make a
woman's mind receptive of everything; only it is frequently the case
that what enters does not remain there. Do you follow me?"
"No, not fully, Madame."
"Very well! To make us comprehensive to the same degree as you, our
woman's nature must be appealed to before addressing our intelligence.
We take no interest in what a man has not first made sympathetic to us,
for we look at all things through the medium of sentiment. I do not say
through the medium of love; no,--but of sentiment, which has shades,
forms, and manifestations of every sort. Sentiment is something that
belongs exclusively to our domain, which you men have no conception
of, for it befogs you while it enlightens us. Oh! I know that all this
is incomprehensible to you, the more the pity! In a word, if a man
loves us and is agreeable to us, for it is indispensable that we should
feel that we are loved in order to become capable of the effort--and
if this man is a superior being, by taking a little pains he can make
us feel, know, and possess everything, everything, I say, and at odd
moments and by bits impart to us the whole of his intelligence. That
is all often blotted out afterward; it disappears, dies out, for we
are forgetful. Oh! we forget as the wind forgets the words that are
spoken to it. We are intuitive and capable of enlightenment, but
changeable, impressionable, readily swayed by our surroundings. If I
could only tell you how many states of mind I pass through that make
of me entirely different women, according to the weather, my health,
what I may have been reading, what may have been said to me! Actually
there are days when I have the feelings of an excellent mother without
children, and others when I almost have those of a _cocotte_ without
lovers."
Greatly pleased, he asked: "Is it your opinion that intelligent women
generally are gifted with this activity of thought?"
"Yes," she said. "Only they allow it to slumber, and then they have a
life shaped for them which draws them in one direction or the other."
Again he questioned: "Then in your heart of hearts it is music that you
prefer above all other distractions?"
"Yes! But what I was telling you just now is so true! I should
certainly never have enjoyed it as I do enjoy it, adored it as I do
adore it, had it not been for that angelic Massival. He seems to have
given me the soul of the great masters by teaching me to play their
works, of which I was passionately fond before. What a pity that he is
married!"
She said these last words with a sprightly air, but so regretfully that
they threw everything else into shadow, her theories upon women and her
admiration for art.
Massival was, in fact, married. Before the days of his success he had
contracted one of those unions that artists make and afterward trail
after them through their renown until the day of their death. He never
mentioned his wife's name, never presented her in society, which he
frequented a great deal; and although he had three children the fact
was scarcely known.
Mariolle laughed. She was decidedly nice, was this unconventional
woman, pretty, and of a type not often met with. Without ever tiring,
with a persistency that seemed in no wise embarrassing to her, he kept
gazing upon that face, grave and gay and a little self-willed, with
its audacious nose and its sensual coloring of a soft, warm blonde,
warmed by the midsummer of a maturity so tender, so full, so sweet that
she seemed to have reached the very year, the month, the minute of
her perfect flowering. He wondered: "Is her complexion false?" And he
looked for the faint telltale line, lighter or darker, at the roots of
her hair, without being able to discover it.
Soft footsteps on the carpet behind him made him start and turn his
head. It was two servants bringing in the tea-table. Over the blue
flame of the little lamp the water bubbled gently in a great silver
receptacle, as shining and complicated as a chemist's apparatus.
"Will you have a cup of tea?" she asked.
Upon his acceptance she arose, and with a firm step in which there was
no undulation, but which was rather marked by stiffness, proceeded to
the table where the water was simmering in the depths of the machine,
surrounded by a little garden of cakes, pastry, candied fruits, and
bonbons. Then, as her profile was presented in clear relief against the
hangings of the salon, Mariolle observed the delicacy of her form and
the thinness of her hips beneath the broad shoulders and the full chest
that he had been admiring a moment before. As the train of her light
dress unrolled and dragged behind her, seemingly prolonging upon the
carpet a body that had no end, this blunt thought arose to his mind:
"Behold, a siren! She is altogether promising." She was now going from
one to another, offering her refreshments with gestures of exquisite
grace. Mariolle was following her with his eyes; but Lamarthe, who was
walking about with his cup in his hand, came up to him and said:
"Shall we go, you and I?"
"Yes, I think so."
"We will go at once, shall we not? I am tired."
"At once. Come."
They left the house. When they were in the street, the novelist asked:
"Are you going home or to the club?"
"I think that I will go and spend an hour at the club."
"At the Tambourins?"
"Yes."
"I will go as far as the door with you. Those places are tiresome to
me; I never put my foot in them. I join them only because they enable
me to economize in hack-hire."
They locked arms and went down the street toward Saint Augustin. They
walked a little way in silence; then Mariolle said:
"What a singular woman! What do you think of her?"
Lamarthe began to laugh outright. "It is the commencement of the
crisis," he said. "You will have to pass through it, just as we have
all done. I have had the malady, but I am cured of it now. My dear
friend, the crisis consists of her friends talking of nothing but of
her when they are together, whenever they chance to meet, wherever they
may happen to be."
"At all events, it is the first time in my case, and it is very natural
for me to ask for information, since I scarcely know her."
"Let it be so, then; we will talk of her. Well, you are bound to fall
in love with her. It is your fate, the lot that is shared by all."
"She is so very seductive, then?"
"Yes and no. Those who love the women of other days, women who have a
heart and a soul, women of sensibility, the women of the old-fashioned
novel, cannot endure her and execrate her to such a degree as to speak
of her with ignominy. We, on the other hand, who are disposed to look
favorably upon what is modern and fresh, are compelled to confess that
she is delicious, provided always that we don't fall in love with
her. And that is just exactly what everybody does. No one dies of the
complaint, however; they do not even suffer very acutely, but they fume
because she is not other than she is. You will have to go through it
all if she takes the fancy; besides, she is already preparing to snap
you up."
Mariolle exclaimed, in response to his secret thought:
"Oh! I am only a chance acquaintance for her, and I imagine that she
values acquaintances of all sorts and conditions."
"Yes, she values them, _parbleu!_ and at the same time she laughs at
them. The most celebrated, even the most distinguished, man will not
darken her door ten times if he is not congenial to her, and she has
formed a stupid attachment for that idiotic Fresnel, and that tiresome
De Maltry. She inexcusably suffers herself to be carried away by those
idiots, no one knows why; perhaps because she gets more amusement out
of them than she does out of us, perhaps because their love for her is
deeper; and there is nothing in the world that pleases a woman so much
as to be loved like that."
And Lamarthe went on talking of her, analyzing her, pulling her to
pieces, correcting himself only to contradict himself again, replying
with unmistakable warmth and sincerity to Mariolle's questions, like a
man who is deeply interested in his subject and carried away by it; a
little at sea also, having his mind stored with observations that were
true and deductions that were false. He said:
"She is not the only one, moreover; at this minute there are fifty
women, if not more, who are like her. There is the little Frémines
who was in her drawing-room just now; she is Mme. de Burne's exact
counterpart, save that she is more forward in her manners and married
to an outlandish kind of fellow, the consequence of which is that her
house is one of the most entertaining lunatic asylums in Paris. I go
there a great deal."
Without noticing it, they had traversed the Boulevard Malesherbes, the
Rue Royale, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, and had reached the Arc de
Triomphe, when Lamarthe suddenly pulled out his watch.
"My dear fellow," he said, "we have spent an hour and ten minutes in
talking of her; that is sufficient for to-day. I will take some other
occasion of seeing you to your club. Go home and go to bed; it is what
I am going to do."