Read Ebook: The Blue Duchess by Bourget Paul Tristan Ernest Translator

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Ebook has 694 lines and 80675 words, and 14 pages

"Naturally she guessed or else I told her--I don't know how to lie--so she is no less jealous of Bonnivet than Bonnivet is of her. I have not been bored for the last week or two I can assure you. Things have moved quickly, and the rapid are just as successful in gallantry as in everything else."

We were having dessert, and he was balancing a piece of pear on the end of his dessert fork as he concluded his confidence with this brutal cruelty which made me say--

"You are between two women again? You are playing a dangerous game."

"Dangerous?" he interrupted with his confident joviality. "To whom? To me? Happily or unhappily, I am insured against these fires. To Madam de Bonnivet? If she does not love me, what risk does she run? If she loves me, she will be grateful. Suffering requires feeling, and to women of this kind that is everything. But I think she is as hard as I am. As for Camille, it will develop her talent."

"Ah!" he said. "If one lived one's books, there would be no trouble in writing them. Come. Let us go down quickly and have coffee. I want you to see the beginning of the first act. I have only one quality, but that is a strong one. I can compose. A play or novel of mine is compact, there is nothing useless in it. The first and third acts are the best in the play. Madam de Bonnivet prefers the second and Camille the fourth. All tastes are suited. Waiter, bring two cups of coffee and two fine cigars at once. Give me just time to cast my eye down the closing prices on the Stock Exchange and I am at your service. Good. My gold mine shares are going up. I am about three thousand francs to the good. How is your money invested?"

"I have not invested it," I said sadly, "it stays where it is and brings in from two and a half to three per cent."

"That is absurd!" Jacques said as he lit a cigar. "I will advise you. I have good friends, one of the Mos? among others, who keep me well informed. I know as much as they do, and if I were not a literary man, I should like to be a financier. But we must hurry. Queen Anne may be at the theatre this evening, though she has already seen the play four times. If she is there, you will see two comedies instead of one. But I am very glad to have met you this evening."

Jacques, too, in his way is a force of nature. His artistic vitality will always overwhelm me, and it did so this evening in proportion with such a hypnotism. For between the formidable exterminating monster which waves its column of smoke above the devastated Pompeii, and the inoffensive cerebral volcano whose smoky eruptions overflow into yellow volumes, or crystallize into three, four or five act plays, the difference is really very great. Without ironical extenuation such a comparison would be rather comic. Whether justified or not, I gave myself up to this sensation without discussion. Wearied as I was by my day of moral lassitude, was not this way of spending my evening an unexpected pleasure? The comedy might interest me, for this foppish egoist had great talent. The actress might be pretty, although doubtless Jacques' fatuity had transformed for my astonishment a Conservatoire fool into a bird of paradise. I had too often accompanied Claude Larcher into Colette Rigaud's dressing-room not to know these footlight-mistresses and their vulgarity. But there are always exceptions, and Madam Pierre de Bonnivet might be an exception to her class, although a rich woman who collects celebrities was hardly likely to please me. In any case, it was worth the trouble of accompanying Molan to the Vaudeville simply to have the pleasure of seeing him enter the theatre.

"We will go in by the stage door," he said "in the Rue de la Chauss?e d'Antin. It is very charming here in the two little stage boxes, and upon the stage behind the curtain. We can get to the boxes through the wings, if either of them is vacant."

He got out of the carriage before me as he said this; he greeted the door-keeper and went through a doorway and up a staircase with the gait which is unique in the world: that of the fashionable author visiting his paper, his editor, or his theatre. Every gesture seemed to say, "The house belongs to me"; his foot was lighter, his cane waved in his hand, and his shoulders involuntarily swaggered. These things are in themselves of no importance, but we painters who have studied portraiture make it our business to seize upon these trifles. The theatre staff, when they saw "their author" pass, displayed inexpressible and unconscious respect. How I should like to inspire some picture dealer with like respect! When shall I have in displaying my pictures to a friend, the peaceful and innocently puerile pride which Jacques displayed in opening for me the door of one of the stage boxes, fortunately unoccupied, where we sat down while he whispered to me--

"The first act has been in progress for five minutes. You will follow it directly. A former mistress of the Duke's is trying to make the Duchess jealous. Was I lying to you when I said that little Favier is pretty? She has caught sight of me. Fortunately she has nothing to say for a minute or two, or she would have forgotten her lines. She is looking at you. You interest her. She knows the three or four friends I usually bring. Now hear her speak. Is not the timbre, the music of her voice, exquisite? Listen to what she is saying."

"It is the thunder-clap," he said, "you have just felt! You can listen, too. Your sublimes will amalgate, as Saint Simon said of some one. But now turn and look with your glasses in the fourth box of the first tier on the left. You see a woman in white, fanning herself with a fan, with silk muslin flounces, white too, and an invention of her own? That is Madam Pierre de Bonnivet. What do you think of her? It is amusing, is it not, to play the game of love and hazard with these two pretty creatures as partners?"

I looked in the direction Jacques indicated, and I soon had my glasses fixed on the fashionable rival of the Bohemian Camille Favier.

The fatuous insolence which my comrade affected then appeared to me justified, and more than justified, by the beauty of this elegant female who coquetted with him, as he told me. I knew he was too daring a fellow not to go on quickly from liberty to liberty. If Camille recalled, even with her rouge and patches, the Psyches and Galateas of the most suave of the Pre-raphaelite Brothers, Madam Pierre de Bonnivet, with her arched nose, her wilful chin, the fine line of the cheek, her elegant haughty mouth, had beauty enough to justify the most aristocratic pretensions. How, coming of a poor family--I have found out since that she was a Taraval--she inevitably recalled one of those princesses so dear to Van Dyck, that incomplete master, whom no other has equalled, in the art of portraying breeding, and the indomitable pride and heroic energy concealed beneath the fragility of feminine grace. The habits of wealth for two or three generations produce these mirages.

It is certain that the painter of the divine Marquise Paola Brignole, of the Red Palace at Genoa, never found a model more suited to his genius. His brush alone could have properly reproduced the glory of that tint whose dead white was not anaemic--the red lips told that--with the cloud of blonde hair which paled in the light. The simple sight of the thick rolls of golden hair lying upon her neck, when she turned her head, betokened that physiological vitality of one of those slender persons who conceal beneath the tenderness of a siren the courage of a captain of dragoons. Her neck, though a little long, was well developed, and the fingers of her nervous hands were a little long also; her bust, which was outlined at each movement by her supple white corsage, was so young, so elegant, and so full. But the most significant thing to me about this creature of luxury was her blue eyes, as blue as those of the other woman, with this difference, that the blue of Camille Favier's eyes recalled the blue of the petals of a flower; while Madam de Bonnivet's eyes were the azure of metal or precious stone. They gave one the idea of something implacable, in spite of their charm, something hard and frigidly dangerous in their magnetism. To complete this singular sensation of graceful cruelty, when the young woman laughed her lips were raised a little too much at the corners displaying sharp white teeth close together, almost too small, like those of a precious animal of the chase.

In to-day trying to exactly reproduce the impressions, which I felt in the presence of Jacques Molan's two partners in his favourite game of heartless love, I am taking into account that my actual knowledge of their characters influences my recollection of this first meeting. I do not think I am giving too powerful a touch to this souvenir. I can still hear myself say, while applause was being showered upon little Favier, to Jacques--

"You make a good choice, when you like."

"I do what I can," he said as he nodded his head.

"One mistress," he corrected me. "Madam de Bonnivet is not my mistress."

"It comes to the same thing, as far as it concerns what I am going to say. I am asking myself, how you manage to escape scandal."

"I am like Proudhon," he replied with a laugh, "whom Hugo pretended had the skin of a toad in his pocket. It appears that this charm protects one from every danger."

"Do you think your luck will hold? Then what of the women themselves?"

"Larcher has an axiom: 'a woman is the best antidote against another woman.'"

"But the result of that is spiteful vengeance, vitriol, and the revolver. One of these two women, I should not trust."

As I said that, I pointed with my cane to Madam Bonnivet.

"Really! beautiful Queen Anne gives you the impression, also, of a coquettish bird of prey, of a little spitfire of a falcon, whom it is not wise to tease. Ah, well! If you like," he went on as he got up, "the act is over, I will present you to one or the other of them. It is very funny. Would you believe that in my stories I have always more or less need of a looker-on; when we think that there are people foolish enough to criticize the classic tragedies on this account? In my opinion there is no more natural person."

He took my arm as he said this, assigning me the part of witness, of satellite borne along in the orbit of its sun. It is a strange thing that I am really made for those secondary parts, Pylades to an Orestes, Horatio to Hamlet; and his coolness did not wound me. Alas! it has been decreed that I should be, like Horatio, always and everywhere an unsuccessful man. What irony to have as my Hamlet the implacable egotist who was showing me the way to little Favier's dressing-room! I followed him behind the scenes, up a staircase crowded with dressers and supernumeraries, and along corridors full of doors from behind which came the sounds of laughter, singing, argument, and of expressions used at a card-party.

Previously, I had only been behind the scenes at the Com?die Fran?aise of the famous theatres; where I often accompanied the unfortunate Claude. At that theatre, was to be found the correct and conventional respectability, which too often spoils the acting of members of the company of that famous house. My horror of pretentiousness has always made me dislike the Com?die, with its elegant appearance, its secular portraits, its venerable busts, and its elegant green room. There, more than elsewhere I have experienced the disenchantment of the contrast between the play and the back of the stage, between theatrical prestige and its kitchen. On the contrary, behind the scenes of the smaller theatres, where my friends have taken me, the Varieties, the Gymnase and the Vaudeville on that evening, I have felt the picturesque antitheses, the supple improvization, the animal energy which constitute an actor's business. Chance willed that in the company of Jacques Molan, after being a prey to impuissance for the entire day, I should find a complete cure for my vitality. Did we not hear, as we knocked at the door of Mademoiselle Favier's dressing-room, the following dialogue exchanged by two actors playing the piece, the famous Bressor?, and a gentleman in a frock coat and tall hat, whose clean-shaven face and bluish cheeks showed he was an actor of this or some other company.

"I was not up to much in my new part," the latter asked, "was I? Tell me the truth."

"You were very good," Bressor? replied, "but you have one failing."

"What is that?"

"You don't stand firm and look the audience straight in the face."

In saying this he did not suspect how gaily and hardly he was touching a sore in my artistic conscience; and I did not give him the answer which rose to my lips. "That simply proves the baseness and brutality of success, and that the artist who succeeds is often a charlatan in disguise."

He had just knocked at the dressing-room door. A voice had answered, "Who is there?" then without waiting for a reply the door opened and Camille Favier appeared with a smile of happiness upon her pretty face which changed into a constrained expression when she saw that her lover was not alone.

"Ah!" she said, slightly confused, "I did not think you would bring any one, and my dressing-room is untidy."

"That does not matter," said Jacques as he gently pushed her back into the room with one hand and introduced me with the other. "My friend is no one of importance as you think he is, little Blue Duchess. He is a very old friend of mine and a painter, a very great painter, you understand. All our friends are great men. He is used to disorder in his own studio, so make your mind easy. He asked to be introduced to you because he has long wished to paint your portrait." He nudged me with his elbow to warn me not to contradict his delicate handling of the truth. "I forgot to mention his name, M. Vincent la Croix. Do not say you have seen his work, for he shows very little. He belongs to the timid school. You are warned. Now the ice is broken let us sit down."

"You can do so," the young woman said with a laugh. My companion's banter, though not very flattering to me, had already transformed her. "You will allow me to tidy up a little?" she went on as with almost incredible rapidity she spread a clean towel over a basin of soapy water in which she had just washed her hands. She rolled up and threw under the dressing-table several other dirty towels. She put the lids on three or four boxes of pomade, and hung a red wrapper over a chair, on which I had noticed a well worn pair of common corsets, which she generally wore for economy's sake. She did all this with a smile, and then noticed a pair of pale green stockings which she wore upon the stage. These she picked up with wonderful quickness, and I thought I could detect a tremor of shame in her as she did so. Those silk stockings which still displayed the shape of her fine leg and tiny foot were a small part of her nudity. She concealed them in the first object which came to hand, and it turned out to be a hat-box. "That is all," she said as she turned to Jacques. "Do you think I anticipated your visit and changed my costume in ten minutes, watch in hand? You will not have to endure the presence of my dresser, who, poor woman, displeases you." She went on in a caressing and frightened tone: "Were you satisfied with me this evening? Did I play my great scene well?"

If she had seduced me the moment I saw her on the stage by her charming finesse and ingenuous grace, how the charm worked with more powerful magic in these common surroundings still more unworthy of her! This simple dressing-room, so untidy, so lacking in embroidery and ornaments, where everything seemed a makeshift for the sake of economy, recalled to me by its contrast the sumptuousness and luxury of the dressing-room where Colette Regaud reigned at the Fran?ais. Ah, if Colette had only had for Claude, when I accompanied that unfortunate fellow to her dressing-room, the evident love which the Blue Duchess showed for Jacques Molan even in the tones of her most ordinary conversation, the ardour of her most fleeting glances, and the fever of her smallest gestures! She was a delightful child, who loved as she gave herself, with her whole being, naturally and spontaneously. What divine tenderness my companion enjoyed simply out of vanity! I felt how delighted he was while talking to his mistress, at directing this little performance! His eyes became shining instead of tender. I could see that he was studying me in a mirror in front of us, instead of looking at the love-sick girl as he answered her--

"You were exquisite as you always are. Ask Vincent if I did not say so?"

"Is that true?" she asked.

"Quite true," I replied.

"He echoed my remarks too, I assure you," Jacques continued.

"Then I really acted my scene well," she said, with a na?ve gleam of contentment in her eyes; then she knitted her brows and nodding her pretty head said: "ah, well, I am surprised at it."

"Why?" I asked her in my turn.

"You ought not to ask her that," Jacques said, with a laugh. "I know beforehand what her answer will be."

"No," she said quickly, and her mobile mouth assumed the bitter curve it had in repose. "Do not listen to him, sir. His is going to tease me, and it is very unkind of him, about one of the nervous impressions which we all have--you two as well. Do you not sometimes experience a shudder of antipathy in the company of certain people, whose presence alone freezes you and takes away all at once your memory, your power, and your mind? Their presence alone produces a feeling that one cannot breathe the same air as them without being stifled."

"Yes, I do know those antipathies!" I cried. "I feel them for people I meet by chance, whom I have never seen before, who are nothing to me, but their approach is quite intolerable to me, just as if they were my avowed enemies. Once I used to try and resist this instinctive feeling of repulsion. I found from experience that I was always wrong not to yield to it, and I am sure to-day that an antipathy of this kind, either strong or slight, is nature's second sight, and an infallible warning that a danger threatens us through the being whose existence annoys us thus."

"You see," Camille said turning to Molan, "I am not so ridiculous after all."

I had at once guessed the name of the person whose presence in the theatre so disconcerted this frail Burne-Jones nymph, transformed by the bad fairy presiding over her destiny into a poor devil of an actress in love with the writer in Paris the most incapable of love. If I had not guessed the name Jacques would not have left me in ignorance of it for long. He is no worse than any one else. I have heard of his good actions and seen his generosity. To my knowledge he has put his purse at the disposal of colleagues whom he had more or less slandered. It is difficult to reconcile that, for example, with the indelicate unkindness which made him name his mistress' rival at a time when he saw the pretty child was so troubled. The explanation, however, is quite simple. Such a thing as good or evil, unkindness or generosity, never entered into his calculations. He always played to the gallery, and a single spectator sufficed to compose this gallery, which in turn made him perform the best or worst actions, and made him magnanimous or mean. While playing the part of looker-on for him I realized how correct are the casuists who pretend that our actions are nothing, but our motives everything. His motives I could see as distinctly as the movement of a watch in a glass case.

"She talks to you in enigmas," he said to me with a gleam in his eyes which meant: "You shall see if my diagnosis is correct and if she loves me." How could this Tussolin Don Juan resist the chance of satisfying two vanities at the same time, that of the observer and that of the seducer? He went on: "I am going to amuse you with the name of the member of the audience who so troubles her this evening. She is not so complex as you are, and it is simply a woman who gives her this feeling of annoyance."

"Jacques!" the actress cried in a supplicating voice, without noticing that the use of his Christian name betrayed their secret even more than her lover's odious teasing.

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