QUESTIONINGS
Good day, M. Mariolle."
Mariolle noticed that it was no longer the "dear friend" of Auteuil,
and the clasp of the hand was a hurried one, the hasty pressure of a
busy woman wholly engrossed in her social functions. As he entered the
salon Mme. de Burne was advancing to speak to the beautiful Mme. le
Prieur, whose sculpturesque form, and the audacious way that she had
of dressing to display it, had caused her to be nicknamed, somewhat
ironically, "The Goddess." She was the wife of a member of the
Institute, of the section of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres.
"Ah, Mariolle!" exclaimed Lamarthe, "where do you come from? We thought
that you were dead."
"I have been making a trip through Finistère."
He was going on to relate his impressions when the novelist interrupted
him: "Are you acquainted with the Baronne de Frémines?"
"Only by sight; but I have heard a good deal of her. They say that she
is queer."
"The very queen of crazy women, but with an exquisite perfume of
modernness. Come and let me present you to her." Taking him by the arm
he led him toward a young woman who was always compared to a doll, a
pale and charming little blond doll, invented and created by the devil
himself for the damnation of those larger children who wear beards
on their faces. She had long, narrow eyes, slightly turned up toward
the temples, apparently like the eyes of the Chinese; their soft blue
glances stole out between lids that were seldom opened to their full
extent, heavy, slowly-moving lids, designed to veil and hide this
creature's mysterious nature.
Her hair, very light in color, shone with silky, silvery reflections,
and her delicate mouth, with its thin lips, seemed to have been cut by
the light hand of a sculptor from the design of a miniature-painter.
The voice that issued from it had bell-like intonations, and the
audacity of her ideas, of a biting quality that was peculiar to
herself, smacking of wickedness and drollery, their destructive charm,
their cold, corrupting seductiveness, all the complicated nature of
this full-grown, mentally diseased child acted upon those who were
brought in contact with her in such a way as to produce in them violent
passions and disturbances.
She was known all over Paris as being the most extravagant of the
_mondaines_ of the real _monde_, and also the wittiest, but no one
could say exactly what she was, what were her ideas, what she did. She
exercised an irresistible sway over mankind in general. Her husband,
also, was quite as much of an enigma as she. Courteous and affable
and a great nobleman, he seemed quite unconscious of what was going
on. Was he indifferent, or complaisant, or was he simply blind?
Perhaps, after all, there was nothing in it more than those little
eccentricities which doubtless amused him as much as they did her.
All sorts of opinions, however, were prevalent in regard to him, and
some very ugly reports were circulated. Rumor even went so far as to
insinuate that his wife's secret vices were not unprofitable to him.
Between her and Mme. de Burne there were natural attractions and fierce
jealousies, spells of friendship succeeded by crises of furious enmity.
They liked and feared each other and mutually sought each other's
society, like professional duelists, who appreciate at the same time
that they would be glad to kill each other.
It was the Baronne de Frémines who was having the upper hand at this
moment. She had just scored a victory, an important victory: she
had conquered Lamarthe, had taken him from her rival and borne him
away ostentatiously to domesticate him in her flock of acknowledged
followers. The novelist seemed to be all at once smitten, puzzled,
charmed, and stupefied by the discoveries he had made in this creature
_sui generis_, and he could not help talking about her to everybody
that he met, a fact which had already given rise to much gossip.
Just as he was presenting Mariolle he encountered Mme. de Burne's look
from the other end of the room; he smiled and whispered in his friend's
ear: "See, the mistress of the house is angry."
André raised his eyes, but Madame had turned to meet Massival, who just
then made his appearance beneath the raised portière. He was followed
almost immediately by the Marquise de Bratiane, which elicited from
Lamarthe: "Ah! we shall only have a second rendition of 'Dido'; the
first has just been given in the Marquise's _coupé_."
Mme. de Frémines added: "Really, our friend De Burne's collection is
losing some of its finest jewels."
Mariolle felt a sudden impulse of anger rising in his heart, a kind
of hatred against this woman, and a brusque sensation of irritation
against these people, their way of life, their ideas, their tastes,
their aimless inclinations, their childish amusements. Then, as
Lamarthe bent over the young woman to whisper something in her ear, he
profited by the opportunity to slip away.
Handsome Mme. le Prieur was sitting by herself only a few steps away;
he went up to her to make his bow. According to Lamarthe she stood
for the old guard among all this irruption of modernism. Young,
tall, handsome, with very regular features and chestnut hair through
which ran threads of gold, extremely affable, captivating by reason
of her tranquil, kindly charm of manner, by reason also of a calm,
well-studied coquetry and a great desire to please that lay concealed
beneath an outward appearance of simple and sincere affection, she had
many firm partisans, whom she took good care should never be exposed
to dangerous rivalries. Her house had the reputation of being a little
gathering of intimate friends, where all the _habitués_, moreover,
concurred in extolling the merits of the husband.
She and Mariolle now entered into conversation. She held in high esteem
this intelligent and reserved man, who gave people so little cause to
talk about him and who was perhaps of more account than all the rest.
The remaining guests came dropping in: big Fresnel, puffing and giving
a last wipe with his handkerchief to his shining and perspiring
forehead, the philosophic George de Maltry, finally the Baron de
Gravil accompanied by the Comte de Marantin. M. de Pradon assisted his
daughter in doing the honors of the house; he was extremely attractive
to Mariolle.
But Mariolle, with a heavy heart, saw _her_ going and coming and
bestowing her attentions on everyone there more than on him.
Twice, it is true, she had thrown him a swift look from a distance
which seemed to say, "I am not forgetting you," but they were so
fleeting that perhaps he had failed to catch their meaning. And then
he could not be unconscious to the fact that Lamarthe's aggressive
assiduities to Mme. de Frémines were displeasing to Mme. de Burne.
"That is only her coquettish feeling of spite," he said to himself,
"a woman's irritation from whose salon some valuable trinket has
been spirited away." Still it made him suffer, and his suffering was
the greater since he saw that she was constantly watching them in a
furtive, concealed kind of way, while she did not seem to trouble
herself a bit at seeing _him_ sitting beside Mme. le Prieur.
The reason was that she had him in her power, she was sure of him,
while the other was escaping her. What, then, could be to her that love
of theirs, that love which was born but yesterday, and which in him had
banished and killed every other idea?
M. de Pradon had called for silence, and Massival was opening the
piano, which Mme. de Bratiane was approaching, removing her gloves
meanwhile, for she was to sing the woes of "Dido," when the door again
opened and a young man appeared upon whom every eye was immediately
fixed. He was tall and slender, with curling side-whiskers, short,
blond, curly hair, and an air that was altogether aristocratic. Even
Mme. le Prieur seemed to feel his influence.
"Who is it?" Mariolle asked her.
"What! is it possible that you do not know him?"
"No, I do not."
"It is Comte Rudolph de Bernhaus."
"Ah! the man who fought a duel with Sigismond Fabre."
"Yes."
The story had made a great noise at the time. The Comte de Bernhaus,
attached to the Austrian embassy and a diplomat of the highest promise,
an elegant Bismarck, so it was said, having heard some words spoken in
derogation of his sovereign at an official reception, had fought the
next day with the man who uttered them, a celebrated fencer, and killed
him. After this duel, in respect to which public opinion had been
divided, the Comte acquired between one day and the next a notoriety
after the manner of Sarah Bernhardt, but with this difference, that
his name appeared in an aureole of poetic chivalry. He was in addition
a man of great charm, an agreeable conversationalist, a man of
distinction in every respect. Lamarthe used to say of him: "He is the
one to tame our pretty wild beasts."
He took his seat beside Mme. de Burne with a very gallant air, and
Massival sat down before the keyboard and allowed his fingers to run
over the keys for a few moments.
Nearly all the audience changed their places and drew their chairs
nearer so as to hear better and at the same time have a better view of
the singer. Thus Mariolle and Lamarthe found themselves side by side.
There was a great silence of expectation and respectful attention;
then the musician began with a slow, a very slow succession of notes,
something like a musical recitative. There were pauses, then the
air would be lightly caught up in a series of little phrases, now
languishing and dying away, now breaking out in nervous strength,
indicative, it would seem, of distressful emotion, but always
characterized by originality of invention. Mariolle gave way to
reverie. He beheld a woman, a woman in the fullness of her mature youth
and ripened beauty, walking slowly upon a shore that was bathed by the
waves of the sea. He knew that she was suffering, that she bore a great
sorrow in her soul, and he looked at Mme. de Bratiane.
Motionless, pale beneath her wealth of thick black hair that seemed to
have been dipped in the shades of night, the Italian stood waiting, her
glance directed straight before her. On her strongly marked, rather
stern features, against which her eyes and eyebrows stood out like
spots of ink, in all her dark, powerful, and passionate beauty, there
was something that struck one, something like the threat of the coming
storm that we read in the blackening _sky._
Massival, slightly nodding his head with its long hair in cadence with
the rhythm, kept on relating the affecting tale that he was drawing
from the resonant keys of ivory.
A shiver all at once ran through the singer; she partially opened her
mouth, and from it there proceeded a long-drawn, heartrending wail of
agony. It was not one of those outbursts of tragic despair that divas
give utterance to upon the stage, with dramatic gestures, neither was
it one of those pitiful laments for love betrayed that bring a storm
of bravos from an audience; it was a cry of supreme passion, coming
from the body and not from the soul, wrung from her like the roar of
a wounded animal, the cry of the feminine animal betrayed. Then she
was silent, and Massival again began to relate, more animatedly, more
stormily, the moving story of the miserable queen who was abandoned by
the man she loved. Then the woman's voice made itself heard again. She
used articulate language now; she told of the intolerable torture of
solitude, of her unquenchable thirst for the caresses that were hers no
more, and of the grief of knowing that he was gone from her forever.
Her warm, ringing voice made the hearts of her audience beat beneath
the spell. This somber Italian, with hair like the darkness of the
night, seemed to be suffering all the sorrows that she was telling,
she seemed to love, or to have the capacity of loving, with furious
ardor. When she ceased her eyes were full of tears, and she slowly
wiped them away. Lamarthe leaned over toward Mariolle and said to him
in a quiver of artistic enthusiasm: "Good heavens! how beautiful she is
just now! She is a woman, the only one in the room." Then he added,
after a moment of reflection: "After all, who can tell? Perhaps there
is nothing there but the mirage of the music, for nothing has real
existence except our illusions. But what an art to produce illusions is
that of hers!"
There was a short intermission between the first and the second parts
of the musical poem, and warm congratulations were extended to the
composer and his interpreter. Lamarthe in particular was very earnest
in his felicitations, and he was really sincere, for he was endowed
with the capacity to feel and comprehend, and beauty of all kinds
appealed strongly to his nature, under whatever form expressed. The
manner in which he told Mme. de Bratiane what his feelings had been
while listening to her was so flattering that it brought a slight blush
to her face and excited a little spiteful feeling among the other women
who heard it. Perhaps he was not altogether unaware of the feeling that
he had produced.
When he turned around to resume his chair, he perceived Comte de
Bernhaus just in the act of seating himself beside Mme. de Frémines.
She seemed at once to be on confidential terms with him, and they
smiled at each other as if this close conversation was particularly
agreeable to them both. Mariolle, whose gloom was momentarily
increasing, stood leaning against a door; the novelist came and
stationed himself at his side. Big Fresnel, George de Maltry, the
Baron de Gravil and the Comte de Marantin formed a circle about Mme.
de Burne, who was going about offering tea. She seemed imprisoned in a
crown of adorers. Lamarthe ironically called his friend's attention to
it and added: "A crown without jewels, however, and I am sure that she
would be glad to give all those rhinestones for the brilliant that she
would like to see there."
"What brilliant do you mean?" inquired Mariolle.
"Why, Bernhaus, handsome, irresistible, incomparable Bernhaus, he in
whose honor this _fête_ is given, for whom the miracle was performed of
inducing Massival to bring out his 'Dido' here."
André, though incredulous, was conscious of a pang of regret as he
heard these words. "Has she known him long?" he asked.
"Oh, no; ten days at most. But she put her best foot foremost during
this brief campaign, and her tactics have been those of a conqueror. If
you had been here you would have had a good laugh."
"How so?"
"She met him for the first time at Mme. de Frémines's; I happened to
be dining there that evening. Bernhaus stands very well in the good
graces of the lady of that house, as you may see for yourself; all that
you have to do is to look at them at the present moment; and behold,
in the very minute that succeeded the first salutation that they ever
made each other, there is our pretty friend De Burne taking the field
to effect the conquest of the Austrian phœnix. And she is succeeding,
and will succeed, although the little Frémines is more than a match for
her in coquetry, real indifference, and perhaps perversity. But our
friend De Burne uses her weapons more scientifically, she is more of a
woman, by which I mean a modern woman, that is to say, irresistible by
reason of that artificial seductiveness which takes the place in the
modern woman of the old-fashioned natural charm of manner. And it is
not her artificiality alone that is to be taken into account, but her
æstheticism, her profound comprehension of feminine æsthetics; all her
strength lies therein. She knows herself thoroughly, because she takes
more delight in herself than in anything else, and she is never at
fault as to the best means of subjugating a man and making the best use
of her gifts in order to captivate men."
Mariolle took exception to this. "I think that you put it too
strongly," he said. "She has always been very simple with me."
"Because simplicity is the right thing to meet the requirements of your
case. I do not wish to speak ill of her, however. I think that she is
better than most of her set. But they are not women."
Massival, striking a few chords on the piano, here reduced them to
silence, and Mme. de Bratiane proceeded to sing the second part of the
poem, in which her delineation of the title-role was a magnificent
study of physical passion and sensual regret.
Lamarthe, however, never once took his eyes from Mme. de Frémines and
the Comte de Bernhaus, where they were enjoying their _tête-à-tête_,
and as soon as the last vibrations of the piano were lost in the
murmurs of applause, he again took up his theme as if in continuation
of an argument, or as if he were replying to an adversary: "No, they
are not women. The most honest of them are coquettes without being
aware of it. The more I know them the less do I find in them that
sensation of mild exhilaration that it is the part of a true woman to
inspire in us. They intoxicate, it is true, but the process wears upon
our nerves, for they are too sophisticated. Oh, it is very good as a
liqueur to sip now and then, but it is a poor substitute for the good
wine that we used to have. You see, my dear fellow, woman was created
and sent to dwell on earth for two objects only, and it is these two
objects alone that can avail to bring out her true, great, and noble
qualities--love and the family. I am talking like M. Prudhomme. Now
the women of to-day are incapable of loving, and they will not bear
children. When they are so inexpert as to have them, it is a misfortune
in their eyes; then a burden. Truly, they are not women; they are
monsters."
Astonished by the writer's violent manner and by the angry look that
glistened in his eye, Mariolle asked him: "Why, then, do you spend half
your time hanging to their skirts?"
Lamarthe hotly replied: "Why? Why? Because it interests me--_parbleu!_
And then--and then--Would you prevent a physician from going to the
hospitals to watch the cases? Those women constitute my clinic."
This reflection seemed to quiet him a little: he proceeded: "Then, too,
I adore them for the very reason that they are so modern. At bottom I
am really no more a man than they are women. When I am at the point
of becoming attached to one of them, I amuse myself by investigating
and analyzing all the resulting sensations and emotions, just like
a chemist who experiments upon himself with a poison in order to
ascertain its properties." After an interval of silence, he continued:
"In this way they will never succeed in getting me into their clutches.
_I_ can play their game as well as they play it themselves, perhaps
even better, and that is of use to me for my books, while their
proceedings are not of the slightest bit of use to them. What fools
they are! Failures, every one of them--charming failures, who will be
ready to die of spite as they grow older and see the mistake that they
have made."
Mariolle, as he listened, felt himself sinking into one of those fits
of depression that are like the humid gloom with which a long-continued
rain darkens everything about us. He was well aware that the man of
letters, as a general thing, was not apt to be very far out of the way,
but he could not bring himself to admit that he was altogether right in
the present case. With a slight appearance of irritation, he argued,
not so much in defense of women as to show the causes of the position
that they occupy in contemporary literature. "In the days when poets
and novelists exalted them, and endowed them with poetic attributes,"
he said, "they looked for in life, and seemed to find, that which
their heart had discovered in their reading. Nowadays you persist in
suppressing everything that has any savor of sentiment and poetry, and
in its stead give them only naked, undeceiving realities. Now, my dear
sir, the more love there is in books, the more love there is in life.
When you invented the ideal and laid it before them, they believed in
the truth of your inventions. Now that you give them nothing but stern,
unadorned realism, they follow in your footsteps and have come to
measure everything by that standard of vulgarity."
Lamarthe, who was always ready for a literary discussion, was about to
commence a dissertation when Mme. de Burne came up to them. It was one
of the days when she looked at her best, with a toilette that delighted
the eye and with that aggressive and alluring air that denoted that
she was ready to try conclusions with anyone. She took a chair. "That
is what I like," she said; "to come upon two men and find that they
are not talking about me. And then you are the only men here that one
can listen to with any interest. What was the subject that you were
discussing?"
Lamarthe, quite without embarrassment and in terms of elegant raillery,
placed before her the question that had arisen between himself and
Mariolle. Then he resumed his reasoning with a spirit that was inflamed
by that desire of applause which, in the presence of women, always
excites men who like to intoxicate themselves with glory.
She at once interested herself in the discussion, and, warming to the
subject, took part in it in defense of the women of our day with a good
deal of wit and ingenuity. Some remarks upon the faithfulness and the
attachment that even those who were looked on with most suspicion might
be capable of, incomprehensible to the novelist, made Mariolle's heart
beat more rapidly, and when she left them to take a seat beside Mme.
de Frémines, who had persistently kept the Comte de Bernhaus near her,
Lamarthe and Mariolle, completely vanquished by her display of feminine
tact and grace, were united in declaring that, beyond all question, she
was exquisite.
"And just look at them!" said the writer.
The grand duel was on. What were they talking about now, the Austrian
and those two women? Mme. de Burne had come up just at the right
moment to interrupt a _tête-à-tête_ which, however agreeable the two
persons engaged in it might be to each other, was becoming monotonous
from being too long protracted, and she broke it up by relating with an
indignant air the expressions that she had heard from Lamarthe's lips.
To be sure, it was all applicable to Mme. de Frémines, it all resulted
from her most recent conquest, and it was all related in the hearing
of an intelligent man who was capable of understanding it in all its
bearings. The match was applied, and again the everlasting question of
love blazed up, and the mistress of the house beckoned to Mariolle and
Lamarthe to come to them; then, as their voices grew loud in debate,
she summoned the remainder of the company.
A general discussion ensued, bright and animated, in which everyone had
something to say. Mme. de Burne was witty and entertaining beyond all
the rest, shifting her ground from sentiment, which might have been
factitious, to droll paradox. The day was a triumphant one for her, and
she was prettier, brighter, and more animated than she had ever been.