A Living Lie

CHAPTER I
A PROVINCIAL CORNER OF PARIS

'The gates are closed, sir,' said the driver, bending down from his box.

'Closed at half-past nine!' exclaimed a voice from the interior of the cab. 'What a place to live in! You needn't trouble to get down. The pavement's dry—I'll walk.'

The door of the vehicle swung open, and a young man stepped gingerly out, pulling the collar of his fur-lined coat a little more closely about his throat. The dainty patent-leather shoes that left just an inch of the embroidered silk socks visible, the plain black trousers and opera hat, showed that the wearer was in evening dress. The cab was one of those superior conveyances that ply for hire outside the Paris clubs, and the driver, little accustomed to this provincial corner of the city, began to peer, with almost as much interest as his fare, into the strange street that, although situated on the borders of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, had such an old-world look about it. At the time we write of—the beginning of February, 1879—the Rue Coëtlogon, running from the Rue d'Assas to the Rue de Rennes, still possessed the peculiarity of being shut off from the rest of the world by gates, while at night it was lit up by an oil lamp, hanging, in the old-fashioned way, from a rope swung right across the roadway. Since then the appearance of the place has changed a good deal. The mysterious-looking house on the right, standing in its own bit of garden, and affording no doubt a quiet retreat to some retiring old dame, has disappeared. The vacant land, that rendered the Rue Coëtlogon as inaccessible to vehicles on the one side as did the iron gates on the other, has been cleared of its heaps of stones. Gas jets have taken the place of the oil lamp, and only a slight unevenness in the pavement now marks the position of the posts upon which the gates hung. These were never locked, but only swung to at night; there was therefore no necessity for the young man to pull the bell, but before entering the narrow lane he stopped for a few moments to take in the strange scene presented by the dark outline of the houses on the left, the garden on the right, a confused mass of unfinished buildings at the bottom, and the old oil lamp in the middle. Overhead a bright wintry moon hung in the vast expanse of the heavens, through which sped a few swift-sailing clouds. As they scudded across the face of the moon, and flew off into the dark immensity beyond, they seemed only to enhance the metallic brilliancy of the luminary by the momentary shadow they cast in sweeping by.

'What a scene it would make for a parting!' murmured the young man, adding, in a somewhat louder tone:

Until the hour when from the vault above us
Glares down the frowning visage of the moon . . .

Had any observant passer-by happened to hear these two lines from Victor Hugo he would have recognised a man of letters by the way in which they were delivered. The solitary speaker bore indeed a name well to the fore in the literature of the day. But names so quickly disappear and get forgotten in the incessant onward rush of new works, self-assertive claims, and fleeting reputations that the successes of ten years ago seem as distant and as vague as those of another age. Two dramas of modern life, a little too directly inspired by the younger Dumas, had brought this young man—he was thirty-five or more, but he looked barely thirty—momentary renown, and he had not yet spoilt his name by putting it at the bottom of hastily written articles or upon the covers of indifferent novels. He was known only as the author of 'La Goule' and 'Entre Adultères,' two plays of unequal merit, full of a pessimism frequently conventional, but powerful in their trenchant analysis, their smart dialogue, and their painful striving after the Ideal. In 1879 these plays were already three years old, and Claude Larcher, who had allowed himself to drift into a life of idle pleasure, was beginning to accept lucrative and easy work, being no longer fit to make any fresh and long-sustained effort.

Like many analytical writers, he was accustomed to study and probe himself incessantly, though all his introspection had not the least influence upon his actions. The most trifling occurrences served as a pretext for indulging in examination of himself and his destiny, but long-continued dualism of this kind only resulted in keeping his perceptive faculties uselessly and painfully alert. The sight of this peaceful street and the thought of Victor Hugo immediately reminded him of the resolutions he had been vainly formulating for some months past to lead a retired life of regular work. He reflected that he had a novel on order for a magazine, a play to write that had already been accepted, and reviews to send to a 'daily,' whilst, instead of being seated at his table in the Rue de Varenne, here he was gadding about at ten o'clock at night dressed like an idler and a snob. He would pass the remainder of the evening and a part of the night at a soirée given by the Comtesse Komof, a Russian lady of fashion living in Paris, whose receptions at the grand mansion in the Rue de Bel-Respiro were as magnificent as they were mixed. He was about to do even worse. He had come to fetch another writer, ten years younger than himself, who had till that moment led precisely the noble life of hard work for which he himself so longed, in one of the houses in this modest and quiet Rue Coëtlogon.

René Vincy—that was the name of his young colleague—had just leapt with one bound into the full glare of publicity, thanks to one of those strokes of literary luck which do not occur twice in a generation. The 'Sigisbée,' a comedy in one act and in verse, a fanciful, dreamy work, written without any hopes of practical success, had brought him sudden fame. Like our dear François Coppée's 'Le Passant,' it had taken the blasé capital by storm, and had called forth not only unanimous applause in the Théâtre Français, but a chorus of praise in the newspapers next day. Of this astonishing success Claude could claim a share. Was he not the first in whose hands the manuscript of the 'Sigisbée' had been placed? Had he not taken it to Colette Rigaud, the famous actress of the House of Molière? And Colette, having fallen in love with the principal part, had smoothed away all obstacles. It was he, Claude Larcher, who, consulted by Madame Komof upon the choice of a play to be performed in her salon, had suggested the 'Sigisbée;' the Comtesse had acted upon his suggestion, and the performance was to take place that evening. Claude, who had undertaken to chaperon the young poet, had come at the appointed hour to the Rue Coëtlogon, where René Vincy lived with his married sister.

This extreme kindness of an already successful author towards a mere novice was not entirely devoid of a tinge of irony and pride. Claude Larcher, who spent his time in slandering the wealthy and cosmopolitan world in which the Comtesse Komof moved, and in which he himself was always mixing, felt his vanity slightly tickled by being able to dazzle his friend with the glamour of his fashionable connections. At the same time the malicious cynic was amused by the simplicity of the poet and by his childish awe of that magic and meaningless word—Society. He had already enjoyed, as much as a play, Vincy's shyness during their first visit to the Comtesse a few days before, and thoughts of the fever of expectancy in which René must now be made him smile as he approached the house in which his young friend lived.

'And to think that I was just as foolish as that once!' he murmured, remembering that he, too, as well as René, had had his début; then he thought, 'That is a feeling of which those who have always lived in that kind of world have no idea; and how absurd it is for us to go and visit these people!'

Whilst philosophising in this manner Claude had stopped before another gate on the left, and, finding it locked, had rung the bell. The passage to which this gate gave access belonged to a three-storeyed house separated from the street by a narrow strip of garden. The porter's lodge was under the arch at the end of the passage, but either the concierge was absent or the pull at the bell had not been sufficiently vigorous, for Claude was obliged to tug a second time at the rusty ring that hung at the end of a long chain. He had time, therefore, to examine this dull, dismal-looking house, in which there was only one window lit up. This was on the ground floor, and belonged to the suite of rooms occupied by the Fresneaus, four windows of which looked out upon the little garden.

Mademoiselle Emilie Vincy, the poet's sister, had married one Maurice Fresneau, a teacher, whose colleague Claude had been upon first coming to Paris—a début of which the pampered author of 'La Goule' was weak enough to be ashamed. How happy he would have been had he been able to say that he had frittered away his patrimony at cards or upon women! He, however, kept up a close acquaintance with his former colleague, out of gratitude for pecuniary services rendered long ago. He had at first interested himself in René chiefly for the sake of this old comrade of less happy days, but had afterwards yielded to the charm of the young man's nature. How often, when tired of his artificial life and tortured by painful indolence and bitter passions, had he not come to obtain an hour's rest in René's modest room, next to that in which the light was now burning, and which was the dining-room. In the short interval that elapsed between his two rings, and thanks to the swift imagination of his artistic mind, this room suddenly rose up before him—symbolical of the purity of soul hitherto preserved by his friend. The poet and his sister had with their own hands nailed to the wall some thin red cloth adorned here and there with a few engravings, chosen with the consummate taste of a lonely thinker—some studies by Albert Dürer, Gustave Moreau's 'Hélène' and 'Orphée,' and one or two etchings by Goya. The iron bedstead, the neatly kept table, the bookcase filled with well-bound books, the red parquetting of the floor forming a frame to the carpet in the centre—how Claude had loved this familiar scene, with these words from the 'Imitatio' written over the door by René in his boyish days: Cella continuata dulcescit! Larcher's thoughts, at first ironical, had become suddenly modified by the images his brain had conjured up, and he felt moved by the idea that this entry into society through the portals of the Komof mansion was after all a great event for a child of twenty-five who had always lived in this house. What a heart full of ideals he was about to carry into that pleasure-loving and artificial Society that crowded the Comtesse's salons!

'What a pity he should have to go!' he exclaimed, his reverie broken by the click of the lock, adding, as he pushed the gate open, 'But it was I who advised him to accept the invitation, and who got him dressed for to-night.' He had, indeed, taken René to his tailor, his hosier, his bootmaker, and even his hatter, in order to proceed to what he jestingly called his investiture. 'The dangers of contact with the world ought to have been thought of before. . . . But how foolish of me to meet troubles half way! He will be presented to four or five women, he will be invited to dinner two or three times, he will forget to call again, he will forget—and he will be forgotten.'

By this time he was half way down the passage, and had knocked at the first door on the right before coming to the porter's lodge, which it was not necessary to pass. His knock was answered by a big fat maid of about thirty, with a short waist, square shoulders, and a great round face surmounted by a huge Auvergne cap and lit up by two brown eyes betraying animal simplicity. Instinctive distrust was expressed not only in the woman's physiognomy, but also by the manner in which she held the door instead of opening it wide, and by the way she blinked her eyes as she raised the lamp to throw the light upon the visitor's features. On recognising Claude her big face expressed a degree of satisfaction that told plainly how welcome the writer was in the Fresneau household.

'Good evening, Françoise,' said the young man; 'is your master ready?'

'Oh!—it's Monsieur Larcher,' exclaimed the maid, with a joyful smile, showing all her sharp little white teeth, of which she had lost one on each side of the top row. 'He is quite ready,' she added, 'and looks like an angel. You will find la compagnie in the dining-room. Let me take your coat for you . . . Saints preserve us! My dear gentleman, what a weight this must be on your back!'

The familiarity of this maid-of-all-work, who had come straight to the Fresneaus from the professor's native village in Auvergne, and who had made herself thoroughly at home with them for the past fifteen years, was a constant source of amusement to Claude Larcher. He was one of those deep thinkers who worship utter simplicity, no doubt because they find in it a relief from the incessant and exhaustive labour of their own brain. Françoise would sometimes speak to him of his works in most droll and grotesque terms, or with great ingenuousness express the fear with which she was always haunted—that the author was going to put her into one of his plays; or, again, she would, after the manner of her kind, give a most ludicrous turn to some literary phrase she had picked up in waiting at table. Claude remembered how he had once heard her say, in praising René's ardour for work: 'He dentifries himself with his heroes.' He could not help laughing at it even now. She would say ceuiller for cuiller, engratigner for égratigner, archeduc for aqueduc, to travel in coquelicot for incognito, and a heap of other similar slips which the writer would amuse himself by jotting down in one of his innumerable notebooks for a novel that he would never finish. He was therefore as a rule glad to provoke the woman's gossip; but that evening he was not in a mood for it, being suddenly filled with melancholy at the idea that he was playing the part of a vulgar worldly tempter. Whilst Françoise was hanging up his coat for him he looked down the corridor that he knew so well, with its doors on each side. René's bedroom was on the right at the end of the passage, facing the south; the Fresneaus were satisfied with a smaller apartment looking north, the room next to this being occupied by their son Constant, a boy six years old, of whom Emilie thought a good deal less than of René. Claude was fully acquainted with all the reasons for this tender sisterly love, as he was indeed with the whole history of this family. It was that history, so touching in its modest simplicity, which amply justified his remorse in dragging from this peaceful retreat the one in whom all was centred.

The father of Emilie and René, an attorney of Vouziers, had died a wretched death from the effects of intemperate habits. The practice having been sold and what little property there was realised, the widow, after paying all debts, found herself in possession of about fifty thousand francs. Feeling that life in Vouziers would recall too many bitter memories, Madame Vincy went to live in Paris with her two young children. She had a brother there, the Abbé Taconet, a priest of some eminence, who, though educated in the Ecole Normale, had suddenly, and without giving any reasons, entered into holy orders; the astonishment of his former comrades was, if possible, increased when they saw him, soon after leaving Saint-Sulpice, set up a school in the Rue Casette. A conscientious but very liberal Catholic, with strong leanings to Gallicanism, the Abbé Taconet had seen many families of the upper middle class hesitate between purely secular and purely religious colleges, not finding in either that combination of traditional Christianity and modern development they sought, and he had taken orders for the express purpose of carrying into effect a plan he had formed for realising that combination. The height of his ambition was reached on the day that he and two younger priests opened an ecclesiastical day school, which he christened the Ecole Saint-André, after his patron saint. The success that attended the Abbé's enterprise was so rapid that already, in the third year, two small one-horse omnibuses were required to fetch the pupils and take them back to their homes.

This opportunity of giving her son, then ten years old, an exceptional education, was one of the reasons that led Madame Vincy to choose Paris for her residence, especially since Emilie's sixteen years promised the mother valuable aid in the discharge of her household duties. By the advice of the Abbé Taconet, whom the management of the school funds had made quite a business man, she invested her fifty thousand francs in Italian stocks, which at that time could be bought at sixty-five francs, thus securing her an income of two thousand eight hundred francs per year. The secret of the idolatrous affection which Emilie lavished upon her young brother lay almost entirely in the innumerable daily sacrifices entailed by the inadequacy of this amount, for in matters of love we pursue our sufferings as at cards we pursue our losses.

Almost immediately after her arrival in Paris—she had taken rooms in this very house in the Rue Coëtlogon, but on the third floor—Madame Vincy had become an invalid, so that from 1863 to 1871, when the poor woman died, Emilie had discharged the triple duty of nursing her mother, of carefully tending a household where fifty centimes meant much, and of superintending step by step her brother's education. All this, too, she had done without allowing the fatigue that stole the colour from her cheeks to wring from her lips a single complaint. She resembled those sempstresses in the old songs of Paris who consoled themselves in their rude, incessant toil by cultivating some tender flower upon their window sill. Her flower was her brother, a timid, loving child with wistful eyes, and he had well repaid Emilie's devotion by his successes at college—a source of great joy to women whose lives were so entirely devoid of all pleasure. It was not long before René began to write poems, and Emilie had been the happy confidante of the young man's first attempts. Then, when Fresneau asked her to be his wife, not six months after the death of her mother, she consented only on condition that the professor, who had just passed his examinations, would not leave Paris, and that René was to live with them, and devote himself to writing. Fresneau joyfully acceded to these demands. He was one of those very good and very simple men who are peculiarly fitted to be lovers, granting blindly all that the object of their love desires. He had been enamoured of Emilie, without daring to declare his passion, since first making the acquaintance of the Vincys as René's master at the Ecole Saint-André in 1865. This man, who was not far from forty, felt drawn towards the girl by the strange similarity of their destinies. Had he not also renounced all selfish ambition and all personal aspirations in order to liquidate the debts which his father—a ruined schoolmaster—had left behind? From 1851 to 1872, when he married, the professor had paid twenty thousand francs to his father's creditors, and that by giving lessons at five francs each, taking one with the other! If we add to the number of working hours that produced this result the time required for preparing the lessons, correcting exercises, and going about from one place to another—Fresneau would sometimes have lessons at all points of the Parisian compass on the same day—we shall have the sketch of an existence, not uncommon in the profession of teaching, that is capable of wearing out the strongest constitutions. His love for Emilie had formed the one romance of Fresneau's life, too occupied as he had been during his youth to find time for such sentiments. The Abbé Taconet had given his blessing to their union, and an addition had been made to the slaves of René's genius.

Claude Larcher was not ignorant of any of these facts, which had all been of importance in developing the character and talent of the young poet. Whilst Françoise was hanging up his overcoat his rapid glance travelled round the dimly-lighted passage and took in all those material details which for him had a deeper and a moral signification. He knew why, in the corner near the door, side by side with the professor's stout alpaca umbrella with its clumsy handle, there stood a neat English frame with an elegant stick, chosen by Madame Fresneau for her brother. He knew, too, that it was the sister's love that had provided the dainty Malacca that adorned the hall-stand, and which had probably cost thirty times as much as the plain heavy stick carried by Fresneau when it was fine. He knew that the professor's books, after having for a long time been exposed to the dirt and dust on the blackened shelves of a bookcase in this passage, had at length been banished even from that place to a dark cupboard, and that the passage had then been given up to René's decorative fancies. The walls were adorned with engravings of his choosing—a whole row of Raffet's splendid studies of the great Napoleon, which must have been very obnoxious to the Republican tastes of the professor. But Claude knew well enough that Fresneau would be the very last to notice the constant sacrifice of the whole household to this brother, whom he, too, worshipped, out of love for Emilie, as blindly as did the servant and even the uncle—the uncle, for the Abbé Taconet had not been able to resist the influence of the young man's disposition and talent. The Abbé did not forget that his nephew possessed a modest income—the amount invested, by his advice, in Italians, and afterwards transferred to safe French stocks, now bringing in three thousand francs—and that he himself would double it at his death. Was not René's Christian education a guarantee that his literary talents would help to propagate the views of the Church? The priest had therefore done what he could to start the poet on that difficult path of letters where the fortunate youth had so far only met with happiness.

Of this happiness, consisting of pure devotion, silent affection, loving indulgence, and hearty, comforting confidence, Claude Larcher knew the value better than anyone—he who, bereft of both his parents, had, from his twentieth year, been compelled to battle alone against the hardships, the disenchantments, and the contamination of a struggling author's life in Paris. He never visited the Fresneaus without experiencing a feeling of sadness, and to-night was no exception to the rule. It was a feeling which generally made him laugh the louder and exercise his most withering sarcasm. Too enervated to bear the slightest emotion without feeling pain, he was, on such occasions, within an ace of proclaiming his agony, and in view of the hopelessness of ever conquering this excessive sensibility, ready, like a child, to be judged by his words whilst uttering the most atrocious libels on his own heart.

CHAPTER II
SIMPLE SOULS

When, with his usual bantering smile, Claude entered the small dining-room he found that la compagnie, as Françoise called it, comprised René—the hero of what seemed to his friends a most remarkable adventure—Madame Fresneau and her husband, Madame Offarel, the wife of a sous-chef de bureau in the Ministère de la Guerre, and her two daughters, Angélique and Rosalie. All these good people were seated around the mahogany table on mahogany chairs, the horsehair seats of which were glossy with the wear of years. This suite formed part of the original household effects of the avoué of Vouziers, and owed its marvellous state of preservation to the care bestowed upon it by its present owners. A portable stove, fixed upon the hearth, did not tend to improve the air in the somewhat small apartment, though it testified to the housewife's habits of thrift. Emilie would have no wood fires except in René's room. A lamp suspended by a brass chain illumined the circle of heads that was turned towards the visitor as he entered and cast a feeble light upon the yellow flowers of the wall-paper, relieved here and there by a piece of old china. The lamp-light revealed more clearly to the new arrival the feelings expressed in the faces of the different occupants of the room. Likes and dislikes are not so easily concealed by those who move in humble circles—there the human animal is less tamed, less accustomed to the mask continually worn in more polite society. Emilie held out her hand to Claude—an unusual thing for her to do—with a happy smile upon her lips, and a look of joy in her brown eyes, her whole being expressing the sincere pleasure she felt at seeing someone whom she knew to be interested in her brother.

'Doesn't his coat fit him beautifully?' she asked impetuously, before Larcher had taken a chair or even exchanged a word of greeting with the other visitors.

René, it was true, was a perfect specimen of the creature so seldom seen in Paris—a handsome young man. At twenty-five the author of the 'Sigisbée' was still without a wrinkle on his brow, while the freshness of his complexion and the look of purity in his clear blue eyes told of a virgin soul and a mind unsullied by the world. He bore a great resemblance to the medallion, but little known, which David, the sculptor, has left of Alfred de Musset in his youth, though René's wealth of hair, his fair and already full beard, and his broad shoulders gave him an air of health and strength wanting in the somewhat effeminate and almost too frail appearance of the great poet. His eyes, generally serious, spoke at that moment of simple and unalloyed happiness, and Emilie's admiration was justified by an innate grace that revealed itself in spite of the levelling effect of a dress-coat. In her tender solicitude the loving sister had even thought of gold studs and links for his shirt-front and cuffs, and had bought them out of her savings at a jeweller's in the Rue de la Paix, after a secret conference with Claude. She had fastened his white tie with her own fingers, and had bestowed as much care upon him that evening as when, fourteen years ago, she had superintended the toilet of this idolised brother for his first communion.

'Poor Emilie,' said René, with a smile that disclosed two splendid rows of teeth; 'you must excuse her, Claude; I am her only weakness.'

'Well! So you are dragging René into dissipation too, eh?' cried Fresneau, as he shook hands with Larcher. The professor was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a great head of hair just beginning to turn grey, and an unkempt beard. Spread out before him, and covered with pencil notes, were some large sheets of paper—the exercises he brought home to correct. He gathered them up, saying, 'Lucky man! You've got rid of this terrible job! Will you take a thimbleful just to warm you?' he asked, holding up a decanter half filled with brandy, which was always left on the table after coffee had been served—the family sitting here in preference to moving into the salon, a room in the front of the house used only on grand occasions. 'Or a cigarette?' he added, offering Claude a bowl filled with tobacco.

Claude thanked him with a deprecatory smile and turned to bow to the three lady visitors, not one of whom offered him her hand. The mother, who scratched her head every now and then with one of her knitting-needles, was busily at work upon a blue woollen stocking, and her two daughters were engaged upon some embroidery. Madame Offarel's hair was quite white, and her face deeply wrinkled; through the round glasses that she managed to balance somehow or other on her short nose there flashed a glance of deep hatred upon Claude. Angélique, the elder of the two girls, repressed a smile as she heard the writer make a slight slip in his pronunciation; with her black eyes, that shot swift sideward glances, with her blushes that came as readily as her smiles, she belonged to the numerous family of shy but mocking females. Rosalie, the younger of the two sisters, had returned Claude's salute without raising her eyes, black as her sister's, but filled with a sweet, timid expression. A few minutes later she stole a glance from beneath her long lashes at René, and her fingers trembled as her needle followed the tracing for the embroidery. She bent her head still lower until her chestnut hair shone in the lamp-light.

Not a whit of this by-play had been lost upon Claude. He was well acquainted with the habits and disposition of ces dames Offarel, as Fresneau called them in his provincial way. They had probably arrived at about seven o'clock, soon after dinner. Old Offarel, after having accompanied them here from the Rue Bagneux, had gone on to the Café Tabourey, at the corner of the Odéon, where he conscientiously waded through all the daily papers. Claude had long guessed that Madame Offarel cherished the idea of a marriage between Rosalie and René; he suspected his young friend of having encouraged these hopes by an innate taste for the romantic, and it was only too evident that Rosalie had been captivated by the mental qualities and physical attractions of the poet. He, Claude Larcher, knew well enough, too, that he himself was both liked and feared by the girl. She liked him because he was devoted to René, and feared him because he was dragging the latter into a fresh current of events. To this innocent child, as well as to all the members of this small circle, the soirée at Madame Komof's seemed like a fairy expedition to distant and unexplored lands. In each of them it conjured up chimerical hopes or foolish fears. Emilie Fresneau had always cherished the most ambitious dreams for her brother, and she now pictured him leaning against a mantelpiece reciting verses in the midst of a crowd of duchesses, and beloved by a 'Russian princess.' These two words expressed the highest form of social superiority that her mind was capable of imagining. Rosalie was the victim of the keenest perspicacity—that of the woman who loves. Although she reproached herself for her folly, René's eyes frightened her with the joy they expressed, and that joy was at going into a world which she, almost his betrothed, could not enter. A bond, stronger than Claude had imagined, already united them, for secret vows had been exchanged by the pair one spring evening in the preceding year. René was then still unknown. She had him to herself. When by her side he thought all things charming; without her, all was insipid. To-day, her confidence disturbed by unconscious jealousy, she began to see what dangerous comparisons threatened her love. With her home-made dresses that spoilt the beauty of her figure, with her ready-made boots in which her dainty feet were lost, with her modest white collars and cuffs, she felt herself grow small by the side of the grand ladies whom René would meet. That was why her fingers trembled and why a vague terror shot through her heart, causing it to beat quicker, whilst the professor pressed Claude to drink a glass of liqueur and to make himself a cigarette.

'I assure you it's excellent eau-de-vie, sent me from Normandy by one of my pupils. Really not? You used to be so fond of it once. Do you remember when we gave lessons at Vanaboste's? Four hours a day, Thursdays included, corrections to be done at home, for a hundred and fifty francs a month! And yet how happy we were in those days! We had a quarter of an hour's interval between the classes, and I remember the little café we used to go to in the Rue Saint-Jacques to get a glass of this eau-de-vie to keep us going. You used to call it hardening the arteries, under the pretence that a man is only as old as his arteries, and that alcohol diminishes their elasticity.'

'I was twelve years younger then,' said Claude, as he laughed at the other's reminiscences, 'and had no rheumatism.'

'It can't be very good for one's health,' interposed Madame Offarel with some asperity, 'to go out nearly every night; and these big dinners, with their fine wines and highly-seasoned dishes, impoverish the blood terribly!'

'Don't be absurd,' said Emilie, interposing; 'we have had the honour of Monsieur Larcher's company to dinner, and you would be surprised to see what a modest meal he makes. And people can afford to go to bed a little late when they are free to sleep long in the morning. René tells us that it is so delightfully quiet in your house,' she added, addressing the writer.

'Yes, so it is. I happened to come across some rooms in an old house in the Rue de Varenne, and I find that at present I am the only tenant in the place. When the blinds are drawn I can fancy it is the middle of the night. I can hear nothing but the ringing of the bells in a convent close by and the roar of the city far, far away.'

'I have always heard it said that one hour's sleep before midnight is worth more than two afterwards,' broke in the old lady, exasperated by Claude's imperturbability. She was incensed against him without knowing exactly why—this feeling being inspired less by the influence he exercised upon René than by deep natural antipathy. She felt that she was being studied by this individual with the inquisitorial eyes, perfect manners, and unfathomable smiles. His presence produced in her a feeling of uneasiness that found vent in sharp words. She therefore added, 'Besides, Monsieur René cannot have such rest here. At what time will this Countess's soirée be over?'

'I don't know,' replied Claude, amused by the ill-concealed rancour of his adversary; 'the "Sigisbée" will be performed about half-past ten, and I suppose we shall sit down to supper about half-past twelve or one.'

'Monsieur René will be in bed about two o'clock, then,' rejoined Madame Offarel, with the visible satisfaction of an aggressive person bringing forward an irrefutable argument; 'and as Monsieur Fresneau goes out about seven, and Françoise begins to potter about at six——'

'Come, come, once in a way!' exclaimed Emilie with some impatience, cutting short the other's words. She feared the old lady's indiscreet tongue, and changed the topic by flattering her pet mania. 'You have not told us whether Cendrillon came back for good?'

Cendrillon was a grey cat presented by Madame Offarel to a young man named Jacques Passart, a teacher of drawing, between whom and the sous-chef de bureau a friendship had sprung up, born of their mutual taste for aquarelles. These were the two family vices—a love for painting in the husband, who daubed his canvases even in his office; and a love of cats in the wife, who had had as many as five such boarders in her flat—a ground floor like that of the Fresneaus, also with its bit of garden. Jacques Passart, who nursed an unrequited affection for Rosalie, had so often gone into rhapsodies over the pretty ways of Cendrette or Cendrinette, as Madame Offarel called her, that he had been presented with the animal. After a stay of three months in the room occupied by Passart on a fifth floor in the Rue du Cherche-Midi, Cendrillon had become a mother. Out of her three kittens two had been killed, and, doubtlessly thinking the third in danger, she had run away with it. Passart had been afraid to speak of his loss, but two days later Madame Offarel heard a scratching at the garden door.

'That's strange,' she said, verifying the number of her cats—one of which was lying at full length on the counterpane of her bed, another on the only sofa, and a third on the marble chimney-piece. 'They are all here, and yet I hear a scratching.' She opened the door, and Cendrillon walked in, purring, arching her back, and rubbing her head against her old mistress with a thousand pretty little ways that charmed the good lady. The next morning Cendrillon had once more vanished. This visit, rendered more mysterious by the avowal Passart had been obliged to make of his negligence, had on the previous day been the sole theme of Madame Offarel's conversation, and the fact that she had not even alluded to the circumstance that evening revealed more than her epigrams the importance attached by Rosalie's mother to René's entry into society.

'Ah! Cendrillon,' she replied, her ill-humour tinged with the enthusiasm evoked by the mention of the dear creature. 'I don't suppose Monsieur René remembers anything about it?' Upon a sign of reassurance from the young man that he had not forgotten the interesting event, she continued: 'Well, she came back this morning, carrying her little one in her mouth, and laid it at my feet like an offering, with such a look in her eyes! The day before she had come to see whether I still cared for her, and now she came to ask me to take her kitten too. It's better to bestow one's affections upon animals than upon human beings,' she added, by way of conclusion; 'they are much more faithful.'

'What a wonderful trait of instinct!' cried Fresneau, beginning once more to disfigure his exercises with cabalistic signs. 'I will make a note of it for my class.' The poor man, a real Jack-of-all-trades in his profession, taught philosophy in a preparatory school for B.A.'s, Latin in another, history in another, and even English, which he could scarcely pronounce. In this way he had contracted the habit, peculiar to old schoolmen, of holding forth at length at every possible opportunity. This marvellous return of Cendrillon to her native hearth was a text to be elaborated ad infinitum. He went on telling anecdote after anecdote, and forgetting his exercises—to all appearances. The excellent man, so weak that he had never been able to keep a class of ten boys in order, was a marvel of observation where his wife was concerned. Whilst his pencil was running over the margins of the sheets of foolscap he had distinctly perceived Madame Offarel's hostility. From Emilie's tone of voice, too, it was clear to him that she was somewhat uneasy as to the turn that such a conversation might take. So the professor prolonged his monologue in order to give the nerves of the sour-tempered bourgeoise time to steady themselves. He was not called upon to play his part long, for there came another ring at the bell.

'That's papa!' exclaimed Rosalie; 'it must be a quarter to ten.' She, too, had suffered from her mother's show of temper towards Claude and René, and the arrival of her father, which was the signal for departure, seemed like a deliverance—to her, too, for whom parting from the Fresneaus was generally an ordeal. But she knew her mother, and felt, by instinct rather than by reasoning, how mean and distasteful the bitterness of her remarks must seem to René. There were only too many reasons why he should no longer care for their company. She therefore rose as her father entered the room. M. Offarel was a tall, withered-looking man, with one of those pinched faces that irresistibly remind one of the immortal type of Don Quixote; an aquiline nose, hollow temples, a harshly drawn mouth, and, to crown all, one of those receding brows the wrinkles and bumps of which represent so many chimerical fancies and false ideas within. To his innocent mania for aquarelles he added the ridiculous weakness of incessantly talking about his imaginary complaints.

'It's very cold to-night,' were his first words, and, addressing his wife, he added, 'Adelaide, have you any tincture of iodine in the house? I am sure I shall have my attack of rheumatism in the morning.'

'Is your cab warmed?' asked Emilie, turning to Claude.

'Oh, yes,' replied the writer, pulling out his watch; 'and I see that it's time to get into it, if we don't want to be late.' Whilst he was taking leave of the little circle René disappeared through the door that led from the dining-room to his bedroom without bidding anyone good night.

'He has probably only gone to get his coat,' thought Rosalie; 'he cannot possibly have gone without saying good-bye, especially as he has not looked at me at all to-night.' She went on with her work whilst Fresneau received the sous-chef de bureau with the same questions he had put to his friend: 'Just a thimbleful to keep the cold out?'

'Only a suspicion,' answered Offarel.

'That's right,' rejoined the professor, 'you are not like Larcher, who despised my eau-de-vie!'

'Monsieur Larcher!' observed the other. 'Don't you know his usual drink? Why'—he added, in a lower key, and prudently looking towards the passage—'I read an article in the paper only this evening that shows him up well.'

'Tell us all about it, petit père,' exclaimed Madame Offarel, dropping her work for the first time that evening, and artlessly allowing her rancorous feelings to betray themselves as openly as her simple affection for her cat.

'It appears,' said the old man, emphasising his words, 'that wherever Monsieur Larcher appears, they offer him blood to drink instead of tea or other things.'

'Blood!' exclaimed Fresneau, taken aback by this astounding statement. 'What for?'

'To sustain him, of course,' said Madame Offarel quickly; 'didn't you notice his face? What a life he must lead!'

'It also appears,' continued Offarel, anxious to gratify that low taste for senseless gossip peculiar to a bourgeois as soon as he gets hold of one of the innumerable calumnies to which well-known men are exposed—'it appears that he lives surrounded by a court of women who adore him, and that he has discovered an infallible method of making whatever he writes a success. He has a dozen copies of his proofs struck off at once, and takes one to each of the ladies he knows. They spread them out on their knees, and "Mon petit Larcher here, and mon petit Larcher there—you must alter this and you must cut out that." So he alters this and he cuts out that, and the ladies imagine that they have written his work for him.'

'I am not at all surprised,' said Madame Offarel; 'he looks like a bold deceiver.'

'I must confess,' replied Fresneau, 'that I don't like his writings much; but as for being a deceiver—that's another matter. My dear Madame Offarel, I assure you he's a perfect child. How it amuses me when the newspapers say that he knows women's hearts! I've always found him in love with the worst creatures on earth, whom he conscientiously believed to be angels, and who deceive him and fool him as much as they please. René told us the other day that he spends his time in dallying with little Colette Rigaud, who plays in the "Sigisbée"—a false hussy who'll worm his last shilling out of him.'

'Hush!' exclaimed Emilie, entering just in time to hear the end of this little speech, and placing her hand on her husband's lips. 'Monsieur Claude is a friend of ours, and I won't have him discussed. My brother desires to be excused for not saying "good night" to you all,' she added; 'they hadn't noticed that it was so late, and left in a hurry. And when am I to have that drawing of the last scene in the "Sigisbée?"' she asked, turning to the sous-chef de bureau.

'It's a bad time of year for water-colours,' replied the latter; 'it gets dark so soon, and we are overwhelmed with work—but you shall have it. Why, what's the matter, Rosalie? You are quite white.'

The poor girl was indeed suffering tortures on finding that René had left her without so much as a look or a word. A great lump rose in her throat, and her eyes filled with tears. She had strength enough, however, to repress her sobs and to reply that she was overcome by the heat of the stove. Her mother darted a look at Emilie containing such a direct reproach that Madame Fresneau turned away her eyes involuntarily. She, too, was deeply grieved; for, although she had always been opposed to this marriage, which was quite out of keeping with the ambitious plans she vaguely cherished for her brother, she loved Rosalie. When the mother and her two daughters had put on their bonnets and were at last ready to go, Emilie's feelings led her to embrace Rosalie more affectionately than was her wont. She was quite ready to pity the girl's sufferings, but that pity was not entirely devoid of a sad kind of satisfaction at seeing René's manifest indifference, and as the door closed behind her visitors she turned to Françoise with unalloyed joy in her honest brown eyes.

'You will take care not to make any noise in the morning, won't you?'

'No more than a mouse,' replied the girl.

'And you too, my big beauty,' she said to her husband, on entering the dining-room, where the professor was once more at his exercises. 'I have told Constant to get up and dress quietly,' adding, with a proud smile, 'what a triumph for René to-night, provided that these grand folks don't turn up their noses at his verse! But I'm sure they'll not do that; his poetry is too good—almost as good as he is himself!'

'It is to be hoped that all these fine ladies will not spoil him as you do,' exclaimed Fresneau, 'for it would end by his losing his head. No, no,' he went on, in order to flatter his wife's feelings, 'it is a pleasure to see how modest he is, even in success.'

And Emilie kissed her husband tenderly for those words.

CHAPTER III
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.

CHAPTER IV
THE 'SIGISBÉE'

Two footmen in livery drew back the curtains from before the miniature stage. The scene being laid 'In a garden, in Venice,' nothing had been required in the way of scenery beyond a piece of cloth stretched across the back of the stage and a bank formed of plants selected from the hostess's famous conservatory. With the somewhat crude appearance of their foliage under the glare of the light these exotic shrubs made a setting very different to that which M. Perrin had arranged with so much taste at the Comédie Française. That model of a manager, if ever there was one, had hit upon the happy idea of placing before his audience one of the terraces on the lagoon that lead by a flight of marble steps down to the lapping waters, with the variegated façades of the palaces standing out against the blue sky and the black gondolas flitting round the corners of the tortuous canals. The change from the usual scenery, the diminutive stage, the limited and eminently select audience, all contributed to increase René's feeling of uneasiness, and he again felt his heart beating as wildly as on the night of the first performance at the theatre.

The appearance of Colette Rigaud, dressed à la Watteau, was the signal for a burst of applause, which the actress smilingly acknowledged. Even in her gay attire, copied from one of the great painter's fêtes galantes, and in spite of her powdered hair, her patch, and her pale cheeks bedaubed with paint, there was a tone of sadness about her—something in the dreamy look of the eyes and the melancholy expression on the sensual lips that reminded one of Botticelli's madonnas and angels. How many times had not René heard Claude sigh: 'When she has been telling me lies, and then looks at me in her own peculiar way, I begin to pity her instead of getting angry.'

Colette had already attacked the first lines of her part and René's anguish was at its highest pitch, while all around he heard the loud remarks which even well-bred people will make when an artiste appears on a drawing-room stage. 'She's very pretty. Do you think it's the same dress she wears at the theatre? She's a little too thin for my taste. What a sympathetic voice! No, she imitates Sarah Bernhardt too much. I'm in love with the piece, aren't you? To tell you the truth, poetry always sends me to sleep.' The poet's sharp ears caught all these exclamations and many more. They were, however, soon silenced by a loud 'hush!' that came from a knot of young men standing near René, conspicuous among them being a bald-headed individual with rather a prominent nose and a very red face.

The Comtesse thanked him with a wave of her hand, and, turning to her partner, said: 'That's M. Salvaney; he is madly in love with Colette.' Silence was reestablished, a silence broken only by the rustle of dresses and the unfurling of fans.

René now listened in delightful intoxication to the music of his own verses, for by the silence as well as by the murmurs of approval that were occasionally heard he felt, he knew, that his work was as surely captivating this select audience as it had captivated the 'house' on its first night at the Théâtre Français, then filled with tired critics, worn-out reporters, scoffing boulevardiers, and smart women. Gradually his thoughts took him back, in spite of himself, to the period when he had first thought out and then written the little play which was that night procuring him such a new and delightful thrill of gratification, after having so completely changed the tenor of his life. He saw himself once more in the Luxembourg garden at the close of a bright spring day; the charm of the deepening twilight, the smell of the flowers, the dark blue sky seen through the spare foliage, and the marble statues of the queens—all these things had deeply impressed him as he walked with Rosalie, silent, by his side. She had such a simple way of looking up at him with her great black eyes, in which he could read unconscious though tender passion.

It was on that evening that he had first spoken to her of love, there, amidst the scent of the early lilac, whilst the voices of Madame Offarel and Emilie could be heard, indistinctly, in the distance. He had returned to the Rue Coëtlogon a prey to that fever of hope which brings tears to one's eyes and moves one's nature to its inmost depths. Finding it impossible to sleep, he had sat there alone in his room and drawn a comparison between Rosalie and the object of an earlier but less innocent attachment—a girl named Elise, living in the Quartier Latin. He had met her in a brasserie, where he had been taken by the only two comrades he possessed. Faded as she was, Elise could still boast of good looks, in spite of the black under her eyes, the powder all over her face, and the carmine on her lips. She had taken a fancy to him, and although she shocked him dreadfully by her gestures and her mode of thought, by her voice and her expressions, he had continued the acquaintanceship for about six months—six months that had left him nothing but a bitter memory. Being one of those in whom passion leads to affection, he had become attached to the girl in spite of himself, and he had suffered cruelly from her coquetry, the coarseness of her feelings, and the stock of moral infamy that formed the groundwork of the poor creature's nature.

Seated at his writing-table that night, and dreaming ecstatically of Rosalie's purity, he had conceived the idea of a poem in which he should draw a contrast between a coquette and a true, tender-hearted girl. Then, being an ardent admirer of Shakespeare and de Musset, his vulgar love affair with Elise underwent a strange metamorphosis and became an Italian romance. There and then he made a rough sketch of the 'Sigisbée,' and composed fifty lines. It was the simple story of a young Venetian noble, named Lorenzo, who had fallen in love with Princess Cœlia, a cold and cruel coquette. The unhappy swain, after wasting much time and many tears in wooing this unrelenting beauty, was advised by a young Marquis de Sénecé, a French roué on a visit to Venice, to affect an interest in the sweet and pretty Countess Beatrice in order to awaken Cœlia's jealousy. He then discovered that the Countess had long loved him, and when Cœlia, caught in the trap, tried to lead him back, Lorenzo, profiting by experience, said the perfidious lady nay, and gave himself up entirely to the charms of her who loved him without guile.

Colette, as Cœlia, was speaking while Lorenzo sat lamenting. The roué was cynical and Beatrice lost in dreams. These characters, coming straight from the world of Benedict and Perdican, of Rosalind and Fortunio, strutted on and off, enveloped in a ray of poetry as sweet and light as a moonbeam. As René heard the frequent exclamations of 'Charming!' or 'Exquisite!' that escaped from the crowd of women before him he recalled the nights of wakefulness that this or that passage had cost him. There were these pathetic lines, for instance, written by Lorenzo to Cœlia, and afterwards shown by the latter to Beatrice. How sweet Colette's voice became, in spite of its mocking note, as she read them out.

If kisses for kisses the roses could pay
When our lips o'er their petals in ecstasy stray;
If the lilacs and tall slender lilies could guess
How their sweet perfume fills us with sorrowfulness;
If the motionless sky and the sea never still
Could know how with joy at their beauties we thrill;
If all that we love in this strange world below
A soul in exchange on our souls could bestow:
But the sea set around us, the sky set above,
Lilacs, roses, and you, sweet, know nothing of love.

And as he listened the past returned to René more vividly than ever; he was back in his peaceful room again, and felt once more the secret pleasure of rising each morning to resume his unfinished task. By Claude's advice, and from a childish desire to imitate the ways of genius—a foolish but pretty trait in most young writers—he had adopted the method formerly practised by Balzac. In bed by eight o'clock at night, he would get up before four in the morning, and, lighting the fire and the lamp, would make himself some coffee over a little spirit-stove, all prepared for him by his sister in the evening. As the fire burned up brightly and the aroma of the inspiring Mocha filled the little room, he would sit down at the table with Rosalie's portrait before him and begin work. Gradually the noises of Paris grew more distinct as the great city awakened once more to life. Then he would put down his pen and gaze at the engravings that adorned the wall or turn over the leaves of a book. About six o'clock Emilie would make her appearance. In spite of her household cares, this loving sister found time to copy day by day the lines that her brother had written. For nothing in the world would she have allowed one of René's manuscripts to pass into the hands of the printers. Poor Emilie! How happy it would have made her to hear the applause that drowned Colette's voice, and what unalloyed pleasure René's would have been had not the change in his feelings with respect to Rosalie sent a pang of sadness through his heart at the very moment when the play was finishing amidst the enthusiasm of the whole audience.

'It is a glorious success,' said the Comtesse to the young author. 'You will see how these people will fight for you.' And as if to corroborate what might only have been the flattery of a gracious hostess, René could hear, during the hubbub that succeeded the close of the piece, broken sentences that came to him amid the frou-frou of the dresses, the noise of falling chairs, and the commonplaces of conversation.

'That's the author! Where? That young man. So young! Do you know him? He's a good-looking fellow. Why does he wear his hair so long? I rather like to see it—it looks artistic. Well, a man may be clever, and still have his hair cut. But his play is charming. Charming! Charming! Who introduced him to the Comtesse? Claude Larcher. Poor Larcher! Look at him hanging round Colette. He and Salvaney will come to blows one of these days. So much the better; it will cool their blood. Are you going to stay to supper?'

These were a few of the snatches of conversation that reached the author's sensitive ears as he bowed and blushed under the weight of the compliments showered upon him by a woman who had carried him away from Madame Komof almost by force. She was a long, lean creature of about fifty, the widow of a M. de Sermoises, who, since his death, had been promoted to 'my poor Sermoises,' after having been, while alive, the laughing-stock of the clubs on account of his fair partner's behaviour. The lady, as she grew older, had transferred her attention from men to literature, but to literature of a serious and even devotional kind. She had heard from the Comtesse in a vague sort of way that the author of the 'Sigisbée' was the nephew of a priest, and the air of romance that pervaded the little play gave her reason to think that the young writer had nothing in common with the literature of the day, the tendencies of which she held in virtuous execration. Turning to René with the exaggerated tone of pomposity adopted by her in giving utterance to her poor, prudish ideas—a judge passing sentence of death could scarcely be more severe—she said: 'Ah, monsieur! what poetry! What divine grace! It is Watteau on paper. And what sentiment! This piece is epoch-making, sir—yes, epoch-making. We women are avenged by you upon those self-styled analysts who seem to write their books with a scalpel in a house of ill-fame.'

'Madame,' stammered the young man, taken off his feet by this astonishing phraseology.

'You will come and see me, won't you?' she continued. 'I am at home on Wednesdays from five to seven. I think you will prefer the people I receive in my house to those you have met here to-night; the dear Comtesse is a foreigner, you know. Some of the members of the Institut do me the honour of consulting me about their works. I have written a few poems myself. Oh! quite unpretentious things—lines to the memory of poor Monsieur de Sermoises—a small collection that I have called "Lilies from the Grave." You must give me your candid opinion upon them. Madame Hurault—Monsieur Vincy,' she added, presenting the writer to a woman of about forty, whose face and figure were still elegant in outline. 'Charming, wasn't it? Watteau on paper!'

'You must be very fond of Alfred de Musset, sir, remarked this lady. She was the wife of a Society man who, under the pseudonym of Florac, had written several plays that had fallen flat in spite of the untiring energy of Madame Hurault, who, for the past sixteen years, had not given a single dinner at which some critic, some manager, or some person connected with some critic or manager had not been present.

'Who is not fond of him at my age?' replied the young man.

'That is what I said to myself as I listened to your pretty verse,' continued Madame Hurault; 'it produced the same effect as music already heard.' Then, having launched her epigram, she remembered that in many a young poet there lurks a future critic, and tried to smooth down by an invitation the phrase that betrayed the cruel envy of a rival's wife. 'I hope you will come and see us; my husband is not here, but he will be glad to make your acquaintance. I am always at home on Thursdays from five till seven.'

'Madame Ethorel—Monsieur Vincy,' said Madame de Sermoises, again introducing René, but this time to a very young and very pretty woman—a pale brunette, with large dreamy eyes and a delicacy of complexion that contrasted with her full, rich voice.

'Ah! monsieur,' she began, 'how you appeal to the heart! I love that sonnet which Lorenzo recites—let me see, how does it go?—

The spectre of a year long dead.'

'"The phantom of a day long dead,"' said René, involuntarily correcting the line which the pretty lips had misquoted; and with unconscious pedantry he repressed a smile, for the passage in question, two verses of five lines each, presented not the slightest resemblance to a sonnet.

'That's it,' rejoined Madame Ethorel; 'divine, sir, divine! I am at home on Saturdays from five till seven. A very small set, I assure you, if you will do me the honour of calling.'

René had no time to thank her, for Madame de Sermoises, a prey to that strange form of vanity that delights in reflected glory, and which inspires both men and women with an irresistible desire to constitute themselves the showman of any interesting personage, was already dragging him away to fresh introductions. In this way he had to bow first to Madame Abel Mosé, the celebrated Israelitish beauty, all in white; then to Madame de Suave all in pink, and to Madame Bernard all in blue. Then Madame de Komof once more took possession of him in order to present him to the Comtesse de Candale, the haughty descendant of the terrible marshal of the fifteenth century, and to her sister the Duchesse d'Arcole, these high-sounding French names being succeeded by others impossible to catch, and belonging to some of the hostess's relatives. René was also called upon to shake hands with the men who were in attendance on these ladies, and thus made the acquaintance of the Marquis de Hère, the most careful man in town, who with an income of twenty thousand francs lived as though he had fifty; of the Vicomte de Brèves, doing his best to ruin himself for the third time; of Crucé, the collector; of San Giobbe, the famous Italian shot, and of three or four Russians.

The names of most of these Society women and clubmen were familiar to the poet from his having read them, with childish avidity, in the fashionable intelligence published by the newspapers for the edification of young bourgeois dreaming of high life. He had formed such grand and entirely false notions of the 'upper ten' of Paris—a little world of wealthy cosmopolitans rather than French aristocrats—that a feeling of both rapture and disenchantment came over him at the realisation of one of his earliest dreams. The splendour of his surroundings charmed him, and his success soothed his professional vanity. There were smiles for him on such tempting lips and kind looks in such glorious eyes. But though all this was very flattering, it overwhelmed him with a sense of shyness, and, whilst the crowd of strange faces struck a kind of terror into his soul, the commonplace praise destroyed his illusions. What makes Society—of whatever class it be—utterly insupportable to many artists is the fact that they appear in it on rare occasions only, in order to be lionised, and that they expect something extraordinary, whilst those who really belong to Society move in the atmosphere of a drawing-room with the natural ease that accompanies a daily habit. The indescribable feeling of disenchantment, the daze of excitement produced by endless introductions, the intoxication of flattery and the anguish of timidity all made René eager to find his friend. Claude had disappeared, but the poet's eyes fell upon Colette, who, having come down from the stage in her bright-coloured dress of the last century and her powdered hair, formed a striking contrast in colour to the black coats of the men by whom she was surrounded. She, too, was evidently embarrassed—a feeling betrayed by her somewhat nervous smile, by the look of defiance in her eyes, and the rapid opening and shutting of her fan. With her it was the embarrassment of an actress suddenly transported beyond her sphere, proud of, and yet distressed by, the attentions she commands.

She met René with a smile that showed real pleasure in finding one of her own set, and breaking off her conversation with the owner of a terra-cotta complexion, who could be no other than Claude's rival, Salvaney, she cried, 'Ah! here is my author!—Well,' she added, shaking hands with the poet, 'I suppose you are quite satisfied? How well everything has gone off! Come, Salvaney, compliment Monsieur Vincy, even if you don't understand anything about it. And your friend Larcher,' she went on, 'has he disappeared? Tell him for me that he nearly made me die of laughing on the stage. He was wearing a love-lock and his weeping-willow air. For whom was he acting his Antony?'

A cruel look came into her greenish eyes, and in the curl of her lips there was an expression of hatred called forth by the fact that the unhappy Claude had gone without bidding her good night. Though she deceived and tortured him, she loved him in her way, and loved above all to bring him to her feet. She experienced a keen delight in making a fool of him before Salvaney, and in thinking that the simple René would repeat all her words to his friend.

'Why do you say such things?' replied the young man in an undertone while Colette's partner was shaking hands with a friend; 'you know very well that he loves you.'

'I know all about that,' said the actress with a harsh laugh. 'You swallow all he tells you—I know the story. I am his evil genius, his fatal woman, his Delilah. I have quite a heap of letters in which he treats me to a lot of that kind of thing. That does not prevent him from getting as drunk as a lord, under pretence of escaping from me. I suppose it's my fault, too, that he gambles and drinks and uses morphia? Get out!' And, shrugging her pretty shoulders, she added more gaily: 'The Comtesse is making signs for us to go down to supper. . . . Salvaney, your arm!'

The numerous introductions had taken up some time, and René, suddenly called back to his surroundings by Colette's last words, saw that there were but very few people left in the salons. The Comtesse had not invited more than about thirty to stay, and gave the signal for adjourning to the supper-room by taking the arm of the most illustrious of her guests, an ambassador then much run after in fashionable circles. The other couples marched off behind her, mounting a narrow staircase adorned with some marvellous wood-carving brought from Italy. This led to an apartment which, though furnished as a boudoir, was really a salon in size. In the centre was a long table, laden with flowers, and fruit, and sparkling with crystal and silver. Near each plate stood a small pink glow-lamp encircled with moss—an English novelty that called forth the admiration of the guests as they sat down wherever they chose.

René, having in his bashful way gone up alone among the last, chose an empty seat between the Vicomte de Brèves and the fair woman in red whom Larcher and he had met in the ante-room, and whom Claude had spoken of as Madame Moraines, the daughter of the famous Bois-Dauffin, one of the most unpopular ministers of Napoleon III. Feeling quite unobserved where he was, for Madame Moraines was carrying on a conversation with her neighbour on the left whilst the Vicomte de Brèves was busily engaged with his partner on the right, René was at length able to collect his thoughts and to take a look at the guests, behind whom the servants were continually passing to and fro as they attended to their wants. His glance wandered from Colette, who was laughing and flirting with Salvaney, to Madame Komof, no doubt telling some fresh tale of her spirit experiences, for her eyes had resumed their piercing brilliancy, her looks were agitated, and her long bejewelled hands trembled as she sat oblivious of all around her table—she generally so attentive and so eager to please her guests! René's feeling of solitude had now become almost painful in its intensity, either because the varied sensations undergone that evening had tried his nerves or because the sudden transition from flattery to neglect appeared to him a symbol of the worthlessness of the world's applause. Some of the women who had overwhelmed him with praise were gone; the others had naturally chosen seats near their own friends. At the other end of the table he could see himself reflected in the actor who had taken the part of Lorenzo, the only one of the players besides Colette who had stayed to supper, and who, looking very stiff and awkward in his gorgeous attire, was doing justice to the viands without exchanging a word with anyone.

In this frame of mind René began to look at his fair neighbour, whose charms had made such an impression upon him during their momentary encounter in the hall. He had not been mistaken in judging her at the first glance as a creature of thoroughly aristocratic appearance. Everything about her, from her delicately-cut features to her slim waist and slender wrists, had an air of distinction and of almost excessive grace. Her hands seemed fragile, so dainty were her fingers and so transparent. The fault of such kind of beauty lies in the very qualities that constitute its charm. Its exceeding daintiness is frequently too pronounced, and what might really be graceful becomes peculiar. Closer study of Madame Moraines showed that this ethereal beauty encased a being of strength, and that beneath all this exquisite grace was hidden a woman who lived well, and whose sound health was revealed in many ways. Her shapely head was gracefully poised on a full neck, while her well-rounded shoulders were not disfigured by a single angle. When she smiled she showed a set of sharp white teeth, and the way in which she did honour to the supper testified that her digestion had withstood the innumerable dangers with which fashionable women are beset—from the pressure of corsets to late suppers, to say nothing of the daily habit of dining out. Her eyes, of a soft, pale blue, would remind a dreamer of Ophelia and Desdemona, but possessed that perfect, humid setting in which the physiognomists of yore saw signs of a full enjoyment of life, the freshness of her eyelids telling of happy slumbers that recruit the whole constitution, whilst her lovely complexion showed her rich blood to be free of any taint of anæmia.

To a philosophising physician, the contrast between the almost ideal charm of this physiognomy and the evident materialism of this physiology would have furnished food for reflections not altogether reassuring. But the young man who was stealing glances at this beauty whilst toying with the morsel of chaufroid set before him was a poet—that is to say, quite the opposite of a physician and a philosopher. Instead of analysing, he was beginning to take a delight in this proximity. He had that evening unwittingly succumbed to a spell of sensuality which was personified, so to speak, in this captivating woman, around whom there floated such a subtle and penetrating aroma. A faithful disciple of the masters of Parnassus, he had in his youth possessed a childish mania for perfumes, and he now inhaled with delight the rare and intoxicating odour he recognised as white heliotrope, remembering how he had once, when a prey to the nostalgia of refined passions, written a rhymed conceit in which the following lines occurred:

Opoponax then sang, 'neath shades so sweet,
The story of those lips that never meet.

Once more, but more strongly than ever, there sprang up within him, the simple wish he had expressed to Claude Larcher in the carriage that evening—to be loved by a woman like the one whose sweet laughter was that instant ringing in his ear. Dreams—idle dreams! That hour would pass without his having even exchanged a word with this dreamlike creature, as far from him here as if a thousand miles had lain between them. Did she even know that he existed? But just as he was sadly asking himself this question he felt his heart begin to beat more quickly. Madame Komof, having by this time recovered from her excitement, had no doubt perceived the distress depicted on the young man's face, and from her place at the end of the table said to the Vicomte de Brèves: 'Will you be good enough to introduce Monsieur Vincy to his neighbour?'

René saw the glorious blue eyes turn towards him, the fair head bend slightly forward, and a sympathetic smile come to those lips which he had just mentally compared to a flower, so fresh, pure, and red were they. He expected to hear from Madame Moraines one of the commonplace compliments that had exasperated him all the evening, and he was surprised to find that, instead of at once speaking of his play, she simply continued the topic upon which she had been conversing with her neighbour.

'Monsieur Crucé and I were talking about the talent displayed by Monsieur Perrin in putting plays on the stage. Do you remember the scenery of the "Sphinx"?'

She spoke in a low, sweet voice that matched her style of beauty, and gave her that additional and indefinable attraction which helps to render a woman's charms irresistible to those who come under their spell. René felt that this voice was as intoxicating as the scent, which now grew stronger as she turned towards him. He had to make an effort to reply, so keen was the sensation that overpowered him. Did Madame Moraines perceive his agitation? Was she flattered by it, as every woman is flattered by receiving the homage of unconquerable timidity? However that might be, she was such an adept in the art of opening a conversation—no easy matter between a Society belle and a timid admirer—that, before ten minutes were over, René was talking to her almost confidentially, and expressing his own ideas on stage matters with a certain amount of natural eloquence, growing quite enthusiastic in his praise of the performances at Bayreuth, as described to him by his friends. Madame Moraines sat and listened, putting on that peculiar air worn by these thoroughbred hypocrites when they are looking at the man they have determined to ensnare. Had anyone told René that this ideal woman cared as much about Wagner or music as about her first frock, and that she really enjoyed only light operettas, he would have looked as blank as if the boisterous mirth going on around him had suddenly changed into cries of terror.

Colette, who had evidently had just a little more champagne than was good for her, was laughing somewhat immoderately, and the guests were already addressing each other by familiar appellations; amidst all this noise René heard his neighbour say: 'How delightful it is to meet a poet who is really what one expects a poet to be! I thought that the species had died out. Do you know,' she added, with a smile that reversed their parts, and turned her, the grand Society dame, into a person intimidated by the indisputable superiority of another; 'do you know that I was going to ask for an introduction to you just now in the salon? I had enjoyed the "Sigisbée" so much! But I said to myself—what is the use? And now chance has brought us together. For a man who has just had a triumph,' she continued, with a malicious little smile, 'you were not looking very happy.'

'Ah! madame,' he replied; 'if you only knew—'and in obedience to the irresistible power this woman already exercised over him, he added: 'You will think me very ungrateful. I cannot explain to you why, but their compliments seemed to freeze me.'

'Therefore I didn't pay you any,' she said, adding in a negligent tone, 'You don't go out much, I suppose?' 'You must not make fun of me,' he replied with that natural grace that constituted his chief charm; 'this is my first appearance in Society. Before this evening,' he went on, seeing a look of curiosity come into the woman's eyes, 'I had only read of it in novels. I am a real savage, you see.'

'But,' she asked, 'how do you spend your evenings?'

'I have worked very hard until lately,' he replied; 'I live with my sister, and I know almost no one.'

'Who introduced you to the Comtesse?' inquired Madame Moraines.

'One of my friends, whom I dare say you know—Claude Larcher.'

'A charming man,' she said, 'with only one fault—that of thinking very badly of women. You must not believe all he says,' she added, again assuming her timid smile; 'he would deprave you. The poor fellow has always had the misfortune to fall in love with flirts and coquettes, and is foolish enough to think that all women are like them.'

As she uttered these words an expression of intense sadness came into her eyes. Her handsome face betrayed all kinds of emotions, from the pride of a woman who feels outraged by the cruel sayings of a misogynist writer to pity for Claude, and even a kind of modest fear that René might be led into similar errors—a fear that implied a mute esteem of his character. A silence ensued, during which the young man was surprised to find himself rejoicing in the absence of his friend. It would have been painful to him to listen on his way home to the brutal paradoxes with which Colette's jealous lover had regaled him during their drive from the Rue Coëtlogon to the Rue du Bel-Respiro. He had been right after all in silently protesting against Claude's withering tirades, even before he had known a single one of these superior creatures, towards whom he felt attracted by an irrepressible hope of finding, amongst them, the woman he should love for life! And he sat there listening to Madame Moraines as she spoke of secret troubles often hidden by a life of pleasure, of virtues concealed under the mask of frivolity, and of works of charity such as were undertaken by one or other of the friends whom she named. She said all this so simply and so sweetly that not a single intonation betrayed aught but a sincere love of the good and the beautiful, and as the company rose from the table she observed, with a kind of divine modesty at having thus laid bare her inmost feelings:

'This is a very strange conversation for a supper; you must have heard of so many "fives to sevens" that I hardly dare to ask you to come and see me. But in case you should be passing that way, pray remember that I am always at home before dinner on Opera days. I should like you to see my husband, who is not here this evening—he wasn't very well. He made me come, because the Comtesse had asked us so often—which proves,' she added, as she shook hands with René, 'that one is sometimes rewarded for doing one's duty, even though it be a social one.'

CHAPTER V
THE DAWN OF LOVE

The shock of the novel and varied sensations experienced by René Vincy on that eventful evening had been so great that it was impossible for him to analyse them as he made his way on foot from the Rue du Bel-Respiro to the Rue Coëtlogon. Had Claude not left the house so suddenly, tortured by the pangs of jealousy, the two friends would have returned together. Whilst walking along the deserted streets with the silent stars shining above, they would have indulged in one of those confidential talks in which, when young, we give full utterance to the feelings inspired by the events of the past few hours. By the mere mention of the name of Madame Moraines, René might then have discovered what a hold on his thoughts had suddenly been secured by this rare specimen of beauty, the living embodiment of all his ideas of aristocracy. Perhaps from Claude, too, he might have gathered a few correct notions concerning the lady, and the difference that existed between a mere fashionable woman like Madame Moraines and a real grande dame, he would then have been spared the dangerous fever of imagination which, all along his route, conjured up to his delight visions of Suzanne. He had heard the Comtesse call her by that pretty name as she gave her a farewell kiss, and he could see her again in her long, fur-lined cloak, her shapely head looking quite lost encircled by the deep ermine collar. He could again see the slight inclination of that dainty head in his direction before she got into the carriage. He could see her still, as she sat at supper, with that look in her glorious eyes, so full of intelligence, and that way she had of moving her lips to utter words, very simple in themselves, but each of which proved that this woman's soul matched her beauty, just as her beauty was worthy of her surroundings.

He was scarcely aware of the length of his journey, covering nearly a third of Paris. He gazed up at the sky above, and down into the Seine waters as they rolled darkly along, while the long lines of gas-lamps before him seemed even to lengthen the dim, far-reaching perspective of the streets. The night gave him an idea of immensity—a symbol, it seemed to him then, of his own life. The mental formation peculiar to poets who are poets only predisposes them to attacks of what, for want of a more definite name, might be called the lyric state; this is something like the intoxication produced by hope or despair, according as the power of exaggerating present sensations to the highest degree is applied to joy or sorrow. What, after all, was this entry into Society, which for the moment seemed to this simple boy an entry upon a new life? Scarcely a glance stolen through a half-open door, and which, to be of any use at all, would have to be followed up by a course of petty strategy that only an ambitious man would have dreamt of. A man eager to make his way would have asked himself what impression he had created, what kind of people he had met, which of the women who had invited him were worth a single visit, and which of them deserved more assiduous attentions. Instead of all that, the poet felt himself surrounded by an atmosphere of happiness. The sweetness of the latter portion of the evening spread itself over the whole, and he entirely forgot the feelings of distress that had once or twice overwhelmed him.

It was in this frame of mind that he reached home. As he pushed the heavy house door open, and crept on tip-toe to his room, it pleased him to compare the world he had left behind with the world to which he returned. Was it not this very contrast that lent his pleasure a tinge of romance? Being, however, at that age when the nervous system recruits itself with perfect regularity in spite of the most disordered state of the mind and feelings, his head had no sooner touched his pillow than he was fast asleep. If he dreamt of the splendour he had seen, of the applause that had filled the vast salon, of the sweet face of Madame Moraines set in a wealth of fair tresses, he was oblivious of it all when he awoke about ten o'clock next morning.

A ray of sunlight came streaming through a narrow slit in the blinds. All was quiet in the little street, and there was no noise in the house—nothing to betray the necessary but exasperating performance of matutinal household duties. This silence surprised the young man. He looked at his watch to see how long he had slept, and once more he experienced that feeling, of which he never tired—that of being beloved by his sister with an idolatrous intensity extending to even the smallest details of life. At the same time recollections of the preceding evening came back to his mind. A score of faces rose up before him, all gradually melting away into the delicate features, mobile lips, and blue eyes of Madame Moraines. He saw her even more distinctly than he had done a moment after leaving her, but neither the clearness of the vision nor the infinite delight it afforded him to dwell upon it led him to suspect the feelings that were awakening within him. It was an artistic impression, nothing more—an embodiment, as it were, of all the most beautiful ideals he had ever read into the lines of romancists and poets. Idly reclining on his pillow, he enjoyed thinking of her in the same way as he enjoyed looking round his old, familiar room, with its air of peace and quiet. His gaze dwelt lovingly upon all the objects visible in the subdued light—upon his table, put in order by Emilie's hands, upon his engravings set off by the dark tone of the red cloth, upon the bindings of his favourite books, upon the marble chimney-piece with its row of photographs in leather frames. His mother's portrait was among them—the poor mother who had died before seeing the realisation of her most ardent hopes, she once so proud of the few scattered fragments she had occasionally come across in tidying her son's room! His father's likeness was there too, with its emaciated, drink-sodden features. Often did René think that the want of will power, of which he was dimly conscious, had been transmitted to him by his unhappy parent. But that morning he was not in the humour to reflect upon the dark side of life, and it was with childish glee that he gave two or three smart raps on the bedside. This was his manner of summoning Françoise in the morning to pull up the blinds and open the shutters. Instead of the servant it was Emilie that entered, and as soon as the sunlight was let into the room it was on his sister's face with its loving smile that the young man gazed—a face now beaming with hopeful curiosity.

'A triumph!' he cried, in reply to Emilie's mute interrogation.

The kind-hearted creature clapped her hands for joy, and sitting down on a low chair at the foot of the bedstead, said, in the tone that we use to a spoilt child: 'You mustn't get up yet . . . Françoise will bring you your coffee. I thought that you would wake up about ten, and I had just ground it when you knocked. You shall have it quite fresh.' The maid entering at that moment, holding in her big red hands the tray with its little load of china, Emilie continued: 'I will serve you myself. Fresneau has gone to take Constant to school—so we have plenty of time—tell me all about it.' And René was obliged to give her a full account of the soirée, without omitting any details.

'What did Larcher say?' asked his sister. 'What was the courtyard like? And the hall? What did the Comtesse wear?' She was highly amused by the fantastic metaphors of Madame de Sermoises, and cried: 'What a wretch!' when she heard the epigram of the unsuccessful playwriter's wife; she laughed at the ignorance of pretty Madame Ethorel, and was indignant at Colette's cruelty. But when the poet attempted to describe the dainty features of Madame Moraines, and to give her an idea of their talk at supper, she felt as though she would have liked to thank the exquisite lady who had thus at the first glance discovered what René really was. The habits she had contracted long years since of seeing everything through her brother's eyes and senses made her the most dangerous of confidantes for the poet. She possessed the same imaginative nature as he himself—an artistic imagination yearning after the beautiful—and, since it was all for another's sake, she gave herself up to it unreservedly. There is a kind of impersonal feminine immorality peculiar to mothers, sisters, and all women in love which ignores the laws of conscience where the happiness of one particular man is at stake. Emilie, who was all self-denial and modesty in what concerned herself, indulged only in dreams of splendour and ambition for her brother, often giving expression to thoughts which René dared hardly formulate.

'Ah! I knew you would succeed,' she cried. 'It's all very well for the Offarels to talk, but your place is not in our modest set. What you writers want is all this grandeur and magnificence. Heavens! how I wish you were rich! But you will be some day. One of these fine ladies will fall in love with you and marry you, and even in a palace you will not cease to be my loving brother, I know. Is it possible for you to go on living like this for ever? Can you fancy yourself in a couple of rooms on the fourth floor with a lot of crying children and a wife with a pair of servant's hands like mine'—holding them out for his inspection—'and being obliged to work by the hour, like a cab-driver, to earn your living? Here, it is true, you have not lived in luxury, but you have had your time to yourself.

'Dear, good sister!' exclaimed René, moved to tears by the depths of affection revealed in these words, and still more by the moral support they lent to his secret desires. Although Rosalie's name had never been mentioned between them in any particular way, and Emilie had never been taken into her brother's confidence, René was well aware that his sister had long guessed his innocent secret. He knew that, holding such ambitious views, she would never have approved of such a marriage. But would she have spoken as she did if she had known all the details? Would she have advised him to commit an act of treachery—for that it was, and of a kind, too, most repugnant to a heart born for noble deeds—the treachery of a man who transfers his love, and foresees, nay, already feels, the pain which his irresistible perfidy will necessarily inflict upon himself?

As soon as Emilie had gone René, his mind busied with the thoughts his sister's last words had suggested, rose and dressed himself, and for the first time found courage to look the situation well in the face. He remembered the little garden in the Rue de Bagneux, and the evening when he had first impressed a kiss upon the girl's blushing cheek. It is true, he had never been her avowed lover; but what of those kisses and their secret betrothal? One truth appeared to him indisputable—that a man has no right to steal a maiden's love unless he feels strong enough to cherish it for ever. But he also felt that his sister had given voice to the thought that had filled him ever since the success of his play had opened up such a horizon of hope. 'This grandeur and magnificence!' Emilie had said, and again the vision of all the splendour he had witnessed rose up before him—again, set in this rich frame, he saw the face of Madame Moraines with that sweet smile of hers. In his loyalty the young poet tried to banish this seductive apparition from his mind.

'Poor Rosalie, how sweet she is, and how she loves me!' he said, finding some sad satisfaction in the contemplation of the deep love he had inspired, and carrying these feelings with him to the breakfast table. How simply that table was laid, and how little resemblance it bore to the splendid display of the previous night. The table-cover was of oil-cloth, adorned with coloured flowers; on this stood a very modest service of white china, the heavy glasses that accompanied it being rendered necessary by the combined clumsiness of Fresneau, Constant, and Françoise, which would have made the use of crystal too costly for the family budget. Fresneau, with his long beard and his look of distraction, ate quickly, leaning his elbows on the table and carrying his knife to his mouth; he was as common in manners as he was kind of heart, and, as if to emphasise more strongly by contrast the impression which the idle cosmopolitanism of high life had made upon René, he laughingly gave on account of his morning.

At seven he had given a lesson at Ecole Saint-André. From eight to ten he had taken a class of boys in the same school who were still too young to follow the ordinary curriculum. Then he had just had time to jump into a Pantheon omnibus which took him to a third lesson in the Rue d'Astorg. 'I bought a paper on the way,' added the good man, 'to read the account of last night's affair. Dear me,' he exclaimed, undoing the strap that held his small parcel of books, 'I must have lost it.'

'You are so careless,' said Emilie almost angrily.

'Oh! it doesn't matter!' cried René gaily; 'Offarel will tell us all about it. You know that he is my walking guide-book. By to-night he will have read all the Paris and provincial newspapers.'

Knowing that the smallest details of last night's performance would be collected by Rosalie's father and commented upon by her mother, René was the more anxious to give the girl a full account of it himself. There is an instinct in man—is it hypocrisy or pity?—which impels him to treat with the utmost regard the woman who no longer holds his affections. Directly lunch was over he bent his steps towards the Rue de Bagneux. It had formerly been his custom to call upon the Fresneaus pretty frequently about that time. While covering the short distance he had often extemporised a few verses, after the manner of Heine, which he poured into Rosalie's ear when they were alone. The power of walking in a day-dream had, however, long since left him, and rarely had the vulgarity of this corner of Paris struck him to such a degree. All in it was eloquent of the sordid lives of the petit bourgeois—from the number of the little shops to the display of their cheap and varied wares that covered half the pavement. In the windows of the restaurants were bills of fare offering meals of various courses at extraordinarily low prices. Even the cooking utensils on sale in the bazaars seemed to have an air of poverty about them.

These and a score of other details reminded the young man of the limited resources of small incomes, of an existence reduced to that shabby gentility which has not the horrible and attractive picturesqueness of absolute want. When we begin to love we find in all the surroundings of our beloved so many reasons for increased affection, and when we cease to love these same details furnish the heart with as many reasons for further hardening. Why did the impression made upon René by the wretchedness of the neighbourhood cause him to feel annoyed with Rosalie? Why did the appearance of the Rue de Bagneux make him as angry with the girl as any personal wrong done to himself? This street, with its line of old houses and a blank wall at the bottom, had a most deserted and poverty-stricken air. At the moment when René entered it one end was almost blocked up by a cart heavily laden with straw, the three horses yoked to it, in country fashion, by stout ropes, standing with their heads half hidden in their nosebags whilst the driver was finishing his dinner in a small, greasy-looking cookshop. A Sister of Mercy was walking along the pavement on the left carrying a large umbrella under her arm; the wind flapped the wings of her immense white cap up and down, and the cross of her rosary beat against her blue serge dress. Why, after having heaped upon Rosalie all the displeasure caused by the sight of her miserable surroundings, did René involuntarily connect Madame Moraines with the religious ideas the good Sister's dress evoked? The manner in which that beautiful creature had spoken only the night before of the pious works performed by many so-called frivolous women came back to him. Three times that day had Suzanne's image come before him, and each time more distinctly. Great heavens! What joy were his if his good genius brought him face to face with her in some retired street like this as she was going to visit her poor! But that was out of the question, so René turned down a passage at the end of which were the ground floor apartments occupied by the Offarels. Profiting by the example of the Fresneaus, they, too, had realised the ambition of every family of the petite bourgeoisie of Paris, and had found in this deserted quarter of the capital a suite of rooms with a bit of garden as large as a pocket-handkerchief.

'Ah! Monsieur René!' exclaimed Rosalie, coming to the door in answer to the young man's ring at the bell. The Offarels only employed the services of a charwoman who left at twelve o'clock, and concerning whom the old lady always had an inexhaustible stock of anecdotes. At the sight of her lover, poor Rosalie, generally somewhat pale, coloured with joy, and she could not repress the cry of pleasure that rose to her lips.

'How good of you to come and tell us so soon how your play got on!' she said, taking the visitor into the dining-room, a dismal apartment with a north light, and in which there was no fire. Madame Offarel was so stingy that in winter, when the weather was not too cold, she would save the expense of fuel, and make her daughters wear mittens and capes instead! 'We are just going through the linen,' remarked the good lady, motioning René to a chair.

On the table lay the whole of the fortnightly washing, from the old man's shirts to the girls' underclothes, the bluish whiteness of the calicots and cottons being enhanced by the darkness of the room. It was the poor linen of a family in straitened circumstances; there were stockings evidently darned times out of number, serviettes full of holes, cuffs and collars frayed at the edges—in fact, a whole heap of things that Rosalie felt were not for a poet's eyes. She therefore gave him no time to sit down, but said, 'Monsieur René had much better come into the drawing-room—it's so dark here.'

Before her mother had had time to say anything further she had pushed the visitor into the apartment honoured by that pompous name, and which, in reality, more often served as a workroom for Angélique. The latter added a little to the income of the family by occasionally translating an English novel, and was at that moment seated at a small table near the window, writing. A dictionary was lying at her feet, those extremities being encased in a pair of slippers the backs of which she had trodden down for ease. No sooner had she caught sight of Vincy than she gathered up her books and papers and fled.

'Excuse me, Monsieur René,' she exclaimed, brushing back with one hand the hair that hung about her head and casting an apologetic look at her dress—a loose morning wrapper wanting some half-dozen buttons down the front. 'I am a perfect fright—don't look at me, please.'

The young man sat down and let his eyes wander round the well-known room, whose chief ornament consisted in a row of aquarelles executed by M. Offarel in Government time. There were about a dozen, some representing bits of landscape that he had discovered in his Sunday walks, others being copies of pictures he admired, and which René's more modern taste therefore detested. A faded felt carpet, six cloth-covered chairs and a sofa completed the furniture of this room, which René had once looked upon as a symbol of almost idyllic simplicity, but which now appeared doubly hateful to him in his present state of mind, aggravated by the acidity of Madame Offarel's accents.

'Well, did you enjoy yourself amongst all your grand folks last night? I suppose your friend only visits people now who keep a carriage, eh? Whenever he opens his mouth you hear of nothing but countesses and princesses. Dear me! He needn't think himself as grand as all that—he was giving lessons only ten years ago.'

'Mamma!' exclaimed Rosalie in beseeching tones.

'Well, what does he want to be so stuck up about?' continued the old lady. 'He looks at us as much as to say "Poor devils!"'

'How mistaken you are in him!' replied René. 'He is rather fond of going into smart society, it is true, but that is only natural in an artist. Why, it's the same with me,' he went on, with a smile. 'I was delighted to go to this affair last night and see that magnificent house filled with flowers and fine dresses. Do you think that prevents me appreciating my modest home and my old friends? All writers have that mad longing for splendour—even Balzac and Musset had it. It is a childish fancy of no importance.'

Whilst the young man was speaking Rosalie darted a look at her mother that told of more happiness than her poor eyes had expressed for months past. In thus confessing to and ridiculing his own inmost feelings, René was obeying impulses too complicated for the simple girl to understand. When Madame Offarel had spoken of 'your grand folks' the young man had seen by the look of anguish in her daughter's eyes that his love for the false glamour of elegance had not escaped Rosalie's perspicacity. He was ashamed of being found guilty of such a plebeian failing, and therefore laid bare his impressions as though he were not their dupe—partly in order to reassure the girl and spare her unnecessary pain, partly in order to indulge in a little weakness without having to reproach himself unduly.

Certain natures—and, owing to the habit of introspection, these are frequently found amongst writers—find pardon for their sins in mere confession. In defending Claude Larcher, René, with an irony that would have escaped sharper critics than a trusting girl, managed to administer a sharp rebuke to his own follies. Whilst openly ridiculing what he himself called his snobbishness, he continued to make those mean-spirited mental comparisons that would force themselves upon him all that day. He could not help measuring the gulf that separated the creatures he had seen at Madame Komof's—living blooms reared in the hothouse of European aristocracy—from the pale-faced and simple-looking creature before him, her hands spoilt by work, her hair tied back in a knot, and dressed so plainly as to look almost uncouth. The comparison, when dwelt upon, became quite painful, and caused the young man one of those inexplicable fits of ill-humour that always nonplussed Rosalie.

Knowing him as she did, she could always see when he had them, but she never guessed their cause. She knew by instinct that there were two Renés existing side by side—the one kind, tender, and good, easily moved and unable to withstand grief—in a word, the René she loved; the other cold, indifferent, and easily irritated. The bond that united these two beings she was, however, unable to find. All she knew was that before the triumphant success of the 'Sigisbée' she had seen only the first of these two Renés, and since then only the second. She was afraid to say 'the unfortunate success;' she had been so proud of it, and yet she would have given so much to go back to the time when her darling was poor and unknown, but all her own. How quickly he could make his voice hard, so hard that even the words addressed to another seemed by their intonation alone to be intended to wound her. At that moment, for instance, he was talking to her mother, and the mere accent that he gave to words empty in themselves touched Rosalie to the quick.

Suddenly Madame Offarel, who had been listening intently for a few seconds, started up. 'I can hear Cendrette scratching at the door,' she said; 'the dear creature wants to go out.'

With these words she returned to the dining-room in order to open the yard door for her favourite cat. She was probably delighted to have an excuse for leaving the two young people together; for, Cendrette having gone off, she stood for some time stroking Raton, another of her feline boarders. 'How clever you are, my Raton! How I love you, my little demon!' These were some of the pet names that she had devised for her cats, and as she repeated them and a dozen others in rather loud tones she was saying to herself: 'If he has come at once, that proves he is still faithful to her—but when will he propose? Poor girl! He'll not find a jewel like her in any of his gilded saloons. She's pretty, gentle, good, and true!' Then aloud: 'Isn't that so, my Raton? You understand, don't you, my son?' And as the cat arched her back, rubbed her head against her mistress's skirt, and purred voluptuously, the mother's internal monologue went on: 'And he is a good match, too. We didn't despise him before; so we have a right to set our caps at him now. She won't have to drudge, as I do for Offarel. It's a pity that she should have to spoil her pretty fingers botching up this old linen.' With the mechanical activity of an old housewife, she made a small pile of the handkerchiefs already gone through, and continued her thoughts: 'Her little dowry, too! What a surprise it will be!' By exercising the most stringent economy, she had managed to save, out of her husband's modest salary, some fifteen thousand francs, which she had invested unknown to M. Offarel. She smiled to herself and listened with some anxiety. 'I wonder what they are talking about!'

She knew that her daughter was fond of René, but she was still ignorant of the secret bonds that united the young people. What would have been her astonishment had she known that Rosalie had already frequently but timidly exchanged stolen kisses with her lover, and that immediately her mother's back was turned she had taken René's hand in hers and murmured in a voice of gentle reproach, 'How could you go off last night without saying good-bye?'

'Claude dragged me out,' said René, reddening, and pressing his sweetheart's fingers. She was, however, not taken in either by the excuse or the feigned caress, and, drawing back her hand, shook her head sadly, while her words came out with an evident effort.

'No,' she observed; 'you are not so nice to me as you used to be. How long is it since you last wrote me a line of poetry?'

'You're not so silly as to think people can sit down and write poetry when they like?' replied the young man, almost harshly. He was seized by that irritability which is a sure sign of the decline of love. The obligation to make a show of sentiment—a most cruel duty—was felt by him in one of its thousand forms.

By an instinct which leads them to sound the depths of their present misfortune whilst desperately clinging to their past happiness, the women who feel love slipping from them formulate these small, unpretending demands that have the same effect upon a man as a clumsy tug at the curb has upon a restive horse. The lover who has come with the firm intention of being gentle and affectionate immediately rears. Rosalie had made a mistake; she felt that as plainly as she had felt René's indifference a few minutes ago, and a feeling of despair, such as she had never known before, crept over her. Since her lover's departure on the previous evening she had been jealous—she had no reason to be, and she would scarcely admit to herself that she was—but she was jealous all the same. 'Whom will he meet there? To whom is he talking?' she had asked herself again and again instead of going to sleep. And now she thought, 'Ah! he is already unfaithful, or he would not have spoken to me in this manner.'

The silence that followed the harsh reply was so painful that she timidly asked, 'Did the actors play their parts well last night?'

Why was she hurt to see how eager René was to answer her question, and to turn the conversation from a more serious subject? Because the heart of a woman who is really in love—and that Rosalie was—is susceptible to the lightest trifles, and in despair she heard René reply: 'They acted divinely,' after which he immediately plunged into a dissertation on the difference between acting on a stage some distance from the audience and acting in the limited space of a drawing-room.

'Poor child!' thought Madame Offarel as she returned to the salon, 'she is so simple; she has not got him to talk of anything but that wretched play!' Then, in order to be revenged on some one for René's procrastination in proposing, she added aloud, 'Tell me—isn't your friend Larcher rather jealous of your success?'

CHAPTER VI
AN OBSERVER'S LOGIC

René had entered the house in the Rue de Bagneux a prey to painful impressions, and when he left it his impressions were more painful still. Then he had been discontented with his surroundings—now he was discontented with himself. He had called on Rosalie with the idea of giving her a little pleasure, and sparing her the trifling pain of hearing all about his success from the mouth of another; instead of which his visit had only caused the girl fresh grief. Although the poet had never harboured aught else than an imaginary love for this child with the beautiful black eyes, that love had gone deep enough to implant in his breast what is last to die in the break-up of any passion—an extraordinary power of following the least movements of that virgin heart, and a pity, as unavailing as it was distressing, for all the pain he had caused it.

Once more he asked himself this question: 'Is it not my duty to tell her I no longer love her?' An insoluble question, for it admits of only two replies—both impossible ones—the first, cruel and brutal in its egoism, if our feelings are plain; the second a frightful mixture of pity and treachery, if they are complicated. The young man shook his head as if to chase away the obtrusive thought, and muttering the eternal 'We shall see—later on,' by which so many agonies have been prolonged, forced himself to look about him. He had mechanically turned his steps towards that portion of the Faubourg Saint-Germain where, in younger days, he had loved to walk, and, inspired by Balzac, that dangerous Iliad of poor plebeians, imagine that he saw the face of a Duchesse de Langeais or de Maufrigneuse looking out from every window.

He was now in that wide but desolate thoroughfare called Rue Barbet-de-Jouy, which, by reason of the total absence of shops, the grandeur of its buildings, and the countrified look of its enclosed gardens, seems a fitting frame for some fine lady of artificial aristocracy. An inevitable association of ideas brought René's mind back to the Komof mansion, and the thought of that lordly dwelling conjured up, for the fourth time that day, but more clearly than ever, the image of Madame Moraines. This time, however, worn-out by the fretful emotions through which he had passed, he became entirely absorbed in the contemplation of that image instead of trying to dispel it. To think of Madame Moraines was to forget Rosalie, and experience, moreover, a peculiarly sweet sensation.

After a few minutes of this mental contemplation the natural roamings of his fancy led the young man to ask himself, 'When shall I see her again?' He recalled the tone of her voice and her smile as she had said, 'On Opera days, before dinner.' Opera days? This novice of Society did not even know them. He felt a childish pleasure, out of all proportion to its ostensible cause—like that of a man who is realising his wildest dreams—in gaining the Boulevard des Invalides as quickly as possible and in finding one of the posts that display theatrical advertisements. It was Friday, and the bills announced a performance of the Huguenots. René's heart began to beat faster. He had forgotten Rosalie, his remorse of a little while ago, and the question that he had put to himself. That inner voice which whispers in our soul's ear such advice as would, upon reflection, astonish us, had just said to him: 'Madame Moraines will be at home to-day. What if you went?'

'What if I went?' he repeated aloud, and the bare idea of this visit parched his throat and set him trembling. It is the facility with which extreme emotions are brought into play upon the slightest provocation that makes the inner life of young men full of such strange and rapid transitions from the heights of joy to the depths of misery. René had no sooner put the temptation that beset him into words than he shrugged his shoulders and said, 'It's madness.' Having arrived at that decision, he commenced to plead the cause of his own desire under pretence of summing up the objections. 'How would she receive me?' The remembrance of her beautiful eyes and of her sweet smile made him reply, 'But she was so gentle and so indulgent.' Then he resumed his questioning. 'What could I say to justify a visit less than twenty-four hours after having left her?' 'Pooh!' replied the tempting voice, 'the occasion brings its own inspiration.' 'But I am not even dressed.' Well, he had only to go to the Rue Coëtlogon. 'But I don't even know her address.' 'Claude knows it—I have only to ask him.'

The idea of calling on Larcher having once presented itself to his mind, he felt that it would be impossible not to put at least that part of his plan into execution. To call on Claude was the first step towards reaching Madame Moraines; but, instead of confessing that, René was hypocrite enough to pretend other reasons. Ought he not really to go and obtain news of his friend? He had left him so unhappy, so truly miserable, on the previous evening. Perhaps he was now fretting like a child? Perhaps he was preparing to pick a quarrel with Salvaney? In this way the poet excused himself for the haste with which he was now making for the Rue de Varenne. It was not only Suzanne's address that he hoped to obtain, but information about her too—and all the while he was trying to persuade himself that he was simply fulfilling a duty of friendship.

In a very short time he had reached the corner of the Rue de Bellechasse, and a few moments later he found himself before the great doors of the strange house in which Larcher had taken up his abode. Pushing these open, he entered an immense courtyard in which everything spoke of desolation, from the grass that grew between the stones to the cobwebs that covered the windows of the deserted stables on the left. At the bottom of the courtyard stood a noble mansion, built in the reign of Louis XIV., and bearing the proud motto of the Saint-Euvertes, whose town house this had been, Fortiter. The stones of this building, already bearing traces of the ravages of time, its long shuttered windows and its silence were all in harmony with the solitude of the courtyard. The old Faubourg Saint-Germain contains many such houses, strange as the destiny of their owners, and which will always prove peculiarly attractive to minds in search of the psychologically picturesque—if we may unite these two words to define an almost indefinable shade of meaning.

René had heard the history of this mansion from his friend; how the old Marquis de Saint-Euverte, reduced to despair by the almost simultaneous loss of his wife, his three daughters, and their husbands, had, six years ago, gone to live with his grandsons on his estates in Poitou. An epidemic of typhoid fever suddenly breaking out in a small watering-place where all the family were staying together had made this happy old man the lonely guardian of a tribe of orphans. Even during the lifetime of the Marquise—an excellent business woman—two small wings in the house had been let to quiet tenants. These wings had also a history of their own, the grandfather of the present Marquis having placed them at the disposal of two cousins—Knights of Saint-Louis and at one time political refugees—who, after a wretched, wandering existence, had ended their days here. M. de Saint-Euverte had left everything as his wife had arranged it. Claude therefore one day found himself the only tenant in the whole of this silent, gloomy building, for the occupant of the other wing had been scared away by the loneliness of the place, and no one else had yet seemed anxious to bury himself in this tomb, standing between a desolate courtyard and a still more desolate garden.

But all these points, that were so displeasing to others, were a source of delight to Larcher. The oddness of the place appealed particularly to this dreamer and maker of paradoxes. It pleased him to set his irregular existence as an artist and a swell clubman in this framework of imposing solitude; and here, too, he could shut himself up with his secret agonies. The love of analytical introspection with which he knew he was infected, and which, like a doctor cultivating his own disease for the sake of a fine 'case,' he carefully nurtured, could not have found a better home. Then, again, here Larcher enjoyed absolute freedom. The concierge, won over by a few theatre tickets and fascinated by the reputation of his tenant, would have allowed him to hold a saturnalian feast in every hall of the Saint-Euverte mansion had Claude felt any desire to found another Club de Haschischins or to reproduce some scene of literary orgies out of love for the romanticism of 1830. The concierge was absent from his post when René arrived, so that the poet walked straight across the courtyard to the house. Entering the main hall, where the magnificent lamps bore testimony to the grandeur of the receptions once held here, he mounted the stone staircase, whose wrought-iron balustrade formed a splendid ornament to the huge well of the house. On the second floor he turned down a corridor, at the end of which heavy curtains of Oriental texture proclaimed a modern installation hidden in the depths of a mansion that seemed to be peopled only with the bewigged ghosts of grands seigneurs.

The man-servant who answered his ring possessed that type of face peculiar to nearly all custodians of old buildings; it is met with both in the guides of ruined castles and in the vergers of cathedrals, and shows how vast must be the influence which places have on human beings. It is a face with a greenish tint and with a hawk-like expression about the eyes and mouth; from its appearance one would suppose that it smelt damp. Ferdinand—that was the name of this individual—differed from his kind only in dress, which, consisting as it did of Claude's cast off clothes, was fashionable and smart. He had been valet to the late Comte de Saint-Euverte, and, in addition to his duties as Larcher's servant, he was a kind of housekeeper for the whole mansion, from which he seldom emerged more than once a month. The concierge went on all the writer's errands, and his wife did the cooking. This little world lived entirely under the spell of Claude, who, through his knowledge of character and his infantile goodness of heart, possessed in a rare degree the gift of winning the attachment of his inferiors. When Ferdinand saw who the caller was he could not help showing great uneasiness.

'They shouldn't have let you come up, sir!' he said. 'I shall get into trouble.'

'Is Monsieur Larcher at work?' asked René, smiling at the man's terror.

'No,' replied Ferdinand in an undertone, and quite at a loss what to do with a visitor whom his master had evidently not expected. 'But Madame Colette is here.'

'Ask him whether he can see me for a minute,' said the poet, curious to know how the two lovers stood after the scene of the preceding evening; and, in order to conquer the valet's hesitation, he added: 'I'll take all the responsibility.'

'You may come up, sir,' was the answer with which he returned, and, preceding René through the ante-room, he took him up the small inner staircase that led to the three apartments usually inhabited by Claude, and which the writer either called his 'laboratory' or his 'torture-chamber,' according to the mood he was in.

The staircase and the first two of the three rooms were remarkable for the richness of their carpets and hangings. The faint light that filtered through the stained-glass windows on this dull February afternoon scarcely cast a shadow, either in the smoking-room with its morocco-covered furniture or in the large salon lined with books. Claude's favourite nook was a den at the end, the walls of which were hung with some dark material and adorned with a few canvases and aquarelles of the most modern painters of the day—these being what the writer's extravagant fancy preferred. There were two opera boxes by Forain, a dancing girl by Degas, a rural scene by Raffaelli, a sea-piece by Monet, four etchings by Félicien Rops, and on a draped pedestal a bust of Larcher himself by Rodin. The bust was a splendid piece of work, in which the great sculptor had reproduced with marvellous skill all that might be read in his model's face—qualms of morality mingled with libertinism, bold reflection allied to a weak will, innate idealism hand in hand with an almost systematically acquired corruption. A low bookcase, a desk in one corner, three fauteuils in Venetian style with negroes supporting the arms, and a wide green leather couch completed the furniture of this retreat, clouded at that moment with the smoke of Colette's Russian cigarette.

The young lady was lying at full length on the couch, her fair hair tumbling about her ears, and attired in somewhat masculine style, with a stand-up collar and an open jacket. Her short plain cloth skirt revealed a pair of neat ankles and long narrow feet encased in black silk stockings and patent leather shoes. Her sunken cheeks were pale—that pallor produced in most theatrical women by the constant use of paint, by late hours, and by the fatigues of an arduous profession.

'Ah! mon petit Vincy,' she cried, holding out her hand to the visitor, 'you have come just in time to save me from a beating. I only wish you knew how badly this boy treats me! Come, Claudie,' she added, shaking her finger at her lover, who was seated at her feet, 'say it's not true if you dare.' And with a graceful movement of her lithe and supple body—she herself would confess that she scarcely ever wore a corset—the charming creature rose to a sitting posture, laid her fair head on Claude's shoulder, and placed between his lips the cigarette she had just been smoking. The wretched man looked at his young friend with shame and supplication written on his face; then, turning to Colette, his eyes filled with tears. At this the actress's behaviour became more wanton still, and leaning forward upon her lover's shoulder, she gazed into his eyes until she saw in them the look of passion that she knew so well how to turn to her own advantage.

A dead silence ensued. The fire burned brightly in the grate, and a solitary sunbeam, making its way through the coloured glass, fell in a long red streak upon the girl's face. René had been present at scenes of this kind too often to feel surprised at the want of modesty of either his friend or Colette. He was well acquainted with the strange cynicism of their nature; but he also remembered Claude's terrible language the night before, and the cruel words his mistress had uttered after his disappearance. He was astounded to see to what depths of degradation the writer's weakness dragged him down, and to witness such proofs of this wretched woman's inconsistency. In the close atmosphere of this room, impregnated with the perfume that Colette used, and before the almost immodest attitude of the pair before him, there came over him a feeling of sensuality with which he was already too familiar. The sight of this depraved creature—though her depravity was generally clothed in graceful forms—had often awakened in him ideas of a physical passion very different from any he had hitherto known. She had frequently received him in her dressing-room at the theatre, and as she stood in careless dishabille before her glass putting the finishing touches to her face, or completing, with unblushing indifference, the more hidden details of her toilet, she had appeared to him like some temptress personifying the highest forms of voluptuousness, and at such times he would envy Claude as much as he sometimes pitied him. But these feelings would soon be dispelled by the disgust with which the moral degradation of the actress inspired him and by the burning scruples of friendship that animate and restrain the young. René would have been horrified to find himself, even for a moment, coveting what he considered his friend's property, and perhaps the knowledge of this delicacy of feeling went for something in Colette's behaviour. Out of sheer wantonness she amused herself by displaying her beauty before him, just as we hold up a flower to be smelt when we know the hands will not be put out to seize it. Wantonness it was, too, that led the misguided girl to dally with Claude and to lavish such caresses upon him before René.

All this, however, produced in the poet a vague physical longing that he could not repress; it grew upon him unconsciously, and, by an association of desires, more difficult to interrupt in its secret workings than an association of ideas, the vision of Madame Moraines was once more before him, surrounded by the halo of seduction that had so completely dazzled him on the previous evening. Two things were now obvious to René: one was, that he must go and call on that woman to-day; the other, that he would never be able to utter her name and ask for her address before the lascivious creature who was torturing Claude with her kisses.

'Get away,' said the writer, pushing her from him; 'I love you, and you know it. Why, then, do you make me suffer so? Ask René what a state I was in last night. Tell her, Vincy, and tell her she should not trifle with me. After all,' he cried, burying his face in his hands, 'what does it matter? If you became the most degraded wretch on earth, I should still idolise you.'

'These are some of the pretty things I have to hear all day long,' cried Colette, rolling back on the cushions with a laugh. 'Well, René, tell him about me too. Tell him how angry I was last night because he went home without saying a word. And then he didn't write, so I came here. Yes, I came to him, if you please. You savage!' she cried, taking Larcher by the hair, 'do you think I should trouble to run after you if I didn't love you?'

Every feature of her face expressed the real nature of the feeling she entertained for Claude—cruel sensuality, that sensuality which impels a woman to make a martyr of the man from whose power she cannot free herself. History tells of queens who loved in this fashion, and who handed over to the headsman the men whom they hated and yet desired to possess. René quietly observed:

'I was uneasy about him last night, it is true, and you were very cruel.'

'That will do!' cried Colette, with a contemptuous laugh. 'I've already told you that you swallow anything he says. I've given that up myself long ago. One day he threatened to commit suicide, and when I came here in my stage clothes, without even waiting to wash my paint off, I found him—correcting proofs!'

'But that I'm obliged to do,' replied Claude; 'you often have to smile on the stage yourself when you're really in trouble.'

'What does that prove?' she retorted sharply; 'that we are merely acting. Only I take you for what you are, and you don't.'

Whilst she rattled on, rating Claude with that savage rancour that a woman takes no pains to conceal from the man with whom she is on intimate terms, René's glance, as it wandered round the room, fell upon a directory containing the addresses of the 'upper ten' and the hangers-on of Society.

Taking it up he turned over the leaves, and to offer some excuse for his action, mendaciously remarked, 'Why, your name isn't here, Claude!'

'I should think not,' said Colette; 'I won't let him send it. He sees quite enough of the swells as it is.'

'I thought you liked the society of that kind of man,' observed Claude.

'What a clever thing to say!' she replied, with a graceful shrug of her shoulders. 'They're smart, it's true—it's their business to be. They know how to dress, to play tennis, to ride, and to talk of horses, whilst you, with all your brains, will never be anything but a cad. How I wish you were now what you were eight years ago when I first met you in that restaurant at the corner of the Rue des Saints-Pères! I had just come from the Conservatoire with my mother and Farguet, my professor, and we were having some lunch. You looked so good, sitting in the corner—as though you had come from a monastery, and were having your first peep at the world. It was that, I think, that made me like you. Are you coming to the theatre to-night?' she asked René, as he closed the book and rose to go. He had found what he wanted; Madame Moraines lived in the Rue Murillo, near the Parc Monceau. 'No? Well, to-morrow then, and mind you don't get gadding about like this boy! Such fine ladies as they are, too, your Society women—I know something of them! Oh, look at his face—won't he storm as soon as you're gone! You're surely not going to be jealous of women?' she said, lighting a fresh cigarette. 'Good-bye, René.'

'She is like that before you,' observed Claude, as he let his friend out; 'but you wouldn't believe how gentle and affectionate she can be when we are alone!'

'And how about Salvaney?' asked René unthinkingly.

Claude turned pale. 'She says that she merely went to his rooms to look at some drawings for her next rôle: she swears that there was nothing wrong in it With women, everything is possible—even what is good,' he added, giving René a hand that was not very steady. 'I can't help it—I must believe her when she looks at me in her peculiar way.'

CHAPTER VII
THE FACE OF A MADONNA

'Can a man of sense, and a good fellow into the bargain, fall as low as that?' René asked himself on leaving his unhappy friend. Then, thinking of Colette's handsome face, he muttered, 'She is very pretty. Heavens! if one could only get Rosalie's beauty of soul united to this creature's incomparable grace and elegance!'

But was not such union to be found? The inner or moral beauty, without which a woman is more bitter than death to the heart of a right-thinking man, and the outer or physical glamour that enables her to attract and captivate his grosser nature—was not such complete and supreme harmony to be found in those creatures whom the accidents of birth and fortune have surrounded by the attributes of real aristocracy, and whose personal charms are in keeping with their surroundings? Was not Madame Moraines an example of this? In any case, that was the poet's first impression of her, and he took a delight in strengthening this impression by argument. Yes, he was sure that this woman, whose soothing image floated through his brain, did indeed possess that double charm—not only beauty and grace superior to Colette's, but a soul as unsullied as Rosalie's. The refinement of her manners, the sweetness of her voice, and the ideality of her conversation gave abundant proofs of it.

René walked on, his mind occupied with these thoughts, and his eyes fixed upon a sort of mirage that made him insensible to all around him. He awoke from this fit of somnambulism on reaching the end of the Pont des Invalides, and found himself in the middle of the Avenue d'Antin. His footsteps had mechanically turned towards the quarter where dwelt the woman to whom his thoughts were so constantly recurring that day. He smiled as he remembered how often he had made a pilgrimage to this Rue Murillo when Gustave Flaubert still lived there. René was such an ardent admirer of the author of the 'Tentation' that it had always been a great treat to him to gaze up at the house of the eminent and powerful writer. How long ago those times seemed now, and how rapturous they would have been had he then known that the woman who was to realise his fondest ideal would live in that very street! Should he go and see her to-day? The question became more pressing as time advanced. One sweep more of the large hand round the dial, and it would be five o'clock—he could see her. He could see her! The idea of this being a real possibility took such a hold upon his mind that all the objections his timidity could devise arose at once. 'No,' he muttered, 'I shall not go; she would be surprised to see me so soon. She only asked me to come because she knew all the others had invited me. She did not want to seem less polite.'

What had seemed in others an empty compliment became a delicate attention in the case of the woman he was beginning to love—unknown to himself. The discovery of an additional motive for distinguishing her from all the women he had met on the previous evening made him feel less able to resist the desire to be near her. He hailed a cab almost mechanically, and on reaching home commenced to dress. His sister was out, and Françoise was busy in the kitchen. Though he had still not the courage to say to himself outright, 'I am going to the Rue Murillo,' he paid as much attention to the minute details of his toilet as amorous youths—at such times a deal more coquettish than women—are wont to do. It was now no longer upon his timidity that he relied for help to battle against the ever-increasing desire within him. Every object in the room recalled memories of Rosalie. With the innate honesty of the young, he for a long time tried to impress upon himself the duty he owed the poor girl. 'What would I think of her if I heard that she was accepting the attentions of a man whom she liked as much as I like Madame Moraines? But then,' rejoined the tempting voice, 'you are an artist, and require fresh sensations and experience of the world. And who says that you are going to call on Madame Moraines only to make love to her?'

He was just in the act of applying his handkerchief to a bottle of 'white rose' that stood on his dressing-table. The penetrating perfume sent the warm blood coursing through his veins in that irresistible tide of voluptuous desire that marks the nascent passions of ardent but continent natures such as his. Since his secret engagement to Rosalie his delicate scruples had led him to return to a life of absolute purity. But the barriers of reserve gave way before this subtle perfume, which awakened memories of all that was least ideal in her rival—the golden ringlets in her neck, her ruby lips and pearly teeth, her snowy rounded shoulders and the long bare arms with their tapering wrists. And this, too, just as he was attempting to attribute his admiration for her to intellectual motives. Of what avail were ideas of loyalty towards Rosalie in the face of such visions? It was five o'clock. René left the house, jumped into another cab, and told the man to drive to the Rue Murillo. He kept his eyes closed the whole of the way, so intensely painful was the sensation of suspense. Mingled with this was shame for his own weakness, apprehension of what was in store for him, deep joy at the thought that he was about to see that glorious face once more, and, permeating all, a spice of that mad hope, intoxicating on account of its very vagueness, that urges the young along fresh paths simply for the sake of their novelty. The feeling of permanence, so indispensable to a man of experience, who knows how short life really is, is hateful to the very young. At twenty-five they are by nature changeable, and consequently fickle. René, who was even better than a good many others, had already irreparably betrayed in thoughts the girl who loved him when his cab set him down at the door of the woman he had seen for one hour on the previous night. He would rather have stepped upon Rosalie's heart than not enter that door now. If a last thought of his betrothed did trouble him at that moment, he no doubt dismissed it with the usual phrase—'She won't know,' and passed on.

The house in which Madame Moraines lived was one of those buildings to be found in the fashionable quarters of Paris which, although parcelled out into flats, have been made by the modern architect to look almost like private mansions. The house was of noble elevation and stood back some little distance from the street, the privacy of the courtyard being insured by some railings that shut it off from the outside world. In the centre of these railings was the porter's lodge, a sort of Gothic pavilion, and as René inquired whether Madame Moraines was at home he could see that the interior of this lodge was better furnished and looked smarter and brighter than the drawing-room of the Offarels on reception nights. The strain upon the young man's nerves had now become so painful that if the veteran soldier who was ending his days in this haven of rest had answered him in the negative he would almost have thanked him. But what he heard was, 'Second floor up the steps at the bottom of the courtyard.'

He crossed the marble threshold and then mounted a wooden staircase covered with a soft-toned carpet. The air that he breathed on the stairs was warm, like that of a room. Here and there stood exotic plants, the gaslight glinting on their green foliage. Chairs were placed at every turn of the staircase, and twice did René sink down into one. His knees trembled under him. If until then he had had any doubts respecting the nature of the feelings he entertained for Madame Moraines, his present state of excitement should have warned him that those feelings amounted to something more than simple curiosity. But he went on as if he were in a dream. He was in that state when he pressed the button at the side of the door, when he heard the servant coming to open it, and when he gave him his name; then, before he had recovered his wits, the man had shown him into a small salon, where he found the dangerous creature whose charms had so enslaved him, though he knew nothing of her except that she was beautiful. Alas! that this beauty should so often be only a mask, and a dangerous mask, too, when we give it credit for being more than it really pretends to be.

Had René in fancy painted any setting for this rare and majestic beauty, he could have imagined no other than that in which he saw Madame Moraines for the second time. She was seated at her writing-desk, on which stood a lighted lamp covered with a lace shade, whilst an ivy plant trained to creep along a gilded trellis formed a novel and pleasing screen to the table. The small room was filled with a profusion of ornaments and trifles indispensable to every modern interior. The inevitable reclining-chair, with its heap of cushions, the whatnot crowded with Japanese netsukés, the photographs in their frames of filigree, the three or four genre pictures, the lacquered boxes standing on the little table covered with its strip of Oriental silk, the flowers distributed here and there—who in Paris is unacquainted with this refinement of comfort now so stereotyped as to be quite commonplace? But all that René knew of Society life he had learnt either from Balzac and other novelists of fifty years ago or from more modern authors who had never seen the inside of a drawing-room; the ensemble of this apartment, beautifully harmonised by the soft tints of the shaded lamp, was therefore to him like the revelation of a hidden trait peculiar to the woman who had presided over its arrangement. The charm of the moment was the more irresistible since the Madonna who dwelt in this shrine, with its subdued light and its warm air heavy with the scent of flowers, received him with a smile and a look in her eyes that at once dispelled all his childish fears.

The men whom Nature has endowed with that inexplicable power of pleasing women, apart from whatever other qualities they may possess, either mental or physical, are provided with a kind of antennæ of the soul to warn them of the impressions they produce. The poet, in spite of his complete ignorance both of Suzanne's disposition and of the customs of the world she lived in, felt that he had done right in coming. This knowledge served to soothe his overstrung nerves, and he gave himself up entirely to the sweetness that emanated from this creature, the first of her kind whom he had been permitted to approach. By merely looking at her he saw that she was not the same woman as on the previous evening. She had evidently but just come in; some pressing duty—a note, perhaps, to be written—had only given her time to take off her hat and to substitute a dainty pair of slippers for her outdoor boots, so that she was still wearing a walking-dress of some dark material with a high collar like Colette's. Her hair, René noticed, was of the same colour as the actress's, and was twisted into a plain coil upon her head. Like that, she seemed to René more approachable, less superhuman, less surrounded by that impenetrable atmosphere in which the pomp of dress and the ceremony of grand receptions envelop a woman of fashion. The few traits that she possessed in common with the actress only added to her charms. They enabled René to measure the distance that separated the two beings, and whilst doing this he heard Suzanne say in that voice which on the previous evening had proved so irresistibly seductive: 'How good of you to come, Monsieur Vincy!'

It was nothing—a mere figure of speech. Madame de Sermoises, and Madame Ethorel, and even the spiteful Madame Hurault would have used the same words. But, in the mouth of Madame Moraines, and for him to whom they were addressed, they were expressive of deep and true sympathy, of unbounded kindness, and of divine indulgence. The phrase had been accompanied by a gesture of indescribable grace, by a slight look of surprise in the pale blue eyes, and by a smile more seductive than ever. Had René not come to the Rue Murillo fully prepared to seize upon the slightest motives for admiring Suzanne still more, the tribute which she paid to his vanity by this form of reception would alone have conquered him. Do not the most celebrated authors and those most weary of drawing-room sycophancy allow themselves to be captivated by attentions of this kind? The author of the 'Sigisbée' was not inclined to look at these things so critically, either. He had come in fear and trembling, and his reception had shown him he was welcome. Since the morning he had felt a passionate desire to see Suzanne again; he stood before her, and she was glad to see him.

There was a merry look in her eyes as her pretty lips now framed the second sentence she had yet spoken: 'If you accepted all the invitations which were showered upon you yesterday you must have had a hard day's work?'

'But you are the only one I have called upon, madame,' he replied naïvely. He had scarcely uttered the words when a deep blush overspread his face. The significance of his reply was so apparent, the sentiments it expressed so sincere, that he felt quite abashed, like a child whose simple nature has led it to tell what it wished to keep secret. Had he not been guilty of familiarity that would shock this exquisite creature, this woman whose delicate perception no shade of meaning could escape, and upon whose sensitive nature the slightest want of tact would certainly jar? The pale pink of her cheeks and the silken gloss of her hair, the blue of her eyes, and the grace of all her person made her appear to him for the few seconds that followed his exclamation like some Titania, by the side of whom he was but an obscure and loutish Bottom. Before her he felt as clumsy in mind as he would have been in body had he tried to imitate any of her graceful movements—the way, for instance, in which she closed her handsomely worked blotting-book and with her fair hands put in order the knick-knacks that covered her table. An imperceptible smile hovered about her lips as the young man uttered his simple words. But how could he have seen that smile when his eyes were modestly cast down at the moment? How could he have guessed that his reply would be acceptable, although it was precisely the one that had been expected and even provoked? René was only certain of one thing—that Madame Moraines was as gentle and as kind as she was beautiful; instead of appearing offended or drawing back she tried to conquer the fresh fit of timidity that was beginning to seize him by replying to his foolish remark.

'Well, sir, I certainly deserve that preference, which would create a deal of jealousy if it were known, for no one admires your talent as much as I do. Your poetry contains such true and delicate sentiment. We women, you know, never judge by reason; our hearts criticise for us, and it is so seldom that a modern author manages to touch only the right chords. How can it be otherwise? We are faithful to the old ideals—ah! yes, I know that is not at all the fashion to-day—it makes one look almost ridiculous. But we defy ridicule—and then, besides, I have inherited these ideas from my poor father. It was always his fondest wish to do something towards raising the literary tone in our unhappy country. I thought of him as I listened to your verses; how he would have enjoyed them!'

She stopped, as if to banish these too melancholy recollections. On hearing the way in which she pronounced her father's name one must needs have been a monster of distrust not to believe that the incurable wound caused by the death of that celebrated minister bled afresh every time she thought of him. René was, nevertheless, a little surprised at the tenor of her words. He remembered that one of the last things Sainte-Beuve had written was a philippic against a copyright bill proposed by Bois-Dauffin, and he had always looked upon the statesman as one of the sworn enemies of literature, of whom there are thousands in the political world. He, moreover, had a profound horror of the conventional idealism to which Madame Moraines had alluded. In poetry, his favourite author was Théophile Gautier, both on account of his construction and the precision of his metaphors—in prose, the severe Flaubert, on account of his wonderfully clear style, and his lack of all mannerisms.

It pleased him, however, that Suzanne should see in her father a liberal protector of literature, for it proved the depth of her filial piety. He was also pleased to find that she cherished an ideal of his art almost childish in its simplicity. Such a comprehension of beauty, if sincere, showed real inner purity. If sincere! René would have disdained to entertain such a doubt in the presence of this ethereal angel with her dreamy eyes. He stammered out some phrase as vague as that in which Madame Moraines had expressed her idea, and spoke only of woman's fine judgment in literature—he, the worshipper not only of Gautier, but of Baudelaire! Was she quick enough to hear by his tone of voice that she was on a wrong tack? Or did the profound ignorance in which, like so many Society women, she was content to dwell—never reading anything beyond a paper and a few third-rate novels when travelling—make it impossible for her to keep up a conversation of this order and quote names in support of her ideas? In any case, she soon dropped this dangerous subject, and quickly passed from the ideal in art to another more feminine problem, the ideal in love. In merely uttering the word 'love,' which, in itself, contains so much that is contradictory, she managed to assume such an air of modesty that René felt as if he had been taken into her confidence. It was evidently a subject upon which this woman, so far above all ideas of gallantry, did not care to enter unless she was in full sympathy with her hearer.

'What pleases me, too, so much in the "Sigisbée,"' she observed, in her sweet, musical voice, 'is the faith in love portrayed there—the horror of coquetry, of lies, of all that dishonours the most divine sentiment of which the human soul is capable. Believe me,' she added, resting her head upon her hand as if in deep reflection, and regarding René with a look of such seriousness that it seemed to concentrate all her thoughts; 'believe me, the day that you doubt the reality of love you will cease to be a poet. But there is a God who watches over genius,' she went on, with a kind of suppressed emotion. 'That God will not permit the splendid gifts with which he has endowed you to be sterilised by scepticism—for you are a believer, I am sure, and a good Catholic?'

'I was,' he replied.

'And now?' she asked, with a look almost of pain on her face.

'I have my days of doubt,' he answered in simple fashion. She was silent, whilst he sat gazing in speechless admiration at this woman who, in the vortex of Society life, could still ascend to a world of higher and nobler ideas. He did not stop to think that there was something degrading—something like an attempt to gain cheap applause—in parading before a stranger—and what else was he to her?—the most sacred feelings of the heart. Although he had in his uncle, the Abbé Taconet, a perfect example of a true Christian soul, he was not surprised to hear Madame Moraines combine in one sentence two things so completely foreign to each other as a belief in God and the gift of writing plays in verse. He knew nothing except that to hear her voice once more, to see in her blue eyes that expression of true faith, to gaze upon the curl of her dainty lips, to feel her presence near him now, always, and for ever, he would have braved the direst perils. Amid this silence the singing of the tea urn in a corner of the little salon became more perceptible. Suzanne passed her hand with its well-polished nails over her eyes; then, with a smile of apology for having dared, ignorant as she was, to broach such serious problems to a great mind like his, she suddenly changed her theme as lightly as some women will offer you a sandwich after having discussed the immortality of the soul.

'But you have not come here to be preached at,' she cried, 'and I am forgetting that I am only a worldly woman after all. Will you have a cup of tea? Then come and help me make it.'

She rose; her step was so lithe and she walked with such an easy grace that to René, who was already completely bewitched, it seemed as if her very movements continued in some way the charm of her conversation. He too had risen, and was now made to take a seat near the little table on which the tea-kettle was singing merrily. He looked at her as her dainty hands, so carefully tended, deftly moved amongst the fragile china with which the tray was laden. She was talking, too, but now her talk ran upon a score of details of every day life. As she poured the strong liquor into the cups she told him where she got her tea; then, as she added the boiling water, she questioned him upon the manner in which he made his coffee when he wanted to work. She finished by taking a seat beside him, after having spread a small cloth for the cups, the plates of toast and cake, the pot of cream, and all the rest. She had set it out as though it were for a young lady's tea party, and bestowed upon her visitor those little attentions in which women excel. They know that the most savage men often love to be petted and made much of, and that they are so easily won by this false coinage of pretended affection. Suzanne was now beginning to question the poet, and made him give her an account of his feelings on the first night of the 'Sigisbée,' thus completing her work of seduction by compelling him to talk about himself. All René's timidity had disappeared, and he felt as if he had known this woman for years, so rapidly had she succeeded in gaining an ascendency over him in this first visit. It was therefore a cruel sensation, like awaking from a heavenly dream, when the door opened to admit a new-comer.

'Oh! what a bother!' exclaimed Suzanne in an undertone. How sweet this exclamation sounded in the poet's ears, and how he appreciated her pretty look of annoyance, and the graceful shrug of her shoulders that accompanied it! He rose to take his leave, but not before Madame Moraines had introduced him to the unwelcome visitor.

'Monsieur le Baron Desforges—Monsieur Vincy.'

The poet caught a glance of a man of middle height attired in a smart-fitting frock-coat. The man might have been fifty-five or forty-five—in reality he was fifty-six—so difficult was it to read his age from his impenetrable features. His moustache was still fair, and though the Baron had managed to escape baldness, that plague common to all Parisians, the colour of his hair, a decided grey, showed that he made no attempt to hide his years. His face was a little too full-blooded to be strictly in keeping with the rest of his appearance. His searching gaze rested upon René with that air of profound indifference which diplomatists by profession are so prone to affect, and which seems to say to the man so regarded, 'If I chose to know you, I should know you—but I do not choose to.' Was this really the meaning of the look that rested on him, or was René merely put out by the interruption to his charming tête-à-tête? Be that as it might, the poet felt an immediate and profound antipathy towards the Baron, who, on hearing his name, had bowed without uttering a word to show whether he knew him or not. But what did that matter to René, since Madame Moraines had still managed to say with a smile as she gave him her hand: 'Thanks for your kind visit. I am so glad that you found me at home.'

Glad! And what word should he use—he who, in an almost maudlin state of intoxication, felt, as he left the house in which this delightful creature lived, that before that day and that hour he had never really loved!

CHAPTER VIII
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PICTURE

'It's Madame Komof's little poet,' said Suzanne, as soon as the door had closed upon René. The tone in which she replied to the Baron's mute interrogation indicated the familiar footing upon which Desforges stood in this house. Then with that girlish smile she could so well assume—one of those smiles in which the most distrustful men will always believe, because they have seen their sisters smile like that—she went on, 'Oh! I forgot—you wouldn't go last night. I looked so nice—you would have been proud of me. I had my hair done just as you like it. I expected to see you come in later on. This young man, who is the author of the play, was introduced to me, and the poor fellow just called to leave his card. He didn't know my hours, and came straight up. You have done him a great service in giving him an opportunity to escape. He had stayed so long that he was afraid to go.'

'You see that I was right in setting my face against last night's affair,' remarked the Baron. 'Here we have another man of letters brought out. He has been here, and will call on others. He'll call again, no doubt, and then he'll be invited here and there. People will talk before him as they do before you and me, without thinking that on leaving your house he will, out of sheer vanity, go and retail the stories he has heard here in some café or newspaper office. And then the Society dames will be astonished to find themselves figuring in the columns of some scurrilous sheet or in an up-to-date novel. To invite writers into the drawing-room is one of the latest and maddest freaks of so-called Society. We wrong them by robbing them of their time, and they return the injury by libelling us. I was told the other day that the daughter of one of this gentleman's colleagues, who helps her papa in his books, was heard to say: "We never go anywhere without bringing home at least two pages of useful notes." I myself cannot understand this mania for talking into phonographs—and such silly, lying phonographs, too, as they are!'

'Ah!' exclaimed Suzanne, taking the Baron's hand in hers, and looking up at him with an admiration that was too marked not to be sincere, 'how fortunate I am in having you to guide me through life! What correct and clear judgment you have!'

'Oh! merely a little gumption, that's all,' replied Desforges, with a shake of the head; 'that will prevent one from committing nine-tenths of the bad actions that are really only follies. All my wisdom of life is to try and get what I can out of what is left me—and what is left me is precious little. Do you know that I shall be fifty-six this week, Suzanne?'

She shook her pretty head, and came closer to him as he stopped in his march up and down the room. With a look of ingenuousness that might have been worn either by an accomplished wanton or a big girl asking her father for a kiss she brought first her cheek with its pretty dimple, and then the corner of her sweet mouth, under the Baron's lips.

'Come,' she said, 'don't you want any tea? It's a bad sign when you begin to talk about your age; you must have upset yourself either in the Chambre or at some Board meeting.'

As she spoke she moved towards the little table, and her eyes fell upon the cups and plates she and René had used. Did she remember the Madonna-like rôle she had played in this very spot only a quarter of an hour ago, and the handsome young man for whose benefit she had assumed her most bewitching attitudes? And if such a thought really entered that pretty head, set in its coils of pale gold, did she feel any shame, any regret, that the poet had gone, or only a kind of secret joy, such as these bold actresses feel in their moments of greatest hypocrisy? She made the tea with as much care as she had bestowed on the process a few minutes before. Desforges had naturally slipped into the arm-chair just vacated by René, and Suzanne occupied her former seat as she sat listening to the Baron's talk. This estimable man had an unfortunate habit of dogmatising at times. He knew the world—that was his great boast, and he was justified in making it. Only, he attached a little too much importance to this knowledge.

'It was rather trying in the Chambre to-day, it is true,' he said. 'I went to hear de Suave hurl his thunderbolts at the Government. He still believes in Parliamentary speeches and in oratorical triumphs. As for me, I have, of course, become a sceptic, a grumbler, and a pessimist since the day when I refused office. They are glad to have me in the House because my grandfather was a Prefect under one emperor and I a Councillor of State under another. The name looks well at the bottom of a poster; but as for hearing me, that's another matter. And they have such respect for me, too! When I drop in at the club in the afternoon I find half-a-dozen of my friends, both young and old, engaged in restoring the monarchy whilst watching the girls pass, if it is summer, or between two deals at bézique in winter. When I come in you should see how quickly they change their faces and their conversation, as if I were discretion itself. I should like to have told them a few home-truths to-day, just to relieve my feelings, but I went to the Rue de la Paix instead to get your earrings.'

With these words he took from his pocket a small leather case; it was quite plain, without the jewellers address, and as he held it out the fire flashed from the two splendid diamonds it contained, making Suzanne's eyes sparkle with delight. The case passed from the Baron's hands into hers, and after gazing at its contents for a moment, she closed the little box and placed it among some other things on a small shelf beside her. The manner in which she accepted it would alone have sufficed to prove how accustomed she was to receiving similar presents. Then, turning to Desforges, her sweet face all aglow with pleasure, she exclaimed, 'How good you are to me!'

'Don't thank me. It's pure selfishness,' said the Baron, though evidently pleased by the impression the earrings had made. 'It is I who ought to thank you for being good enough to wear these poor stones—I do so love to see you look nice. Ah!' he added, 'I had forgotten to tell you—the famous port has arrived; I shall send you half the consignment, and, by a stroke of good luck, I have managed to get the Watteau you admired so much for a mere song.'

'I shall have a chance of thanking you to-morrow, I hope, in the Rue du Mont-Thabor,' she replied, darting a look at him; 'at four o'clock, isn't it?' she added, dropping her eyes with a blush. If, endowed with the power of second sight, poor René, who had just returned home in a fit of idolatry, could have perceived her at that moment without hearing the conversation he would certainly have seen in her noble face an expression of most divine modesty. But those downcast lids and the look she had given him had probably brought other thoughts to the Baron's mind, for his eyes grew bright, and the blood rushed to his cheeks—those cheeks which bore such evident traces of good living, a dangerous vice whose consequences Desforges was always trying to elude. 'I hold the balance,' he used to say, 'between gout and apoplexy.'

Giving his moustache a twirl, he changed the subject, and in a thick voice, by which his mistress could once more gauge the hold she had upon the senses of this hoary sinner, asked, 'Who will be in your box to-night?'

'Only Madame Ethorel.'

'What men?'

'Ethorel cannot come. There will be my husband—and, of course, Crucé.'

'He must make a pretty little thing out of her, only in commission!' exclaimed Desforges. 'He has just put her on to a picture for which she has paid twenty thousand francs—I'll wager he got ten thousand out of it!'

A Living Lie

A LIVING LIE

(MENSONGES)

BY

PAUL BOURGET

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH

BY

JOHN DE VILLIERS

NEW YORK

R. F. FENNO & COMPANY

112 FIFTH AVENUE

LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS

CONTENTS

MY DEAR DE VILLIERS,

A LIVING LIE

CHAPTER IA PROVINCIAL CORNER OF PARIS

CHAPTER IISIMPLE SOULS

CHAPTER IIIA LOVER AND A SNOB

CHAPTER IVTHE 'SIGISBÉE'

CHAPTER VTHE DAWN OF LOVE

CHAPTER VIAN OBSERVER'S LOGIC

CHAPTER VIITHE FACE OF A MADONNA

CHAPTER VIIITHE OTHER SIDE OF THE PICTURE