A LOVER AND A SNOB

The two young men got into the cab and were soon being rapidly driven along the Rue du Cherche-Midi in order to reach the Boulevard du Montparnasse, and so follow, by way of the Invalides, the long line of avenues that crosses the Seine by the Pont de l'Alma and leads almost direct to the Arc de Triomphe. At first both remained perfectly silent, René amusing himself by watching for the well-known landmarks of a neighbourhood in which all the reminiscences of his childhood and youth were centred. The pane of glass through which he gazed was clouded with a thin vapour, a fitting symbol of the cloud that separated the world he had just left from that which lay before him. There was not an angle in the Rue du Cherche-Midi that was not as familiar to him as the walls of his own room—from the tall dark building of the military prison to the corner of the quiet Rue de Bagneux, where Rosalie dwelt.

The remembrance of the charming girl whom he had so unceremoniously quitted that evening passed through his mind, but caused him no pain. The sensation he felt was like dreaming with open eyes, so little did the individual who had trodden these streets in his dreary and obscure youth resemble the rich and celebrated writer now seated next to Claude Larcher. Celebrated—for all Paris had flocked to see his piece; rich—for 'Le Sigisbée,' first performed in September, had already brought him in twenty-five thousand francs by February. Nor was this source of revenue likely to be soon exhausted. 'Le Sigisbée' had been put into the same bill with 'Le Jumeau,' a three-act comedy by a well-known author that would have a long run. The play, too, was selling well in book form, and the rights of translation and of representation in the provinces were being turned to good account. But all this was only a beginning, for René had several other works in reserve—a volume of philosophical poems entitled 'On the Heights,' a drama in verse dealing with the Renaissance, to be called 'Savonarola,' and a half-finished story of deep passion for which the writer had as yet found no title.

As the cab rolled along, the intoxication produced by thoughts of past success, as well as by ambitious plans for the future, was intensified by the excitement of his entering into Society. The feelings of this grown-up child were similar to those of a girl going to her first ball. He was a prey to a fit of nerves that almost made him feel beside himself. This power of amplifying even to fanciful dimensions impressions of utter mediocrity in themselves is both the misfortune and happiness of poets. To that power is due those transitions, almost startling in their suddenness, from the heights of optimism to the depths of pessimism, from exultation to despair; these lend to the imagination, and consequently to the disposition and feelings, a continual pendulum-like motion—an instability of terrible portent to the women who become attached to these vacillating souls. Amongst such souls, however, there are some in whom this dangerous quality does not exclude true affection. This was the case with René.

The involuntary comparison between the present and the past so suddenly provoked by the familiar aspect of the streets brought his thoughts round to the more experienced friend who had witnessed his rapid change of fortune. In obedience to one of those simple impulses which form such a charming trait in the young—affording as they do a beautiful but rare example of the invincible bond between the inner and the outer man—he grasped the hand of his silent companion, saying: 'How kind you have been to me!'. . . And seeing Claude's eyes turned upon him in some astonishment, he continued: 'If you had not been so encouraging when I made my first attempts I should never have brought you "Le Sigisbée," and if you had not recommended it to Mademoiselle Rigaud it would now be mouldering on some manager's shelf. If you had not spoken to the Comtesse Komof my piece would not be performed at her house, and I should not be going there this evening. I am happy, very happy, and I owe it all to you! Ah! mon ami, you may think me as silly as a schoolboy, but you cannot imagine how often I have dreamt of that world into which you are now taking me, where the mere dresses of the women are poems, and where joy and grief are set in exquisite frames!'

'Would that these women had souls of the same stuff as their dresses!' exclaimed Claude with a smile. 'But you surprise me,' he went on; 'do you think that you will be in Society because you are received by Madame Komof, a foreign countess who keeps open house, or by any of the lion-hunters whom you will meet there, and who will tell you that they are at home every afternoon? You will go out a good deal, if you like that kind of thing, but you will be no more in Society than I or any other artist or even genius, simply because you were not born in it, and because your family is not in it.

You will be received and made much of. But try to marry into one of these families and you will see what they will tell you. And a good thing for you, too. Good heavens! if you only knew these women whom you picture to yourself as being so refined, so elegant, so aristocratic! Mere bundles of vanity, dressed by Worth or Laferrière . . . Why, there are not ten in the whole of Paris capable of true feeling. The most honest are those who take a lover because they like him. Were you to dissect them, you would find in place of a heart a dressmaker's bill, half-a-dozen prejudices which serve as principles, and a mad desire to eclipse some other woman. What fools we are to be here in this vehicle—two fairly sensible men with work to do at home—you all of a tremble at the idea of mixing with so-called grandes dames, and I . . .!'

'What has Colette been doing to-day?' asked René quietly, a little put out by the asperity of his friend's words, though not laying much weight upon arguments applied with such evident rancour. These furious outbursts were nearly always caused, as he knew, by some coquetry on the part of the actress with whom Claude was madly in love, and who delighted in fooling him, though loving him in her way. It was one of those attachments, based on hatred and sensuality, which both torture and degrade the heart, and which transform their victim into a wild beast, one of the features peculiar to this sort of passion being the frequency with which it is liable to suffer crises as sharp and violent as the physical ideas on which it feeds.

The image of his mistress had probably flashed across Claude's brain, and the happy frame of mind called forth by his last visit had immediately yielded to sudden rage—rage which he would have satisfied at that moment by no matter what outrageous paradox. He fell headlong into the trap laid for him by his friend, and, grasping the arm of the latter tightly, he said with a sickly laugh: 'What has she been doing to-day? . . . Are you anxious to know the depth of this keen analyst of women's hearts, this subtle psychologist as the papers call me, this unmitigated ass as I call myself? Alas! my wits have never served for aught else than to convince me of my folly! Have I told you,' he added, dropping his voice, 'that I have grown to be jealous of Salvaney? .

I forgot, you don't know Salvaney—an up-to-date gallant who goes about his love affairs cheque-book in hand!  With a nose like a beetroot, a bald pate, eyes starting from their sockets, and a colour like a drover! .But there you are—he is an anglomane, anglomane to such an extent that the Prince of Wales is a Frenchman by the side of him Last year he spent three months in Florence, and I myself heard him boast that in those three months he had never worn a shirt that had not been washed in London. 

You must take my word for it that in Society, which has such a fascination for you, one fact like that gives a man more prestige than if he had written the "Nabab" or "L'Assommoir." Well! this individual pleases Colette. He is to be found in her dressing-room as often as I am, and gazes at her with his whisky-drinker's eyes. It was he who introduced the custom of going to a bar filled with jockeys and bookmakers, in order to sip most abominable spirits after the Opera; I will take you there some evening, and you will see the beauty for yourself. . . . Colette lets him take her even there, and goes about everywhere with him in a brougham. . . . "Get out!" she says, "you are not going to be jealous of a man like that, are you? He smells of gin, to begin with." . . . Such women will tell you these things without any ado, and pull to pieces in the most shameless manner their lovers of yesterday. . . . To cut a long story short, I was at her house this morning. Yes, yes—I knew all about these things, but I didn't believe them. A fellow like Salvaney! If you were to see him you would understand how incredible it seems, and as for her—well, you know her with that soft look in her eyes, with her mouth à la Botticelli and her exquisite grace. What a pity it seems! Well, I was with her when the servant, a fresh importation, who didn't know her business, brought a letter in, saying, "It's from Monsieur Salvaney—his man is waiting for an answer."

In one of her fits of affection Colette had just sworn to me that nothing, absolutely nothing, not even the shadow of a shade of a flirtation had ever passed between them. As she held the letter in her hand I was foolish enough to think, "She is going to show me the letter, and I shall have written proofs that she has not told me a lie—and proof positive, for Salvaney could not have known that I should see this letter." She held the letter in her hand, and, looking at me, said to the girl, "Very well, I'll answer it at once. You will excuse me, won't you?" she added, passing into the other room—with her letter! I suppose you think I took my hat and stick and left the house for good with an oath on my lips? No, I stayed, mon cher ami. She came back, rang the bell, gave the servant a note, and then, coming towards me, said, "Are you angry?" Silence on my part. "Did you want to read that letter?" I was still silent. "No, you sha'n't read it," she continued, with a pretty little frown; "I have burnt it. He only asked for the pattern of some stuff for a fancy dress; but I want you to believe me on my bare word." All this was said as coolly as possible; I have never seen her act better. Don't ask me what I said in reply. I treated her as the vilest thing on earth. I flung into her teeth all the disgust, hatred, and contempt I felt for her; and then, as she sat there sobbing, I took her in my arms, and on the very spot where she had lied to me, and I had treated her like the common thing she was, we kissed and made it up. Do you think I have fallen low enough?'

'But were your suspicions correct?' asked René.

'Were they correct?' re-echoed Claude, with that accent of cruel triumph affected by jealous lovers when their mad desire to know all has ended in proving their worst suspicions up to the hilt. 'Do you know what Salvaney's note contained? An appointment—and Colette's reply confirmed the appointment. I know this, for I had her followed. Yes, I stooped even to that. He met her coming from rehearsal, and they were together until eight o'clock.'

'And haven't you broken with her?' asked Vincy.

'It's all over,' replied Claude, 'and for good, I promise you. But I must tell her what I think of her, just for the last time. The wretch! You'll see how I'll treat her to-night.'

In telling his sad tale Claude had betrayed such intense grief that René's former feelings of joy were quite disturbed. Pity for the man to whom he was deeply attached by bonds of gratitude was mingled with disgust for Colette's shameless duplicity. For a moment he felt, too, some deep-lying remorse as he conjured up by way of contrast the pure soul that shone in Rosalie's honest eyes. But it was only a passing fancy, quickly dispelled by the sudden change in his companion.

This demon of a man, who was one bundle of nerves, possessed the gift of changing his ideas and feelings with a rapidity that was perfectly inexplicable. He had just been speaking in despairing accents and in a voice broken with emotion, which his friend knew to be sincere. Snapping his fingers as if to get rid of his trouble, he muttered, 'Come, come,' and immediately brought the conversation round to literary topics, so that the two writers were discussing the last novel when the sudden stoppage of the vehicle as it fell in behind a long line of others told them that they had arrived.

René's heart began to beat afresh with short, convulsive throbs. The cab stopped before a doorway protected by an awning, and again the dreamlike feeling came over the young man on finding himself in the ante-room which he had already once passed through. There were several liveried footmen in the room, which was filled with flowers and heated by invisible pipes.

The coats and cloaks arranged on long tables and the hum of conversation that came from the salons made it evident that most of the guests had arrived. In the ante-room there was only one lady, whom an attendant was just helping off with her fur-lined cloak, from which she emerged in an elegantly fitting low-necked dress of red material. She had a very distinguished face, a nose slightly tipped, and lips that denoted spirituality. A few diamonds sparkled amidst the tresses of her fair silken hair. René saw Claude bow to her, and he felt himself grow pale as her eyes rested indifferently upon him—eyes of light blue set off by that complexion, found in blondes, which, in spite of the hackneyed metaphor, can only be described as that of a blush rose, possessing as it does all the freshness and delicacy of the latter.

'That's Madame Moraines,' said Claude, 'the daughter of Victor Bois-Dauffin, a Minister during the Empire.'

These words, spoken as if in reply to a mute question, were to come back to René more than once. More than once was he to ask himself what strange fate had brought him face to face, almost on the threshold of this house, with the one woman who, of all those assembled in these salons, was to exercise most influence upon him. But at the moment itself he felt none of those presentiments which sometimes seize us on meeting a creature who is to bring us either good or evil. The vision of this beautiful woman of thirty, who had already disappeared whilst Claude and he were waiting for the numbers of their coats, became lost in the confused impression created by the novelty of everything around him. Though it was impossible for him to analyse his feelings, the richness of the carpets, the splendidly decorated vestibule, the lofty halls, the livery of the footmen, the reflection of the lights, all went a long way towards making this impression a strange medley of painful timidity and delightful sensuality.

On the occasion of his first visit he had already felt himself enveloped by those thousand indescribable atoms that float in the atmosphere of luxury. Persons born in opulence no more perceive these infinitely small but subtle trifles than we perceive the weight of the air that surrounds us. We cannot feel what we have always felt. Nor do parvenus ever tell us their impressions. Their instinct teaches them to swallow such feelings and to keep them hidden in their hearts.

Apart from all this, René had no time to reflect upon the snobbishness of the feeling that filled him. The doors were swung back, and he entered the first salon, furnished in that sumptuous but stereotyped style peculiar to all the big modern houses in Paris. Whoever has seen one has seen them all. A novice like René, however, would discover signs of the purest aristocracy in the smallest details of this furniture, in the antique materials with which the arm-chairs were upholstered, and in the tapestry that hung over the chimney-piece and represented a Triumph of Bacchus. The first salon, of middling dimensions, communicated by folding doors with another much larger, in which all the guests were evidently assembled, judging by the hum of conversation.

René's perceptive faculties being in that state of intense excitement frequently caused by extreme shyness, he was able to take in the whole scene at a glance; he saw Madame Moraines in her red dress disappear through the open folding doors, and the Comtesse Komof talking, with violent and extravagant gesticulation, to a group of people before the chimney-piece of the smaller salon. The Comtesse was a tall woman of almost tragic appearance; she had shoulders too narrow for the rest of her body, white hair, rather harsh features, and grey eyes of piercing brilliancy. The sombre hue of her dress enhanced the magnificence of the jewels with which she was covered, and her hands, as she waved them about, displayed a wealth of enormous sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds. Acknowledging with a smile the bow that Claude and René made her, she continued her account of a séance of spiritualism—a favourite hobby of hers.

'The table went up, up, up,' she said, 'until our hands could scarcely follow it. The candles were blown out by invisible lips, and in the darkness I saw a hand pass up and down—an immense hand—it was that of Peter the Great!'

The muscles of her face grew rigid as she spoke, and her eyes became fixed as if on a terrible apparition. Traces of that brutish and almost half-witted creature of instinct that lurks even in the most refined Russian appeared for a few seconds upon the surface. Then the Society woman suddenly remembered that she had to perform the honours of her house, and the smile came back to her lips and the gleam in her eyes grew softer. Was it that intuition peculiar to elderly women which gives them such a soothing influence over men of irritable nerves that revealed to her how solitary René felt in the midst of these crowded salons, where he knew not a soul? As soon as her story was ended she was good enough to turn to him with a smile and say: 'Do you believe in spirits, Monsieur Vincy? Of course you do—you are a poet. But we'll talk of that some other day. You must come with me now, in spite of the fact that I'm neither young nor pretty, and be presented to some of my friends, who are already passionate admirers of yours.'

She had taken the young man's arm, and, although he was above the middle height, she was taller than he by half a head. Her tragic expression was not deceptive. She had really lived through what the strange look in her eyes and the determined set of her features led one to imagine. Her husband had been murdered almost at her feet, and she herself had killed the assassin. René had heard the story from Claude, and he could see the scene before him—the Comte Komof, a distinguished diplomat, stabbed to the heart by a Nihilist in his study; the Comtesse entering at the moment and bringing down the murderer by a well-directed shot. While the young man reflected that those tapering fingers, resplendent with rings as they lay on his coat sleeve, had clutched the pistol, his partner had already commenced some fresh story with that savage energy of expression that in people of Slavonic race is not incompatible with the most refined and elegant manners.

'It was on my arrival in Paris about eight years ago, just after the war. I had not been here since the first Exhibition, in 1855. Ah! my dear sir, the Paris of those days was really charming . . . and your Emperor . . . idéal! She had a way of dwelling on her last syllables when she wished to express her enthusiasm. 'My daughter, the Princess Roudine, was with me—I don't think you know her; she lives in Florence all the year round. She was taken ill, but Doctor Louvet—you know, the little man who looks like a miniature edition of Henri III.—got her over it. I always call him Louvetsky, because he only attends Russians. I could not think of taking her away from Paris, so this house being for sale, ready furnished, I bought it. But I've turned everything upside down. Look here, this used to be the garden,' she added, showing René the larger salon, which they had just entered.

This salon was a vast apartment, whose walls were hung with canvases of all sizes and schools, picked up by the Comtesse in the course of her European rambles. Though René had been strongly impressed from the first by the general air of material well-being everywhere apparent, this feeling was intensified by the spiritual luxury, if one may use such a term, which such cosmopolitanism represents.

The way in which the Comtesse had mentioned Florence, as if it were a suburb of Paris, the resources indicated by the improvements effected in the mansion, the fluency with which this grand Russian lady spoke French—how could a young man accustomed to the limited horizon of a struggling family of modest bourgeois fail to be struck with childlike wonder at the sight of a world such as these details suggested? His eyes opened wide to take in the whole of the charming scene before him. At the end of the salon heavy, dark red curtains hung across the usual entrance to the dining-room, which apartment, approached by three broad stairs, had been turned for the nonce into a stage. In the centre of the hall stood a marble column surmounted by a bust in bronze of the famous Nicolas Komof, the friend of Peter the Great—this ancestral kind of monument being surrounded by a group of gigantic palms in huge pots of Indian brass ware, whilst lines of chairs were drawn up between the column and the stage.

By this time nearly all the ladies were seated, and the lights shone down upon a living sea of snowy arms and shoulders, some too robust, others too lean, others again most exquisitely moulded; jewels sparkled in tresses fair and dark, the flutter of fans tempered the glances that shot from eloquent eyes, whilst words and laughter became blended in one loud, harmonious murmur. In the ladies' dresses, too, lay a wonderful play of colour, and one side of the salon presented a striking contrast to the other, where the men, in their swallow-tails, formed a solid mass of black. 

 A few women, however, had found their way amongst the sterner sex, while here and there a dark patch amidst the seated fair ones betrayed the presence of a male interloper. The whole of the company, although somewhat mixed, was composed of people accustomed to meet daily, and for years, in places that serve as common ground for different sets of Society. There were blue-blooded duchesses from the Faubourg Saint-Germain, whose sporting tastes and charity errands took them to all kinds of places. There were also the wives of big financiers and politicians, representing every degree of cosmopolitan elegance, and there were even the wives of plain artists, following up their husbands' successes through a string of fashionable dinners and receptions.

But to a new-comer like René Vincy the social distinctions that broke up the salon into a series of very dissimilar groups were utterly imperceptible. The spectacle upon which he gazed surpassed, in outward magnificence, his wildest dreams. Amidst a hum of voices he allowed himself to be presented to some of the men as they passed, and to a few of the women seated on the back row of chairs, bowing and stammering out a few words in reply to the compliments with which the more amiable ones favoured him.

 Madame Komof, perceiving his timidity, was kind enough not to leave him, especially since Claude, a prey to some fresh fit of his amorous passion, had disappeared. He had probably gone behind the scenes, and when the signal for raising the curtain was given the poet found himself seated beside the Comtesse in the shadow of the palms that surrounded the ancestral bust, happy that he was in a place where he could escape notice.