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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Artists' Wives, by Alphonse Daudet
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Artists' Wives
+
+Author: Alphonse Daudet
+
+Illustrator: De Bieler, Myrbach; and Rossi
+
+Translator: Laura Ensor
+
+Release Date: September 5, 2007 [EBook #22522]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARTISTS' WIVES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+ARTISTS' WIVES
+
+By Alphonse Daudet
+
+Translated by Laura Ensor
+
+Illustrated by De Bieler, Myrbach; And Rossi
+
+[Illustration: Frontispiece]
+
+[Illustration: Titlepage]
+
+[Illustration: p007-018]
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+_Stretched at full length, on the great divan of a studio, cigar in
+mouth, two friends--a poet and a painter--were talking together one
+evening after dinner_.
+
+_It was the hour of confidences and effusion. The lamp burned softly
+beneath its shade, limiting its circle of light to the intimacy of the
+conversation, leaving scarcely distinct the capricious luxury of the
+vast walls, cumbered with canvases, hangings, panoplies, surmounted by a
+glass roof through which the sombre blue shades of the night penetrated
+unhindered. The portrait of a woman, leaning slightly forward, as if to
+listen, alone stood out a little from the shadow; young with intelligent
+eyes, a grave and sweet mouth and a spirituel smile which seemed to
+defend the husband's easel from fools and disparagers. A low chair
+pushed away from the fire, two little blue shoes lying on the carpet,
+indicated also the presence of a child in the house; and indeed from the
+next room, within which mother and child had but just disappeared,
+came occasional bursts of soft laughter, of childish babble; the
+pretty flutterings of a nest going off to sleep. All this shed over the
+artistic interior a vague perfume of family happiness which the poet
+breathed in with delight:_
+
+"_Decidedly, my dear fellow?" he said to his friend, "you were in the
+right. There are no two ways of being happy. Happiness lies in this and
+in nothing else. You must find me a wife!_"
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_Good Heavens, no! not on any account. Find one for yourself, if you are
+bent upon it. As for me, I will have nothing to do with it._
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_And why?_
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_Because--because artists ought never to marry._
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_That's rather too good. You dare to say that, and the lamp does not
+go out suddenly, and the walls don't fall down upon your head! But just
+think, wretch, that for two hours past, you have been setting before me
+the enviable spectacle of the very happiness you forbid me. Are you by
+chance like those odious millionaires whose well-being is in-creased by
+the sufferings of others, and who better enjoy their own fireside when
+they reflect that it is raining out of doors, and that there are plenty
+of poor devils without a shelter?_
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_Think of me what you will. I have too much affection for you to help
+you to commit a folly--an irreparable folly._
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_Come! what is it? You are not satisfied? And yet it seems to me that
+one breathes in happiness here, just as freely as one does the air of
+heaven at a country window._
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_You are right, I am happy, completely happy, I love my wife with all my
+heart. When I think of my child, I laugh aloud to myself with pleasure.
+Marriage for me has been a harbour of calm and safe waters, not one in
+which you make fast to a ring on the shore, at the risk of rusting
+there for ever, but one of those blue creeks where sails and masts are
+repaired for fresh excursions into unknown countries, I never worked as
+well as I have since my marriage. All my best pictures date from then._
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_Well then!_
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_My dear fellow, at the risk of seeming a coxcomb, I will say that I
+look upon my happiness as a kind of miracle, something abnormal and
+exceptional. Yes! the more I see what marriage is, the more I look back
+with terror at the risk I ran. I am like those who, ignorant of the
+dangers they have unwittingly gone through, turn pale when all is over,
+amazed at their own audacity._
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_But what then are these terrible dangers?_
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_The first and greatest of all, is the loss or degradation of one's
+talent. This should count, I think, with an artist. For observe that
+at this moment, I am not speaking of the ordinary conditions of life. I
+grant you, that in general marriage is an excellent thing, and that the
+majority of men only begin to be of some account when the family circle
+completes them or makes them greater. Often, indeed, it is necessary to
+a profession. A bachelor lawyer cannot even be imagined. He would not
+have the needful air of weight and gravity. But for all of us, painters,
+poets, sculptors, musicians, who live outside of life, wholly occupied
+in studying it, in reproducing it, holding ourselves always a little
+remote from it, as one steps back from a picture the better to see it, I
+say that marriage can only be the exception. To that nervous, exacting,
+impressionable being, that child-man that we call an artist, a special
+type of woman, almost impossible to find, is needful, and the safest
+thing to do is not to look for her. Ah! how well our great Delacroix,
+whom you admire so much, understood that! What a fine existence was his,
+bounded by his studio wall, devoted exclusively to Art! I was looking
+the other day at his cottage at Champrosay and the prim little garden
+full of roses, where he sauntered alone for twenty years! It has the
+calm and the narrowness of celibacy. Well now! think for a moment of
+Delacroix married, father of a family, with all the preoccupations of
+children to bring up, of money matters, of illnesses; do you believe his
+work would have been the same?_
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_You cite Delacroix, I reply Victor Hugo. Do you think that marriage
+hampered him for instance, while writing so many admirable books?_
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_I think as a matter of fact, that marriage did not hamper him in
+anything. But all husbands have not the genius that obtains pardon,
+nor a halo of glory with which to dry the tears they cause to flow. It
+cannot be very amusing to be the wife of a genius. There are plenty of
+labourers' wives who are happier._
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_A curious thing, all the same, this special pleading against marriage,
+by a married man, who is happy in being so._
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_I repeat that I don't give myself as an example. My opinion is formed by
+all the sad things I have seen elsewhere; all the misunderstandings
+so frequent in the households of artists, and caused solely by their
+abnormal life. Look at that sculptor who, in full maturity of age and
+talent, has just exiled himself, leaving wife and children behind him.
+Public opinion condemns him, and certainly I offer no excuse for him.
+And, nevertheless, I can well understand how he arrived at such a point!
+Here was a fellow who adored his art, and had a horror of the world, and
+society. The wife, though amiable and intelligent, instead of shielding
+him from the social obligations he loathed, condemned him for some
+ten years to all the exactions they involved. Thus she induced him to
+undertake a lot of official busts, horrible respectabilities in velvet
+skull caps, frights of women utterly devoid of grace; she disturbed him
+ten times a day with importunate visitors, and then every evening
+laid out for him a dress suit and light gloves, and dragged him from
+drawing-room to drawing-room. You will tell me he could have rebelled,
+could have replied point-blank: "No!" But don't you know that the very
+fact of our sedentary existences leaves us more than other men dependent
+on domestic influence? The atmosphere of the home envelopes us, and if
+some touch of the ideal does not lighten it, soon wearies and drags us
+down. Moreover, the artist as a rule puts what force and energy he
+has into his work, and after his solitary and patient struggles, finds
+himself left with no will to oppose to the petty importunities of life.
+With him, feminine tyrannies have free play. No one is more easily
+conquered and subdued. Only, beware! He must not be made to feel the
+yoke too heavily. If one day the invisible bonds with which he is
+surreptitiously fettered are drawn too tight and arrest the artistic
+effort, he will all at once tear them asunder, and, mistrusting his own
+weakness, will fly like our sculptor, over the hills and far away._
+
+_The wife of this sculptor was astounded at his flight. The unhappy
+creature is still wondering: "What can I have done to him?" Nothing.
+She simply did not understand him. For it is not enough to be good and
+intelligent to be the true helpmate of an artist, A woman must also
+possess infinite tact, smiling abnegation; and all this is found only by
+a miracle in a young creature, curious though ignorant as regards life.
+She is pretty, she has married a well-known man, received everywhere;
+why should she not wish to show herself a little on his arm? Is it
+not quite natural? The husband, on the contrary, growing intolerant
+of society as his talent progresses, finding time short, and art
+engrossing, refuses to be exhibited. Behold them both miserable, and
+whether the man gives in or resists, his life is henceforward turned
+from its course, and from its tranquillity. Ah! how many of these
+ill-matched couples have I known, where the wife was sometimes
+executioner, sometimes victim, but more often executioner, and nearly
+always unwittingly so! The other evening I was at Dargenty's, the
+musician. There were but a few guests, and he was asked to play. Hardly
+had he begun one off those pretty mazurkas with a Polish rhythm, which
+make him the successor of Chopin, when his wife began to talk, quite
+low at first, then a little louder. By degrees the fire of conversation
+spread. At the end of a minute I was the only listener. Then he shut the
+piano, and said to me with a heart-rent smile: "It is always like this
+here--my wife does not care for music." Can you imagine anything more
+terrible than to marry a woman who does not care for your art? Take my
+word for it, my friend, and don't marry. You are alone, you are free;
+keep as precious things, your liberty and your loneliness._
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_That is all very well! You talk at your ease of solitude. Presently,
+when I am gone, if some idea occurs to you, you will gently follow it
+by the side of your dying embers, without feeling around you that
+atmosphere of isolation, so vast, so empty, that in it inspiration
+evaporates and disperses. And one may yet fear to be alone in the hours
+of work; but there are moments of discouragement and weariness, when
+one doubts oneself ones art even. That is the moment when it must be
+happiness to find a faithful and loving heart, ever ready to sympathize
+with one's depression, to which one may appeal without fearing to
+disconcert a confidence and enthusiasm that are, in fact, unalterable.
+And then the child. That sweet unconscious baby smile, is not that the
+best moral rejuvenescence one can have? Ah! I have often thought over
+that. For us artists, vain as all must be who live by success, by that
+superficial esteem, capricious and fleeting, that we call the vogue; for
+us, above all others, children are indispensable. They alone can console
+us for growing old. All that we lose, the child gains. The success we
+have missed, we think: "He will have it" and in proportion as our hair
+grows thin, we have the joy of seeing it grow again, curly, golden, full
+of life, on a little fair head at our side._
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_Ah, poet! poet! have you thought also of all the mouthfuls by which
+with the end of pen or brush we must nourish a brood?_
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_Well! say what you like, the artist is made for family life, and
+that is so true, that those among us who do not marry, take refuge in
+temporary companionships, like travellers who, tired of being always
+home-less, end by settling in a room in some hotel, and pass their lives
+under the hackneyed notice of the signboard: "Apartments by the month or
+night?"_
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_Such are all in the wrong. They accept the worries of wedlock and will
+never know its joys._
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_"You acknowledge then that there are some joys?"_
+
+
+_Here the painter, instead of replying, rose, searched out from among
+drawings and sketches a much-thumbed manuscript, and returning to his
+companion:_
+
+_"We might argue like this," said he, "for ever so long without either
+convincing the other. But since, notwithstanding my observations, you
+seem determined to try marriage, here is a little work I beg you to
+read. It is written--I would have you note--by a married man, much in
+love with his wife, very happy in his home, an observer who, spending
+his life among artists, amused himself by sketching one or two such
+households as I spoke of just now. From the first to the last line of
+this book, all is true, so true that the author would never publish it.
+Read it, and come to me when you have read it. I think you will have
+changed your mind."_
+
+_The poet took the manuscript and carried it home with him; but he did
+not keep the little book with all the needful care, for I have been able
+to detach a few leaves from it and boldly offer them to the public._
+
+[Illustration: p023-034]
+
+
+
+
+MADAME HEURTEBISE.
+
+She was certainly not intended for an artist's wife, above all for
+such an artist as this outrageous fellow, impassioned, uproarious and
+exuberant, who, with his nose in the air and bristling moustaches,
+rushed through life defiantly flaunting the eccentric and whirlwind-like
+name of Heurtebise,* like a challenge thrown down to all the absurd
+conventionalities and prejudices of the _bourgeois_ class. How, and by
+what strange charm had the little woman, brought up in a jeweller's
+shop, behind rows of watch chains and strings of rings, found the means
+of captivating this poet?
+
+* Hit the blast (literally).
+
+Picture to yourself the affected graces of a shopwoman with
+insignificant features, cold and ever-smiling eyes, complacent and
+placid physiognomy, devoid of real elegance, but having a certain love
+for glitter and tinsel, no doubt caught at her father's shopwindow,
+making her take pleasure in many-coloured satin bows, sashes and
+buckles; and her hair glossy with cosmetic, stiffly arranged by the
+hairdresser over a small, obstinate, narrow forehead, where the total
+absence of wrinkles told less of youth than of complete lack of thought.
+Such as she was, however, Heurtebise loved and wooed her, and as he
+happened to possess a small income, found no difficulty in winning her.
+
+What pleased her in this marriage was the idea of wedding an author,
+a well-known man, who would take her to the theatre as often as she
+wished. As for him, I verily believe that her sham elegance born of the
+shop, her pretentious manners, pursed up mouth, and affectedly uplifted
+little finger, fascinated him and appeared to him the height, of
+Parisian refinement; for he was born a peasant and in spite of his
+intelligence remained one to the end of his days.
+
+[Illustration: p025-036]
+
+Tempted by a quiet happiness and the family life of which he had been so
+long deprived, Heurtebise spent two years far from his friends, buried
+in the country, or in out-of-way suburban nooks, within easy distance
+of that great city Paris, which overexcited him even while he yet sought
+its attenuated atmosphere, just like those invalids who are recommended
+sea air, but who, too delicate to bear it in all its strength, are
+compelled to inhale it from a distance of some miles. From time to time,
+his name appeared in a newspaper or magazine at the end of an article;
+but already the freshness of style, the bursts of eloquence, were
+lacking by which he had been formerly known. We thought: "He is too
+happy! his happiness has spoilt him."
+
+However, one day he returned amongst us, and we immediately saw that he
+was not happy. His pallid countenance, drawn features contracted by a
+perpetual irritability, the violent manners degenerated into a nervous
+rage, the hollow sound of his once fine ringing laugh, all showed that
+he was an altered man. Too proud to admit that he had made a mistake,
+he would, not complain, but the old friends who gathered round him
+were soon convinced that he had made a most foolish marriage, and that
+henceforth his life must prove a failure. On the other hand, Madame
+Heurtebise appeared to us, after two years of married life, exactly the
+same as we had beheld her in the vestry on her wedding day. She wore
+the same calm and simpering smile, she had as much as ever the air of
+a shopwoman in her Sunday clothes, only she had gained self-possession.
+She talked now. In the midst of artistic discussions into which
+Heurtebise passionately threw himself, with arbitrary assertions, brutal
+contempt, or blind enthusiasm, the false and honeyed voice of his
+wife would suddenly make irruption, forcing him to listen to some idle
+reasoning or foolish observation invariably outside of the subject
+of discussion. Embarrassed and worried, he would cast us an imploring
+glance, and strive to resume the interrupted conversation. Then at last,
+wearied out by her familiar and constant contradiction, by the silliness
+of her birdlike brain, inflated and empty as any cracknel, he held his
+tongue, and silently resigned himself to let her go on to the bitter
+end. But this determined silence exasperated Madame, seemed to her
+more insulting, more disdainful than anything. Her sharp voice became
+discordant, and growing higher and shriller, stung and buzzed, like
+the ceaseless teasing of a fly, till at last her enraged husband in his
+turn, burst out brutal and terrific.
+
+She emerged from these incessant quarrels, which always ended in tears,
+rested and refreshed, as a lawn after a watering, but he remained
+broken, fevered, incapable of work, Little by little his very violence
+was worn out One evening when I was present at one of these odious
+scenes, as Madame Heurtebise triumphantly left the table, I saw on her
+husband's face bent downwards during the quarrel and now upraised, an
+expression of scorn and anger that no words could any longer express.
+The little woman went off shutting the door with a sharp snap, and he,
+flushed, with his eyes full of tears, and his mouth distorted by an
+ironical and despairing smile, made like any school-boy behind his
+master's back, an atrocious gesture of mingled rage and pain. After a
+few moments, I heard him murmur, in a voice strangled by emotion: "Ah,
+if it were not for the child, how I would be off at once!"
+
+For they had a child, a poor little fellow, handsome and dirty, who
+crawled all over the place, played with dogs bigger than himself, with
+the spiders in the garden, and made mud-pies. His mother only noticed
+him to declare him "disgusting" and that she had not put him out to
+nurse.
+
+[Illustration: p029-040]
+
+She clung in fact to all the little shopkeeper traditions of her youth,
+and the untidy home in which she went about from early morn in elaborate
+costumes and astonishingly dressed hair, recalled the back-shops so dear
+to her heart, rooms black with filth and want of air, where in the
+short intervals of rest from commercial life, badly cooked meals were
+hurriedly eaten, at a bare wooden table, listening all the while for the
+tinkle of the shop-bell. With this class, nothing has importance but
+the street, the street with its passing purchasers and idlers, and its
+overflowing holiday crowd, that on Sundays throng the side walks and
+pavements. And how bored she was, wretched creature, in the country, how
+she regretted the Paris life! Heurtebise, on the contrary, required
+the country for his mental health. Paris still bewildered him like some
+countrified boor on his first visit. His wife could not understand it,
+and bitterly complained of her exile. By way of diversion she invited
+her old acquaintances, and when her husband was absent they amused
+themselves by turning over his papers, his memoranda, and the work he
+was engaged upon.
+
+"Do look, my dear, how funny it is. He shuts himself up to write this.
+He paces up and down, talking to himself. As for me, I understand
+nothing of what he does."
+
+And then came endless regrets, and recollections of her past life.
+
+"Ah! if I had known. When I think that I might have married Aubertot and
+Fajon, the linen-drapers." She always spoke of the two partners at the
+same time, as though she would have married the firm. Neither did she
+restrain her feelings in her husband's presence.
+
+[Illustration: p031-042]
+
+She disturbed him, prevented all work, settling down with her friends in
+the very room he was writing in, and filling it with the silly
+chatter of idle women, who talked loud, full of disdain for a literary
+profession which brought in so little, and whose most laborious hours
+always resemble a capricious idleness. From time to time Heurtebise
+strove to escape from the life which he felt was daily becoming more
+dismal. He rushed off to Paris, hired a small room at an hotel, tried to
+fancy he was a bachelor; but suddenly he thought of his son, and with a
+desperate longing to embrace him hurried back the same evening into the
+country.
+
+[Illustration: p032-043]
+
+On these occasions, in order to avoid the inevitable scene on his
+return, he took a friend back with him and kept him there as long as he
+could. As soon as he was no longer alone face to face with his wife,
+his fine intellect awoke and his interrupted schemes of work little by
+little and one after the other came back to him. But what anguish it was
+when his friends left! He would have kept his guests for ever, clinging
+to them by all the strength of his _ennui_. With what sadness would he
+accompany us to the stand of the little suburban omnibus which bore us
+back to Paris! and when we left, how slowly he turned homewards over the
+dusty road, with rounded shoulders and listless arms, listening to the
+vanishing wheels.
+
+In truth their _tête-à-tête_ life had become unbearable, and to avoid
+it, he tried always to keep his house full. With his easy goodnature,
+his weariness and indifference, he was soon surrounded by a lot of
+literary starvelings. A set of scribblers, lazy, cracked day-dreamers,
+settled down upon him and became more at home than himself; and as his
+wife was but a fool, incapable of judging, because they talked more
+loudly, she found them charming and very superior to her husband. The
+days were spent in idle discussions. There was a clash of empty words,
+a firing of smallest shot, and poor Heurtebise, motionless and silent
+in the midst of the tumult, merely smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
+Sometimes, however, towards the end of an interminable repast, when all
+his guests, elbows on table, began around the brandy flasks one of
+those lengthy maundering conversations, benumbing like clouds of tobacco
+smoke, an immense feeling of disgust would seize hold of him, and not
+having the courage to turn out all these poor wretches, he would himself
+disappear and remain absent for a week.
+
+[Illustration: p034-045]
+
+"My house is full of imbeciles," he said one day to me. "I dare not
+return." With this kind of existence, he no longer wrote. His name was
+never seen, and his fortune, squandered in a perpetual craving to have
+people in his house, disappeared in the outstretched hands around him.
+
+[Illustration: p035-046]
+
+It was a long time since we had met when I received one morning a line
+of his dear little handwriting, formerly so firm, now trembling and
+uncertain. "We are in Paris. Come and see me. I am so dull." I found him
+with his wife, his child and his dogs, in a lugubrious little apartment
+in the Batignolles. The disorder which in this narrow space could not be
+spread about, seemed more hideous even than in the country. While the
+child and dogs rolled about in rooms the size of a chessboard
+compartment, Heurtebise; who was ill, lay with his face to the wall, in
+a state of utter prostration. His wife, dressed out as usual, and ever
+placid, hardly looked at him. "I don't know what is the matter with
+him," she said to me with a gesture of indifference. On seeing me he had
+for a moment a return of gaiety, and a minute of his old hearty laugh,
+but it was soon stifled. As they had kept up in Paris all their suburban
+habits, there appeared at the breakfast hour, in the midst of this
+household disorganized by poverty and illness, a parasite, a seedy
+looking little bald man, cranky and peevish, of whom they always spoke
+as "the man who has read Proudhon." It was thus that Heurtebise, who
+probably had never known his name, introduced him to everybody. When he
+was asked "Who is that?" he unhesitatingly replied, "Oh! a very clever
+fellow, who has thoroughly studied Proudhon." His knowledge was
+certainly not very apparent, for this deep thinker rarely made himself
+heard except to complain at table of an ill-cooked roast or a spoilt
+sauce. On this occasion, the man who had read Proudhon declared that the
+breakfast was detestable, which however did not prevent his devouring
+the larger half of it himself.
+
+How long and lugubrious this meal by the bedside of my sick friend
+appeared to me! The wife gossiped as usual, with a tap now and then to
+the child, a bone to the dogs, and a smile to the philosopher. Not once
+did Heurtebise turn towards us, and yet he was not asleep. I hardly know
+whether he thought. Dear, valiant fellow! In those paltry and ceaseless
+struggles, the mainspring of his strong nature had broken, and he was
+already beginning to die. The silent death agony, which however was
+rather an abandonment of life, lasted several months; and then Madame
+Heurtebise found herself a widow. Then, as no tears had dimmed her clear
+eyes, as she always bestowed the same care on her glossy locks, and as
+Aubertot and Fajon were still available, she married Aubertot and Fajon.
+Perhaps it was Aubertot, perhaps it was Fajon, perhaps even both of
+them. In any case, she was able to resume the life she was fitted for,
+and the voluble gossip and eternal smile of the shopwoman.
+
+[Illustration: p038-049]
+
+[Illustration: p041-052]
+
+
+
+
+THE CREDO OF LOVE.
+
+To be the wife of a poet! that had been the dream of her life! but
+ruthless fate, instead of the romantic and fevered existence she sighed
+for, had doomed her to a peaceful, humdrum happiness, and married her to
+a rich man at Auteuil, gentle and amiable, perhaps indeed a trifle
+old for her, possessed of but one passion,--perfectly inoffensive and
+unexciting--that of horticulture. This excellent man spent his days
+pruning, scissors in hand, tending and trimming a magnificent collection
+of rose trees, heating a greenhouse, watering flower beds; and really it
+must be admitted that, for a poor little heart hungering after an ideal,
+this was hardly sufficient food. Nevertheless for ten years her life
+remained straightforward and uniform, like the smooth sanded paths in
+her husband's garden, and she pursued it with measured steps, listening
+with resigned weariness to the dry and irritating sound of the
+ever-moving scissors, or to the monotonous and endless showers that fell
+from the watering pots on to the leafy shrubs. The rabid horticulturist
+bestowed on his wife the same scrupulous attention he gave to his
+flowers. He carefully regulated the temperature of the drawing-room,
+overcrowded with nosegays, fearing for her the April frosts or March
+sun; and like the plants in pots that are put out and taken in at stated
+times, he made her live methodically, ever watchful of a change of
+barometer or phase of the moon.
+
+She remained like this for a long time, closed in by the four walls
+of the conjugal garden, innocent as a clematis, full however of wild
+aspirations towards other gardens, less staid, less humdrum, where the
+rose trees would fling out their branches untrained, and the wild growth
+of weed and briar be taller than the trees, and blossom with unknown and
+fantastic flowers, luxuriantly coloured by a warmer sun. Such gardens
+are rarely found save in the books of poets, and so she read many
+verses, all unknown to the nurseryman, who knew no other poetry than a
+few almanac distichs such as:
+
+     Quand il pleut à la Saint-Médard,
+     Il pleut quarante jours plus tard.*
+
+     * When it rains on Saint Medard's day,
+     It rains on for forty more days.
+
+At haphazard, the unfortunate creature ravenously devoured the paltriest
+rhymes, satisfied if she found in them lines ending in "love" and
+"passion"; then closing the book, she would spend hours dreaming and
+sighing: "That would have been the husband for me!"
+
+It is probable that all this would have remained in a state of vague
+aspiration, if at the terrible age of thirty, which seems to be the
+decisive critical moment for woman's virtue, as twelve o'clock is for
+the day's beauty, the irresistible Amaury had not chanced to cross her
+path. Amaury was a drawing-room poet, one of those fanatics in dress
+coat and grey kid gloves, who between ten o'clock and midnight, go
+and recite to the world their ecstasies of love, their raptures, their
+despair, leaning mournfully against the mantel-piece, in the blaze of
+the lights, while seated around him women, in full evening dress, listen
+entranced behind their fans.
+
+This one might pose as the very ideal of his kind; with his vulgar but
+irresistible countenance, sunken eye, pallid complexion, hair cut short
+and moustaches stiffly plastered with cosmetic. A desperate man such
+as women love, hopeless of life but irreproachably dressed, a lyric
+enthusiast, chilled and disheartened, in whom the madness of inspiration
+can be divined only in the loose and neglected tie of his cravat. But
+also what success awaits him, when he delivers in a strident voice
+a tirade from his poem, the _Credo of Love_, more especially the one
+ending in this extraordinary line:
+
+     Moi, je crois à l'amour comme je crois en Dieu! *
+
+     * I believe in love as I believe in God.
+
+[Illustration: p045-56]
+
+Mark you, I strongly suspect the rascal cares as little for God, as for
+the rest; but women do not look so closely. They are easily caught by
+a birdlime of words, and every time Amaury recites his _Credo of Love_,
+you are certain to see all round the drawing-room rows upon rows of
+little rosy mouths, eagerly opening, ready to swallow the taking bait
+of mawkish sentimentality. Just fancy! A poet who has such beautiful
+moustaches and who believes in love as he believes in God.
+
+For the nurseryman's wife this proved indeed irresistible. In three
+sittings she was conquered. Only, as at the bottom of this elegiac
+nature there was some honesty and pride, she would not stoop to any
+paltry fault. Moreover the poet himself declared in his _Credo_, that
+he only understood one way of erring: that which was openly declared and
+ready to defy both law and society. Taking therefore the _Credo of Love_
+for her guide, the young woman one fine day escaped from the garden at
+Auteuil and went off to throw herself into her poet's arms.--"I can no
+longer live with that man! Take me away!"
+
+In such cases the husband is always _that man_, even when he is a
+horticulturist.
+
+For a moment Amaury was staggered. How on earth could he have imagined
+that an ordinary little housewife of thirty would have taken in earnest
+a love poem, and followed it out literally? However he put the best face
+he could on his over-good fortune, and as the lady had, thanks to her
+little Auteuil garden, remained fresh and pretty, he carried her off
+without a murmur. The first days, all was delightful. They feared lest
+the husband should track them. They thought it advisable to hide under
+fictitious names, change hotels, inhabit the most remote quarters of the
+town, the suburbs of Paris, the outlying districts.
+
+[Illustration: p047-058]
+
+In the evening they stealthily sallied forth and took sentimental walks
+along the fortifications. Oh the wonderful power of romance! The more
+she was alarmed, the more precautions, window blinds and lowered veils,
+were necessary, the greater did her poet seem. At night, they opened the
+little window of their room and gazing at the stars rising on high above
+the signal lights of the neighbouring railway, she made him repeat again
+and again his wonderful verses:
+
+     Moi, je crois à l'amour comme je crois en Dieu.
+
+And it was delightful!
+
+[Illustration: p048-059]
+
+Unfortunately it did not last. The husband left them too much
+undisturbed. The fact is, _that man_ was a philosopher. His wife gone,
+he had closed the green door of his oasis and quietly set about trimming
+his roses again, happy in the thought that these at least, attached
+to the soil by long roots, would not be able to run away from him. Our
+reassured lovers returned to Paris and then suddenly the young woman
+felt that some change had come over her poet. Their flight, fear of
+detection, and constant alarms,--all these things which had fed
+her passion existing no longer, she began to understand and see the
+situation clearly.
+
+[Illustration: p049-060]
+
+Moreover, at every moment, in the settling of their little household,
+in the thousand paltry details of every day life, the man she was living
+with showed himself more thoroughly.
+
+The few and scarce generous, heroic or delicate feelings he possessed
+were spun out in his verses, and he kept none for his personal use.
+He was mean, selfish, above all very niggardly, a fault love seldom
+forgives. Then he had cut off his moustaches, and was disfigured by
+the loss. How different from that fine gloomy fellow with his carefully
+curled locks, as he appeared one evening declaiming his _Credo_, in the
+blaze of two chandeliers! Now, in the enforced retreat he was undergoing
+on her account, he gave way to all his crotchets, the greatest of which
+was fancying himself always ill. Indeed, from constantly playing at
+consumption, one ends by believing in it. The poet Amaury was fond of
+decoctions, wrapped himself up in plaisters, and covered his chimney
+piece with phials and powders. For some time the little woman took up
+quite seriously her part of a nursing sister. Her devotion seemed to
+excuse her fault and give an object to her life. But she soon tired of
+it. In spite of herself, in the stuffy room where the poet sat wrapped
+in flannel, she could not help thinking of her little garden so sweetly
+scented, and the kind nurseryman seen from afar in the midst of
+his shrubs and flowerbeds, appeared to her as simple, touching and
+disinterested, as this other one was exacting and egotistical.
+
+At the end of a month, she loved her husband, really loved him, not with
+the affection induced by habit, but with a real and true love. One day
+she wrote him a long letter full of passion and repentance. He did
+not vouchsafe a reply. Perhaps he thought she was not yet sufficiently
+punished. Then she despatched letter after letter, humbled herself,
+begged him to allow her to return, saying she would die rather than
+continue to live with that man. It was now the lover's turn to be called
+"that man." Strange to say, she hid herself from him to write; for
+she believed him still in love, and while imploring her husband's
+forgiveness, she feared the exaltation of her lover.
+
+"He will never allow me to leave," she said to herself.
+Accordingly, when by dint of supplications she obtained forgiveness
+and the nurseryman--I have already mentioned that he was a
+philosopher,--consented to take her back, the return to her own home
+bore all the mysterious and dramatic aspect of flight. She literally
+eloped with her husband. It was her last culpable pleasure. One evening
+as the poet, tired of their dual existence, and proud of his regrown
+moustaches, had gone to an evening party to recite his _Credo of Love_,
+she jumped into a cab that was awaiting her at the end of the street and
+returned with her old husband to the little garden at Auteuil, for ever
+cured of her ambition to be the wife of a poet. It is true that this
+fellow was not much of a poet!
+
+[Illustration: p055-066]
+
+
+
+
+THE TRANSTEVERINA.
+
+The play was just over, and while the crowd, with its many varied
+impressions, hurried away and poured out under the glare of the
+principal portico of the theatre, a few friends, of whom I was one,
+awaited the poet at the artists' entrance in order to congratulate him.
+His production had not, indeed, been very successful. Too powerful to
+suit the timid and trivial imagination of the public of our day, it
+was quite beyond the range of the stage, limited as that is by
+conventionalities and tolerated traditions. Pedantic criticism declared:
+"It is not fit for the stage!" and the scoffers of the boulevards
+revenged themselves for the emotion these magnificent verses had given
+them by repeating: "It won't pay!" As for us, we were proud of the
+friend who had dared to roll forth in a ringing peal, his splendid
+golden rhymes, flashing the best product of his genius beneath the
+artificial and murderous light of the lustres, and presenting his
+personages in life-like size, heedless of the optical illusion of the
+modern stage, of the dimness of opera-glass and defective vision.
+
+Amid a motley crowd of scene shifters, firemen, and _figurants_ muffled
+up in comforters, the poet approached us, his tall figure bent double,
+his coat collar chillily turned up over his thin beard and long grizzled
+hair. He seemed depressed. The scant applause of the hired claque and
+literary friends confined to a corner of the house foretold a limited
+number of representations, choice and rare spectators, and posters
+rapidly replaced without giving his name a chance of being known. When
+one has worked twenty of talent and life, this obstinate refusal of
+the public to comprehend is wearying and disheartening, and one ends by
+thinking: "Perhaps after all they are right." Fear paralyses and words
+fail. Our acclamations and enthusiastic greetings somewhat cheered him.
+"Really do you think so? Is it well done? 'Tis true I have given all I
+knew." And his feverish hands anxiously clutched ours, his eyes full
+of tears sought a sincere and reassuring glance. It was the imploring
+anguish of the sick person, asking the doctor: "It is not true, I'm
+not going to die?" No! poet, you will not die. The operettas and fairy
+pieces that have had hundreds of representations and thousands of
+spectators will be long since forgotten, scattered to the winds with
+their last playbills, while your work will ever remain fresh and living.
+
+As we stood on the now deserted pavement, exhorting and cheering him, a
+loud contralto voice vulgarised by an Italian accent burst upon us.
+
+"Hullo, artist! enough _pouégie_. Let's go and eat the _estoufato!_"
+
+[Illustration: p058-069]
+
+At the same moment a stout woman wrapped up in a hooded cape and a red
+tartan shawl linked her arm in that of our friend, in a manner so
+brutal and despotic that his countenance and attitude became at once
+embarrassed.
+
+"My wife," he said, then turning towards her with a hesitating smile:
+
+"Suppose we take them home and show them how you make an _estoufato?_"
+
+Flattered in the conceit of her culinary accomplishments, the Italian
+graciously consented to receive us, and five or six of us started off
+for the heights of Montmartre where they dwelt, to share their stewed
+beef.
+
+I confess I took a certain interest in the artist's home life. Since his
+marriage our friend had led a very secluded existence, almost always in
+the country; but what I knew of his life whetted my curiosity. Fifteen
+years before, when in all the freshness of a romantic imagination,
+he had met in the suburbs of Rome a magnificent creature with whom he
+immediately fell desperately in love. Maria Assunta, her father, and a
+brood of brothers and sisters inhabited one of those little houses of
+the Transtevera with walls uprising from the waters of the Tiber, and an
+old fishing boat rocking level with the door. One day he caught sight of
+the handsome Italian girl, with bare feet in the sand, red skirt tightly
+pleated around her, and unbleached linen sleeves tucked up to the
+shoulders, catching eels out of a large gleaming wet net. The silvery
+scales glistening through the meshes full of water, the golden river
+and scarlet petticoat, the beautiful black eyes deep and pensive, which
+seemed darkened in their musing by the surrounding sunlight struck the
+artist, perhaps even rather trivially, like some coloured print on the
+titlepage of a song in a music-seller's window.
+
+[Illustration: p060-071]
+
+It so chanced that the girl was heart-whole, having till now bestowed
+her affections on a big tom-cat, yellow and sly, also a great fisher of
+eels, who bristled up all over when anyone approached his mistress.
+
+[Illustration: p061-072]
+
+Beasts and men, our lover managed to tame all these folk, was married at
+Santa-Maria of the Transtevera and brought back to France the beautiful
+Assunta and her _cato_.
+
+Ah! poor fellow, he ought also to have brought away at the same time
+some of the sunlight of that country, a scrap of the blue sky, the
+eccentric costume and the bulrushes of the Tiber, and the large swing
+nets of the _Ponte Rotto_; in fact the frame with the picture. Then he
+would have been spared the cruel disenchantment he experienced when,
+having settled in a modest flat on the fourth storey, on the heights of
+Montmartre, he saw his handsome Transteverina decked out in a crinoline,
+a flounced dress, and a Parisian bonnet, which, constantly out of
+balance on the top of her heavy braids, assumed the most independent
+attitudes. Under the clear cold light of Parisian skies, the unfortunate
+man soon perceived that his wife was a fool, an irretrievable fool. Not
+a single idea even lurked in the velvety depths of those beautiful black
+eyes, lost in infinite contemplation. They glittered like an animal's
+in the calm of digestion, or in a chance gleam of light, nothing more.
+Withal the lady was common, vulgar, accustomed to govern by a slap all
+the little world of her native hut, and the least opposition threw her
+into uncontrollable rages.
+
+Who would have guessed that the fine mouth, straitened by silence into
+the purest shape of an antique face, would suddenly open to let flow
+torrents of vulgar abuse? Without respect for herself or for him, out
+loud, in the street, at the theatre, she would pick a quarrel with him,
+and indulge in scenes of fearful jealousy. To crown all, devoid of
+any artistic feeling, she was completely ignorant of her husband's
+profession and language, of manners, in fact of everything. The little
+French she could be taught, only made her forget Italian, and the result
+was that she composed a kind of half and half jargon which had the most
+comical effect. In short this love story, begun like one of Lamartine's
+poems, was ending like a novel of Champfleury's. After having for a long
+time struggled to civilise this wild woman, the poet saw he must abandon
+the task. Too honourable to leave her, probably still too much in love,
+he made up his mind to shut himself up, see no one, and work hard. The
+few intimate friends he admitted to his house, saw that they embarrassed
+him and ceased to come.
+
+[Illustration: p064-075]
+
+Hence it was that for the last fifteen years he had been living boxed up
+in his household like in a leper's cell.
+
+As I pondered over this wretched existence, I watched the strange couple
+walking before me. He, slender, tall and round-shouldered.
+
+[Illustration: p065-076]
+
+She, squarely built, heavy, shaking her shawl by an impatient shrug
+of her shoulders, with a free gait like a man's. She was tolerably
+cheerful, her speech was loud, and from time to time she turned round to
+see if we followed, familiarly shouting and calling by name those of us
+she happened to know, accentuating her words by much gesticulation as
+she would have hailed a fishing boat on the Tiber. When we reached their
+house, the _concierge_, furious at seeing so noisy a crew at such an
+unearthly hour, tried to prevent our entry. The Italian and he had a
+fearful row on the staircase. We were all dotted about on the winding
+stairs dimly lighted by the dying gas, ill at ease, uncomfortable,
+hardly knowing if we ought not to come down again.
+
+"Come, quick, let us go up," said the poet in a low tone, and we
+followed him silently, while, leaning over the banisters that shook
+under her weight and anger, the Italian let fly a volley of abuse in
+which Roman imprecations alternated with the vocabulary of the
+back slums. What a return home for the poet who had just roused the
+admiration of artistic Paris, and still retained in his fevered eyes
+the dazzling intoxication of his first performance! What a humiliating
+recall to every-day life!
+
+It was only by the fireside in his little sitting room that the icy
+chill caused by this silly adventure was dispelled, and we should soon
+have completely forgotten it, had it not been for the piercing voice and
+bursts of laughter of the signora whom we heard in the kitchen telling
+her maid how soundly she had rated that _choulato!_ When the table was
+laid and supper ready, she came and seated herself amongst us, having
+taken off her shawl, bonnet and veil, and I was able to examine her at
+my leisure. She was no longer handsome. The square face, the broad heavy
+jaw, the coarse hair turning grey, and above all the vulgar expression
+of the mouth, contrasted singularly with the eternal and meaningless
+reverie of the dreamy gaze. Resting her elbows on the table, familiar
+and shapeless, she joined in the conversation without for an instant
+losing sight of her plate. Just over her head, proud amid all the
+melancholy rubbish of the drawing-room, a large portrait signed by an
+illustrious name, stood out of the surrounding shade,--it was Maria
+Assunta at twenty. The purple costume, the milky white of the pleated
+wimple, the bright gold of the over-abundant imitation jewelry, set off
+magnificently the brilliancy of a sunny complexion, the velvety shades
+of the thick hair growing low on the forehead, which seemed to be united
+by an almost imperceptible down to the superb and straight line of
+the eyebrows. How could such an exuberance of life and beauty have
+deteriorated and become such a mass of vulgarity? And curiously while
+the Transteverina talked, I interrogated her lovely eyes, so deep and
+soft on the canvas.
+
+[Illustration: p068-079]
+
+The excitement of the meal had put her in a good humour. To cheer up
+the poet, to whom his mingled failure and glory were doubly painful,
+she thumped him on the back, laughed with her mouth full, saying in her
+hideous jargon, that it was not worth while for such a trifle to fling
+oneself head downwards from the _campanile del Duomo_.
+
+[Illustration: p069-080]
+
+"Isn't it true, _il cato?_" she added turning to the old tom-cat
+crippled by rheumatism, snoring in front of the fire. Then suddenly, in
+the middle of an interesting discussion, she screamed out to her husband
+in a voice senseless and brutal as the crack of a rifle:
+
+"Hey! artist! _la lampo qui filo!_"
+
+The poor fellow immediately interrupted his conversation to wind up the
+lamp, humble, submissive, anxious to avoid the scene he dreaded, and
+which in spite of all, he did not escape.
+
+On returning from the theatre we had stopped at the _Maison d'Or_ to get
+a bottle of choice wine to wash down the _estoufato_. All along the road
+Maria Assunta had piously carried it under her shawl, and on her arrival
+she had placed it on the table where she could cast tender looks upon
+it, for Roman women are fond of good wine. Already twice or three times
+mistrustful of her husband's absence of mind, and the length of his
+arms, she had said:
+
+"Mind the _boteglia_--you're going to break it."
+
+At last, as she went off to the kitchen to take up with her own hands
+the famous _estoufato_, she again called out to him:
+
+"Whatever you do, don't break the _boteglia_."
+
+Unluckily, the moment his wife had disappeared, the poet seized the
+opportunity to talk about art, theatres, success, so freely and with so
+much gusto and vivacity, that--crash! By a gesture more eloquent than
+the others, the wonderful bottle was thrown down and fell to the ground
+in a thousand pieces. Never have I beheld such terror. He stopped short,
+and became deadly pale. At the same moment, Assunta's contralto was
+heard in the next room, and the Italian appeared on the threshold with
+flashing eyes, lips swollen with rage, red with the heat of the kitchen
+range.
+
+"The _boteglia!_" she roared in a terrible voice.
+
+Then timidly bending down to me, he whispered:
+
+"Say it's you."
+
+And the poor devil was so frightened, that I felt his long legs tremble
+under the table.
+
+[Illustration: p075-086]
+
+
+
+
+A COUPLE OF SINGERS.
+
+How could they help falling in love? Handsome and famous as they both
+were, singing in the same operas, living each night during five whole
+acts the same artificial and passionate existence. You cannot play with
+fire without being burnt. You cannot say twenty times a month: "I love
+you!" to the sighing of a flute or the tremolos of a violin, without at
+last being caught by the emotion of your own voice. In course of time,
+passion awoke in the surrounding harmonies, the rhythmical surprises,
+the gorgeousness of costume and scenery. It was wafted to them through
+the window that Elsa and Lohengrin threw wide open on a night vibrating
+with sound and luminousness:
+
+"Come let us breathe the intoxicating perfumes."
+
+It slipped in between the white columns of the Capulets' balcony, where
+Romeo and Juliet linger in the dawning light of day:
+
+"It was the nightingale, and not the lark."
+
+And softly it caught Faust and Marguerite in a ray of moonlight, that
+rose from the rustic bench to the shutters of their little chamber, amid
+the entangled ivy and blossoming roses:
+
+"Let me once more gaze upon thy face."
+
+Soon all Paris knew their love and became interested in it. It was the
+wonder of the season. The world came to admire the two splendid stars
+gently gravitating towards each other in the musical firmament of the
+Opera House. At last one evening, after an enthusiastic recall, as the
+curtain fell, separating the house full of noisy applause and the
+stage littered with bouquets, where the white gown of Juliet swept
+over scattered camellia blossoms, the two singers were seized with an
+irresistible impulse, as though their love, a shade artificial, had but
+awaited the emotion of a splendid success to reveal itself.
+
+[Illustration: p077-088]
+
+Hands were clasped, vows exchanged, vows consecrated by the distant
+and persistent plaudits of the house. The two stars had made their
+conjunction.
+
+After the wedding, some time passed before they were again seen on the
+stage. Then, when their holiday was ended, they reappeared in the
+same piece. This reappearance was a revelation. Until then, of the two
+singers, the man had been the most prized. Older and more accustomed to
+the public, whose foibles and preferences he had studied, he held the
+pit and boxes under the spell of his voice. Beside him, the other one
+seemed but an admirably gifted pupil, the promise of a future genius;
+but her voice was young and had angles in it, just as her shoulders were
+too slight and thin. And when on her return she appeared in one of her
+former parts, and the full rich, powerful sound poured out in the very
+first notes, abundant and pure, like the water of some sparkling spring,
+there ran through the house such a thrill of delight and surprise, that
+all the interest of the evening was concentrated on her. For the young
+woman, it was one of those happy days, in which the ambient atmosphere
+becomes limpid, light and vibrating, wafting towards one all the
+radiance and adulations of success. As for the husband, they almost
+forgot to applaud him, and as a dazzling light ever seems to make the
+shade around it darker, so he, found himself relegated, as it were, to
+the most insignificant part of the stage, as if he were neither more nor
+less than a mere walking gentleman.
+
+After all, the passion that was revealed in the songstress's acting, in
+her voice full of charm and tenderness, was inspired by him. He alone
+lent fire to the glances of those deep eyes, and that idea ought to have
+made him proud, but the comedian's vanity proved stronger. At the end
+of the performance he sent for the leader of the _claque_ and rated him
+soundly. They had missed his entry and his exit, forgotten the recall at
+the third act; he would complain to the manager, &c.
+
+Alas! In vain he struggled, in vain did the paid applause greet him,
+the good graces of the public, henceforth bestowed on his wife, remained
+definitively acquired to her. She was fortunate too in a choice of parts
+appropriate to her talent and her beauty, in which she appeared with all
+the assurance of a woman of the world entering a ball-room, dressed in
+the colours best suited to her, and certain of an ovation. At each fresh
+success the husband was depressed, nervous, and irritable. This vogue
+which left him and so absolutely became hers only, seemed to him a kind
+of robbery. For a long while he strove to hide from every one, more
+especially from his wife, this unavowable anguish; but one evening, as
+she was going up the stairs leading to her dressing-room, holding up
+with both hands her skirt-laden with bouquets, carried away by her
+triumphal success, she said to him with a voice still overcome by the
+excitement of applause: "We have had a magnificent house to-night." He
+replied: "You think so!" in such an ironical and bitter tone, that the
+young wife suddenly understood all.
+
+Her husband was jealous! Not with the jealousy of a lover, who will
+only allow his wife to be beautiful for him, but with the jealousy of an
+artist, cold, furious, implacable. At times, when she stopped at the end
+of an air and multitudes of bravos were thrown to her from outstretched
+hands, he affected an indifferent and absent manner, and his listless
+gaze seemed to say to the spectators: "When you have finished
+applauding, I'll sing."
+
+Ah! the applause, that sound like hail reechoing so delightfully through
+the lobbies, the house, and the side scenes, once the sweets of it are
+tasted, it is impossible to live without it. Great actors do not die of
+illness or old age, they cease to exist when applause no longer greets
+them. At the indifference of the public, this one was really seized with
+a feeling of despair. He grew thin, became peevish and bad-tempered. In
+vain did he reason with himself, look his incurable folly well in the
+face, repeat to himself before he came on the stage:
+
+"And yet she is my wife, and I love her!"
+
+In the artificial atmosphere of the stage the true sentiment of life
+vanished at once. He still loved the wife, but detested the singer. She
+realized it, and as one nurses an invalid, watched the sad mania. At
+first she thought of lessening her success, of making a sparing use and
+not giving the full power of her voice and talent; but her resolutions
+like those of her husband could not withstand the glare of the
+footlights. Her talent, almost unconsciously, overstepped her will. Then
+she humbled herself before him, belittled herself. She asked his advice,
+inquired if he thought her interpretation correct, if he understood the
+part in that way.
+
+Of course he was never satisfied. With assumed goodnature, in the tone
+of false friendship that comedians use so much amongst each other, he
+would say, on the evenings of her greatest successes:
+
+"You must watch yourself, dear, you are not doing very well just now,
+not improving."
+
+At other times he tried to prevent her singing:
+
+"Take care, you are lavishing yourself. You are doing too much. Don't
+wear out your luck. Believe me, you ought to take a holiday."
+
+He even condescended to the most paltry pretexts. Said she had a cold,
+was not in good voice. Or else he would try to pick some mean stage
+quarrel:
+
+"You took up the end of the duet too quickly; you spoilt my effect. You
+did it on purpose."
+
+He never saw, poor wretch, that it was he who hindered her bye play,
+hurrying on with his cue in order to prevent any applause, and in his
+anxiety to regain the public ear, monopolizing the front of the stage,
+leaving his wife in the background. She never complained, for she loved
+him too well; moreover success makes us indulgent and every evening
+she was compelled to quit the shade in which she strove to conceal and
+efface herself, to obey the summons enthusiastically calling her to the
+footlights. This singular jealousy was soon noticed at the theatre, and
+their fellow actors made fun of it. They overwhelmed the singer with
+compliments about his wife's singing. They thrust under his eyes the
+newspaper article in which after four long columns devoted to the star,
+the critic bestowed a few lines to the fast fading vogue of the husband.
+One day, having just read one of these articles, he rushed into his
+wife's dressing-room, holding the open paper in his hand and said to
+her, pale with rage:
+
+"The fellow must have been your lover." He had indeed reached this
+degree of injustice. In fact the unhappy woman, praised and envied,
+whose name figured in large type on the play bills and might be read on
+all the walls of Paris, who was seized upon as a successful advertising
+medium and placed on the tiny gilt labels of the confectioner or
+perfumer, led the saddest and most humiliating of lives. She dared not
+open a paper for fear of reading her own praises, wept over the flowers
+that were thrown to her and which she left to die in a corner of her
+dressing-room, that she might avoid perpetuating at home the cruel
+memories of her triumphant evenings. She even wanted to quit the stage,
+but her husband objected.
+
+[Illustration: p084-095]
+
+"It will be said that I make you leave it." And the horrible torture
+continued for both.
+
+One night of a first representation, the songstress was going to the
+front, when somebody said to her: "Mind what you are about. There is
+a cabal in the house against you." She laughed at the idea. A cabal
+against her? And for what reason, Good Heavens! She who only met with
+sympathy, who did not belong to any coterie! It was true however. In
+the middle of the opera, in a grand duet with her husband, at the moment
+when her magnificent voice had reached the highest pitch of its compass,
+finishing the sound in a succession of notes, even and pure like the
+rounded pearls of a necklace, a volley of hisses cut her short. The
+audience was as much moved and surprised as herself. All remained
+breathless, as though each one felt prisoner within them the passage
+she had not been able to finish. Suddenly a horrible, mad idea flashed
+across her mind. He was alone on the stage, in front of her. She gazed
+at him steadily and saw in his eyes the passing gleam of a cruel smile.
+The poor woman understood all. Sobs suffocated her.
+
+She could only burst into tears and blindly disappear through the
+crowded side scenes.
+
+It was her own husband who had had her hissed!
+
+[Illustration: p086-097]
+
+[Illustration: p088-099]
+
+
+
+
+A MISUNDERSTANDING -- THE WIFE'S VERSION.
+
+What can be the matter with him? What can he complain of? I cannot
+understand it. And yet I have done all I could to make him happy. To be
+sure, I don't say that instead of a poet I would not rather have married
+a notary or a lawyer, something rather more serious, rather less vague
+as a profession; nevertheless, such as he was he took my fancy.
+I thought him a trifle visionary, but charming all the same, and
+well-mannered; besides he had some fortune, and I thought that once
+married poetizing would not prevent him from seeking out some good
+appointment which would set us quite at ease.
+
+[Illustration: p089-100]
+
+[Illustration: p090-101]
+
+He, too at that time seemed to find me to his taste. When he came to see
+me at my aunt's in the country, he could not find words enough to admire
+the order and arrangement of our little house, kept like a convent, "It
+is so quaint!" he used to say. He would laugh and call me all sorts of
+names taken from the poems and romances he had read. That shocked me a
+little I confess; I should have liked him to be more serious. But it
+was not until we were married and settled in Paris, that I felt all the
+difference of our two natures.
+
+I had dreamed of a little home kept scrupulously bright and clean;
+instead of which, he began at once to encumber our apartment with
+useless old-fashioned furniture, covered with dust, and with faded
+tapestries, old as the hills. In everything it was the same. Would you
+believe that he obliged me to put away in the attic a sweetly
+pretty Empire clock, which had come to me from my aunt, and some
+splendidly-framed pictures given me by my school friends. He thought
+them hideous. I am still wondering why? For after all, his study was one
+mass of lumber, of old smoky pictures; statuettes I blushed to look at,
+chipped antiquities of all kinds, good for nothing; vases that would not
+hold water, odd cups, chandeliers covered with verdigris.
+
+[Illustration: p094-105]
+
+By the side of my beautiful rosewood piano, he had put another, a little
+shabby thing with all the polish off, half-the notes wanting, and so
+old and worn that one could hardly hear it. I began to think: "Good
+gracious! is an artist then, really a little mad? Does he only care for
+useless things, and despise all that is useful?"
+
+When I saw his friends', the society he received, it was still worse.
+Men with long hair, great beards, scarcely combed, badly dressed, who
+did not hesitate to smoke in my presence, while to listen to them made
+me quite uncomfortable, so widely opposed were their ideas to mine. They
+used long words, fine phrases, nothing natural, nothing simple. Then
+with all this, not a notion of ordinary civilities: you might ask them
+to dinner twenty times running, and there would be never a call, never
+a return of any kind. Not even a card or a bonbon on New Year's day.
+Nothing. Some of these gentry were married and brought their wives to
+see us. You should have seen the style of these persons! For every day
+wear, superb toilettes such as thank heaven, I would wear at no time!
+And so ill-arranged, without order or method. Hair loose, skirts
+trailing, and such a bold display of their talents! There were some who
+sang like actresses, played the piano like professors, all talked on
+every subject just like men. I ask you, is this reasonable?
+
+Ought serious women once married to think of anything but the care of
+their household? This is what I tried to make my husband understand,
+when he was vexed at seeing me give up my music. Music is all very well
+when one is a little girl and has nothing better to do. But candidly,
+I should consider myself very ridiculous if I sat down every day to the
+piano.
+
+[Illustration: p098-109]
+
+Oh! I am quite aware that his great complaint against me is that I
+wished to draw him from the strange society I considered so dangerous
+for him. "You have driven away all my friends?" he often used to say
+reproachfully. Yes, I did do so, and I don't regret it. Those creatures
+would have ended by driving him crazy. After leaving them, he would
+often spend the night in making rhymes and in marching up and down and
+talking aloud. As if he were not already sufficiently eccentric and
+original in himself without being excited by others! What caprices, what
+whims have I not put up with! Suddenly one morning, he would appear in
+my room: "Quick, get your hat--we are off to the country." Then one
+must leave everything, sewing, household affairs, take a carriage, go
+by rail, spend a mint of money! And I, who only thought of economy! For
+after all, it is not with fifteen thousand francs (six hundred pounds)
+a year that one can be counted rich in Paris or make any provision for
+one's children. At first he used to laugh at my observations, and try
+to make me laugh; then when he saw how firmly I was resolved to remain
+serious, he found fault with my simplicity and my taste for home. Am
+I to blame because I detest theatres and concerts, and those artistic
+soirées to which he wished to drag me, and where he met his old
+acquaintances, a lot of scatterbrains, dissipated and Bohemian?
+
+At one time, I thought he was becoming more reasonable. I had managed to
+with-draw him from his good-for-nothing circle of friends, and to gather
+round us a society of sensible people, well-settled in life, who might
+be of use to us. But no! Monsieur was bored. He was always bored,
+from morning till night. At our little soirees, where I was careful to
+arrange a whist table and a tea table, all as it should be, he would
+appear with such a face! in such a temper! When we were alone, it was
+just the same. Nevertheless, I was full of little attentions. I used to
+say to him: "Read me something of what you are doing." He recited to me
+verses, tirades, of which I understood nothing, but I put on an air of
+interest, and here and there made some little remark, which by the way,
+inevitably had the knack of annoying him. In a year, working night and
+day, he could only make of all his rhymes, one single volume which never
+sold, I said to him: "Ah! you see," just in a reasoning spirit, to bring
+him to something more comprehensible, more remunerative, He got into a
+frightful rage, and afterwards sank into a state of gloomy depression
+which made me very unhappy. My friends advised me as well as they could:
+"You see, my dear, it is the ennui and bad temper of an unoccupied man.
+If he worked a little more, he would not be so gloomy."
+
+Then I set to work, and all my belongings too, to seek him an
+appointment, I moved heaven and earth, I made I don't know how many
+visits to the wives of government officials, heads of departments; I
+even penetrated into a minister's office. It was a surprise I reserved
+for him, I said to my-self: "We shall see whether he will be pleased
+this time," At length, the day when I received his nomination in a
+lovely envelope with five big seals, I carried it myself to his table,
+half wild with joy. It was provision for the future, comfort, self
+content, the tranquillity of regular work. Do you know what he did? He
+said: "He would never forgive me." After which he tore the minister's
+letter into a thousand pieces, and rushed out, banging the doors. Oh!
+these artists, poor unsettled brains taking life all the wrong way! What
+could be done with such a man? I should have liked to talk to him, to
+reason with him. In vain. Those were indeed right, who had said to me:
+"He is a madman." Of what use moreover to talk to him? We do not
+speak the same language. He would not understand me, any more than I
+understand him. And now, here we must sit and look at each other. I see
+hatred in his glance, and yet I have true affection for him. It is very
+painful.
+
+
+   *   *   *   *   *
+
+
+A MISUNDERSTANDING -- THE HUSBAND'S VERSION.
+
+I had thought of everything, taken all my precautions. I would not have
+a Parisian, because Parisian women alarm me. I would not have a rich
+wife because she might be too exacting and extravagant. I also
+dreaded family ties, that terrible network of homely affections, which
+monopolizes, imprisons, dwarfs and stifles. My wife was the realization
+of my fondest dreams. I said to myself: "She will owe me everything."
+
+[Illustration: p091-102]
+
+What pleasure to educate this simple mind to the contemplation of
+beauty, to initiate this pure soul to my enthusiasms and hopes, to give
+life, in short, to this statue! The fact is she had the air of a
+statue, with her great serious calm eyes, her regular Greek profile, her
+features, which although rather too marked and severe, were softened by
+the rose-tinted bloom of youth and the shadow of the waving hair. Added
+to all this was a faint provincial accent that was my especial joy, an
+accent to which with closed eyes, I listened as a recollection of happy
+childhood, the echo of a tranquil life in some far away, utterly unknown
+nook. And to think that now, this accent has become unbearable to me!
+But in those days, I had faith. I loved, I was happy, and disposed to
+be still more so. Full of ardour for my work, I had as soon as I was
+married begun a new poem, and in the evening I read to her the verses
+of the day. I wished to make her enter completely into my existence. The
+first time or two, she said to me: "Very pretty," and I was grateful
+to her for this childish approbation, hoping that in time she would
+comprehend better what was the very breath of my life.
+
+Poor creature! How I must have bored her! After having read her my
+verses, I explained them to her, seeking in her beautiful astonished
+eyes the hoped-for gleam of light, ever fancying I should surprise it.
+
+[Illustration: p095-106]
+
+I obliged her to give me her opinion and I passed over all that was
+foolish to retain only what a chance inspiration might contain of good.
+I so longed to make of her my true help mate, the real artist's wife!
+But no! She could not understand. In vain did I read to her the great
+poets, choosing the strongest, the tenderest,--the golden rhymes of the
+love poems fell upon her ear as coldly and tediously as a hailstorm.
+Once I remember, we were reading _la Nuit d'Octobre_; she interrupted
+me, to ask for something more serious! I tried then to explain to her
+that there is nothing in the world more serious than poetry, which is
+the very essence of life, floating above it like a glory of light,
+in the % vibrations of which words and thoughts are elevated and
+transfigured. Oh! what a disdainful smile passed over her pretty mouth
+and what condescension in her glance! As though a child or a madman had
+spoken to her.
+
+What have I not thus wasted of strength and useless eloquence! Nothing
+was of any use. I stumbled perpetually against what she called good
+sense, reason, that eternal excuse of dried up hearts and narrow minds.
+And it was not only poetry that bored her. Before our marriage, I had
+believed her to be a musician. She seemed to understand the pieces
+she played, aided by the underlinings of her teacher. Scarcely was she
+married when she closed her piano, and gave up her music.
+
+[Illustration: p099-110]
+
+Can there be anything more melancholy than this abandonment by the young
+wife of all that had pleased in the young girl? The reply given, the
+part ended, the actress quits her costume. It was all done with a view
+to marriage; a surface of petty accomplishments, of pretty smiles, and
+fleeting elegance. With her the change was instantaneous. At first I
+hoped that the taste I could not give her, an artistic intelligence and
+love of the beautiful, would come to her in spite of herself, through
+the medium of this wonderful Paris, with its unconscious refining
+influence on eyes and mind. But what can be done with a woman who does
+not know how to open a book, to look at a picture, who is always bored
+and refuses to see anything? I soon understood that I must resign myself
+to have by my side nothing but a housewife, active and economical,
+indeed very economical. According to Proudhon, a woman, nothing more. I
+could have shaped my course accordingly; so many artists are in the same
+plight! But this modest rôle was not enough for her.
+
+Little by little, slyly, silently, she managed to get rid of all my
+friends. We had not made any difference in our talk because of * her
+presence. We talked as we always had done in the past, but she never
+understood the irony or the fantasy of our artistic exaggerations, of
+our wild axioms, or paradoxes, in which-an idea is travestied only to
+figure more brilliantly. It only irritated and puzzled her. Seated in
+a quiet corner of the drawing-room, she listened and said nothing,
+planning all the while how she should eliminate one by one those who
+so much shocked her. Notwithstanding the seeming friendliness of the
+welcome, there could already be felt in my rooms that thin current
+of cold air, which warns that the door is open and that it is time to
+leave.
+
+My friends once gone, she replaced them by her own. I found myself
+surrounded by an absurd set of worthies, strangers to art, who hated
+poetry and scorned it because "it made no money." On purpose the names
+of fashionable writers who manufacture plays and novels by the dozen
+were cited before me, with the remark: "So and so makes a great deal of
+money!"
+
+Make money! this is the all-important point for these creatures, and
+I had the pain of seeing my wife think with them. In this fatal
+atmosphere, her provincial habits, her mean and narrow views were made
+still more odious by an incredible stinginess.
+
+Fifteen thousand francs (six hundred pounds) a year! It seemed to me
+that with this income we could live without fear of the morrow. Not
+at all! She was always grumbling, talking of economy, reform, good
+investments. As she overpowered me with these dull details, I felt all
+desire and taste for work ebb away from me. Sometimes she came to
+my table and scornfully turned over the scattered half-written
+pages:--"Only that!" she would say, counting the hours lost upon the
+insignificant little lines. Ah I if I had listened to her, my glorious
+title of poet, which it has taken me so many years to win, would be now
+dragged through the black mire of sensational literature. And when
+I think that to this selfsame woman I had at first opened my heart,
+confided all my dreams; and when I think that the contempt she now
+shows me because I do not make money dates from the first days of our
+marriage; I am indeed ashamed, both of myself and of her.
+
+I make no money! That explains everything, the reproach of her glance,
+her admiration for fruitful commonplaces, culminating in the steps she
+took but lately to obtain for me I don't know what post in a government
+office.
+
+At this, however, I resisted. No defence remains to me but this, a force
+of inertia, which yields to no assault, to no persuasion. She may speak
+for hours, freeze me with her chilliest smile, my thought ever escapes
+her, will always escape her. And we have come to this! Married and
+condemned to live together, leagues of distance separate us; and we are
+both too weary, too utterly discouraged, to care to make one step that
+might draw us together. It is horrible!
+
+[Illustration: p108-119]
+
+[Illustration: p111-122]
+
+
+
+
+ASSAULT WITH VIOLENCE.
+
+
+MR. PETITBRY, Chamber Counsel.
+
+_To Madame Nina de B., at her Aunt's house, in Moulins_.
+
+Madame, conformably to the wishes of Madame your aunt, I have looked
+into the matter in question. I have noted down one by one all the
+different points and submitted your grievances to the most scrupulous
+investigation. Well, on my soul and conscience, I do not find the
+fruit ripe enough, or to speak plainly, I do not consider that you have
+sufficient grounds to justify your petition for a judicial separation.
+Let us not forget that the French law is a very downright kind of thing,
+totally devoid of delicate feeling for nice distinctions. It recognizes
+only acts, serious, brutal acts, and unfortunately it is these acts
+we lack. Most assuredly I have been deeply touched while reading the
+account of the first year of your married life, so very painful to you.
+You have paid dearly for the glory of marrying a famous artist, one of
+those men in whom fame and adulation develop monstrous egotism, and who
+under penalty of shattering the frail and timid life that would attach
+itself to theirs, must live alone. Ah! madame, since the commencement of
+my career, how many wretched wives have I not beheld in the same cruel
+position as yourself! Artists who live only by and for the public, carry
+nothing home to their hearth but fatigue from glory, or the melancholy
+of their disappointments. An ill-regulated existence, without compass
+or rudder, subversive ideas contrary to all social conventionality,
+contempt of family life and its happiness, cerebral excitement sought
+for in the abuse of tobacco and strong drink, without mentioning
+anything else, this constitutes the terrible artistic element from which
+your dear Aunt is desirous of withdrawing you; but I must repeat, that
+while I fully comprehend her anxiety, nay her remorse even at having
+consented to such a marriage, I cannot see that matters have reached a
+point calculated to warrant your petition.
+
+I have, however, set down the outlines of a judicial memorandum, in
+which your principal grievances are grouped and skilfully brought into
+prominence. Here are the principal divisions of the work:
+
+1°. _Insulting conduct of Monsieur towards Madame's family_.--Refusal
+to receive our Aunt from Moulins, who brought us up, and is tenderly
+attached to us.--Nicknames such as _Tata Bobosse_, Fairy Carabossa,
+and others, bestowed on that venerable old maid, whose back is slightly
+bent.--Jests and quips, drawings in pen and pencil of the aforesaid and
+her infirmity.
+
+2°. _Unsociableness_.--Refusal to see Ma-dame's friends, to make wedding
+calls, to send cards, to answer invitations, etc.
+
+3°. _Wanton extravagance_.--Money lent without acknowledgment to all
+kinds of Bohemians.--Open house and free quarters, turning the house
+into an inn.--Constant subscriptions for statues, tombs, and productions
+of unfortunate fellow artists.--Starting an artistic and literary
+magazine!!!
+
+4°. _Insulting conduct to Madame_.--Having said out loud when alluding
+to us: "What a fool!"
+
+5°. _Cruelty and violence_.--Excessive brutality on the part of
+Monsieur.--Rage on the slightest pretext.--Breakage of china and
+furniture.--Scandalous rows, offensive expressions.
+
+
+All this, as you see, dear Madame, constitutes a somewhat respectable
+amount of evidence, but is not however sufficient. We lack assault with
+violence. Ah! if we had only an assault with violence, a tiny little
+assault before witnesses, our case would be grand! But now that you have
+put a hundred and fifty miles between your husband and yourself we can
+scarcely hope for an incident of this kind. I say "hope" because in the
+present state of affairs, a brutal act on the part of this man would be
+the most fortunate thing that could befall you.
+
+I remain, Madame, awaiting your commands, your devoted and obedient
+servant,
+
+Petitbry.
+
+PS.--Violence before witnesses, of course!
+
+[Illustration: p115-126]
+
+
+_To Monsieur Petitbry, in Paris_.
+
+What, Sir! have we come to such a pass as this! Is this what your laws
+have made of antique French chivalry! So then, when a misunderstanding
+is often sufficient to separate two hearts for ever, your law courts
+require acts of violence to justify such a separation. Is it not
+scandalous, unjust, barbarous, outrageous? To think that in order to
+regain her freedom, my poor darling will be obliged to run her neck
+into the halter, to abandon herself to all the fury of that monster,
+to excite it even. But no matter, our mind is made up. An assault with
+personal violence is necessary. Well! we will have it. No later than
+to-morrow, Nina will return to Paris, How will she be received? What
+will take place there? I cannot think of it without a shudder. At this
+idea my hand trembles, my eyes become dimmed. Ah! Monsieur. Ah! Monsieur
+Petitbry. Ah!
+
+Nina's unhappy Aunt.
+
+
+
+MR. MARESTANG, ATTORNEY At the Law Court of the Seine.
+
+_To Monsieur Henri de B., Literary man in Paris_.
+
+Be calm, be calm, be calm! I forbid your going to Moulins or rushing off
+in pursuit of the fugitive. It is more judicious and safer to await her
+return in your own house, by your fireside. In point of fact, what has
+taken place? You refused to receive that ridiculous and ill-natured old
+maid; your wife has gone to join her. You should have expected as much.
+Family ties are very strong in the heart of such an extremely youthful
+bride. You were in too great a hurry. Remember that this Aunt brought
+her up, that she has no other relations in the world. She has her
+husband, you will say. Ah! my dear fellow, between ourselves we may
+admit that husbands are not always amiable. I know one more especially
+who in spite of his good heart is so nervous, so violent! I am well
+aware that hard work and artistic preoccupations have a good deal to do
+with it. Be that as it may, the bird has been scared, and has flown back
+to its former cage. Don't be alarmed, it won't stay there long. Either
+I am very much mistaken or the Parisian of yesterday will soon weary of
+the antiquated surroundings, and ere long regret the vivacities of her
+poet. Above all don't stir.
+
+Your old friend,
+
+Marestang.
+
+
+_To Monsieur Marestang, attorney in Paris_.
+
+At the same moment with your rational and friendly letter, I received a
+telegram from Moulins, announcing Nina's return. Ah! what a true prophet
+you were! She is coming back this evening, all alone, just as she left
+me, without the slightest advance on my part. The thing now will be to
+arrange so easy and agreeable a life for her, that she shall never
+again be tempted to leave me. I have laid in a stock of tenderness and
+patience during her week's absence. There is only one point on which
+I remain inflexible: I will not again receive that horrible _Tata
+Bobosse_, that blue stocking of 1820, who gave me her niece only in the
+hopes that my modest fame would serve to heighten hers. Remember, my
+dear Marestang, that ever since my marriage this wicked little old woman
+has always come between my wife and me, pushing her hump into all our
+amusements at the theatres, the exhibitions, in society, in the country,
+everywhere in fact. And you wonder after that, at my having displayed
+a certain haste in getting rid of her, and packing her off to her good
+town of Moulins. Indeed, my dear fellow, you have no idea of all the
+harm those old maids, suspicious and ignorant of life, are capable of
+doing in a young household. This one had stuffed my wife's pretty
+little head full of false, old fashioned, preposterous ideas, trumpery
+sentimentality of the time of Ipsiboé or young Florange: "Ah! if my
+lady love saw me!" For her, I was a poâte, the poâte one sees on the
+frontispieces of Renduel or Ladvocat, crowned with laurels, a lyre
+on his hips, and his short velvet-collared cloak blown aside by a
+Parnassian gust of wind. That was the husband she had promised her
+niece, and you may fancy how terribly my poor Nina must have been
+disappointed. Nevertheless I admit that I was very bungling with the
+dear child. As you say, I wanted to go ahead too rapidly, I frightened
+her. It was my part gently to modify all that the rather narrowing and
+false education of the convent and the sentimental dreams of the Aunt
+had effected, leaving the provincial perfume time to evaporate. However
+all this can be repaired since she is returning. She is returning, my
+dear friend! This evening, I shall go and meet her at the station and we
+shall walk home arm in arm, reconciled and happy.
+
+Henri de B.
+
+
+_Nina de B. to her Aunt in Moulins_.
+
+He was waiting for me at the station and greeted me with a smile and
+open arms, as though I were returning from some ordinary journey. You
+can imagine that I put on my iciest appearance. Directly I reached home,
+I shut myself up in my room, where I dined alone, pleading fatigue.
+After which, I locked myself in. He came to bid me good-night through
+the key-hole, and to my great surprise, went away on tiptoe without
+anger or importunity. This morning, I called on Monsieur Petitbry, who
+gave me detailed instructions as to the way I was to act, the hour,
+place, witnesses. Ah! my dear Aunt, if you knew how frightened I am as
+the hour draws near.
+
+[Illustration: p121-132]
+
+His violence is so dreadful. Even when he is gentle like yesterday, his
+eyes have flashes of lightning. However, I will try and be courageous in
+thinking of you, my darling Aunt. Besides, as Monsieur Petitbry said to
+me, it is only a short painful moment to get over, and then we will both
+resume our former quiet life, so calm and happy.
+
+Nina de B.
+
+[Illustration: p122-134]
+
+[Illustration: p123-134]
+
+
+_From the same to the same_.
+
+Dear Aunt, I am writing to you from my bed, torn by the emotions of
+that terrible scene. Who could have supposed that things would take this
+turn? Nevertheless I had taken every precaution. I had warned Marthe and
+her sister, who were to come at one o'clock, and I had chosen for the
+great scene the moment when on leaving the table, the servants are
+clearing away in the dining-room next to the study. From early morn
+my plans were laid; an hour of scales and exercises on the piano, the
+_Cloches du Monastère_, the _Rêveries de Rosellen_, all the pieces
+he hates. This did not prevent his working away without betraying the
+slightest irritability. At breakfast, the same patience. A detestable
+breakfast, scraps, and the sweet dishes he loathes. And if you had seen
+my costume! A dress with a cape some five years out of date, a little
+black silk apron, and uncurled hair! In vain I sought for some signs
+of irritation, that well-known straight line that Monsieur hollows out
+between his eyebrows at the least annoyance. Well no! nothing! Really I
+might have thought they had changed my husband. He said to me in a calm
+and rather sad tone:
+
+"Ah, you have done your hair in the old way."
+
+I hardly answered, not wishing to hurry on matters before my witnesses
+had arrived, and then, strangely enough, I felt somewhat moved and upset
+beforehand by the scene I was trying to get up. At last, after a few
+still shorter replies on my part, he rose from the table and went into
+his own room. I followed him trembling. I heard my friends stationing
+themselves in the little drawing-room, and Pierre who came and went,
+arranging the glasses and silver. The decisive moment had arrived. He
+must now be brought to the needful point of violence, and it seemed
+to me this would be easy, after all I had done since the morning to
+irritate him.
+
+When I entered his study I must have been very pale. I felt myself in
+the lion's cage. The thought flashed across me: "Suppose he killed me!"
+He did not present a very terrible appearance, however, leaning back on
+his divan, a cigar in his mouth.
+
+"Do I disturb you?" I asked in my most ironical voice.
+
+He replied gently:
+
+"No. You see. I am not working."
+
+Myself, viciously:
+
+"Ah! indeed you don't work then at all, now?"
+
+He still very mild.
+
+"You are mistaken, my dear. On the contrary, I work a great deal. Only
+our craft is one in which a great deal of work can be done without
+having a tool in hand."
+
+"And what may you be doing at this moment? Ah! yes, I know, your play
+in verse; always the same thing for the last two years. It is certainly
+lucky that your wife had a fortune! That allows you to idle at your
+ease."
+
+I thought he would have sprung upon me at this. Not a bit of it. He came
+up to me and took hold of my hands gently:
+
+"Come, is it to be always the same thing? Are we to begin our life of
+warfare again? If so, why did you come back?"
+
+I confess I felt rather moved by his sad and affectionate tone; but
+I thought of you, my poor Aunt, of your exile, of his harsh conduct
+towards us, and that gave me courage. I said to him the bitterest, most
+wounding things I could think of--I know not what--that I wished to
+heaven I had never married an artist; that at Moulins, every one pitied
+me; that I found my friends married to magistrates, serious, influential
+men, in good positions, while he--If even he made money--But no,
+Monsieur would work for fame only! and what fame!
+
+[Illustration: p127-138]
+
+At Moulins no one knew him; at Paris, his pieces were hissed. His books
+did not sell. And so on, and so on. My brain seemed to whirl round as
+all the malicious words came from me one after the other. He looked
+at me without replying, in chilly anger. Of course this coldness
+exasperated me still more. I was so much excited, that I no longer
+recognized my own voice, raised to an extraordinary pitch, and the last
+words I screamed at him--I can't remember what unjust and mad remark
+it was--seemed to buzz indistinctly in my ears. For a moment, I thought
+Monsieur Petitbry's assault with violence was an accomplished fact.
+Pallid, with set teeth Henri made two steps towards me:
+
+"Madame!"
+
+Then suddenly, his anger fell, his face became impassive again, and
+he looked at me with so scornful, insolent and calm a glance, that my
+patience came to an end. I raised my hand, and gave him the best box on
+the ear I ever gave in my life. At the noise, the door opened, and my
+witnesses appeared solemn and indignant.
+
+"Monsieur! this is infamous!"
+
+"Yes, isn't it?" said the poor fellow, showing his red cheek.
+
+You can imagine my confusion. Happily, I took the line of fainting, and
+melting into torrents of tears, which relieved me greatly. At present,
+Henri is in my room. He watches by me, nurses me, and is really
+most kind. What can I do? What a checkmate! This will not prove very
+satisfactory to Monsieur Petitbry.
+
+Nina de B.
+
+[Illustration: p129-140]
+
+[Illustration: p130-141]
+
+[Illustration: p133-144]
+
+
+
+
+BOHEMIA AT HOME.
+
+I hardly fancy it would be possible to find in the whole of Paris, a
+more lively and peculiar house than that of the sculptor Simaise. Life
+there is one continual round of festivities. At whatever hour you drop
+in upon them, a sound of singing and laughter, or the jingle of a piano,
+guitar, or tamtam greets you. You can never enter the studio without
+finding a waltz going on, or a set of quadrilles, or a game of
+battledore and shuttlecock, or else it is cumbered with all the litter
+and preparations for a ball; shreds of tulle and ribbons lying scattered
+among the sculptor's chisels; artificial flowers hanging over the busts,
+and spangled skirts spreading over groups of moist clay.
+
+[Illustration: p134-145]
+
+The fact is that four big t daughters of sixteen to twenty-five years
+of age, all very pretty indeed, take up a great deal of room; and when
+these young ladies whirl round with their hair streaming down their
+backs, with floating ribbons, long pins, and showy ornaments, it really
+seems as if instead of four there were eight, sixteen, thirty-two Misses
+Simaise, as dashing the one as the other, talking and laughing loudly,
+with the hoydenish manner peculiar to artists' daughters, with the
+studio jests, the familiarity of students, and knowing also better than
+anyone how to dismiss a creditor or blow up a tradesman impertinent
+enough to present his bill at an inopportune moment.
+
+[Illustration: p135-146]
+
+These young damsels are the real mistresses of the house. From early
+dawn the father works, chisels, models unceasingly, for he has no
+settled income. At first he was ambitious and strove to do good work;
+some early successful exhibitions promised him future fame; but the
+necessity of providing for the support of his family, the clothing,
+feeding and future establishment of his children, threw him back
+into the ordinary work of the trade. As for Madame Simaise, she never
+attended to anything.
+
+Very handsome when she married, very much admired in the artistic world
+into which her husband introduced her, at first satisfied with being
+only a pretty woman, later on she resigned herself to the part of a
+woman who had been pretty. A créole by birth, at least such was her
+pretension--although it was asserted that her parents had never left
+Courbevoie,--she spent the days from morning to night in a hammock swung
+up in turn in all the different rooms of the house, fanning herself and
+taking siestas, full of contempt for the material details of everyday
+life. She had so often sat to her husband as model for Hebes and Dianas,
+that she fancied her only duty was to pass through life carrying some
+emblem of a goddess, such as a crescent on her head or a goblet in her
+hand. Indeed the disorder of the establishment was a sight in itself.
+The least thing necessitated a full hour's search.
+
+"Have you seen my thimble? Marthe, Eva, Geneviève, Madeleine, who has
+seen my thimble?"
+
+The drawers, in which books, powder, rouge, spangles, spoons and fans
+are tossed at haphazard, though crammed full, contain absolutely nothing
+useful; moreover they belong to strange pieces of furniture, curious,
+battered and incomplete. And how peculiar is the house itself! As they
+are constantly changing their residence, they never have time to settle
+anywhere, and this merry household seems to be perpetually awaiting the
+setting to rights indispensable after a ball. Only so many things are
+lacking, that it is not worth while settling, and as long as they can
+put on a bit of finery, display themselves out of doors with something
+of a meteor flash, a semblance of style and appearance of luxury, honour
+is saved! Encampment does not in any way distress this migratory tribe.
+Through the half-opened doors, their poverty is betrayed by the four
+bare walls of an unfurnished chamber, or the litter of an overcrowded
+room. It is bohemianism in the domestic circle, a life full of
+improvidence and surprises.
+
+At the very moment when they sit down to table, they suddenly perceive
+that everything is wanting, and that the breakfast must be sent out for
+at once. In this manner hours are spent rapidly, bustling and idling,
+and herein lies a certain advantage. After a late breakfast, one does
+not need to dine, but can sup at the ball, which fills up nearly every
+evening. These ladies also give evening parties. Tea is drunk out of
+all kinds of queer receptacles, goblets, old tankards, ancient glasses,
+Japanese shells, the whole chipped and cracked by the constant moves.
+
+[Illustration: p138-149]
+
+The serene calm of both mother and daughters in the midst of this
+poverty is truly admirable. They have indeed other ideas running through
+the brain than mere housekeeping details. One has plaited her hair
+like a Swiss girl, another is curled like any English baby, and Madame
+Simaise, from the top of her hammock, lives in the beatitude of her
+former beauty. As for father Simaise, he is always delighted. As long
+as he hears the merry laugh of his daughters around him, he is ready
+cheerfully to assume all the weight of this disorderly existence. To him
+are addressed in a coaxing manner such requests as: "Papa, I want a
+bonnet. Papa, I must have a dress." Sometimes the winter is severe. They
+are in such request, receive so many invitations. Pooh! the father has
+but to get up a couple of hours earlier. They will have a fire only in
+the studio, where all the family will gather. The girls will cut out and
+make their own dresses, while the hammock ropes swing slowly to and fro,
+and the father works on, perched upon his high stool.
+
+[Illustration: p139-150]
+
+Have you ever met these ladies in society? The moment they appear there
+is a commotion. It is long since the first two came out, but they are
+always so well adorned and so smart, that they are in great request as
+partners. They have as much success as the younger sisters, almost as
+much as the mother in former days; moreover they carry off their tawdry
+jewelry and finery so well, and have such charming easy manners, with
+the giddy laugh of spoilt children, and such a Spanish way of flirting
+with a fan. Nevertheless they do not get married. No admirer has ever
+been able to get over the sight of that singular home. The wasteful and
+useless extravagance, the want of plates, the profusion of old tapestry
+in holes, of antique and ungilt lustres, the draughty doors, the
+constant visits of creditors, the slatternly appearance of the young
+ladies in slipshod slippers and dressing gowns, put to flight the best
+intentioned. In truth, it is not everyone who could resign himself to
+hang up the hammock of an idle woman in his home for the rest of his
+life.
+
+I am very much afraid that the Misses Simaise will never marry. They
+had, however, a golden and unique opportunity during the Commune. The
+family had taken refuge in Normandy, in a small and very litigious town,
+full of lawyers, attorneys, and business men. No sooner had the father
+arrived, than he looked out for orders. His fame as a sculptor was of
+service to him, and as in the public square of the town there happened
+to be a statue of Cujas done by him, all the notabilities of the place
+wanted to have their busts done.
+
+[Illustration: p141-152]
+
+The mother at once fastened up the hammock in a corner of the studio,
+and the young ladies organized a few parties. They at once met with
+great success. Here at least, poverty seemed but an accident due to
+exile; the disorder of the establishment was accounted for. The handsome
+girls laughed loudly themselves at their destitution.
+
+[Illustration: p142-153]
+
+They had started off without anything; and nothing could be had now
+Paris was closed. It lent to them an extra charm. It called to mind
+travelling gipsies, combing their beautiful hair in barns, and quenching
+their thirst in streams. The least poetical compared them in their minds
+to the exiles of Coblentz, those ladies of Marie-Antoinette's court who,
+obliged to fly in haste, without powder or hoops, or bedchamber women,
+were driven to all sorts of makeshifts, learning to wait upon themselves,
+and keeping up the frivolity of the French court, the piquant smile of
+the lost patches.
+
+[Illustration: p143-154]
+
+Every evening a throng of dazzled lawyers crowded Simaise's studio. To
+the sounds of a hired piano, all this little world danced the polka,
+waltzed, schottisched,--they still schottische in Normandy. "I shall
+end by marrying off one," thought old Simaise; and the fact is if one
+had gone off, all the others would have followed suit. Unluckily the
+first never went off, but it was a near touch. Amongst the numerous
+partners of these young ladies, in that corps de ballet of lawyers,
+attorneys and solicitors, the most rabid dancer was a widowed lawyer,
+who was extremely attentive to the eldest daughter. He was called by
+them "the first dancing attorney," in memory of Moliere's ballets, and
+certainly, considering the rate at which the fellow whirled round, Papa
+Simaise might well build the greatest hopes on him. But then business
+men do not dance like everybody else. This fellow, all the time he was
+waltzing, reflected silently: "The Simaise family is charming. Tra, la
+la, la la la, but it's useless their trying to hurry me on, la la la, la
+la la. I shall not propose till the gates of Paris are reopened. Tra la
+la, and I shall be able to make all necessary inquiries, la la la!" Thus
+thought the first dancing attorney, and in fact, directly the blockade
+of Paris was raised, he got his information about the family, and the
+marriage did not come off.
+
+Since then, the poor little creatures have missed many other chances.
+However, this has in no way spoilt the happiness of the singular
+household. On the contrary, the more they live, the merrier they are.
+Last winter they changed quarters three times, were sold up once, and
+notwithstanding all this, gave two large fancy balls!
+
+[Illustration: p145-156]
+
+[Illustration: p146-157]
+
+[Illustration: p149-160]
+
+
+
+
+FRAGMENT OF A WOMAN'S LETTER FOUND IN THE RUE NOTRE-DAME-DES-CHAMPS
+
+... What it has cost me to marry an artist! Oh, my dear! if I had known!
+but young girls have singular ideas about so many things. Just imagine
+that at the Exhibition, when I read in the catalogue the addresses of
+far-away quiet streets at the further end of Paris, I pictured to myself
+peaceable, stay-at-home lives, devoted to work and the family circle,
+and I said to myself (feeling beforehand a certainty that I should be
+dreadfully jealous), "That is the sort of husband to suit me. He will
+always be with me. We shall spend our days together; he at his picture
+or sculpture, while I read or sew beside him, in the concentrated light
+of the studio." Poor dear innocent! I had not the faintest idea then
+what a studio really was, nor of the singular creatures one meets there.
+Never, in gazing at those statues of bold undressed goddesses had the
+idea occurred to me that there were women daring enough to--and that
+even I myself----. Otherwise, I can assure you I should never have
+married a sculptor. No, indeed, most decidedly not! I must own, they
+were all against this marriage at home; notwithstanding my husband's
+fortune, his already famous name, and the fine house he was having built
+for us two. It was I alone who would have it so. He was so elegant, so
+charming, so eager. I thought, however, he meddled a little too much
+about my dress, and the arrangement of my hair: "Do your hair like this;
+so," and he would amuse himself by placing a flower in the midst of
+my curls with far greater skill than any one of our milliners. So much
+experience in a man was alarming, wasn't it? I ought to have distrusted
+him. Well, you will see. Listen.
+
+[Illustration: p151-162]
+
+We returned from our honeymoon. While I was busy settling myself in my
+pretty and charmingly furnished rooms, that paradise you know so well,
+my husband, from the moment of his arrival, had set to work and spent
+the days at his studio, which was away from the house. When he returned
+in the evening, he would talk to me with feverish eagerness of his next
+subject for exhibition.
+
+[Illustration: p152-163]
+
+The subject was "a Roman lady leaving the bath." He wanted the marble
+to reproduce that faint shiver of the skin at the contact of air, the
+moisture of the delicate textures clinging to the shoulders, and all
+sorts of other fine things which I no longer remember. Between you and
+me, when he speaks to me of his sculpture, I do-not always understand
+him very well. However, I used to say confidently: "It will be very
+pretty," and already I saw myself treading the finely sanded walks
+admiring my husband's work, a beautiful marble sculpture gleaming white
+against the green hangings; while behind me I heard whispered: "the wife
+of the sculptor."
+
+[Illustration: p153-164]
+
+At last one day, curious to see how our Roman lady was getting on, the
+idea occurred to me, to go and take him by surprise in his studio, which
+I had not yet visited. It was one of the first times I had gone out
+alone, and I had made myself very smart, I can tell you. When I arrived,
+I found the door of the little garden leading to the ground floor, wide
+open. So I walked straight in; and, conceive my indignation, when I
+beheld my husband in a white smock like a stone mason, with ruffled
+hair, hands grimed with clay, and in front of him, upright on a
+platform, a woman, my dear, a great creature, almost undressed,
+and looking just as composed in this airy costume as though it were
+perfectly natural.
+
+[Illustration: p154-165]
+
+Her wretched clothes covered with mud, thick walking boots, and a round
+hat trimmed with a feather out of curl, were thrown beside her on a
+chair. All this I saw in an instant, for you may imagine how I fled.
+Etienne would have spoken to me--detained me; but with a gesture of
+horror at the clay-covered hands, I rushed off to mama, and reached her
+barely alive. You can imagine my appearance.
+
+[Illustration: p155-166]
+
+"Good heavens, dear child! what is the matter?"
+
+I related to mama what I had seen, where this dreadful woman was, and
+in what costume. And I cried, and cried. My mother, much moved, tried to
+console me, explained to me that it must have been a model.
+
+"What! but it is abominable; no one ever told me about that before I was
+married!"
+
+Hereupon Etienne arrived, greatly distressed, and tried in his turn to
+make me understand that a model is not a woman like other women, and
+that besides sculptors cannot get on without them; but these reasons
+had no effect upon me, and I stoutly declared I would have nothing to
+do with a husband who spent his days _tête-à-tête_ with young ladies in
+such a costume.
+
+"Come, my dear Etienne," said poor mama, trying hard to arrange
+everything peaceably, "could you not out of respect for your wife's
+feelings, replace this creature by a dummy, a lay figure?"
+
+My husband bit his moustaches furiously.
+
+"Quite impossible, dear mother."
+
+"Still, my dear, it seems to me--a bright idea! milliners have
+pasteboard heads on which they trim bonnets. Well, what can be done for
+a head, could it not be done for----?" It seems this is not possible.
+
+At least, this was what Etienne tried to demonstrate at great length,
+with all sorts of details and technical words. He really looked very
+unhappy. I watched him out of the corner of my eye while I dried my
+tears, and I saw that my grief affected him deeply. At last, after
+an endless discussion, it was agreed that since the model was
+indispensable, I should be there whenever she came. There chanced to
+be on one side of the studio a very convenient little lumber-room, from
+which I could see without being seen. I ought to be ashamed, you will
+say, of being jealous of such kind of creatures, and of showing my
+jealousy. But, my pet, you must have gone through these emotions before
+you can offer an opinion about them.
+
+Next day, the model was to be there. I therefore summoned up my courage,
+and installed myself in my hiding-place, with the express condition that
+at the least tap at the partition my husband should come to me at once.
+Scarcely had I shut myself in, when the dreadful model I had seen
+the other day arrived, dressed Heaven knows how, and so wretched in
+appearance, that I asked myself how I could have been jealous of a woman
+who could walk abroad without a scrap of white cuff at her wrists,
+and in an old shawl with green fringe. Well, my dear, when I saw this
+creature throw off shawl and dress in the middle of the studio, and
+begin to undress in the coolest and boldest manner, it had an effect
+upon me I cannot describe. I choked with rage. I thumped at the
+partition. Etienne came to me. I trembled; I was pale. He laughed at me,
+gently re-assured me, and returned to his work. By this time the woman
+was standing up, half-naked, her thick hair loosened and hanging down
+her back in glossy heaviness. It was no longer the poor wretch of a
+moment ago, but already almost a statue, notwithstanding her common and
+listless air. My heart died within me. However, I said nothing. All at
+once, I heard my husband cry: "The left leg; the left leg forward." And
+as the model did not understand him at once, he went to her, and--Oh! I
+could contain myself no longer. I knocked. He did not hear me. I knocked
+again, furiously. This time he ran to me, frowning a little at being
+disturbed in the heat of work. "Come, Armande, do be reasonable!"
+Bathed in tears, I leant my head upon his shoulder, and sobbed out: "I
+can't bear it, my dear, I can't; indeed, I can't!"
+
+[Illustration: p159-170]
+
+At this, without answering me, he went sharply into the studio, and made
+a sign to that horror of a woman, who dressed herself and departed.
+
+For several days, Etienne did not return to the studio. He remained
+at home with me, would not go out, refused even to see his friends;
+otherwise he was quite kind and gentle, but he had such a melancholy
+air. Once I asked him timidly: "You are not working any more?" which
+earned me this reply: "One can't work without a model." I had not the
+courage to pursue the subject, for I felt how much I was to blame,
+and that he had a right to be vexed with me. Nevertheless, by dint of
+caresses and endearments, I cajoled him into returning to his studio and
+trying to finish the statue--how do they say it? out of his head, from
+imagination, in short, by mama's process. To me, this seemed quite
+feasible; but it gave the poor fellow endless trouble. Every evening
+he came in, with irritated nerves and more and more discouraged; almost
+ill, indeed. To cheer him up, I used often to go and see him. I always
+said: "It is charming." But, as a fact, the statue made no progress
+whatever. I don't even know if he worked at it. When I arrived, I would
+find him always smoking on his divan, or perhaps, rolling up pellets of
+clay, which he angrily threw against the opposite wall.
+
+One afternoon, when I was gazing at the unfortunate Roman lady, who,
+half modelled, had been so long in stepping out of her bath, an idea
+occurred to me. The Roman lady was about the same figure as myself;
+perhaps at a pinch I might----
+
+"What do you mean by a well-turned leg?" I asked my husband suddenly.
+
+He explained it to me at great length, showing me all that was still
+lacking to his statue, and which he could by no means give it without a
+model. Poor fellow! He had such a heart-broken air as he said this. Do
+you know what I did? Well, I bravely picked up the drapery which was
+lying in a corner, I went into my hiding-place; then, very softly
+without saying a word, while he was still looking at his statue, I
+placed myself on the platform in front of him, in the costume and
+attitude in which I had seen that abominable model. Ah my dear I What
+emotion I felt when he raised his eyes! I could have laughed and
+cried. I was blushing all over. And that tiresome muslin took so
+much arranging. Never mind! Etienne was so delighted that I was soon
+re-assured. Indeed, to hear him, my dear, you might suppose----.
+
+[Illustration: p162-173]
+
+[Illustration: p164-175]
+
+[Illustration: p165-176]
+
+
+
+
+A GREAT MAN'S WIDOW
+
+No one was astonished at hearing she was going to marry again.
+Notwithstanding all his genius, perhaps even on account of his genius,
+the great man had for fifteen years led her a hard life, full of
+caprices and mad freaks that had attracted the attention of all
+Paris. On the high road to fame, over which he had so triumphantly and
+hurriedly travelled, like those who are to die young, she had sat behind
+him, humbly and timidly, in a corner of the chariot, ever fearful of
+collisions. Whenever she complained, relatives, friends, every one was
+against her: "Respect his weaknesses," they would say to her, "they are
+the weaknesses of a god. Do not disturb him, do not worry him. Remember
+that your husband does not belong exclusively to you. He belongs much
+more to Art, to his country, than to his family. And who knows if
+each of the faults you reproach him with has not given us some sublime
+creation?" At last, however, her patience was worn out, she rebelled,
+became indignant and even unjust, so much indeed, that at the moment of
+the great man's death, they were on the point of demanding a judicial
+separation and ready to see their great and celebrated name dragged into
+the columns of a society paper.
+
+After the agitation of this unhappy match, the anxieties of the last
+illness, and the sudden death which for a moment revived her former
+affection, the first months of her widowhood acted on the young woman
+like a healthy calming water-cure. The enforced retirement, the quiet
+charm of mitigated sorrow, lent to her thirty-five years a second youth
+almost as attractive as the first.
+
+[Illustration: p167-178]
+
+Moreover black suited her, and then she had the responsible and rather
+proud look of a woman left alone in life, with all the weight of a great
+name to carry honourably. Mindful of the fame of the departed one, that
+wretched fame that had cost her so many tears, and now grew day by day,
+like a magnificent flower nourished by the black earth of the tomb, she
+was to be seen draped in her long sombre veils holding interviews with
+theatrical managers and publishers, busying herself in getting her
+husband's operas put again on the stage, superintending the printing of
+his posthumous works and unfinished manuscripts, bestowing on all these
+details a kind of solemn care and as it were the respect for a shrine.
+
+It was at this moment that her second husband met her. He too was a
+musician, almost unknown it is true, the author of a few waltzes
+and songs, and of two little operas, of which the scores, charmingly
+printed, were scarcely more played than sold. With a pleasant
+countenance, a handsome fortune that he owed to his exceedingly
+_bourgeois_ family, he had above all an infinite respect for genius,
+a curiosity about famous men, and the ingenuous enthusiasm of a still
+youthful artist. Thus when he met the wife of the great man, he was
+dazzled and bewildered. It was as though the image of the glorious muse
+herself had appeared to him. He at once fell in love, and as the widow
+was beginning to receive a few friends, he had himself presented to her.
+There his passion grew in the atmosphere of genius that still lingered
+in all the corners of the drawing-room. There was the bust of the
+master, the piano he composed on, his scores spread over all the
+furniture, melodious even to look at, as though from between their
+half-opened pages, the written phrases re-echoed musically. The actual
+and very real charm of the widow surrounded by those austere memories as
+by a frame that became her, brought his love to a climax.
+
+[Illustration: p169-180]
+
+After hesitating a long time, the poor fellow at last proposed, but
+in such humble and timid terms! "He knew how unworthy he was of her. He
+understood all the regret she would feel, in exchanging her illustrious
+name for his, so unknown and insignificant." And a thousand other
+artless phrases in the same style. In reality, the lady was indeed very
+much flattered by her conquest; however, she played the comedy of a
+broken heart, and assumed the disdainful, wearied airs of a woman whose
+life is ended without hopes of renewal. She, who had never in her life
+been so quiet and comfortable as since the death of her great man, she
+actually found tears with which to mourn for him, and an enthusiastic
+ardour in speaking of him. This, of course, only inflamed her youthful
+adorer the more and made him more eloquent and persuasive.
+
+In short, this severe widowhood ended in a marriage; but the widow did
+not abdicate, and remained--although married--more than ever the widow
+of a great man; well knowing that herein lay, in the eyes of her second
+husband, her real prestige. As she felt herself much older than he, to
+prevent his perceiving it, she overwhelmed him with her disdain, with
+a kind of vague pity, and unexpressed and offensive regret at her
+condescending marriage. However, he was not wounded by it, quite the
+contrary. He was so convinced of his inferiority and thought it so
+natural that the memory of such a man should reign despotically in her
+heart! In order the better to maintain in him this humble attitude, she
+would at times read over with him the letters the great man had
+written to her when he was courting her. This return towards the past
+rejuvenated her some fifteen years, lent her the assurance of a handsome
+and beloved woman, seen through all the wild love and delightful
+exaggeration of written passion. That she had since then changed her
+young husband cared little, loving her on the faith of another, and
+drawing therefrom I know not what strange kind of vanity. It seemed
+to him that these passionate appeals added to his own, and that he
+inherited a whole past of love.
+
+A strange couple indeed! It was in society, however, that they presented
+the most curious spectacle. I sometimes caught sight of them at the
+theatre. No one would have recognized the timid and shy young woman, who
+formerly accompanied the _maestro_, lost in the gigantic shadow he cast
+around him. Now, seated upright in the front of the box, she displayed
+herself, attracting all eyes by the pride of her own glance. It might be
+said that her head was surrounded by her first husband's halo of glory,
+his name re-echoing around her like a homage or a reproach. The other
+one, seated a little behind her, with the subservient physiognomy of one
+ready for every abnegation in life, watched each of her movements, ready
+to attend to her slightest wish.
+
+At home, the peculiarity of their attitude was still more noticeable. I
+remember a certain evening party they gave a year after their marriage.
+The husband moved about among the crowd of guests, proud but rather
+embarrassed at gathering together so many in his own house. The wife,
+disdainful, melancholy, and very superior, was on that evening more than
+ever the widow of a great man! She had a peculiar way of glancing at her
+husband from over her shoulder, of calling him "my poor dear friend," of
+casting on him all the wearisome drudgery of the reception, with an air
+of saying: "You are only fit for that." Around her gathered a circle of
+former friends, those who had been spectators of the brilliant debuts of
+the great man, of his struggles, and his success. She simpered to them;
+played the young girl! They had known her so young! Nearly all of
+them called her by her Christian name, "Anaïs." They formed a kind of
+conaculum, which the poor husband respectfully approached, to hear his
+predecessor spoken of. They recalled the glorious first nights, those
+evenings on which nearly every battle was won, and the great man's
+manias, his way of working; how, in order to summon up inspiration, he
+insisted on his wife being by his side, decked out in full ball dress.
+"Do you remember, Anaïs?" And Anaïs sighed and blushed.
+
+It was at that time that he had written his most tender pieces, above
+all _Savonarole_, the most passionate of his creations, with a grand
+duet, interwoven with rays of moonshine, the perfume of roses and the
+warbling of nightingales. An enthusiast sat down and played it on the
+piano, amid a silence of attentive emotion. At the last note of the
+magnificent piece, the lady burst into tears. "I cannot help it," she
+said, "I have never been able to hear it without weeping." The great
+man's old friends surrounded his unhappy widow with sympathetic
+expressions, coming up to her one by one, like at a funereal ceremony,
+to give a thrilling clasp to her hand. "Come, come, Anaïs, be
+courageous." And the drollest thing was to see the second husband,
+standing by the side of his wife, deeply touched and affected, shaking
+hands all round, and accepting, he too, his share of sympathy. "What
+genius! what genius!" he repeated as he mopped his eyes. It was at the
+same time ridiculous and affecting.
+
+[Illustration: p174-185]
+
+[Illustration: p177-188]
+
+
+
+
+THE DECEIVER.
+
+I have loved but one woman in my life, the painter D------ said one day
+to us.
+
+I spent five years of perfect happiness and peaceful and fruitful
+tranquillity with her. I may say that to her I owe my present celebrity,
+so easy was work, and so spontaneous was inspiration by her side. Even
+when I first met her, she seemed to have been mine from time immemorial.
+Her beauty, her character were the realization of all my dreams. That
+woman never left me; she died in my house, in my arms, loving to the
+last. Well, when I think of her, it is with a feeling of rage. If I
+strive to recall her, the same as I ever saw her during those five
+years, in all the radiance of love, with her lithe yielding figure, the
+gilded pallor of her cheeks, her oriental Jewish features, regular and
+delicate in the soft roundness of her face, her slow speech as velvety
+as her glance, if I seek to embody that charming vision, it is only in
+order the more fiercely to cry to it: "I hate you!"
+
+Her name was Clotilde. At the house of the mutual acquaintances where we
+met, she was known under the name of Madame Deloche, and was said to be
+the widow of a captain in the merchant service. Indeed, she appeared to
+have travelled a great deal. In the course of conversation, she would
+suddenly say: When I was at Tampico; or else: once in the harbour at
+Valparaiso. But apart from this, there was no trace in her manners or
+language of a wandering existence, nothing betrayed the disorder or
+precipitation of sudden departures or abrupt returns. She was a thorough
+Parisian, dressed in perfect good taste, without any of those bur-nooses
+or eccentric _sarapés_ by which one recognizes the wives of officers and
+sailors who are always arrayed in travelling costume.
+
+[Illustration: p179-190]
+
+When I found that I loved her, my first, my only idea was to ask her in
+marriage. Someone spoke on my behalf. She simply replied that she would
+never marry again. Henceforth I avoided meeting her; and as my thoughts
+were too wholly absorbed and occupied by her to allow me to work,
+I determined to travel. I was busily engaged in preparations for my
+departure, when one morning, in my own apartment, in the midst of all
+the litter of opened drawers and scattered trunks, to my great surprise,
+I saw Madame Deloche enter.
+
+"Why are you leaving?" she said softly. "Because you love me? I also
+love. I love you. Only (and here her voice shook a little) only, I am
+married." And she told me her history.
+
+It was a romance of love and desertion. Her husband drank, struck her!
+At the end of three years they had separated Her family, of whom she
+seemed very proud, held a high position in Paris, but ever since her
+marriage had refused to receive her. She was the niece of the Chief
+Rabbi. Her sister, the widow of a superior officer, had married for the
+second time a Chief Ranger of the woods and forests of Saint-Germain. As
+for her, ruined by her husband, she had fortunately had a very thorough
+education and possessed some accomplishments, by which she was able to
+augment her resources. She gave music lessons in various rich houses
+of the Chaussée d'Antin and Faubourg Saint Honoré, and gained an ample
+livelihood.
+
+The story was touching, although somewhat lengthy, full of the
+pretty repetitions, the interminable incidents that entangle feminine
+discourse.
+
+[Illustration: p181-192]
+
+Indeed she took several days to relate it. I had hired for us two, a
+little house in the Avenue de l'Impératrice, standing between the silent
+streets and peaceful lawns. I could have spent a year listening to and
+looking at her, without a thought for my work. She was the first to send
+me back to my studio, and I could not prevent her from again taking up
+her lessons. I was touched by her concern for the dignity of her life.
+I admired the proud spirit, notwithstanding that I could not help being
+rather humiliated at her expressed determination to owe nothing save to
+her own exertions. We were therefore separated all day long, and only
+met in the evening in our little house.
+
+With what joy did I not return home, what impatience I felt when she was
+late, and how happy I was when I found her there before me! She would
+bring me back bouquets and choice flowers from her journeys to Paris.
+Often I pressed upon her some present, but she laughingly said she was
+richer than I; and in truth her lessons must have been very well paid,
+for she always dressed in an expensively elegant manner, and the black
+dresses which, with coquettish care for her complexion and style of
+beauty she preferred, had the dull softness of velvet, the brilliancy
+of satin and jet, a confusion of silken lace, which revealed to the
+astonished eye, under an apparent simplicity, a world of feminine
+elegance in the thousand shades contained in a single colour.
+
+[Illustration: p183-194]
+
+Moreover her occupation was by no means laborious, she said. All her
+pupils, daughters of bankers or stock brokers, loved and respected her;
+and many a time she would show me a bracelet or a ring, that had been
+presented as a mark of gratitude for her care. Except for our work, we
+never left one another, and we went nowhere. Only on Sundays she went
+off to Saint-Germain to see her sister, the wife of the Chief Ranger,
+with whom she was now reconciled. I would accompany her to the station.
+She would return the same evening, and often in the long summer days, we
+would agree to meet at some station on the way, by the riverside or in
+the woods. She would tell me about her visit, the children's good looks,
+the air of happiness that reigned in the household. My heart bled for
+her, deprived of the pleasures of family life as she was doomed to be;
+and my tenderness increased tenfold in order to make her forget the
+falseness of her position, so painful to a woman of her character.
+
+What a happy time of perfect confidence, and how well I worked! I
+suspected nothing. All she said seemed so true, so natural. I could only
+reproach her with one thing. When talking of the houses she frequented,
+and the different families of her pupils, she would indulge in a
+superabundance of imaginary details and fancied intrigues, which she
+invented without any _apropos_.
+
+[Illustration: p185-196]
+
+Calm herself, she was ever conjuring up romances around her, and her
+life was spent in composing dramatic situations. These idle fancies
+disturbed my happiness. I, who longed to leave the world and society, in
+order to devote myself exclusively to her, found her too much taken up
+by indifferent subjects. However, I could easily excuse this defect in a
+young and unhappy woman, whose life had been hitherto a sad romance, the
+issue of which could not be foreseen.
+
+Once only did a suspicion or rather a presentiment cross my mind. One
+Sunday evening she failed to return home. I was in despair. What could
+I do? Go to Saint-Germain? I might compromise her. Nevertheless, after a
+dreadful night of anguish, I had decided on starting, when she arrived,
+looking pale and worried. Her sister was ill, she had been obliged to
+stay and nurse her. I believed all she told me, not distrusting the
+overflow of words called forth by the slightest question, which swamped
+the principal matter in a deluge of idle details: such as the hour of
+arrival, the rudeness of a guard, the lateness of the train. Twice or
+three times in the same week, she returned to Saint-Germain and slept
+there; then, her sister's illness over, she resumed her regular and
+peaceful existence.
+
+[Illustration: p187-198]
+
+Unfortunately, shortly after this, she in her turn fell ill. She came
+back one day from her lessons, shivering, wet, and fevered. Inflammation
+of the lungs set in; from the first her case was serious, and soon--the
+doctor told me--hopeless. My despair was maddening. Then I thought only
+of soothing her last moments. The family she loved so well, of which she
+was so proud, I would bring to her deathbed. Without letting her know,
+I first wrote to her sister at Saint-Germain, and I went off at
+once myself to her uncle, the Chief Rabbi. I hardly remember at what
+unreasonable hour I reached his house. Great catastrophes throw such a
+confusion into life and upset every detail. I fancy the good Rabbi was
+dining. He came out into the hall, wondering and amazed, to speak to me.
+
+"Monsieur," I said to him, "there are moments when all hatred must
+cease."
+
+He turned his venerable face towards me with a bewildered look.
+
+I resumed:
+
+"Your niece is dying!"
+
+"My niece! But I have no niece; you are mistaken."
+
+"Oh, Sir! I implore you, lay aside all foolish family rancour. I am
+speaking of Madame Deloche, the wife of Captain----"
+
+"I do not know Madame Deloche. You are mistaken, my son, I assure you."
+
+And he gently pushed me toward the door, taking me for a hoaxer or
+a madman. I must in fact have appeared very odd. What I heard was so
+unexpected, so terrible. She had lied to me then. Wherefore?
+
+Suddenly an idea flashed across me. I directed the cabman to drive me
+to the address of one of those pupils of whom she had so often spoken to
+me, the daughter of a well-known banker.
+
+I inquired of the servant: "Madame Deloche?"
+
+"There is no one here of that name."
+
+"Yes, I know that. It is a lady who gives music lessons to your young
+ladies."
+
+"We have no young ladies here, not even a piano. I don't know what you
+mean."
+
+And he angrily shut the door in my face.
+
+I made no further inquiries. I felt sure of meeting with the same
+answer, the same disappointment. On my return to our little house,
+they gave me a letter with the postmark of Saint-Germain. I opened
+it, instinctively guessing the contents. The Chief Ranger also had no
+knowledge of Madame Deloche. Moreover he had neither wife nor child.
+
+This was the last blow. Thus for five years each of her words had been
+a lie. A thousand jealous thoughts took possession of me, and madly,
+hardly knowing what I was about, I entered the room in which she was
+dying. All the questions that were torturing me burst forth over that
+bed of suffering: "Why did you go to Saint-Germain on Sundays? Where did
+you spend your days? Where did you spend that night? Come, answer
+me." And I bent over her, seeking in the depths of her still proud and
+beautiful eyes answers that I awaited with anguish; but she remained
+mute and impassive.
+
+I resumed, trembling with rage: "You never gave any lessons. I have been
+everywhere. Nobody knows you. Whence came that money, those laces, those
+jewels?" She threw me a glance full of despairing sadness, and that was
+all. In truth, I ought to have spared her, and allowed her to die in
+peace. But I had loved her too well. My jealousy was stronger than my
+pity. I continued: "For five years you have deceived me, lying to me
+every day, every hour. You knew my whole life, and I knew nothing of
+yours. Nothing, not even your name. For it is not yours, is it, the name
+you bear? Ah liar! liar! What, she is going to die, and I do not even
+know by what name to call her! Come, tell me who you are? Whence come
+you? Why did you intrude into my life? Speak! Tell me something!"
+
+Vain efforts! Instead of answering, she with difficulty turned her face
+to the wall, as though she feared that her last glance might betray her
+secret. And thus the unhappy creature died! Died without a word, liar to
+the last.
+
+[Illustration: p191-202]
+
+[Illustration: p195-206]
+
+
+
+
+THE COMTESSE IRMA.
+
+"_M. Charles d'Athis, literary man, has the honour to inform you of the
+birth of his son Robert._
+
+"_The child is doing well._"
+
+Some dozen years ago, all literary and artistic Paris received this
+little note on the glossiest of paper, embossed with the arms of the
+Counts of d'Athis-Mons, of whom the last Charles d'Athis had--while
+still young--succeeded in making for himself a genuine reputation as a
+poet.
+
+"The child is doing well." And the mother? Of her there was no mention
+in the note. Every one knew her but too well. She was the daughter of an
+old poacher of Seine et Oise; a quondam model, named Irma Salle, whose
+portrait had figured in every exhibition, as the original had in every
+studio. Her low forehead, lip curled like an antique, this chance return
+of the peasant's face to primitive lines--a turkey herd with Greek
+features--the slightly tanned skin common to all whose childhood
+is spent in the open air, giving to fair hair reflections of pale
+silkiness, adorned this minx with a kind of wild originality, completed
+by a pair of magnificently green eyes, burning beneath heavy eyebrows.
+
+[Illustration: p196-207]
+
+One night, on leaving a _bal de l'Opéra_, d'Athis had taken her to sup
+with him, and though this was two years ago, the supper still continued.
+But, whereas Irma had become completely a part of the poet's life,
+this intimation of the child's birth, curt and haughty as it was,
+sufficiently indicated how little she was considered by him. And in
+truth, in this temporary household, the woman was scarcely more than a
+housekeeper, showing in the management of the gentleman-poet's house
+the hard shrewdness of her dual nature of peasant and courtesan; and
+endeavouring, at no matter what price, to render herself indispensable.
+
+[Illustration: p197-208]
+
+Too rustic, and too stupid to understand anything of d'Athis' genius, of
+those fine verses, fashionable and refined, which made of him a sort of
+Parisian Tennyson, she nevertheless understood how to bend to all his
+whims, and be silent under his contempt; as if in the depths of that
+peasant nature lurked something of the boor's humble admiration for his
+lord. The birth of the child only served to accentuate her unimportance
+in the house.
+
+When the dowager Comtesse d'Athis-Mons, the mother of the poet, a
+distinguished and very great lady, learned that a grandson was born to
+her, a sweet little Vicomte, duly recognized and authenticated by the
+author of his being,* she was seized with a wish to see and kiss the
+child. It was, to be sure, a rather bitter reflection for the former
+reader to Queen Marie-Amélie to think that the heir of such a great name
+should have such a mother; but, keeping strictly to the terms of
+the _billets de faire pari_ the venerable lady could forget that the
+creature existed.
+
+* According to French law, an unmarried man recognizing his illegitimate
+child, thereby confers on him all the rights of a legitimate one,
+including both title and fortune.
+
+When she went to see the child out at nurse, she chose the days on which
+she would be sure not to meet any one; she admired him, spoilt him, took
+him to her heart, worshipped him with that grandmotherly adoration which
+is the last love of a woman's life, giving her an excuse for living
+a few years longer in order to see the little ones springing up and
+growing around her. Then when the baby Vicomte was a little bigger and
+returned to live with his father and mother, a treaty was made, for
+the Comtesse could not give up her beloved visits; at the sound of the
+grandmother's ring, Irma humbly and silently disappeared, or else the
+child was taken to his grandmother's house, and thus spoilt by his
+two mothers. He loved them equally, somewhat astonished to feel in
+the warmth of their caresses, a kind of exclusive-ness, a wish to
+monopolize. D'Athis, careless of everything but his verses, absorbed by
+his growing fame, was content to adore his little Robert, to talk of him
+to everyone and to imagine that the child belonged to him, and him only.
+This illusion did not last.
+
+"I should like to see you married," his mother said to him one day.
+
+"Yes, but how about the child?" "Don't worry yourself about that. I have
+picked out for you a young girl of good family but poor, who adores you.
+I have introduced Robert to her, and they are already great friends.
+Besides, the first year I will keep the darling with me. Afterwards, we
+shall see."
+
+[Illustration: p200-211]
+
+"And--the mother?" hesitated the poet, reddening a little, for it was
+the first time that he had spoken of Irma to his mother.
+
+[Illustration: p201-212]
+
+"Pooh!" replied the old dowager, laughing, "we will settle something
+handsome on her, and I am quite sure she will soon be married also. The
+_bourgeois_ of Paris is not particular."
+
+That very evening, d'Athis, who had never been desperately in love
+with his mistress, spoke to her of these arrangements and found her as
+usual--submissive and apparently docile to his will. But the next
+day, when he returned home, he found that mother and child had flown.
+Finally, they were discovered in a wretched hut on the borders of the
+Forest of Rambouillet, with Irma's father; and when the poet arrived he
+found his son, his young prince, in his velvet and lace, jumping on
+the old poacher's knee, playing with his pipe, running after the hens,
+delighted to shake his fair curls in the fresh air. D'Athis, though much
+upset by emotion, pretended to laugh the affair off, and wished at once
+to take his fugitives home with him. But Irma did not see the matter
+in the same light. She had been dismissed; she took her child with her.
+What more natural? Nothing short of the poet's promise that he would
+give up all thoughts of marriage decided her to return. Moreover, she
+made her own conditions. It had been too long forgotten that she was
+Robert's mother. Always to disappear and hide whenever Madame d'Athis
+appeared, was no longer possible for her. The child was growing too old
+for her to be exposed to such humiliations before him. It was therefore
+agreed that as Madame d'Athis had refused to be brought into contact
+with her son's mistress, she should no longer go to his house, but that
+the child should be brought to her every day.
+
+Then began for the old grandmother a regular torture. Every day fresh
+pretexts were made to keep the child away; he had coughed, it was too
+cold, it was raining. Then came his walks, rides, gymnastic exercises.
+The poor old lady never saw her grandson. At first she tried complaining
+to d'Athis; but women alone have the secret of carrying on these little
+warfares. Their ruses remain invisible, like the hidden stitches which
+catch back the folds and laces of their dress. The poet could see
+nothing of it; and the saddened grandmother spent her life in waiting
+for her darling's visit, in watching for him in the street, when he
+walked out with a servant; and these furtive kisses and hasty glances
+only augmented her maternal passion without satisfying it.
+
+During this time, Irma Salle--always by means of the child--succeeded in
+gaining ground in the father's heart. She was the recognized head of the
+house now, received visitors, gave parties, settled herself as a woman
+who means to remain where she is. Still she took care to say from time
+to time to the little Vicomte, before his father: "Do you remember the
+chickens at Grandpapa Salle's? Shall we go back and see them?"
+
+[Illustration: p204-215]
+
+And by this everlasting threat of departure, she paved the way to the
+end she had in view--marriage.
+
+It took her five years to become a Comtesse, but at length she gained
+her point. One day, the poet came in fear and trembling to announce to
+his mother that he had decided to marry his mistress, and the old lady,
+instead of being indignant hailed the calamity as a deliverance, seeing
+but one thing in the marriage; the possibility of once more entering her
+son's door, and of freely indulging her affection for her little Robert.
+
+[Illustration: p205-216]
+
+In truth, the real honeymoon was for the grandmother. D'Athis, after
+this rash act, wished to be away from Paris for a time. He felt uneasy
+there. And as the child, clinging to his mother's skirts ruled the
+house, they all established themselves in Irma's native country, within
+hail of old father Salle's chickens. It was indeed the most curious, the
+most ill-assorted household that could be imagined. Grandmama d'Athis
+and Grandpapa Salle met each night at the evening toilet of their
+grandson. The old poacher, his short black pipe wedged into the corner
+of his mouth; and the former reader at the Tuileries, with her silvery
+hair, and her imposing manner, together watched the lovely child rolling
+before them on the carpet, and admired him equally. The one brought
+him from Paris the newest, most expensive, most showy toys; the other
+manufactured for him the most splendid whistles from bits of elder; and,
+by Jove! the Dauphin hesitated between them!
+
+Upon the whole, among all these beings grouped as it were by force
+around a cradle, the only really unhappy one was Charles d'Athis. His
+elegant and patrician inspiration suffered from this life in the depths
+of a forest, like a delicate Parisian woman for whom the country air is
+too strong. He could no longer work, and far from that terrible Paris
+who shuts her gates so quickly against the absent, he felt himself
+already nearly forgotten. Fortunately the child was there, and when the
+child smiled, the father thought no more of his successes as a poet, nor
+of the past of Irma Salle.
+
+And now, would you know the finale of this singular drama? Read the
+brief note bordered with black, that I received only a few days ago, and
+which is the last page of this truly Parisian adventure:
+
+"_M. le Comte and Mme. la Comtesse d'Athis grieve to inform you of the
+death of their son Robert!_"
+
+Unhappy creatures! Imagine them all four gazing at each other before
+that empty cradle!
+
+[Illustration: p207-218]
+
+[Illustration: p208-219]
+
+[Illustration: p211-222]
+
+
+
+
+THE CONFIDENCES OF AN ACADEMIC COAT.
+
+That morning was the dawn of a glorious day for the sculptor Guillardin.
+
+Elected on the previous day a member of the _Institut_, he was about
+to inaugurate before the five Academies gathered together in solemn
+concourse, his academic coat, a magnificent garment ornamented with
+green palm-leaves, resplendent in its new cloth and silken embroidery,
+colour of hope. The blessed coat, opened ready to slip on, lay spread on
+an arm-chair, and Guillardin contemplated it tenderly as he arranged the
+bow of his white tie.
+
+"Above all no hurry," thought the good fellow. "I have plenty of time."
+
+The fact is that in his feverish impatience he had dressed a couple of
+hours too soon; and the beautiful Madame Guillardin--always very slow
+over her dressing--had positively declared that on this day she would
+only be ready at the precise moment--not a minute earlier, do you hear!
+
+Unfortunate Guillardin! What could he do to kill the time?
+
+"Well, all the same, I will try on my coat," he said, and gently as
+though he were handling tulle and lace, he lifted the precious frippery,
+and having donned it with infinite precaution, he placed himself in
+front of his looking-glass. Oh! what a charming picture the
+mirror disclosed to him! What an amiable little Academician, freshly
+hatched, happy, smiling, grizzled, and protuberant, with arms too short
+in proportion to his figure, which in the new sleeves acquired a stiff
+and automatic dignity!
+
+[Illustration: p213-224]
+
+Thoroughly satisfied with his appearance, Guillardin marched up and
+down, bowed as though entering the Academy, smiled to his colleagues of
+the fine arts, and assumed academical attitudes. Nevertheless, whatever
+pride one may feel at one's personal appearance, it is impossible to
+remain two hours in full dress, before a looking-glass. At last our
+Academician felt somewhat fatigued, and fearful lest he should rumple
+his coat, made up his mind to take it off and lay it back very carefully
+on the arm-chair. Then seating himself opposite on the other side of the
+fireplace, with his legs stretched out and his two hands crossed over
+his dress waistcoat, he began to indulge in sweet dreams as he gazed at
+the green coat.
+
+Like the traveller who, arrived at the end of his journey, likes
+to remember the dangers and difficulties that have beset his path,
+Guillardin retraced his life, year by year, from the day when he began
+to learn modelling in Jouffroy's studio. Ah! the outset is hard in that
+confounded profession. He remembered the fireless winters, the sleepless
+nights, the endless walks in search of work, the desperate rage
+experienced at feeling so small, so lost, and unknown in the immense
+crowd that pushes, hustles, upsets, and crushes. And yet all alone,
+without patronage or money, he had managed to rise. By sheer talent,
+sir! And his head thrown back, and eyes half-shut, the worthy man kept
+repeating out loud to himself: "By sheer talent. Nothing but talent."
+
+[Illustration: p215-226]
+
+A long burst of laughter, dry and creaky like an old man's laugh,
+suddenly interrupted him. Slightly startled, Guillardin glanced around
+the room. He was alone, quite alone, _tête-à-tête_ with his green coat,
+the ghost of an Academician solemnly spread out opposite him, on the
+other side of the fire. And still the insolent laugh rang on. Then as
+he looked at it more intently, the sculptor almost fancied that his coat
+was no longer in the place where he had put it, but really seated in the
+arm-chair, with tails turned up, and sleeves resting on the arms of the
+chair, the fronts puffed out with an appearance of life. Incredible as
+it may seem, it was this thing that was laughing. Yes, it was from this
+singular green coat that arose the uncontrollable fits of laughter by
+which it was agitated, shaken and convulsed, causing it to jerk its
+tails, throw itself back in the chair, and at moments place its two
+sleeves against its sides, as though to check this supernatural and
+inextinguishable excess of mirth. At the same time, a feeble voice, sly
+and mischievous, could be heard saying between two hiccups: "Oh dear,
+oh dear, how it hurts one to laugh like this! How it hurts one to laugh
+like this!" "Who the devil is there, for mercy's sake?" asked the poor
+Academician with wide staring eyes.
+
+The voice continued still more slyly and mischievously:
+
+"But it's I, Monsieur Guillardin, I, your palm-embroidered coat, waiting
+for you to start for the reception. I must crave pardon for having so
+unseasonably interrupted your musing; but really it is too funny to hear
+you talk of your talent! I could not restrain myself. Come, you can't be
+serious? Can you conscientiously believe that your talent has sufficed
+to raise you so rapidly to the point you have attained in life; that it
+has given you all you possess: honours, position, fame, fortune? Do
+you really think that possible, Guillardin? Examine yourself, my dear
+friend, before answering; go down, far, far down, into your inmost
+conscience. Now, answer me? Don't you see you dare not?"
+
+"And yet," stammered Guillardin, with comical hesitation, "I've.... I've
+worked a great deal."
+
+"Oh yes, a great deal, you have fagged tremendously. You are a toiler,
+a drudge, you knock off a great deal of work. You count your task by the
+hour, like a cabdriver. But the spark, my dear boy, which, like a golden
+bee flits through the brain of the true artist, and emits from its wings
+both light and music, when has it ever visited you? Not once, and you
+are well aware of it. It has always frightened you, that divine little
+bee! And yet it is this only that gives real talent. Ah! I know many who
+also work, but very differently from you, with all the anxiety and fever
+of sincere research, and yet who will never reach the point you have
+attained. Look here, acknowledge this much, now we are alone. Your one
+talent has been marrying a pretty woman."
+
+"Monsieur!" interrupted Guillardin, turning purple. The voice proceeded
+unchanged: "Ah well! This burst of indignation is a good sign. It proves
+to me what all the world knows indeed; that you are certainly more fool
+than knave. Come, come, you need not roll such furious eyes at me. In
+the first place, if you touch me, if you make the least crease or tear
+in me, it will be impossible to go to the reception to-day, and then,
+what will Madame Guillardin say? For after all, it is to her that all
+the glory of this great day is due.
+
+[Illustration: p219-230]
+
+It is she whom the five Academies are about to receive, and I can assure
+you that if I appeared at the _Institut_ on her pretty person, still
+so elegant and slender notwithstanding her age, I should cut a very
+different figure than with you. Confound it, Monsieur Guillardin,
+we must look facts in the face! You owe everything to that woman;
+everything, your house, your forty thousand francs (sixteen hundred
+pounds) a year, your cross of the Legion of Honour, your laurels, your
+medals."
+
+And with the gesture of a one-armed man, the green coat, with its empty
+embroidered sleeve, pointed out to the unfortunate sculptor the glorious
+insignia hung up on the walls of his alcove. Then, as though wishing
+the better to torment his victim, to assume every aspect, and every
+attitude, the cruel coat drew nearer the fire, and leaning forward on
+his arm-chair with a little old-fashioned and confidential air, he spoke
+familiarly, in the tone of a long-established intimacy:
+
+"Come, old boy, what I've said seems to upset you. Yet it is better you
+should know what everybody is aware of. And who could tell you better
+than your own coat? Let us reason a little. What had you when you
+married? Nothing. What did your wife bring you? Nothing. Then how do
+you explain your present fortune? You are going to repeat again that you
+have, worked very hard. But my poor friend, working day and night, with
+all the patronage and the orders from government which have certainly
+not been wanting to you since your marriage, you have never made more
+than fifteen thousand francs (six hundred pounds) a year. Can you for
+one moment suppose that was sufficient to keep up an establishment like
+yours? Remember that the beautiful Madame Guillardin has always been
+cited as a model of elegance, frequenting the richest society. Of course
+I am well aware that shut up as you were from morning till night in your
+studio, you never gave a thought to all this. You were satisfied with
+saying to your friends: 'I have a wife who is a surprisingly skilful
+manager. With what I gain, she not only pays our expenses, but manages
+also to put by money.' It was you who were surprising, poor man! The
+truth was that you had married one of those pretty little unscrupulous
+creatures of which Paris is full, an ambitious flirt, serious in what
+concerned your interests and unprejudiced in regard of her own, knowing
+how to reconcile your affairs and her pleasures. The life of these
+women, my dear fellow, resembles a dance programme in which sums would
+be placed side by side with the dancers' names. Yours reasoned in the
+following manner: 'My husband has no talent, no fortune, no good looks
+either; but he is an excellent man, good-natured, credulous, as little
+in the way as possible. Provided he leaves me free to amuse myself as
+I choose, I can undertake to give him all he lacks!' And from that day
+forth, money, orders, decorations from all countries kept pouring
+in upon your studio, with their pretty metallic sound and their
+many-coloured ribbons. Look at the row on my lapel. Then one fine
+morning, Madame was seized with the fancy--a fancy of beauty on the
+wane--to be the wife of an Academician, and it is her delicately
+gloved hand that has opened before you one by one all the doors of the
+sanctuary. Ah! my poor old fellow, your colleagues alone can tell you
+what all these green palms have cost you!"
+
+"You lie, you lie!" screamed Guillardin, half choked by indignation.
+
+"Ah no! my old friend, indeed I do not lie. You need only to look
+around you presently, when you enter the reception hall. You will see a
+malicious gleam in every eye, a smile at the corner of every lip,
+while they will whisper as you pass by: 'Here is the beautiful Madame
+Guillardin's husband.' For you will never be anything else in life, my
+dear fellow, but the husband of a pretty woman."
+
+This time, Guillardin could bear it no longer. Pale with rage, he
+bounded forward, to seize and dash into the fire, after first tearing
+from it the pretty green palm wreath, this insolent and raving coat; but
+a door opens and a well-known voice, tinged with a mixture of contempt
+and mild condescension, opportunely awakes him from his horrible
+nightmare:
+
+"Oh! that is just like you, asleep at the corner of the fire on such an
+important day!"
+
+And Madame Guillardin stands before him, tall and still handsome,
+although rather too imposing with her almost natural pink complexion,
+her powdered hair, and the exaggerated brilliancy of her painted eyes.
+With the gesture of the superior woman, she takes up the green-palmed
+coat, and briskly, with a little smile, helps her husband to don it;
+while he, poor man, still trembling with the horrors of his nightmare,
+draws a deep sigh of relief and thinks to himself: "Thank goodness! It
+was a dream!"
+
+[Illustration: p224-235]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Artists' Wives, by Alphonse Daudet
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+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
+    content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+<title>
+    Artists' Wives,
+    by Alphonse Daudet
+</title>
+
+<style type="text/css">
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Artists' Wives, by Alphonse Daudet
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Artists' Wives
+
+Author: Alphonse Daudet
+
+Illustrator: De Bieler, Myrbach; and Rossi
+
+Translator: Laura Ensor
+
+Release Date: September 5, 2007 [EBook #22522]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARTISTS' WIVES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h1>
+    ARTISTS' WIVES
+</h1>
+<h2>
+By Alphonse Daudet
+</h2><br />
+<br />
+
+<h3>
+Translated by Laura Ensor
+<br />
+<br />
+
+Illustrated by De Bieler, Myrbach; And Rossi
+</h3>
+<a name="image-0001"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" height="1034" width="762"
+alt="Frontispiece
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="image-0002"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/titlepage.jpg" height="743" width="459"
+alt="Titlepage
+">
+</center>
+
+
+
+
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr>
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+
+<center>
+<table summary="">
+<tr><td>
+
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_PROL">
+PROLOGUE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0002">
+MADAME HEURTEBISE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0003">
+THE CREDO OF LOVE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0004">
+THE TRANSTEVERINA.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0005">
+A COUPLE OF SINGERS.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0006">
+A MISUNDERSTANDING
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0007">
+ASSAULT WITH VIOLENCE.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0008">
+BOHEMIA AT HOME.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0009">
+FRAGMENT OF A WOMAN'S LETTER
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0010">
+A GREAT MAN'S WIDOW
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0011">
+THE DECEIVER.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0012">
+THE COMTESSE IRMA.
+</a></p>
+<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0013">
+THE CONFIDENCES OF AN ACADEMIC COAT.
+</a></p>
+
+
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+</center>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr>
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+
+<a name="2H_PROL"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<a name="image-0003"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/018.jpg" height="771" width="560"
+alt="P007-018
+">
+</center>
+
+<h2>
+    PROLOGUE.
+</h2>
+<p>
+<i>Stretched at full length, on the great divan of a studio, cigar in
+mouth, two friends&mdash;a poet and a painter&mdash;were talking together one
+evening after dinner</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>It was the hour of confidences and effusion. The lamp burned softly
+beneath its shade, limiting its circle of light to the intimacy of the
+conversation, leaving scarcely distinct the capricious luxury of the
+vast walls, cumbered with canvases, hangings, panoplies, surmounted by a
+glass roof through which the sombre blue shades of the night penetrated
+unhindered. The portrait of a woman, leaning slightly forward, as if to
+listen, alone stood out a little from the shadow; young with intelligent
+eyes, a grave and sweet mouth and a spirituel smile which seemed to
+defend the husband's easel from fools and disparagers. A low chair
+pushed away from the fire, two little blue shoes lying on the carpet,
+indicated also the presence of a child in the house; and indeed from the
+next room, within which mother and child had but just disappeared,
+came occasional bursts of soft laughter, of childish babble; the
+pretty flutterings of a nest going off to sleep. All this shed over the
+artistic interior a vague perfume of family happiness which the poet
+breathed in with delight:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+"<i>Decidedly, my dear fellow?" he said to his friend, "you were in the
+right. There are no two ways of being happy. Happiness lies in this and
+in nothing else. You must find me a wife!</i>"
+</p>
+<center>
+THE PAINTER.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>Good Heavens, no! not on any account. Find one for yourself, if you are
+bent upon it. As for me, I will have nothing to do with it.</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE POET.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>And why?</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE PAINTER.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>Because&mdash;because artists ought never to marry.</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE POET.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>That's rather too good. You dare to say that, and the lamp does not
+go out suddenly, and the walls don't fall down upon your head! But just
+think, wretch, that for two hours past, you have been setting before me
+the enviable spectacle of the very happiness you forbid me. Are you by
+chance like those odious millionaires whose well-being is in-creased by
+the sufferings of others, and who better enjoy their own fireside when
+they reflect that it is raining out of doors, and that there are plenty
+of poor devils without a shelter?</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE PAINTER.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>Think of me what you will. I have too much affection for you to help
+you to commit a folly&mdash;an irreparable folly.</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE POET.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>Come! what is it? You are not satisfied? And yet it seems to me that
+one breathes in happiness here, just as freely as one does the air of
+heaven at a country window.</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE PAINTER.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>You are right, I am happy, completely happy, I love my wife with all my
+heart. When I think of my child, I laugh aloud to myself with pleasure.
+Marriage for me has been a harbour of calm and safe waters, not one in
+which you make fast to a ring on the shore, at the risk of rusting
+there for ever, but one of those blue creeks where sails and masts are
+repaired for fresh excursions into unknown countries, I never worked as
+well as I have since my marriage. All my best pictures date from then.</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE POET.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>Well then!</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE PAINTER.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>My dear fellow, at the risk of seeming a coxcomb, I will say that I
+look upon my happiness as a kind of miracle, something abnormal and
+exceptional. Yes! the more I see what marriage is, the more I look back
+with terror at the risk I ran. I am like those who, ignorant of the
+dangers they have unwittingly gone through, turn pale when all is over,
+amazed at their own audacity.</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE POET.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>But what then are these terrible dangers?</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE PAINTER.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>The first and greatest of all, is the loss or degradation of one's
+talent. This should count, I think, with an artist. For observe that
+at this moment, I am not speaking of the ordinary conditions of life. I
+grant you, that in general marriage is an excellent thing, and that the
+majority of men only begin to be of some account when the family circle
+completes them or makes them greater. Often, indeed, it is necessary to
+a profession. A bachelor lawyer cannot even be imagined. He would not
+have the needful air of weight and gravity. But for all of us, painters,
+poets, sculptors, musicians, who live outside of life, wholly occupied
+in studying it, in reproducing it, holding ourselves always a little
+remote from it, as one steps back from a picture the better to see it, I
+say that marriage can only be the exception. To that nervous, exacting,
+impressionable being, that child-man that we call an artist, a special
+type of woman, almost impossible to find, is needful, and the safest
+thing to do is not to look for her. Ah! how well our great Delacroix,
+whom you admire so much, understood that! What a fine existence was his,
+bounded by his studio wall, devoted exclusively to Art! I was looking
+the other day at his cottage at Champrosay and the prim little garden
+full of roses, where he sauntered alone for twenty years! It has the
+calm and the narrowness of celibacy. Well now! think for a moment of
+Delacroix married, father of a family, with all the preoccupations of
+children to bring up, of money matters, of illnesses; do you believe his
+work would have been the same?</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE POET.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>You cite Delacroix, I reply Victor Hugo. Do you think that marriage
+hampered him for instance, while writing so many admirable books?</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE PAINTER.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>I think as a matter of fact, that marriage did not hamper him in
+anything. But all husbands have not the genius that obtains pardon,
+nor a halo of glory with which to dry the tears they cause to flow. It
+cannot be very amusing to be the wife of a genius. There are plenty of
+labourers' wives who are happier.</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE POET.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>A curious thing, all the same, this special pleading against marriage,
+by a married man, who is happy in being so.</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE PAINTER.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>I repeat that I don't give myself as an example. My opinion is formed by
+all the sad things I have seen elsewhere; all the misunderstandings
+so frequent in the households of artists, and caused solely by their
+abnormal life. Look at that sculptor who, in full maturity of age and
+talent, has just exiled himself, leaving wife and children behind him.
+Public opinion condemns him, and certainly I offer no excuse for him.
+And, nevertheless, I can well understand how he arrived at such a point!
+Here was a fellow who adored his art, and had a horror of the world, and
+society. The wife, though amiable and intelligent, instead of shielding
+him from the social obligations he loathed, condemned him for some
+ten years to all the exactions they involved. Thus she induced him to
+undertake a lot of official busts, horrible respectabilities in velvet
+skull caps, frights of women utterly devoid of grace; she disturbed him
+ten times a day with importunate visitors, and then every evening
+laid out for him a dress suit and light gloves, and dragged him from
+drawing-room to drawing-room. You will tell me he could have rebelled,
+could have replied point-blank: "No!" But don't you know that the very
+fact of our sedentary existences leaves us more than other men dependent
+on domestic influence? The atmosphere of the home envelopes us, and if
+some touch of the ideal does not lighten it, soon wearies and drags us
+down. Moreover, the artist as a rule puts what force and energy he
+has into his work, and after his solitary and patient struggles, finds
+himself left with no will to oppose to the petty importunities of life.
+With him, feminine tyrannies have free play. No one is more easily
+conquered and subdued. Only, beware! He must not be made to feel the
+yoke too heavily. If one day the invisible bonds with which he is
+surreptitiously fettered are drawn too tight and arrest the artistic
+effort, he will all at once tear them asunder, and, mistrusting his own
+weakness, will fly like our sculptor, over the hills and far away.</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>The wife of this sculptor was astounded at his flight. The unhappy
+creature is still wondering: "What can I have done to him?" Nothing.
+She simply did not understand him. For it is not enough to be good and
+intelligent to be the true helpmate of an artist, A woman must also
+possess infinite tact, smiling abnegation; and all this is found only by
+a miracle in a young creature, curious though ignorant as regards life.
+She is pretty, she has married a well-known man, received everywhere;
+why should she not wish to show herself a little on his arm? Is it
+not quite natural? The husband, on the contrary, growing intolerant
+of society as his talent progresses, finding time short, and art
+engrossing, refuses to be exhibited. Behold them both miserable, and
+whether the man gives in or resists, his life is henceforward turned
+from its course, and from its tranquillity. Ah! how many of these
+ill-matched couples have I known, where the wife was sometimes
+executioner, sometimes victim, but more often executioner, and nearly
+always unwittingly so! The other evening I was at Dargenty's, the
+musician. There were but a few guests, and he was asked to play. Hardly
+had he begun one off those pretty mazurkas with a Polish rhythm, which
+make him the successor of Chopin, when his wife began to talk, quite
+low at first, then a little louder. By degrees the fire of conversation
+spread. At the end of a minute I was the only listener. Then he shut the
+piano, and said to me with a heart-rent smile: "It is always like this
+here&mdash;my wife does not care for music." Can you imagine anything more
+terrible than to marry a woman who does not care for your art? Take my
+word for it, my friend, and don't marry. You are alone, you are free;
+keep as precious things, your liberty and your loneliness.</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE POET.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>That is all very well! You talk at your ease of solitude. Presently,
+when I am gone, if some idea occurs to you, you will gently follow it
+by the side of your dying embers, without feeling around you that
+atmosphere of isolation, so vast, so empty, that in it inspiration
+evaporates and disperses. And one may yet fear to be alone in the hours
+of work; but there are moments of discouragement and weariness, when
+one doubts oneself ones art even. That is the moment when it must be
+happiness to find a faithful and loving heart, ever ready to sympathize
+with one's depression, to which one may appeal without fearing to
+disconcert a confidence and enthusiasm that are, in fact, unalterable.
+And then the child. That sweet unconscious baby smile, is not that the
+best moral rejuvenescence one can have? Ah! I have often thought over
+that. For us artists, vain as all must be who live by success, by that
+superficial esteem, capricious and fleeting, that we call the vogue; for
+us, above all others, children are indispensable. They alone can console
+us for growing old. All that we lose, the child gains. The success we
+have missed, we think: "He will have it" and in proportion as our hair
+grows thin, we have the joy of seeing it grow again, curly, golden, full
+of life, on a little fair head at our side.</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE PAINTER.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>Ah, poet! poet! have you thought also of all the mouthfuls by which
+with the end of pen or brush we must nourish a brood?</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE POET.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>Well! say what you like, the artist is made for family life, and
+that is so true, that those among us who do not marry, take refuge in
+temporary companionships, like travellers who, tired of being always
+home-less, end by settling in a room in some hotel, and pass their lives
+under the hackneyed notice of the signboard: "Apartments by the month or
+night?"</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE PAINTER.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>Such are all in the wrong. They accept the worries of wedlock and will
+never know its joys.</i>
+</p>
+<center>
+THE POET.
+</center>
+<p>
+<i>"You acknowledge then that there are some joys?"</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>Here the painter, instead of replying, rose, searched out from among
+drawings and sketches a much-thumbed manuscript, and returning to his
+companion:</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>"We might argue like this," said he, "for ever so long without either
+convincing the other. But since, notwithstanding my observations, you
+seem determined to try marriage, here is a little work I beg you to
+read. It is written&mdash;I would have you note&mdash;by a married man, much in
+love with his wife, very happy in his home, an observer who, spending
+his life among artists, amused himself by sketching one or two such
+households as I spoke of just now. From the first to the last line of
+this book, all is true, so true that the author would never publish it.
+Read it, and come to me when you have read it. I think you will have
+changed your mind."</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>The poet took the manuscript and carried it home with him; but he did
+not keep the little book with all the needful care, for I have been able
+to detach a few leaves from it and boldly offer them to the public.</i>
+</p>
+<a name="image-0004"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/034.jpg" height="748" width="480"
+alt="P023-034
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    MADAME HEURTEBISE.
+</h2>
+<p>
+She was certainly not intended for an artist's wife, above all for
+such an artist as this outrageous fellow, impassioned, uproarious and
+exuberant, who, with his nose in the air and bristling moustaches,
+rushed through life defiantly flaunting the eccentric and whirlwind-like
+name of Heurtebise,* like a challenge thrown down to all the absurd
+conventionalities and prejudices of the <i>bourgeois</i> class. How, and by
+what strange charm had the little woman, brought up in a jeweller's
+shop, behind rows of watch chains and strings of rings, found the means
+of captivating this poet?
+</p>
+<p>
+* Hit the blast (literally).
+</p>
+<p>
+Picture to yourself the affected graces of a shopwoman with
+insignificant features, cold and ever-smiling eyes, complacent and
+placid physiognomy, devoid of real elegance, but having a certain love
+for glitter and tinsel, no doubt caught at her father's shopwindow,
+making her take pleasure in many-coloured satin bows, sashes and
+buckles; and her hair glossy with cosmetic, stiffly arranged by the
+hairdresser over a small, obstinate, narrow forehead, where the total
+absence of wrinkles told less of youth than of complete lack of thought.
+Such as she was, however, Heurtebise loved and wooed her, and as he
+happened to possess a small income, found no difficulty in winning her.
+</p>
+<p>
+What pleased her in this marriage was the idea of wedding an author,
+a well-known man, who would take her to the theatre as often as she
+wished. As for him, I verily believe that her sham elegance born of the
+shop, her pretentious manners, pursed up mouth, and affectedly uplifted
+little finger, fascinated him and appeared to him the height, of
+Parisian refinement; for he was born a peasant and in spite of his
+intelligence remained one to the end of his days.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0005"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:30%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/036.jpg" height="395"
+alt="036">
+</div>
+<p>
+Tempted by a quiet happiness and the family life of which he had been so
+long deprived, Heurtebise spent two years far from his friends, buried
+in the country, or in out-of-way suburban nooks, within easy distance
+of that great city Paris, which overexcited him even while he yet sought
+its attenuated atmosphere, just like those invalids who are recommended
+sea air, but who, too delicate to bear it in all its strength, are
+compelled to inhale it from a distance of some miles. From time to time,
+his name appeared in a newspaper or magazine at the end of an article;
+but already the freshness of style, the bursts of eloquence, were
+lacking by which he had been formerly known. We thought: "He is too
+happy! his happiness has spoilt him."
+</p>
+<p>
+However, one day he returned amongst us, and we immediately saw that he
+was not happy. His pallid countenance, drawn features contracted by a
+perpetual irritability, the violent manners degenerated into a nervous
+rage, the hollow sound of his once fine ringing laugh, all showed that
+he was an altered man. Too proud to admit that he had made a mistake,
+he would, not complain, but the old friends who gathered round him
+were soon convinced that he had made a most foolish marriage, and that
+henceforth his life must prove a failure. On the other hand, Madame
+Heurtebise appeared to us, after two years of married life, exactly the
+same as we had beheld her in the vestry on her wedding day. She wore
+the same calm and simpering smile, she had as much as ever the air of
+a shopwoman in her Sunday clothes, only she had gained self-possession.
+She talked now. In the midst of artistic discussions into which
+Heurtebise passionately threw himself, with arbitrary assertions, brutal
+contempt, or blind enthusiasm, the false and honeyed voice of his
+wife would suddenly make irruption, forcing him to listen to some idle
+reasoning or foolish observation invariably outside of the subject
+of discussion. Embarrassed and worried, he would cast us an imploring
+glance, and strive to resume the interrupted conversation. Then at last,
+wearied out by her familiar and constant contradiction, by the silliness
+of her birdlike brain, inflated and empty as any cracknel, he held his
+tongue, and silently resigned himself to let her go on to the bitter
+end. But this determined silence exasperated Madame, seemed to her
+more insulting, more disdainful than anything. Her sharp voice became
+discordant, and growing higher and shriller, stung and buzzed, like
+the ceaseless teasing of a fly, till at last her enraged husband in his
+turn, burst out brutal and terrific.
+</p>
+<p>
+She emerged from these incessant quarrels, which always ended in tears,
+rested and refreshed, as a lawn after a watering, but he remained
+broken, fevered, incapable of work, Little by little his very violence
+was worn out One evening when I was present at one of these odious
+scenes, as Madame Heurtebise triumphantly left the table, I saw on her
+husband's face bent downwards during the quarrel and now upraised, an
+expression of scorn and anger that no words could any longer express.
+The little woman went off shutting the door with a sharp snap, and he,
+flushed, with his eyes full of tears, and his mouth distorted by an
+ironical and despairing smile, made like any school-boy behind his
+master's back, an atrocious gesture of mingled rage and pain. After a
+few moments, I heard him murmur, in a voice strangled by emotion: "Ah,
+if it were not for the child, how I would be off at once!"
+</p>
+<p>
+For they had a child, a poor little fellow, handsome and dirty, who
+crawled all over the place, played with dogs bigger than himself, with
+the spiders in the garden, and made mud-pies. His mother only noticed
+him to declare him "disgusting" and that she had not put him out to
+nurse.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0006"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:25%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/040.jpg" height="476"
+alt="P029-040
+">
+</div>
+
+
+<p>
+She clung in fact to all the little shopkeeper traditions of her youth,
+and the untidy home in which she went about from early morn in elaborate
+costumes and astonishingly dressed hair, recalled the back-shops so dear
+to her heart, rooms black with filth and want of air, where in the
+short intervals of rest from commercial life, badly cooked meals were
+hurriedly eaten, at a bare wooden table, listening all the while for the
+tinkle of the shop-bell. With this class, nothing has importance but
+the street, the street with its passing purchasers and idlers, and its
+overflowing holiday crowd, that on Sundays throng the side walks and
+pavements. And how bored she was, wretched creature, in the country, how
+she regretted the Paris life! Heurtebise, on the contrary, required
+the country for his mental health. Paris still bewildered him like some
+countrified boor on his first visit. His wife could not understand it,
+and bitterly complained of her exile. By way of diversion she invited
+her old acquaintances, and when her husband was absent they amused
+themselves by turning over his papers, his memoranda, and the work he
+was engaged upon.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Do look, my dear, how funny it is. He shuts himself up to write this.
+He paces up and down, talking to himself. As for me, I understand
+nothing of what he does."
+</p>
+<p>
+And then came endless regrets, and recollections of her past life.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ah! if I had known. When I think that I might have married Aubertot and
+Fajon, the linen-drapers." She always spoke of the two partners at the
+same time, as though she would have married the firm. Neither did she
+restrain her feelings in her husband's presence.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0007"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width:30%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/042.jpg" height="307"
+alt="P031-042
+">
+</div>
+
+
+<p>
+She disturbed him, prevented all work, settling down with her friends in
+the very room he was writing in, and filling it with the silly
+chatter of idle women, who talked loud, full of disdain for a literary
+profession which brought in so little, and whose most laborious hours
+always resemble a capricious idleness. From time to time Heurtebise
+strove to escape from the life which he felt was daily becoming more
+dismal. He rushed off to Paris, hired a small room at an hotel, tried to
+fancy he was a bachelor; but suddenly he thought of his son, and with a
+desperate longing to embrace him hurried back the same evening into the
+country.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0008"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/043.jpg" height="296"
+alt="P032-043
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+On these occasions, in order to avoid the inevitable scene on his
+return, he took a friend back with him and kept him there as long as he
+could. As soon as he was no longer alone face to face with his wife,
+his fine intellect awoke and his interrupted schemes of work little by
+little and one after the other came back to him. But what anguish it was
+when his friends left! He would have kept his guests for ever, clinging
+to them by all the strength of his <i>ennui</i>. With what sadness would he
+accompany us to the stand of the little suburban omnibus which bore us
+back to Paris! and when we left, how slowly he turned homewards over the
+dusty road, with rounded shoulders and listless arms, listening to the
+vanishing wheels.
+</p>
+<p>
+In truth their <i>tête-à-tête</i> life had become unbearable, and to avoid
+it, he tried always to keep his house full. With his easy goodnature,
+his weariness and indifference, he was soon surrounded by a lot of
+literary starvelings. A set of scribblers, lazy, cracked day-dreamers,
+settled down upon him and became more at home than himself; and as his
+wife was but a fool, incapable of judging, because they talked more
+loudly, she found them charming and very superior to her husband. The
+days were spent in idle discussions. There was a clash of empty words,
+a firing of smallest shot, and poor Heurtebise, motionless and silent
+in the midst of the tumult, merely smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
+Sometimes, however, towards the end of an interminable repast, when all
+his guests, elbows on table, began around the brandy flasks one of
+those lengthy maundering conversations, benumbing like clouds of tobacco
+smoke, an immense feeling of disgust would seize hold of him, and not
+having the courage to turn out all these poor wretches, he would himself
+disappear and remain absent for a week.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0009"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:34%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/045.jpg" height="338"
+alt="P034-045
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+"My house is full of imbeciles," he said one day to me. "I dare not
+return." With this kind of existence, he no longer wrote. His name was
+never seen, and his fortune, squandered in a perpetual craving to have
+people in his house, disappeared in the outstretched hands around him.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0010"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:28%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/046.jpg" height="416"
+alt="P035-046
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+It was a long time since we had met when I received one morning a line
+of his dear little handwriting, formerly so firm, now trembling and
+uncertain. "We are in Paris. Come and see me. I am so dull." I found him
+with his wife, his child and his dogs, in a lugubrious little apartment
+in the Batignolles. The disorder which in this narrow space could not be
+spread about, seemed more hideous even than in the country. While the
+child and dogs rolled about in rooms the size of a chessboard
+compartment, Heurtebise; who was ill, lay with his face to the wall, in
+a state of utter prostration. His wife, dressed out as usual, and ever
+placid, hardly looked at him. "I don't know what is the matter with
+him," she said to me with a gesture of indifference. On seeing me he had
+for a moment a return of gaiety, and a minute of his old hearty laugh,
+but it was soon stifled. As they had kept up in Paris all their suburban
+habits, there appeared at the breakfast hour, in the midst of this
+household disorganized by poverty and illness, a parasite, a seedy
+looking little bald man, cranky and peevish, of whom they always spoke
+as "the man who has read Proudhon." It was thus that Heurtebise, who
+probably had never known his name, introduced him to everybody. When he
+was asked "Who is that?" he unhesitatingly replied, "Oh! a very clever
+fellow, who has thoroughly studied Proudhon." His knowledge was
+certainly not very apparent, for this deep thinker rarely made himself
+heard except to complain at table of an ill-cooked roast or a spoilt
+sauce. On this occasion, the man who had read Proudhon declared that the
+breakfast was detestable, which however did not prevent his devouring
+the larger half of it himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+How long and lugubrious this meal by the bedside of my sick friend
+appeared to me! The wife gossiped as usual, with a tap now and then to
+the child, a bone to the dogs, and a smile to the philosopher. Not once
+did Heurtebise turn towards us, and yet he was not asleep. I hardly know
+whether he thought. Dear, valiant fellow! In those paltry and ceaseless
+struggles, the mainspring of his strong nature had broken, and he was
+already beginning to die. The silent death agony, which however was
+rather an abandonment of life, lasted several months; and then Madame
+Heurtebise found herself a widow. Then, as no tears had dimmed her clear
+eyes, as she always bestowed the same care on her glossy locks, and as
+Aubertot and Fajon were still available, she married Aubertot and Fajon.
+Perhaps it was Aubertot, perhaps it was Fajon, perhaps even both of
+them. In any case, she was able to resume the life she was fitted for,
+and the voluble gossip and eternal smile of the shopwoman.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0011"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/049.jpg" height="309" width="316"
+alt="P038-049
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="image-0012"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/052.jpg" height="754" width="484"
+alt="P041-052
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    THE CREDO OF LOVE.
+</h2>
+<p>
+To be the wife of a poet! that had been the dream of her life! but
+ruthless fate, instead of the romantic and fevered existence she sighed
+for, had doomed her to a peaceful, humdrum happiness, and married her to
+a rich man at Auteuil, gentle and amiable, perhaps indeed a trifle
+old for her, possessed of but one passion,&mdash;perfectly inoffensive and
+unexciting&mdash;that of horticulture. This excellent man spent his days
+pruning, scissors in hand, tending and trimming a magnificent collection
+of rose trees, heating a greenhouse, watering flower beds; and really it
+must be admitted that, for a poor little heart hungering after an ideal,
+this was hardly sufficient food. Nevertheless for ten years her life
+remained straightforward and uniform, like the smooth sanded paths in
+her husband's garden, and she pursued it with measured steps, listening
+with resigned weariness to the dry and irritating sound of the
+ever-moving scissors, or to the monotonous and endless showers that fell
+from the watering pots on to the leafy shrubs. The rabid horticulturist
+bestowed on his wife the same scrupulous attention he gave to his
+flowers. He carefully regulated the temperature of the drawing-room,
+overcrowded with nosegays, fearing for her the April frosts or March
+sun; and like the plants in pots that are put out and taken in at stated
+times, he made her live methodically, ever watchful of a change of
+barometer or phase of the moon.
+</p>
+<p>
+She remained like this for a long time, closed in by the four walls
+of the conjugal garden, innocent as a clematis, full however of wild
+aspirations towards other gardens, less staid, less humdrum, where the
+rose trees would fling out their branches untrained, and the wild growth
+of weed and briar be taller than the trees, and blossom with unknown and
+fantastic flowers, luxuriantly coloured by a warmer sun. Such gardens
+are rarely found save in the books of poets, and so she read many
+verses, all unknown to the nurseryman, who knew no other poetry than a
+few almanac distichs such as:
+</p>
+<pre>
+     Quand il pleut à la Saint-Médard,
+     Il pleut quarante jours plus tard.*
+
+     * When it rains on Saint Medard's day,
+     It rains on for forty more days.
+</pre>
+<p>
+At haphazard, the unfortunate creature ravenously devoured the paltriest
+rhymes, satisfied if she found in them lines ending in "love" and
+"passion"; then closing the book, she would spend hours dreaming and
+sighing: "That would have been the husband for me!"
+</p>
+<p>
+It is probable that all this would have remained in a state of vague
+aspiration, if at the terrible age of thirty, which seems to be the
+decisive critical moment for woman's virtue, as twelve o'clock is for
+the day's beauty, the irresistible Amaury had not chanced to cross her
+path. Amaury was a drawing-room poet, one of those fanatics in dress
+coat and grey kid gloves, who between ten o'clock and midnight, go
+and recite to the world their ecstasies of love, their raptures, their
+despair, leaning mournfully against the mantel-piece, in the blaze of
+the lights, while seated around him women, in full evening dress, listen
+entranced behind their fans.
+</p>
+<p>
+This one might pose as the very ideal of his kind; with his vulgar but
+irresistible countenance, sunken eye, pallid complexion, hair cut short
+and moustaches stiffly plastered with cosmetic. A desperate man such
+as women love, hopeless of life but irreproachably dressed, a lyric
+enthusiast, chilled and disheartened, in whom the madness of inspiration
+can be divined only in the loose and neglected tie of his cravat. But
+also what success awaits him, when he delivers in a strident voice
+a tirade from his poem, the <i>Credo of Love</i>, more especially the one
+ending in this extraordinary line:
+</p>
+<pre>
+     Moi, je crois à l'amour comme je crois en Dieu! *
+
+     * I believe in love as I believe in God.
+</pre>
+<a name="image-0013"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:15%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/056.jpg" height="394"
+alt="P045-056
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Mark you, I strongly suspect the rascal cares as little for God, as for
+the rest; but women do not look so closely. They are easily caught by
+a birdlime of words, and every time Amaury recites his <i>Credo of Love</i>,
+you are certain to see all round the drawing-room rows upon rows of
+little rosy mouths, eagerly opening, ready to swallow the taking bait
+of mawkish sentimentality. Just fancy! A poet who has such beautiful
+moustaches and who believes in love as he believes in God.
+</p>
+<p>
+For the nurseryman's wife this proved indeed irresistible. In three
+sittings she was conquered. Only, as at the bottom of this elegiac
+nature there was some honesty and pride, she would not stoop to any
+paltry fault. Moreover the poet himself declared in his <i>Credo</i>, that
+he only understood one way of erring: that which was openly declared and
+ready to defy both law and society. Taking therefore the <i>Credo of Love</i>
+for her guide, the young woman one fine day escaped from the garden at
+Auteuil and went off to throw herself into her poet's arms.&mdash;"I can no
+longer live with that man! Take me away!"
+</p>
+<p>
+In such cases the husband is always <i>that man</i>, even when he is a
+horticulturist.
+</p>
+<p>
+For a moment Amaury was staggered. How on earth could he have imagined
+that an ordinary little housewife of thirty would have taken in earnest
+a love poem, and followed it out literally? However he put the best face
+he could on his over-good fortune, and as the lady had, thanks to her
+little Auteuil garden, remained fresh and pretty, he carried her off
+without a murmur. The first days, all was delightful. They feared lest
+the husband should track them. They thought it advisable to hide under
+fictitious names, change hotels, inhabit the most remote quarters of the
+town, the suburbs of Paris, the outlying districts.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0014"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:25%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/058.jpg" height="415"
+alt="P047-058
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+In the evening they stealthily sallied forth and took sentimental walks
+along the fortifications. Oh the wonderful power of romance! The more
+she was alarmed, the more precautions, window blinds and lowered veils,
+were necessary, the greater did her poet seem. At night, they opened the
+little window of their room and gazing at the stars rising on high above
+the signal lights of the neighbouring railway, she made him repeat again
+and again his wonderful verses:
+</p>
+<pre>
+     Moi, je crois à l'amour comme je crois en Dieu.
+</pre>
+<p>
+And it was delightful!
+</p>
+<a name="image-0015"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:18%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/059.jpg" height="433"
+alt="P048-059
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Unfortunately it did not last. The husband left them too much
+undisturbed. The fact is, <i>that man</i> was a philosopher. His wife gone,
+he had closed the green door of his oasis and quietly set about trimming
+his roses again, happy in the thought that these at least, attached
+to the soil by long roots, would not be able to run away from him. Our
+reassured lovers returned to Paris and then suddenly the young woman
+felt that some change had come over her poet. Their flight, fear of
+detection, and constant alarms,&mdash;all these things which had fed
+her passion existing no longer, she began to understand and see the
+situation clearly.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0016"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:28%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/060.jpg" height="386"
+alt="P049-060
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Moreover, at every moment, in the settling of their little household,
+in the thousand paltry details of every day life, the man she was living
+with showed himself more thoroughly.
+</p>
+<p>
+The few and scarce generous, heroic or delicate feelings he possessed
+were spun out in his verses, and he kept none for his personal use.
+He was mean, selfish, above all very niggardly, a fault love seldom
+forgives. Then he had cut off his moustaches, and was disfigured by
+the loss. How different from that fine gloomy fellow with his carefully
+curled locks, as he appeared one evening declaiming his <i>Credo</i>, in the
+blaze of two chandeliers! Now, in the enforced retreat he was undergoing
+on her account, he gave way to all his crotchets, the greatest of which
+was fancying himself always ill. Indeed, from constantly playing at
+consumption, one ends by believing in it. The poet Amaury was fond of
+decoctions, wrapped himself up in plaisters, and covered his chimney
+piece with phials and powders. For some time the little woman took up
+quite seriously her part of a nursing sister. Her devotion seemed to
+excuse her fault and give an object to her life. But she soon tired of
+it. In spite of herself, in the stuffy room where the poet sat wrapped
+in flannel, she could not help thinking of her little garden so sweetly
+scented, and the kind nurseryman seen from afar in the midst of
+his shrubs and flowerbeds, appeared to her as simple, touching and
+disinterested, as this other one was exacting and egotistical.
+</p>
+<p>
+At the end of a month, she loved her husband, really loved him, not with
+the affection induced by habit, but with a real and true love. One day
+she wrote him a long letter full of passion and repentance. He did
+not vouchsafe a reply. Perhaps he thought she was not yet sufficiently
+punished. Then she despatched letter after letter, humbled herself,
+begged him to allow her to return, saying she would die rather than
+continue to live with that man. It was now the lover's turn to be called
+"that man." Strange to say, she hid herself from him to write; for
+she believed him still in love, and while imploring her husband's
+forgiveness, she feared the exaltation of her lover.
+</p>
+<p>
+"He will never allow me to leave," she said to herself.
+Accordingly, when by dint of supplications she obtained forgiveness
+and the nurseryman&mdash;I have already mentioned that he was a
+philosopher,&mdash;consented to take her back, the return to her own home
+bore all the mysterious and dramatic aspect of flight. She literally
+eloped with her husband. It was her last culpable pleasure. One evening
+as the poet, tired of their dual existence, and proud of his regrown
+moustaches, had gone to an evening party to recite his <i>Credo of Love</i>,
+she jumped into a cab that was awaiting her at the end of the street and
+returned with her old husband to the little garden at Auteuil, for ever
+cured of her ambition to be the wife of a poet. It is true that this
+fellow was not much of a poet!
+</p>
+<a name="image-0017"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/066.jpg" height="703" width="484"
+alt="P055-066
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    THE TRANSTEVERINA.
+</h2>
+<p>
+The play was just over, and while the crowd, with its many varied
+impressions, hurried away and poured out under the glare of the
+principal portico of the theatre, a few friends, of whom I was one,
+awaited the poet at the artists' entrance in order to congratulate him.
+His production had not, indeed, been very successful. Too powerful to
+suit the timid and trivial imagination of the public of our day, it
+was quite beyond the range of the stage, limited as that is by
+conventionalities and tolerated traditions. Pedantic criticism declared:
+"It is not fit for the stage!" and the scoffers of the boulevards
+revenged themselves for the emotion these magnificent verses had given
+them by repeating: "It won't pay!" As for us, we were proud of the
+friend who had dared to roll forth in a ringing peal, his splendid
+golden rhymes, flashing the best product of his genius beneath the
+artificial and murderous light of the lustres, and presenting his
+personages in life-like size, heedless of the optical illusion of the
+modern stage, of the dimness of opera-glass and defective vision.
+</p>
+<p>
+Amid a motley crowd of scene shifters, firemen, and <i>figurants</i> muffled
+up in comforters, the poet approached us, his tall figure bent double,
+his coat collar chillily turned up over his thin beard and long grizzled
+hair. He seemed depressed. The scant applause of the hired claque and
+literary friends confined to a corner of the house foretold a limited
+number of representations, choice and rare spectators, and posters
+rapidly replaced without giving his name a chance of being known. When
+one has worked twenty of talent and life, this obstinate refusal of
+the public to comprehend is wearying and disheartening, and one ends by
+thinking: "Perhaps after all they are right." Fear paralyses and words
+fail. Our acclamations and enthusiastic greetings somewhat cheered him.
+"Really do you think so? Is it well done? 'Tis true I have given all I
+knew." And his feverish hands anxiously clutched ours, his eyes full
+of tears sought a sincere and reassuring glance. It was the imploring
+anguish of the sick person, asking the doctor: "It is not true, I'm
+not going to die?" No! poet, you will not die. The operettas and fairy
+pieces that have had hundreds of representations and thousands of
+spectators will be long since forgotten, scattered to the winds with
+their last playbills, while your work will ever remain fresh and living.
+</p>
+<p>
+As we stood on the now deserted pavement, exhorting and cheering him, a
+loud contralto voice vulgarised by an Italian accent burst upon us.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Hullo, artist! enough <i>pouégie</i>. Let's go and eat the <i>estoufato!</i>"
+</p>
+<a name="image-0018"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:17%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/069.jpg" height="456"
+alt="P058-069
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+At the same moment a stout woman wrapped up in a hooded cape and a red
+tartan shawl linked her arm in that of our friend, in a manner so
+brutal and despotic that his countenance and attitude became at once
+embarrassed.
+</p>
+<p>
+"My wife," he said, then turning towards her with a hesitating smile:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Suppose we take them home and show them how you make an <i>estoufato?</i>"
+</p>
+<p>
+Flattered in the conceit of her culinary accomplishments, the Italian
+graciously consented to receive us, and five or six of us started off
+for the heights of Montmartre where they dwelt, to share their stewed
+beef.
+</p>
+<p>
+I confess I took a certain interest in the artist's home life. Since his
+marriage our friend had led a very secluded existence, almost always in
+the country; but what I knew of his life whetted my curiosity. Fifteen
+years before, when in all the freshness of a romantic imagination,
+he had met in the suburbs of Rome a magnificent creature with whom he
+immediately fell desperately in love. Maria Assunta, her father, and a
+brood of brothers and sisters inhabited one of those little houses of
+the Transtevera with walls uprising from the waters of the Tiber, and an
+old fishing boat rocking level with the door. One day he caught sight of
+the handsome Italian girl, with bare feet in the sand, red skirt tightly
+pleated around her, and unbleached linen sleeves tucked up to the
+shoulders, catching eels out of a large gleaming wet net. The silvery
+scales glistening through the meshes full of water, the golden river
+and scarlet petticoat, the beautiful black eyes deep and pensive, which
+seemed darkened in their musing by the surrounding sunlight struck the
+artist, perhaps even rather trivially, like some coloured print on the
+titlepage of a song in a music-seller's window.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0019"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:18%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/071.jpg" height="496"
+alt="P060-071
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+It so chanced that the girl was heart-whole, having till now bestowed
+her affections on a big tom-cat, yellow and sly, also a great fisher of
+eels, who bristled up all over when anyone approached his mistress.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0020"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:15%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/072.jpg" height="456"
+alt="P061-072
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Beasts and men, our lover managed to tame all these folk, was married at
+Santa-Maria of the Transtevera and brought back to France the beautiful
+Assunta and her <i>cato</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+Ah! poor fellow, he ought also to have brought away at the same time
+some of the sunlight of that country, a scrap of the blue sky, the
+eccentric costume and the bulrushes of the Tiber, and the large swing
+nets of the <i>Ponte Rotto</i>; in fact the frame with the picture. Then he
+would have been spared the cruel disenchantment he experienced when,
+having settled in a modest flat on the fourth storey, on the heights of
+Montmartre, he saw his handsome Transteverina decked out in a crinoline,
+a flounced dress, and a Parisian bonnet, which, constantly out of
+balance on the top of her heavy braids, assumed the most independent
+attitudes. Under the clear cold light of Parisian skies, the unfortunate
+man soon perceived that his wife was a fool, an irretrievable fool. Not
+a single idea even lurked in the velvety depths of those beautiful black
+eyes, lost in infinite contemplation. They glittered like an animal's
+in the calm of digestion, or in a chance gleam of light, nothing more.
+Withal the lady was common, vulgar, accustomed to govern by a slap all
+the little world of her native hut, and the least opposition threw her
+into uncontrollable rages.
+</p>
+<p>
+Who would have guessed that the fine mouth, straitened by silence into
+the purest shape of an antique face, would suddenly open to let flow
+torrents of vulgar abuse? Without respect for herself or for him, out
+loud, in the street, at the theatre, she would pick a quarrel with him,
+and indulge in scenes of fearful jealousy. To crown all, devoid of
+any artistic feeling, she was completely ignorant of her husband's
+profession and language, of manners, in fact of everything. The little
+French she could be taught, only made her forget Italian, and the result
+was that she composed a kind of half and half jargon which had the most
+comical effect. In short this love story, begun like one of Lamartine's
+poems, was ending like a novel of Champfleury's. After having for a long
+time struggled to civilise this wild woman, the poet saw he must abandon
+the task. Too honourable to leave her, probably still too much in love,
+he made up his mind to shut himself up, see no one, and work hard. The
+few intimate friends he admitted to his house, saw that they embarrassed
+him and ceased to come.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0021"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:20%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/075.jpg" height="400"
+alt="P064-075
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Hence it was that for the last fifteen years he had been living boxed up
+in his household like in a leper's cell.
+</p>
+<p>
+As I pondered over this wretched existence, I watched the strange couple
+walking before me. He, slender, tall and round-shouldered.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0022"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:18%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/076.jpg" height="519"
+alt="P065-076
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+She, squarely built, heavy, shaking her shawl by an impatient shrug
+of her shoulders, with a free gait like a man's. She was tolerably
+cheerful, her speech was loud, and from time to time she turned round to
+see if we followed, familiarly shouting and calling by name those of us
+she happened to know, accentuating her words by much gesticulation as
+she would have hailed a fishing boat on the Tiber. When we reached their
+house, the <i>concierge</i>, furious at seeing so noisy a crew at such an
+unearthly hour, tried to prevent our entry. The Italian and he had a
+fearful row on the staircase. We were all dotted about on the winding
+stairs dimly lighted by the dying gas, ill at ease, uncomfortable,
+hardly knowing if we ought not to come down again.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Come, quick, let us go up," said the poet in a low tone, and we
+followed him silently, while, leaning over the banisters that shook
+under her weight and anger, the Italian let fly a volley of abuse in
+which Roman imprecations alternated with the vocabulary of the
+back slums. What a return home for the poet who had just roused the
+admiration of artistic Paris, and still retained in his fevered eyes
+the dazzling intoxication of his first performance! What a humiliating
+recall to every-day life!
+</p>
+<p>
+It was only by the fireside in his little sitting room that the icy
+chill caused by this silly adventure was dispelled, and we should soon
+have completely forgotten it, had it not been for the piercing voice and
+bursts of laughter of the signora whom we heard in the kitchen telling
+her maid how soundly she had rated that <i>choulato!</i> When the table was
+laid and supper ready, she came and seated herself amongst us, having
+taken off her shawl, bonnet and veil, and I was able to examine her at
+my leisure. She was no longer handsome. The square face, the broad heavy
+jaw, the coarse hair turning grey, and above all the vulgar expression
+of the mouth, contrasted singularly with the eternal and meaningless
+reverie of the dreamy gaze. Resting her elbows on the table, familiar
+and shapeless, she joined in the conversation without for an instant
+losing sight of her plate. Just over her head, proud amid all the
+melancholy rubbish of the drawing-room, a large portrait signed by an
+illustrious name, stood out of the surrounding shade,&mdash;it was Maria
+Assunta at twenty. The purple costume, the milky white of the pleated
+wimple, the bright gold of the over-abundant imitation jewelry, set off
+magnificently the brilliancy of a sunny complexion, the velvety shades
+of the thick hair growing low on the forehead, which seemed to be united
+by an almost imperceptible down to the superb and straight line of
+the eyebrows. How could such an exuberance of life and beauty have
+deteriorated and become such a mass of vulgarity? And curiously while
+the Transteverina talked, I interrogated her lovely eyes, so deep and
+soft on the canvas.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0023"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:18%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/079.jpg" height="284"
+alt="P068-079
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The excitement of the meal had put her in a good humour. To cheer up
+the poet, to whom his mingled failure and glory were doubly painful,
+she thumped him on the back, laughed with her mouth full, saying in her
+hideous jargon, that it was not worth while for such a trifle to fling
+oneself head downwards from the <i>campanile del Duomo</i>.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0024"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:30%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/080.jpg" height="608"
+alt="P069-080
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+"Isn't it true, <i>il cato?</i>" she added turning to the old tom-cat
+crippled by rheumatism, snoring in front of the fire. Then suddenly, in
+the middle of an interesting discussion, she screamed out to her husband
+in a voice senseless and brutal as the crack of a rifle:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Hey! artist! <i>la lampo qui filo!</i>"
+</p>
+<p>
+The poor fellow immediately interrupted his conversation to wind up the
+lamp, humble, submissive, anxious to avoid the scene he dreaded, and
+which in spite of all, he did not escape.
+</p>
+<p>
+On returning from the theatre we had stopped at the <i>Maison d'Or</i> to get
+a bottle of choice wine to wash down the <i>estoufato</i>. All along the road
+Maria Assunta had piously carried it under her shawl, and on her arrival
+she had placed it on the table where she could cast tender looks upon
+it, for Roman women are fond of good wine. Already twice or three times
+mistrustful of her husband's absence of mind, and the length of his
+arms, she had said:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Mind the <i>boteglia</i>&mdash;you're going to break it."
+</p>
+<p>
+At last, as she went off to the kitchen to take up with her own hands
+the famous <i>estoufato</i>, she again called out to him:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Whatever you do, don't break the <i>boteglia</i>."
+</p>
+<p>
+Unluckily, the moment his wife had disappeared, the poet seized the
+opportunity to talk about art, theatres, success, so freely and with so
+much gusto and vivacity, that&mdash;crash! By a gesture more eloquent than
+the others, the wonderful bottle was thrown down and fell to the ground
+in a thousand pieces. Never have I beheld such terror. He stopped short,
+and became deadly pale. At the same moment, Assunta's contralto was
+heard in the next room, and the Italian appeared on the threshold with
+flashing eyes, lips swollen with rage, red with the heat of the kitchen
+range.
+</p>
+<p>
+"The <i>boteglia!</i>" she roared in a terrible voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then timidly bending down to me, he whispered:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Say it's you."
+</p>
+<p>
+And the poor devil was so frightened, that I felt his long legs tremble
+under the table.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0025"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/086.jpg" height="750" width="457"
+alt="P075-086
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    A COUPLE OF SINGERS.
+</h2>
+<p>
+How could they help falling in love? Handsome and famous as they both
+were, singing in the same operas, living each night during five whole
+acts the same artificial and passionate existence. You cannot play with
+fire without being burnt. You cannot say twenty times a month: "I love
+you!" to the sighing of a flute or the tremolos of a violin, without at
+last being caught by the emotion of your own voice. In course of time,
+passion awoke in the surrounding harmonies, the rhythmical surprises,
+the gorgeousness of costume and scenery. It was wafted to them through
+the window that Elsa and Lohengrin threw wide open on a night vibrating
+with sound and luminousness:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Come let us breathe the intoxicating perfumes."
+</p>
+<p>
+It slipped in between the white columns of the Capulets' balcony, where
+Romeo and Juliet linger in the dawning light of day:
+</p>
+<p>
+"It was the nightingale, and not the lark."
+</p>
+<p>
+And softly it caught Faust and Marguerite in a ray of moonlight, that
+rose from the rustic bench to the shutters of their little chamber, amid
+the entangled ivy and blossoming roses:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Let me once more gaze upon thy face."
+</p>
+<p>
+Soon all Paris knew their love and became interested in it. It was the
+wonder of the season. The world came to admire the two splendid stars
+gently gravitating towards each other in the musical firmament of the
+Opera House. At last one evening, after an enthusiastic recall, as the
+curtain fell, separating the house full of noisy applause and the
+stage littered with bouquets, where the white gown of Juliet swept
+over scattered camellia blossoms, the two singers were seized with an
+irresistible impulse, as though their love, a shade artificial, had but
+awaited the emotion of a splendid success to reveal itself.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0026"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:10%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/088.jpg" height="423"
+alt="P077-088
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Hands were clasped, vows exchanged, vows consecrated by the distant
+and persistent plaudits of the house. The two stars had made their
+conjunction.
+</p>
+<p>
+After the wedding, some time passed before they were again seen on the
+stage. Then, when their holiday was ended, they reappeared in the
+same piece. This reappearance was a revelation. Until then, of the two
+singers, the man had been the most prized. Older and more accustomed to
+the public, whose foibles and preferences he had studied, he held the
+pit and boxes under the spell of his voice. Beside him, the other one
+seemed but an admirably gifted pupil, the promise of a future genius;
+but her voice was young and had angles in it, just as her shoulders were
+too slight and thin. And when on her return she appeared in one of her
+former parts, and the full rich, powerful sound poured out in the very
+first notes, abundant and pure, like the water of some sparkling spring,
+there ran through the house such a thrill of delight and surprise, that
+all the interest of the evening was concentrated on her. For the young
+woman, it was one of those happy days, in which the ambient atmosphere
+becomes limpid, light and vibrating, wafting towards one all the
+radiance and adulations of success. As for the husband, they almost
+forgot to applaud him, and as a dazzling light ever seems to make the
+shade around it darker, so he, found himself relegated, as it were, to
+the most insignificant part of the stage, as if he were neither more nor
+less than a mere walking gentleman.
+</p>
+<p>
+After all, the passion that was revealed in the songstress's acting, in
+her voice full of charm and tenderness, was inspired by him. He alone
+lent fire to the glances of those deep eyes, and that idea ought to have
+made him proud, but the comedian's vanity proved stronger. At the end
+of the performance he sent for the leader of the <i>claque</i> and rated him
+soundly. They had missed his entry and his exit, forgotten the recall at
+the third act; he would complain to the manager, &amp;c.
+</p>
+<p>
+Alas! In vain he struggled, in vain did the paid applause greet him,
+the good graces of the public, henceforth bestowed on his wife, remained
+definitively acquired to her. She was fortunate too in a choice of parts
+appropriate to her talent and her beauty, in which she appeared with all
+the assurance of a woman of the world entering a ball-room, dressed in
+the colours best suited to her, and certain of an ovation. At each fresh
+success the husband was depressed, nervous, and irritable. This vogue
+which left him and so absolutely became hers only, seemed to him a kind
+of robbery. For a long while he strove to hide from every one, more
+especially from his wife, this unavowable anguish; but one evening, as
+she was going up the stairs leading to her dressing-room, holding up
+with both hands her skirt-laden with bouquets, carried away by her
+triumphal success, she said to him with a voice still overcome by the
+excitement of applause: "We have had a magnificent house to-night." He
+replied: "You think so!" in such an ironical and bitter tone, that the
+young wife suddenly understood all.
+</p>
+<p>
+Her husband was jealous! Not with the jealousy of a lover, who will
+only allow his wife to be beautiful for him, but with the jealousy of an
+artist, cold, furious, implacable. At times, when she stopped at the end
+of an air and multitudes of bravos were thrown to her from outstretched
+hands, he affected an indifferent and absent manner, and his listless
+gaze seemed to say to the spectators: "When you have finished
+applauding, I'll sing."
+</p>
+<p>
+Ah! the applause, that sound like hail reechoing so delightfully through
+the lobbies, the house, and the side scenes, once the sweets of it are
+tasted, it is impossible to live without it. Great actors do not die of
+illness or old age, they cease to exist when applause no longer greets
+them. At the indifference of the public, this one was really seized with
+a feeling of despair. He grew thin, became peevish and bad-tempered. In
+vain did he reason with himself, look his incurable folly well in the
+face, repeat to himself before he came on the stage:
+</p>
+<p>
+"And yet she is my wife, and I love her!"
+</p>
+<p>
+In the artificial atmosphere of the stage the true sentiment of life
+vanished at once. He still loved the wife, but detested the singer. She
+realized it, and as one nurses an invalid, watched the sad mania. At
+first she thought of lessening her success, of making a sparing use and
+not giving the full power of her voice and talent; but her resolutions
+like those of her husband could not withstand the glare of the
+footlights. Her talent, almost unconsciously, overstepped her will. Then
+she humbled herself before him, belittled herself. She asked his advice,
+inquired if he thought her interpretation correct, if he understood the
+part in that way.
+</p>
+<p>
+Of course he was never satisfied. With assumed goodnature, in the tone
+of false friendship that comedians use so much amongst each other, he
+would say, on the evenings of her greatest successes:
+</p>
+<p>
+"You must watch yourself, dear, you are not doing very well just now,
+not improving."
+</p>
+<p>
+At other times he tried to prevent her singing:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Take care, you are lavishing yourself. You are doing too much. Don't
+wear out your luck. Believe me, you ought to take a holiday."
+</p>
+<p>
+He even condescended to the most paltry pretexts. Said she had a cold,
+was not in good voice. Or else he would try to pick some mean stage
+quarrel:
+</p>
+<p>
+"You took up the end of the duet too quickly; you spoilt my effect. You
+did it on purpose."
+</p>
+<p>
+He never saw, poor wretch, that it was he who hindered her bye play,
+hurrying on with his cue in order to prevent any applause, and in his
+anxiety to regain the public ear, monopolizing the front of the stage,
+leaving his wife in the background. She never complained, for she loved
+him too well; moreover success makes us indulgent and every evening
+she was compelled to quit the shade in which she strove to conceal and
+efface herself, to obey the summons enthusiastically calling her to the
+footlights. This singular jealousy was soon noticed at the theatre, and
+their fellow actors made fun of it. They overwhelmed the singer with
+compliments about his wife's singing. They thrust under his eyes the
+newspaper article in which after four long columns devoted to the star,
+the critic bestowed a few lines to the fast fading vogue of the husband.
+One day, having just read one of these articles, he rushed into his
+wife's dressing-room, holding the open paper in his hand and said to
+her, pale with rage:
+</p>
+<p>
+"The fellow must have been your lover." He had indeed reached this
+degree of injustice. In fact the unhappy woman, praised and envied,
+whose name figured in large type on the play bills and might be read on
+all the walls of Paris, who was seized upon as a successful advertising
+medium and placed on the tiny gilt labels of the confectioner or
+perfumer, led the saddest and most humiliating of lives. She dared not
+open a paper for fear of reading her own praises, wept over the flowers
+that were thrown to her and which she left to die in a corner of her
+dressing-room, that she might avoid perpetuating at home the cruel
+memories of her triumphant evenings. She even wanted to quit the stage,
+but her husband objected.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0027"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:24%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/095.jpg" height="422"
+alt="P084-095
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+"It will be said that I make you leave it." And the horrible torture
+continued for both.
+</p>
+<p>
+One night of a first representation, the songstress was going to the
+front, when somebody said to her: "Mind what you are about. There is
+a cabal in the house against you." She laughed at the idea. A cabal
+against her? And for what reason, Good Heavens! She who only met with
+sympathy, who did not belong to any coterie! It was true however. In
+the middle of the opera, in a grand duet with her husband, at the moment
+when her magnificent voice had reached the highest pitch of its compass,
+finishing the sound in a succession of notes, even and pure like the
+rounded pearls of a necklace, a volley of hisses cut her short. The
+audience was as much moved and surprised as herself. All remained
+breathless, as though each one felt prisoner within them the passage
+she had not been able to finish. Suddenly a horrible, mad idea flashed
+across her mind. He was alone on the stage, in front of her. She gazed
+at him steadily and saw in his eyes the passing gleam of a cruel smile.
+The poor woman understood all. Sobs suffocated her.
+</p>
+<p>
+She could only burst into tears and blindly disappear through the
+crowded side scenes.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was her own husband who had had her hissed!
+</p>
+<a name="image-0028"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/097.jpg" height="341" width="254"
+alt="P086-097
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="image-0029"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/099.jpg" height="747" width="465"
+alt="P088-099
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0006"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    A MISUNDERSTANDING &mdash;
+	</h2>
+
+
+
+<center>
+<table summary="">
+<tr><td>
+
+
+
+		<center>THE WIFE'S VERSION.</center>
+
+<p>
+<i>What can be the matter with him? What can he complain of? I cannot
+understand it. And yet I have done all I could to make him happy. To be
+sure, I don't say that instead of a poet I would not rather have married
+a notary or a lawyer, something rather more serious, rather less vague
+as a profession; nevertheless, such as he was he took my fancy.
+I thought him a trifle visionary, but charming all the same, and
+well-mannered; besides he had some fortune, and I thought that once
+married poetizing would not prevent him from seeking out some good
+appointment which would set us quite at ease.</i>
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0031"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/101.jpg" height="665" width="417"
+alt="P090-101
+">
+</center>
+
+<p>
+<i>He, too at that time seemed to find me to his taste. When he came to see
+me at my aunt's in the country, he could not find words enough to admire
+the order and arrangement of our little house, kept like a convent, "It
+is so quaint!" he used to say. He would laugh and call me all sorts of
+names taken from the poems and romances he had read. That shocked me a
+little I confess; I should have liked him to be more serious. But it
+was not until we were married and settled in Paris, that I felt all the
+difference of our two natures.</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>I had dreamed of a little home kept scrupulously bright and clean;
+instead of which, he began at once to encumber our apartment with
+useless old-fashioned furniture, covered with dust, and with faded
+tapestries, old as the hills. In everything it was the same. Would you
+believe that he obliged me to put away in the attic a sweetly
+pretty Empire clock, which had come to me from my aunt, and some
+splendidly-framed pictures given me by my school friends. He thought
+them hideous. I am still wondering why? For after all, his study was one
+mass of lumber, of old smoky pictures; statuettes I blushed to look at,
+chipped antiquities of all kinds, good for nothing; vases that would not
+hold water, odd cups, chandeliers covered with verdigris.</i>
+</p>
+<a name="image-0032"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/105.jpg" height="664" width="401"
+alt="P094-105
+">
+</center>
+
+<p>
+<i>By the side of my beautiful rosewood piano, he had put another, a little
+shabby thing with all the polish off, half-the notes wanting, and so
+old and worn that one could hardly hear it. I began to think: "Good
+gracious! is an artist then, really a little mad? Does he only care for
+useless things, and despise all that is useful?"</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>When I saw his friends', the society he received, it was still worse.
+Men with long hair, great beards, scarcely combed, badly dressed, who
+did not hesitate to smoke in my presence, while to listen to them made
+me quite uncomfortable, so widely opposed were their ideas to mine. They
+used long words, fine phrases, nothing natural, nothing simple. Then
+with all this, not a notion of ordinary civilities: you might ask them
+to dinner twenty times running, and there would be never a call, never
+a return of any kind. Not even a card or a bonbon on New Year's day.
+Nothing. Some of these gentry were married and brought their wives to
+see us. You should have seen the style of these persons! For every day
+wear, superb toilettes such as thank heaven, I would wear at no time!
+And so ill-arranged, without order or method. Hair loose, skirts
+trailing, and such a bold display of their talents! There were some who
+sang like actresses, played the piano like professors, all talked on
+every subject just like men. I ask you, is this reasonable?</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>Ought serious women once married to think of anything but the care of
+their household? This is what I tried to make my husband understand,
+when he was vexed at seeing me give up my music. Music is all very well
+when one is a little girl and has nothing better to do. But candidly,
+I should consider myself very ridiculous if I sat down every day to the
+piano.</i>
+</p>
+<a name="image-0033"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/109.jpg" height="656" width="489"
+alt="P098-109
+">
+</center>
+
+<p>
+<i>Oh! I am quite aware that his great complaint against me is that I
+wished to draw him from the strange society I considered so dangerous
+for him. "You have driven away all my friends?" he often used to say
+reproachfully. Yes, I did do so, and I don't regret it. Those creatures
+would have ended by driving him crazy. After leaving them, he would
+often spend the night in making rhymes and in marching up and down and
+talking aloud. As if he were not already sufficiently eccentric and
+original in himself without being excited by others! What caprices, what
+whims have I not put up with! Suddenly one morning, he would appear in
+my room: "Quick, get your hat&mdash;we are off to the country." Then one
+must leave everything, sewing, household affairs, take a carriage, go
+by rail, spend a mint of money! And I, who only thought of economy! For
+after all, it is not with fifteen thousand francs (six hundred pounds)
+a year that one can be counted rich in Paris or make any provision for
+one's children. At first he used to laugh at my observations, and try
+to make me laugh; then when he saw how firmly I was resolved to remain
+serious, he found fault with my simplicity and my taste for home. Am
+I to blame because I detest theatres and concerts, and those artistic
+soirées to which he wished to drag me, and where he met his old
+acquaintances, a lot of scatterbrains, dissipated and Bohemian?</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>At one time, I thought he was becoming more reasonable. I had managed to
+with-draw him from his good-for-nothing circle of friends, and to gather
+round us a society of sensible people, well-settled in life, who might
+be of use to us. But no! Monsieur was bored. He was always bored,
+from morning till night. At our little soirees, where I was careful to
+arrange a whist table and a tea table, all as it should be, he would
+appear with such a face! in such a temper! When we were alone, it was
+just the same. Nevertheless, I was full of little attentions. I used to
+say to him: "Read me something of what you are doing." He recited to me
+verses, tirades, of which I understood nothing, but I put on an air of
+interest, and here and there made some little remark, which by the way,
+inevitably had the knack of annoying him. In a year, working night and
+day, he could only make of all his rhymes, one single volume which never
+sold, I said to him: "Ah! you see," just in a reasoning spirit, to bring
+him to something more comprehensible, more remunerative, He got into a
+frightful rage, and afterwards sank into a state of gloomy depression
+which made me very unhappy. My friends advised me as well as they could:
+"You see, my dear, it is the ennui and bad temper of an unoccupied man.
+If he worked a little more, he would not be so gloomy."</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>Then I set to work, and all my belongings too, to seek him an
+appointment, I moved heaven and earth, I made I don't know how many
+visits to the wives of government officials, heads of departments; I
+even penetrated into a minister's office. It was a surprise I reserved
+for him, I said to my-self: "We shall see whether he will be pleased
+this time," At length, the day when I received his nomination in a
+lovely envelope with five big seals, I carried it myself to his table,
+half wild with joy. It was provision for the future, comfort, self
+content, the tranquillity of regular work. Do you know what he did? He
+said: "He would never forgive me." After which he tore the minister's
+letter into a thousand pieces, and rushed out, banging the doors. Oh!
+these artists, poor unsettled brains taking life all the wrong way! What
+could be done with such a man? I should have liked to talk to him, to
+reason with him. In vain. Those were indeed right, who had said to me:
+"He is a madman." Of what use moreover to talk to him? We do not
+speak the same language. He would not understand me, any more than I
+understand him. And now, here we must sit and look at each other. I see
+hatred in his glance, and yet I have true affection for him. It is very
+painful.</i>
+</p>
+
+
+</td><td>
+<a name="image-0030"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/100.jpg" height="730" width="424"
+alt="P089-100
+">
+</center>
+
+
+
+<center>
+THE HUSBAND'S VERSION.
+</center>
+<p>
+I had thought of everything, taken all my precautions. I would not have
+a Parisian, because Parisian women alarm me. I would not have a rich
+wife because she might be too exacting and extravagant. I also
+dreaded family ties, that terrible network of homely affections, which
+monopolizes, imprisons, dwarfs and stifles. My wife was the realization
+of my fondest dreams. I said to myself: "She will owe me everything."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0034"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/102.jpg" height="674" width="411"
+alt="P091-102
+">
+</center>
+
+<p>
+What pleasure to educate this simple mind to the contemplation of
+beauty, to initiate this pure soul to my enthusiasms and hopes, to give
+life, in short, to this statue! The fact is she had the air of a
+statue, with her great serious calm eyes, her regular Greek profile, her
+features, which although rather too marked and severe, were softened by
+the rose-tinted bloom of youth and the shadow of the waving hair. Added
+to all this was a faint provincial accent that was my especial joy, an
+accent to which with closed eyes, I listened as a recollection of happy
+childhood, the echo of a tranquil life in some far away, utterly unknown
+nook. And to think that now, this accent has become unbearable to me!
+But in those days, I had faith. I loved, I was happy, and disposed to
+be still more so. Full of ardour for my work, I had as soon as I was
+married begun a new poem, and in the evening I read to her the verses
+of the day. I wished to make her enter completely into my existence. The
+first time or two, she said to me: "Very pretty," and I was grateful
+to her for this childish approbation, hoping that in time she would
+comprehend better what was the very breath of my life.
+</p>
+<p>
+Poor creature! How I must have bored her! After having read her my
+verses, I explained them to her, seeking in her beautiful astonished
+eyes the hoped-for gleam of light, ever fancying I should surprise it.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0035"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/106.jpg" height="662" width="426"
+alt="P095-106
+">
+</center>
+
+<p>
+I obliged her to give me her opinion and I passed over all that was
+foolish to retain only what a chance inspiration might contain of good.
+I so longed to make of her my true help mate, the real artist's wife!
+But no! She could not understand. In vain did I read to her the great
+poets, choosing the strongest, the tenderest,&mdash;the golden rhymes of the
+love poems fell upon her ear as coldly and tediously as a hailstorm.
+Once I remember, we were reading <i>la Nuit d'Octobre</i>; she interrupted
+me, to ask for something more serious! I tried then to explain to her
+that there is nothing in the world more serious than poetry, which is
+the very essence of life, floating above it like a glory of light,
+in the % vibrations of which words and thoughts are elevated and
+transfigured. Oh! what a disdainful smile passed over her pretty mouth
+and what condescension in her glance! As though a child or a madman had
+spoken to her.
+</p>
+<p>
+What have I not thus wasted of strength and useless eloquence! Nothing
+was of any use. I stumbled perpetually against what she called good
+sense, reason, that eternal excuse of dried up hearts and narrow minds.
+And it was not only poetry that bored her. Before our marriage, I had
+believed her to be a musician. She seemed to understand the pieces
+she played, aided by the underlinings of her teacher. Scarcely was she
+married when she closed her piano, and gave up her music.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0036"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/110.jpg" height="650" width="421"
+alt="P099-110
+">
+</center>
+
+<p>
+Can there be anything more melancholy than this abandonment by the young
+wife of all that had pleased in the young girl? The reply given, the
+part ended, the actress quits her costume. It was all done with a view
+to marriage; a surface of petty accomplishments, of pretty smiles, and
+fleeting elegance. With her the change was instantaneous. At first I
+hoped that the taste I could not give her, an artistic intelligence and
+love of the beautiful, would come to her in spite of herself, through
+the medium of this wonderful Paris, with its unconscious refining
+influence on eyes and mind. But what can be done with a woman who does
+not know how to open a book, to look at a picture, who is always bored
+and refuses to see anything? I soon understood that I must resign myself
+to have by my side nothing but a housewife, active and economical,
+indeed very economical. According to Proudhon, a woman, nothing more. I
+could have shaped my course accordingly; so many artists are in the same
+plight! But this modest rôle was not enough for her.
+</p>
+<p>
+Little by little, slyly, silently, she managed to get rid of all my
+friends. We had not made any difference in our talk because of * her
+presence. We talked as we always had done in the past, but she never
+understood the irony or the fantasy of our artistic exaggerations, of
+our wild axioms, or paradoxes, in which-an idea is travestied only to
+figure more brilliantly. It only irritated and puzzled her. Seated in
+a quiet corner of the drawing-room, she listened and said nothing,
+planning all the while how she should eliminate one by one those who
+so much shocked her. Notwithstanding the seeming friendliness of the
+welcome, there could already be felt in my rooms that thin current
+of cold air, which warns that the door is open and that it is time to
+leave.
+</p>
+<p>
+My friends once gone, she replaced them by her own. I found myself
+surrounded by an absurd set of worthies, strangers to art, who hated
+poetry and scorned it because "it made no money." On purpose the names
+of fashionable writers who manufacture plays and novels by the dozen
+were cited before me, with the remark: "So and so makes a great deal of
+money!"
+</p>
+<p>
+Make money! this is the all-important point for these creatures, and
+I had the pain of seeing my wife think with them. In this fatal
+atmosphere, her provincial habits, her mean and narrow views were made
+still more odious by an incredible stinginess.
+</p>
+<p>
+Fifteen thousand francs (six hundred pounds) a year! It seemed to me
+that with this income we could live without fear of the morrow. Not
+at all! She was always grumbling, talking of economy, reform, good
+investments. As she overpowered me with these dull details, I felt all
+desire and taste for work ebb away from me. Sometimes she came to
+my table and scornfully turned over the scattered half-written
+pages:&mdash;"Only that!" she would say, counting the hours lost upon the
+insignificant little lines. Ah I if I had listened to her, my glorious
+title of poet, which it has taken me so many years to win, would be now
+dragged through the black mire of sensational literature. And when
+I think that to this selfsame woman I had at first opened my heart,
+confided all my dreams; and when I think that the contempt she now
+shows me because I do not make money dates from the first days of our
+marriage; I am indeed ashamed, both of myself and of her.
+</p>
+<p>
+I make no money! That explains everything, the reproach of her glance,
+her admiration for fruitful commonplaces, culminating in the steps she
+took but lately to obtain for me I don't know what post in a government
+office.
+</p>
+<p>
+At this, however, I resisted. No defence remains to me but this, a force
+of inertia, which yields to no assault, to no persuasion. She may speak
+for hours, freeze me with her chilliest smile, my thought ever escapes
+her, will always escape her. And we have come to this! Married and
+condemned to live together, leagues of distance separate us; and we are
+both too weary, too utterly discouraged, to care to make one step that
+might draw us together. It is horrible!
+</p>
+
+
+
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+</center>
+
+
+<a name="image-0037"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/119.jpg" height="375" width="294"
+alt="P108-119
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="image-0038"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/122.jpg" height="683" width="408"
+alt="P111-122
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0007"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    ASSAULT WITH VIOLENCE.
+</h2>
+<p>
+MR. PETITBRY, Chamber Counsel.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>To Madame Nina de B., at her Aunt's house, in Moulins</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+Madame, conformably to the wishes of Madame your aunt, I have looked
+into the matter in question. I have noted down one by one all the
+different points and submitted your grievances to the most scrupulous
+investigation. Well, on my soul and conscience, I do not find the
+fruit ripe enough, or to speak plainly, I do not consider that you have
+sufficient grounds to justify your petition for a judicial separation.
+Let us not forget that the French law is a very downright kind of thing,
+totally devoid of delicate feeling for nice distinctions. It recognizes
+only acts, serious, brutal acts, and unfortunately it is these acts
+we lack. Most assuredly I have been deeply touched while reading the
+account of the first year of your married life, so very painful to you.
+You have paid dearly for the glory of marrying a famous artist, one of
+those men in whom fame and adulation develop monstrous egotism, and who
+under penalty of shattering the frail and timid life that would attach
+itself to theirs, must live alone. Ah! madame, since the commencement of
+my career, how many wretched wives have I not beheld in the same cruel
+position as yourself! Artists who live only by and for the public, carry
+nothing home to their hearth but fatigue from glory, or the melancholy
+of their disappointments. An ill-regulated existence, without compass
+or rudder, subversive ideas contrary to all social conventionality,
+contempt of family life and its happiness, cerebral excitement sought
+for in the abuse of tobacco and strong drink, without mentioning
+anything else, this constitutes the terrible artistic element from which
+your dear Aunt is desirous of withdrawing you; but I must repeat, that
+while I fully comprehend her anxiety, nay her remorse even at having
+consented to such a marriage, I cannot see that matters have reached a
+point calculated to warrant your petition.
+</p>
+<p>
+I have, however, set down the outlines of a judicial memorandum, in
+which your principal grievances are grouped and skilfully brought into
+prominence. Here are the principal divisions of the work:
+</p>
+<p>
+1°. <i>Insulting conduct of Monsieur towards Madame's family</i>.&mdash;Refusal
+to receive our Aunt from Moulins, who brought us up, and is tenderly
+attached to us.&mdash;Nicknames such as <i>Tata Bobosse</i>, Fairy Carabossa,
+and others, bestowed on that venerable old maid, whose back is slightly
+bent.&mdash;Jests and quips, drawings in pen and pencil of the aforesaid and
+her infirmity.
+</p>
+<p>
+2°. <i>Unsociableness</i>.&mdash;Refusal to see Madame's friends, to make wedding
+calls, to send cards, to answer invitations, etc.
+</p>
+<p>
+3°. <i>Wanton extravagance</i>.&mdash;Money lent without acknowledgment to all
+kinds of Bohemians.&mdash;Open house and free quarters, turning the house
+into an inn.&mdash;Constant subscriptions for statues, tombs, and productions
+of unfortunate fellow artists.&mdash;Starting an artistic and literary
+magazine!!!
+</p>
+<p>
+4°. <i>Insulting conduct to Madame</i>.&mdash;Having said out loud when alluding
+to us: "What a fool!"
+</p>
+<p>
+5°. <i>Cruelty and violence</i>.&mdash;Excessive brutality on the part of
+Monsieur.&mdash;Rage on the slightest pretext.&mdash;Breakage of china and
+furniture.&mdash;Scandalous rows, offensive expressions.
+</p>
+<p>
+All this, as you see, dear Madame, constitutes a somewhat respectable
+amount of evidence, but is not however sufficient. We lack assault with
+violence. Ah! if we had only an assault with violence, a tiny little
+assault before witnesses, our case would be grand! But now that you have
+put a hundred and fifty miles between your husband and yourself we can
+scarcely hope for an incident of this kind. I say "hope" because in the
+present state of affairs, a brutal act on the part of this man would be
+the most fortunate thing that could befall you.
+</p>
+<p>
+I remain, Madame, awaiting your commands, your devoted and obedient
+servant,
+</p>
+<p>
+Petitbry.
+</p>
+<p>
+PS.&mdash;Violence before witnesses, of course!
+</p>
+<a name="image-0039"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/126.jpg" height="312"
+alt="P115-126
+">
+</center>
+
+<p>
+<i>To Monsieur Petitbry, in Paris</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+What, Sir! have we come to such a pass as this! Is this what your laws
+have made of antique French chivalry! So then, when a misunderstanding
+is often sufficient to separate two hearts for ever, your law courts
+require acts of violence to justify such a separation. Is it not
+scandalous, unjust, barbarous, outrageous? To think that in order to
+regain her freedom, my poor darling will be obliged to run her neck
+into the halter, to abandon herself to all the fury of that monster,
+to excite it even. But no matter, our mind is made up. An assault with
+personal violence is necessary. Well! we will have it. No later than
+to-morrow, Nina will return to Paris, How will she be received? What
+will take place there? I cannot think of it without a shudder. At this
+idea my hand trembles, my eyes become dimmed. Ah! Monsieur. Ah! Monsieur
+Petitbry. Ah!
+</p>
+<p>
+Nina's unhappy Aunt.
+</p>
+<p>
+MR. MARESTANG, ATTORNEY At the Law Court of the Seine.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>To Monsieur Henri de B., Literary man in Paris</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+Be calm, be calm, be calm! I forbid your going to Moulins or rushing off
+in pursuit of the fugitive. It is more judicious and safer to await her
+return in your own house, by your fireside. In point of fact, what has
+taken place? You refused to receive that ridiculous and ill-natured old
+maid; your wife has gone to join her. You should have expected as much.
+Family ties are very strong in the heart of such an extremely youthful
+bride. You were in too great a hurry. Remember that this Aunt brought
+her up, that she has no other relations in the world. She has her
+husband, you will say. Ah! my dear fellow, between ourselves we may
+admit that husbands are not always amiable. I know one more especially
+who in spite of his good heart is so nervous, so violent! I am well
+aware that hard work and artistic preoccupations have a good deal to do
+with it. Be that as it may, the bird has been scared, and has flown back
+to its former cage. Don't be alarmed, it won't stay there long. Either
+I am very much mistaken or the Parisian of yesterday will soon weary of
+the antiquated surroundings, and ere long regret the vivacities of her
+poet. Above all don't stir.
+</p>
+<p>
+Your old friend,
+</p>
+<p>
+Marestang.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>To Monsieur Marestang, attorney in Paris</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+At the same moment with your rational and friendly letter, I received a
+telegram from Moulins, announcing Nina's return. Ah! what a true prophet
+you were! She is coming back this evening, all alone, just as she left
+me, without the slightest advance on my part. The thing now will be to
+arrange so easy and agreeable a life for her, that she shall never
+again be tempted to leave me. I have laid in a stock of tenderness and
+patience during her week's absence. There is only one point on which
+I remain inflexible: I will not again receive that horrible <i>Tata
+Bobosse</i>, that blue stocking of 1820, who gave me her niece only in the
+hopes that my modest fame would serve to heighten hers. Remember, my
+dear Marestang, that ever since my marriage this wicked little old woman
+has always come between my wife and me, pushing her hump into all our
+amusements at the theatres, the exhibitions, in society, in the country,
+everywhere in fact. And you wonder after that, at my having displayed
+a certain haste in getting rid of her, and packing her off to her good
+town of Moulins. Indeed, my dear fellow, you have no idea of all the
+harm those old maids, suspicious and ignorant of life, are capable of
+doing in a young household. This one had stuffed my wife's pretty
+little head full of false, old fashioned, preposterous ideas, trumpery
+sentimentality of the time of Ipsiboé or young Florange: "Ah! if my
+lady love saw me!" For her, I was a poâte, the poâte one sees on the
+frontispieces of Renduel or Ladvocat, crowned with laurels, a lyre
+on his hips, and his short velvet-collared cloak blown aside by a
+Parnassian gust of wind. That was the husband she had promised her
+niece, and you may fancy how terribly my poor Nina must have been
+disappointed. Nevertheless I admit that I was very bungling with the
+dear child. As you say, I wanted to go ahead too rapidly, I frightened
+her. It was my part gently to modify all that the rather narrowing and
+false education of the convent and the sentimental dreams of the Aunt
+had effected, leaving the provincial perfume time to evaporate. However
+all this can be repaired since she is returning. She is returning, my
+dear friend! This evening, I shall go and meet her at the station and we
+shall walk home arm in arm, reconciled and happy.
+</p>
+<p>
+Henri de B.
+</p>
+<p>
+<i>Nina de B. to her Aunt in Moulins</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+He was waiting for me at the station and greeted me with a smile and
+open arms, as though I were returning from some ordinary journey. You
+can imagine that I put on my iciest appearance. Directly I reached home,
+I shut myself up in my room, where I dined alone, pleading fatigue.
+After which, I locked myself in. He came to bid me good-night through
+the key-hole, and to my great surprise, went away on tiptoe without
+anger or importunity. This morning, I called on Monsieur Petitbry, who
+gave me detailed instructions as to the way I was to act, the hour,
+place, witnesses. Ah! my dear Aunt, if you knew how frightened I am as
+the hour draws near.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0040"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:24%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/132.jpg" height="467"
+alt="P121-132
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+His violence is so dreadful. Even when he is gentle like yesterday, his
+eyes have flashes of lightning. However, I will try and be courageous in
+thinking of you, my darling Aunt. Besides, as Monsieur Petitbry said to
+me, it is only a short painful moment to get over, and then we will both
+resume our former quiet life, so calm and happy.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nina de B.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0041"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:18%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/134.jpg" height="265"
+alt="P122-134
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+<i>From the same to the same</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+Dear Aunt, I am writing to you from my bed, torn by the emotions of
+that terrible scene. Who could have supposed that things would take this
+turn? Nevertheless I had taken every precaution. I had warned Marthe and
+her sister, who were to come at one o'clock, and I had chosen for the
+great scene the moment when on leaving the table, the servants are
+clearing away in the dining-room next to the study. From early morn
+my plans were laid; an hour of scales and exercises on the piano, the
+<i>Cloches du Monastère</i>, the <i>Rêveries de Rosellen</i>, all the pieces
+he hates. This did not prevent his working away without betraying the
+slightest irritability. At breakfast, the same patience. A detestable
+breakfast, scraps, and the sweet dishes he loathes. And if you had seen
+my costume! A dress with a cape some five years out of date, a little
+black silk apron, and uncurled hair! In vain I sought for some signs
+of irritation, that well-known straight line that Monsieur hollows out
+between his eyebrows at the least annoyance. Well no! nothing! Really I
+might have thought they had changed my husband. He said to me in a calm
+and rather sad tone:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ah, you have done your hair in the old way."
+</p>
+<p>
+I hardly answered, not wishing to hurry on matters before my witnesses
+had arrived, and then, strangely enough, I felt somewhat moved and upset
+beforehand by the scene I was trying to get up. At last, after a few
+still shorter replies on my part, he rose from the table and went into
+his own room. I followed him trembling. I heard my friends stationing
+themselves in the little drawing-room, and Pierre who came and went,
+arranging the glasses and silver. The decisive moment had arrived. He
+must now be brought to the needful point of violence, and it seemed
+to me this would be easy, after all I had done since the morning to
+irritate him.
+</p>
+<p>
+When I entered his study I must have been very pale. I felt myself in
+the lion's cage. The thought flashed across me: "Suppose he killed me!"
+He did not present a very terrible appearance, however, leaning back on
+his divan, a cigar in his mouth.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Do I disturb you?" I asked in my most ironical voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+He replied gently:
+</p>
+<p>
+"No. You see. I am not working."
+</p>
+<p>
+Myself, viciously:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ah! indeed you don't work then at all, now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+He still very mild.
+</p>
+<p>
+"You are mistaken, my dear. On the contrary, I work a great deal. Only
+our craft is one in which a great deal of work can be done without
+having a tool in hand."
+</p>
+<p>
+"And what may you be doing at this moment? Ah! yes, I know, your play
+in verse; always the same thing for the last two years. It is certainly
+lucky that your wife had a fortune! That allows you to idle at your
+ease."
+</p>
+<p>
+I thought he would have sprung upon me at this. Not a bit of it. He came
+up to me and took hold of my hands gently:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Come, is it to be always the same thing? Are we to begin our life of
+warfare again? If so, why did you come back?"
+</p>
+<p>
+I confess I felt rather moved by his sad and affectionate tone; but
+I thought of you, my poor Aunt, of your exile, of his harsh conduct
+towards us, and that gave me courage. I said to him the bitterest, most
+wounding things I could think of&mdash;I know not what&mdash;that I wished to
+heaven I had never married an artist; that at Moulins, every one pitied
+me; that I found my friends married to magistrates, serious, influential
+men, in good positions, while he&mdash;If even he made money&mdash;But no,
+Monsieur would work for fame only! and what fame!
+</p>
+<a name="image-0043"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:25%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/138.jpg" height="348"
+alt="P127-138
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+At Moulins no one knew him; at Paris, his pieces were hissed. His books
+did not sell. And so on, and so on. My brain seemed to whirl round as
+all the malicious words came from me one after the other. He looked
+at me without replying, in chilly anger. Of course this coldness
+exasperated me still more. I was so much excited, that I no longer
+recognized my own voice, raised to an extraordinary pitch, and the last
+words I screamed at him&mdash;I can't remember what unjust and mad remark
+it was&mdash;seemed to buzz indistinctly in my ears. For a moment, I thought
+Monsieur Petitbry's assault with violence was an accomplished fact.
+Pallid, with set teeth Henri made two steps towards me:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Madame!"
+</p>
+<p>
+Then suddenly, his anger fell, his face became impassive again, and
+he looked at me with so scornful, insolent and calm a glance, that my
+patience came to an end. I raised my hand, and gave him the best box on
+the ear I ever gave in my life. At the noise, the door opened, and my
+witnesses appeared solemn and indignant.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Monsieur! this is infamous!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes, isn't it?" said the poor fellow, showing his red cheek.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0044"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:28%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/140.jpg" height="405"
+alt="P129-140
+">
+</div>
+<p>
+You can imagine my confusion. Happily, I took the line of fainting, and
+melting into torrents of tears, which relieved me greatly. At present,
+Henri is in my room. He watches by me, nurses me, and is really
+most kind. What can I do? What a checkmate! This will not prove very
+satisfactory to Monsieur Petitbry.
+</p>
+<p>
+Nina de B.
+</p>
+
+<
+<a name="image-0045"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/141.jpg" height="214" width="340"
+alt="P130-141
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="image-0046"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/144.jpg" height="938" width="532"
+alt="P133-144
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0008"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    BOHEMIA AT HOME.
+</h2>
+<p>
+I hardly fancy it would be possible to find in the whole of Paris, a
+more lively and peculiar house than that of the sculptor Simaise. Life
+there is one continual round of festivities. At whatever hour you drop
+in upon them, a sound of singing and laughter, or the jingle of a piano,
+guitar, or tamtam greets you. You can never enter the studio without
+finding a waltz going on, or a set of quadrilles, or a game of
+battledore and shuttlecock, or else it is cumbered with all the litter
+and preparations for a ball; shreds of tulle and ribbons lying scattered
+among the sculptor's chisels; artificial flowers hanging over the busts,
+and spangled skirts spreading over groups of moist clay.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0047"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:18%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/145.jpg" height="269"
+alt="P134-145
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The fact is that four big t daughters of sixteen to twenty-five years
+of age, all very pretty indeed, take up a great deal of room; and when
+these young ladies whirl round with their hair streaming down their
+backs, with floating ribbons, long pins, and showy ornaments, it really
+seems as if instead of four there were eight, sixteen, thirty-two Misses
+Simaise, as dashing the one as the other, talking and laughing loudly,
+with the hoydenish manner peculiar to artists' daughters, with the
+studio jests, the familiarity of students, and knowing also better than
+anyone how to dismiss a creditor or blow up a tradesman impertinent
+enough to present his bill at an inopportune moment.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0048"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:16%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/146.jpg" height="374"
+alt="P135-146
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+These young damsels are the real mistresses of the house. From early
+dawn the father works, chisels, models unceasingly, for he has no
+settled income. At first he was ambitious and strove to do good work;
+some early successful exhibitions promised him future fame; but the
+necessity of providing for the support of his family, the clothing,
+feeding and future establishment of his children, threw him back
+into the ordinary work of the trade. As for Madame Simaise, she never
+attended to anything.
+</p>
+<p>
+Very handsome when she married, very much admired in the artistic world
+into which her husband introduced her, at first satisfied with being
+only a pretty woman, later on she resigned herself to the part of a
+woman who had been pretty. A créole by birth, at least such was her
+pretension&mdash;although it was asserted that her parents had never left
+Courbevoie,&mdash;she spent the days from morning to night in a hammock swung
+up in turn in all the different rooms of the house, fanning herself and
+taking siestas, full of contempt for the material details of everyday
+life. She had so often sat to her husband as model for Hebes and Dianas,
+that she fancied her only duty was to pass through life carrying some
+emblem of a goddess, such as a crescent on her head or a goblet in her
+hand. Indeed the disorder of the establishment was a sight in itself.
+The least thing necessitated a full hour's search.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Have you seen my thimble? Marthe, Eva, Geneviève, Madeleine, who has
+seen my thimble?"
+</p>
+<p>
+The drawers, in which books, powder, rouge, spangles, spoons and fans
+are tossed at haphazard, though crammed full, contain absolutely nothing
+useful; moreover they belong to strange pieces of furniture, curious,
+battered and incomplete. And how peculiar is the house itself! As they
+are constantly changing their residence, they never have time to settle
+anywhere, and this merry household seems to be perpetually awaiting the
+setting to rights indispensable after a ball. Only so many things are
+lacking, that it is not worth while settling, and as long as they can
+put on a bit of finery, display themselves out of doors with something
+of a meteor flash, a semblance of style and appearance of luxury, honour
+is saved! Encampment does not in any way distress this migratory tribe.
+Through the half-opened doors, their poverty is betrayed by the four
+bare walls of an unfurnished chamber, or the litter of an overcrowded
+room. It is bohemianism in the domestic circle, a life full of
+improvidence and surprises.
+</p>
+<p>
+At the very moment when they sit down to table, they suddenly perceive
+that everything is wanting, and that the breakfast must be sent out for
+at once. In this manner hours are spent rapidly, bustling and idling,
+and herein lies a certain advantage. After a late breakfast, one does
+not need to dine, but can sup at the ball, which fills up nearly every
+evening. These ladies also give evening parties. Tea is drunk out of
+all kinds of queer receptacles, goblets, old tankards, ancient glasses,
+Japanese shells, the whole chipped and cracked by the constant moves.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0049"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:24%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/149.jpg" height="305"
+alt="P138-149
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The serene calm of both mother and daughters in the midst of this
+poverty is truly admirable. They have indeed other ideas running through
+the brain than mere housekeeping details. One has plaited her hair
+like a Swiss girl, another is curled like any English baby, and Madame
+Simaise, from the top of her hammock, lives in the beatitude of her
+former beauty. As for father Simaise, he is always delighted. As long
+as he hears the merry laugh of his daughters around him, he is ready
+cheerfully to assume all the weight of this disorderly existence.
+</p>
+
+<br />
+<center>
+<img alt="150 (89K)" src="images/150.jpg" height="773" width="607" />
+</center>
+<br />
+
+<p>
+To him
+are addressed in a coaxing manner such requests as: "Papa, I want a
+bonnet. Papa, I must have a dress." Sometimes the winter is severe. They
+are in such request, receive so many invitations. Pooh! the father has
+but to get up a couple of hours earlier. They will have a fire only in
+the studio, where all the family will gather. The girls will cut out and
+make their own dresses, while the hammock ropes swing slowly to and fro,
+and the father works on, perched upon his high stool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Have you ever met these ladies in society? The moment they appear there
+is a commotion. It is long since the first two came out, but they are
+always so well adorned and so smart, that they are in great request as
+partners. They have as much success as the younger sisters, almost as
+much as the mother in former days; moreover they carry off their tawdry
+jewelry and finery so well, and have such charming easy manners, with
+the giddy laugh of spoilt children, and such a Spanish way of flirting
+with a fan. Nevertheless they do not get married. No admirer has ever
+been able to get over the sight of that singular home. The wasteful and
+useless extravagance, the want of plates, the profusion of old tapestry
+in holes, of antique and ungilt lustres, the draughty doors, the
+constant visits of creditors, the slatternly appearance of the young
+ladies in slipshod slippers and dressing gowns, put to flight the best
+intentioned. In truth, it is not everyone who could resign himself to
+hang up the hammock of an idle woman in his home for the rest of his
+life.
+</p>
+<p>
+I am very much afraid that the Misses Simaise will never marry. They
+had, however, a golden and unique opportunity during the Commune. The
+family had taken refuge in Normandy, in a small and very litigious town,
+full of lawyers, attorneys, and business men. No sooner had the father
+arrived, than he looked out for orders. His fame as a sculptor was of
+service to him, and as in the public square of the town there happened
+to be a statue of Cujas done by him, all the notabilities of the place
+wanted to have their busts done.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0051"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:28%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/152.jpg" height="368"
+alt="P141-152
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The mother at once fastened up the hammock in a corner of the studio,
+and the young ladies organized a few parties. They at once met with
+great success. Here at least, poverty seemed but an accident due to
+exile; the disorder of the establishment was accounted for. The handsome
+girls laughed loudly themselves at their destitution.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0052"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:25%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/153.jpg" height="464"
+alt="P142-153
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+They had started off without anything; and nothing could be had now
+Paris was closed. It lent to them an extra charm. It called to mind
+travelling gipsies, combing their beautiful hair in barns, and quenching
+their thirst in streams. The least poetical compared them in their minds
+to the exiles of Coblentz, those ladies of Marie-Antoinette's court who,
+obliged to fly in haste, without powder or hoops, or bedchamber women,
+were driven to all sorts of makeshifts, learning to wait upon themselves,
+and keeping up the frivolity of the French court, the piquant smile of
+the lost patches.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0053"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:15%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/154.jpg" height="374"
+alt="P143-154
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Every evening a throng of dazzled lawyers crowded Simaise's studio. To
+the sounds of a hired piano, all this little world danced the polka,
+waltzed, schottisched,&mdash;they still schottische in Normandy. "I shall
+end by marrying off one," thought old Simaise; and the fact is if one
+had gone off, all the others would have followed suit. Unluckily the
+first never went off, but it was a near touch. Amongst the numerous
+partners of these young ladies, in that corps de ballet of lawyers,
+attorneys and solicitors, the most rabid dancer was a widowed lawyer,
+who was extremely attentive to the eldest daughter. He was called by
+them "the first dancing attorney," in memory of Moliere's ballets, and
+certainly, considering the rate at which the fellow whirled round, Papa
+Simaise might well build the greatest hopes on him. But then business
+men do not dance like everybody else. This fellow, all the time he was
+waltzing, reflected silently: "The Simaise family is charming. Tra, la
+la, la la la, but it's useless their trying to hurry me on, la la la, la
+la la. I shall not propose till the gates of Paris are reopened. Tra la
+la, and I shall be able to make all necessary inquiries, la la la!" Thus
+thought the first dancing attorney, and in fact, directly the blockade
+of Paris was raised, he got his information about the family, and the
+marriage did not come off.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0054"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:23%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/156.jpg" height="339"
+alt="P145-156
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Since then, the poor little creatures have missed many other chances.
+However, this has in no way spoilt the happiness of the singular
+household. On the contrary, the more they live, the merrier they are.
+Last winter they changed quarters three times, were sold up once, and
+notwithstanding all this, gave two large fancy balls!
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0055"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/157.jpg" height="193" width="233"
+alt="P146-157
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="image-0056"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/160.jpg" height="715" width="449"
+alt="P149-160
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0009"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    FRAGMENT OF A WOMAN'S LETTER FOUND IN THE RUE NOTRE-DAME-DES-CHAMPS
+</h2>
+<p>
+... What it has cost me to marry an artist! Oh, my dear! if I had known!
+but young girls have singular ideas about so many things. Just imagine
+that at the Exhibition, when I read in the catalogue the addresses of
+far-away quiet streets at the further end of Paris, I pictured to myself
+peaceable, stay-at-home lives, devoted to work and the family circle,
+and I said to myself (feeling beforehand a certainty that I should be
+dreadfully jealous), "That is the sort of husband to suit me. He will
+always be with me. We shall spend our days together; he at his picture
+or sculpture, while I read or sew beside him, in the concentrated light
+of the studio." Poor dear innocent! I had not the faintest idea then
+what a studio really was, nor of the singular creatures one meets there.
+Never, in gazing at those statues of bold undressed goddesses had the
+idea occurred to me that there were women daring enough to&mdash;and that
+even I myself&mdash;&mdash;. Otherwise, I can assure you I should never have
+married a sculptor. No, indeed, most decidedly not! I must own, they
+were all against this marriage at home; notwithstanding my husband's
+fortune, his already famous name, and the fine house he was having built
+for us two. It was I alone who would have it so. He was so elegant, so
+charming, so eager. I thought, however, he meddled a little too much
+about my dress, and the arrangement of my hair: "Do your hair like this;
+so," and he would amuse himself by placing a flower in the midst of
+my curls with far greater skill than any one of our milliners. So much
+experience in a man was alarming, wasn't it? I ought to have distrusted
+him. Well, you will see. Listen.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0057"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:20%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/162.jpg" height="465"
+alt="P151-162
+">
+</div>
+
+
+<p>
+We returned from our honeymoon. While I was busy settling myself in my
+pretty and charmingly furnished rooms, that paradise you know so well,
+my husband, from the moment of his arrival, had set to work and spent
+the days at his studio, which was away from the house. When he returned
+in the evening, he would talk to me with feverish eagerness of his next
+subject for exhibition.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0058"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:10%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/163.jpg" height="395"
+alt="P152-163
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+The subject was "a Roman lady leaving the bath." He wanted the marble
+to reproduce that faint shiver of the skin at the contact of air, the
+moisture of the delicate textures clinging to the shoulders, and all
+sorts of other fine things which I no longer remember. Between you and
+me, when he speaks to me of his sculpture, I do-not always understand
+him very well. However, I used to say confidently: "It will be very
+pretty," and already I saw myself treading the finely sanded walks
+admiring my husband's work, a beautiful marble sculpture gleaming white
+against the green hangings; while behind me I heard whispered: "the wife
+of the sculptor."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0059"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:18%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/164.jpg" height="476"
+alt="P153-164
+">
+</div>
+
+
+<p>
+At last one day, curious to see how our Roman lady was getting on, the
+idea occurred to me, to go and take him by surprise in his studio, which
+I had not yet visited. It was one of the first times I had gone out
+alone, and I had made myself very smart, I can tell you. When I arrived,
+I found the door of the little garden leading to the ground floor, wide
+open. So I walked straight in; and, conceive my indignation, when I
+beheld my husband in a white smock like a stone mason, with ruffled
+hair, hands grimed with clay, and in front of him, upright on a
+platform, a woman, my dear, a great creature, almost undressed,
+and looking just as composed in this airy costume as though it were
+perfectly natural.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0060"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:30%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/165.jpg" height="417"
+alt="P154-165
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Her wretched clothes covered with mud, thick walking boots, and a round
+hat trimmed with a feather out of curl, were thrown beside her on a
+chair. All this I saw in an instant, for you may imagine how I fled.
+Etienne would have spoken to me&mdash;detained me; but with a gesture of
+horror at the clay-covered hands, I rushed off to mama, and reached her
+barely alive. You can imagine my appearance.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0061"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/166.jpg" height="287"
+alt="P155-166
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+"Good heavens, dear child! what is the matter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+I related to mama what I had seen, where this dreadful woman was, and
+in what costume. And I cried, and cried. My mother, much moved, tried to
+console me, explained to me that it must have been a model.
+</p>
+<p>
+"What! but it is abominable; no one ever told me about that before I was
+married!"
+</p>
+<p>
+Hereupon Etienne arrived, greatly distressed, and tried in his turn to
+make me understand that a model is not a woman like other women, and
+that besides sculptors cannot get on without them; but these reasons
+had no effect upon me, and I stoutly declared I would have nothing to
+do with a husband who spent his days <i>tête-à-tête</i> with young ladies in
+such a costume.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Come, my dear Etienne," said poor mama, trying hard to arrange
+everything peaceably, "could you not out of respect for your wife's
+feelings, replace this creature by a dummy, a lay figure?"
+</p>
+<p>
+My husband bit his moustaches furiously.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Quite impossible, dear mother."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Still, my dear, it seems to me&mdash;a bright idea! milliners have
+pasteboard heads on which they trim bonnets. Well, what can be done for
+a head, could it not be done for&mdash;&mdash;?" It seems this is not possible.
+</p>
+<p>
+At least, this was what Etienne tried to demonstrate at great length,
+with all sorts of details and technical words. He really looked very
+unhappy. I watched him out of the corner of my eye while I dried my
+tears, and I saw that my grief affected him deeply. At last, after
+an endless discussion, it was agreed that since the model was
+indispensable, I should be there whenever she came. There chanced to
+be on one side of the studio a very convenient little lumber-room, from
+which I could see without being seen. I ought to be ashamed, you will
+say, of being jealous of such kind of creatures, and of showing my
+jealousy. But, my pet, you must have gone through these emotions before
+you can offer an opinion about them.
+</p>
+<p>
+Next day, the model was to be there. I therefore summoned up my courage,
+and installed myself in my hiding-place, with the express condition that
+at the least tap at the partition my husband should come to me at once.
+Scarcely had I shut myself in, when the dreadful model I had seen
+the other day arrived, dressed Heaven knows how, and so wretched in
+appearance, that I asked myself how I could have been jealous of a woman
+who could walk abroad without a scrap of white cuff at her wrists,
+and in an old shawl with green fringe. Well, my dear, when I saw this
+creature throw off shawl and dress in the middle of the studio, and
+begin to undress in the coolest and boldest manner, it had an effect
+upon me I cannot describe. I choked with rage. I thumped at the
+partition. Etienne came to me. I trembled; I was pale. He laughed at me,
+gently re-assured me, and returned to his work. By this time the woman
+was standing up, half-naked, her thick hair loosened and hanging down
+her back in glossy heaviness. It was no longer the poor wretch of a
+moment ago, but already almost a statue, notwithstanding her common and
+listless air. My heart died within me. However, I said nothing. All at
+once, I heard my husband cry: "The left leg; the left leg forward." And
+as the model did not understand him at once, he went to her, and&mdash;Oh! I
+could contain myself no longer. I knocked. He did not hear me. I knocked
+again, furiously. This time he ran to me, frowning a little at being
+disturbed in the heat of work. "Come, Armande, do be reasonable!"
+Bathed in tears, I leant my head upon his shoulder, and sobbed out: "I
+can't bear it, my dear, I can't; indeed, I can't!"
+</p>
+<a name="image-0062"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:20%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/170.jpg" height="370"
+alt="P159-170
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+At this, without answering me, he went sharply into the studio, and made
+a sign to that horror of a woman, who dressed herself and departed.
+</p>
+<p>
+For several days, Etienne did not return to the studio. He remained
+at home with me, would not go out, refused even to see his friends;
+otherwise he was quite kind and gentle, but he had such a melancholy
+air. Once I asked him timidly: "You are not working any more?" which
+earned me this reply: "One can't work without a model." I had not the
+courage to pursue the subject, for I felt how much I was to blame,
+and that he had a right to be vexed with me. Nevertheless, by dint of
+caresses and endearments, I cajoled him into returning to his studio and
+trying to finish the statue&mdash;how do they say it? out of his head, from
+imagination, in short, by mama's process. To me, this seemed quite
+feasible; but it gave the poor fellow endless trouble. Every evening
+he came in, with irritated nerves and more and more discouraged; almost
+ill, indeed. To cheer him up, I used often to go and see him. I always
+said: "It is charming." But, as a fact, the statue made no progress
+whatever. I don't even know if he worked at it. When I arrived, I would
+find him always smoking on his divan, or perhaps, rolling up pellets of
+clay, which he angrily threw against the opposite wall.
+</p>
+<p>
+One afternoon, when I was gazing at the unfortunate Roman lady, who,
+half modelled, had been so long in stepping out of her bath, an idea
+occurred to me. The Roman lady was about the same figure as myself;
+perhaps at a pinch I might&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+"What do you mean by a well-turned leg?" I asked my husband suddenly.
+</p>
+<p>
+He explained it to me at great length, showing me all that was still
+lacking to his statue, and which he could by no means give it without a
+model. Poor fellow! He had such a heart-broken air as he said this. Do
+you know what I did? Well, I bravely picked up the drapery which was
+lying in a corner, I went into my hiding-place; then, very softly
+without saying a word, while he was still looking at his statue, I
+placed myself on the platform in front of him, in the costume and
+attitude in which I had seen that abominable model. Ah my dear I What
+emotion I felt when he raised his eyes! I could have laughed and
+cried. I was blushing all over. And that tiresome muslin took so
+much arranging. Never mind! Etienne was so delighted that I was soon
+re-assured. Indeed, to hear him, my dear, you might suppose&mdash;&mdash;.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0063"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/173.jpg" height="407" width="363"
+alt="P162-173
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="image-0064"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/175.jpg" height="229" width="332"
+alt="P164-175
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="image-0065"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/176.jpg" height="736" width="421"
+alt="P165-176
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0010"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    A GREAT MAN'S WIDOW
+</h2>
+<p>
+No one was astonished at hearing she was going to marry again.
+Notwithstanding all his genius, perhaps even on account of his genius,
+the great man had for fifteen years led her a hard life, full of
+caprices and mad freaks that had attracted the attention of all
+Paris. On the high road to fame, over which he had so triumphantly and
+hurriedly travelled, like those who are to die young, she had sat behind
+him, humbly and timidly, in a corner of the chariot, ever fearful of
+collisions. Whenever she complained, relatives, friends, every one was
+against her: "Respect his weaknesses," they would say to her, "they are
+the weaknesses of a god. Do not disturb him, do not worry him. Remember
+that your husband does not belong exclusively to you. He belongs much
+more to Art, to his country, than to his family. And who knows if
+each of the faults you reproach him with has not given us some sublime
+creation?" At last, however, her patience was worn out, she rebelled,
+became indignant and even unjust, so much indeed, that at the moment of
+the great man's death, they were on the point of demanding a judicial
+separation and ready to see their great and celebrated name dragged into
+the columns of a society paper.
+</p>
+<p>
+After the agitation of this unhappy match, the anxieties of the last
+illness, and the sudden death which for a moment revived her former
+affection, the first months of her widowhood acted on the young woman
+like a healthy calming water-cure. The enforced retirement, the quiet
+charm of mitigated sorrow, lent to her thirty-five years a second youth
+almost as attractive as the first.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0066"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:30%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/178.jpg" height="349"
+alt="P167-178
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Moreover black suited her, and then she had the responsible and rather
+proud look of a woman left alone in life, with all the weight of a great
+name to carry honourably. Mindful of the fame of the departed one, that
+wretched fame that had cost her so many tears, and now grew day by day,
+like a magnificent flower nourished by the black earth of the tomb, she
+was to be seen draped in her long sombre veils holding interviews with
+theatrical managers and publishers, busying herself in getting her
+husband's operas put again on the stage, superintending the printing of
+his posthumous works and unfinished manuscripts, bestowing on all these
+details a kind of solemn care and as it were the respect for a shrine.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was at this moment that her second husband met her. He too was a
+musician, almost unknown it is true, the author of a few waltzes
+and songs, and of two little operas, of which the scores, charmingly
+printed, were scarcely more played than sold. With a pleasant
+countenance, a handsome fortune that he owed to his exceedingly
+<i>bourgeois</i> family, he had above all an infinite respect for genius,
+a curiosity about famous men, and the ingenuous enthusiasm of a still
+youthful artist. Thus when he met the wife of the great man, he was
+dazzled and bewildered. It was as though the image of the glorious muse
+herself had appeared to him. He at once fell in love, and as the widow
+was beginning to receive a few friends, he had himself presented to her.
+There his passion grew in the atmosphere of genius that still lingered
+in all the corners of the drawing-room. There was the bust of the
+master, the piano he composed on, his scores spread over all the
+furniture, melodious even to look at, as though from between their
+half-opened pages, the written phrases re-echoed musically. The actual
+and very real charm of the widow surrounded by those austere memories as
+by a frame that became her, brought his love to a climax.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0067"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:20%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/180.jpg" height="445"
+alt="P169-180
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+After hesitating a long time, the poor fellow at last proposed, but
+in such humble and timid terms! "He knew how unworthy he was of her. He
+understood all the regret she would feel, in exchanging her illustrious
+name for his, so unknown and insignificant." And a thousand other
+artless phrases in the same style. In reality, the lady was indeed very
+much flattered by her conquest; however, she played the comedy of a
+broken heart, and assumed the disdainful, wearied airs of a woman whose
+life is ended without hopes of renewal. She, who had never in her life
+been so quiet and comfortable as since the death of her great man, she
+actually found tears with which to mourn for him, and an enthusiastic
+ardour in speaking of him. This, of course, only inflamed her youthful
+adorer the more and made him more eloquent and persuasive.
+</p>
+<p>
+In short, this severe widowhood ended in a marriage; but the widow did
+not abdicate, and remained&mdash;although married&mdash;more than ever the widow
+of a great man; well knowing that herein lay, in the eyes of her second
+husband, her real prestige. As she felt herself much older than he, to
+prevent his perceiving it, she overwhelmed him with her disdain, with
+a kind of vague pity, and unexpressed and offensive regret at her
+condescending marriage. However, he was not wounded by it, quite the
+contrary. He was so convinced of his inferiority and thought it so
+natural that the memory of such a man should reign despotically in her
+heart! In order the better to maintain in him this humble attitude, she
+would at times read over with him the letters the great man had
+written to her when he was courting her. This return towards the past
+rejuvenated her some fifteen years, lent her the assurance of a handsome
+and beloved woman, seen through all the wild love and delightful
+exaggeration of written passion. That she had since then changed her
+young husband cared little, loving her on the faith of another, and
+drawing therefrom I know not what strange kind of vanity. It seemed
+to him that these passionate appeals added to his own, and that he
+inherited a whole past of love.
+</p>
+<p>
+A strange couple indeed! It was in society, however, that they presented
+the most curious spectacle. I sometimes caught sight of them at the
+theatre. No one would have recognized the timid and shy young woman, who
+formerly accompanied the <i>maestro</i>, lost in the gigantic shadow he cast
+around him. Now, seated upright in the front of the box, she displayed
+herself, attracting all eyes by the pride of her own glance. It might be
+said that her head was surrounded by her first husband's halo of glory,
+his name re-echoing around her like a homage or a reproach. The other
+one, seated a little behind her, with the subservient physiognomy of one
+ready for every abnegation in life, watched each of her movements, ready
+to attend to her slightest wish.
+</p>
+<p>
+At home, the peculiarity of their attitude was still more noticeable. I
+remember a certain evening party they gave a year after their marriage.
+The husband moved about among the crowd of guests, proud but rather
+embarrassed at gathering together so many in his own house. The wife,
+disdainful, melancholy, and very superior, was on that evening more than
+ever the widow of a great man! She had a peculiar way of glancing at her
+husband from over her shoulder, of calling him "my poor dear friend," of
+casting on him all the wearisome drudgery of the reception, with an air
+of saying: "You are only fit for that." Around her gathered a circle of
+former friends, those who had been spectators of the brilliant debuts of
+the great man, of his struggles, and his success. She simpered to them;
+played the young girl! They had known her so young! Nearly all of
+them called her by her Christian name, "Anaïs." They formed a kind of
+conaculum, which the poor husband respectfully approached, to hear his
+predecessor spoken of. They recalled the glorious first nights, those
+evenings on which nearly every battle was won, and the great man's
+manias, his way of working; how, in order to summon up inspiration, he
+insisted on his wife being by his side, decked out in full ball dress.
+"Do you remember, Anaïs?" And Anaïs sighed and blushed.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0068"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:32%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/185.jpg" height="399"
+alt="P174-185
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+It was at that time that he had written his most tender pieces, above
+all <i>Savonarole</i>, the most passionate of his creations, with a grand
+duet, interwoven with rays of moonshine, the perfume of roses and the
+warbling of nightingales. An enthusiast sat down and played it on the
+piano, amid a silence of attentive emotion. At the last note of the
+magnificent piece, the lady burst into tears. "I cannot help it," she
+said, "I have never been able to hear it without weeping." The great
+man's old friends surrounded his unhappy widow with sympathetic
+expressions, coming up to her one by one, like at a funereal ceremony,
+to give a thrilling clasp to her hand. "Come, come, Anaïs, be
+courageous." And the drollest thing was to see the second husband,
+standing by the side of his wife, deeply touched and affected, shaking
+hands all round, and accepting, he too, his share of sympathy. "What
+genius! what genius!" he repeated as he mopped his eyes. It was at the
+same time ridiculous and affecting.
+</p>
+
+<a name="image-0069"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/188.jpg" height="693" width="457"
+alt="P177-188
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0011"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    THE DECEIVER.
+</h2>
+<p>
+I have loved but one woman in my life, the painter D&mdash;&mdash;&mdash; said one day
+to us.
+</p>
+<p>
+I spent five years of perfect happiness and peaceful and fruitful
+tranquillity with her. I may say that to her I owe my present celebrity,
+so easy was work, and so spontaneous was inspiration by her side. Even
+when I first met her, she seemed to have been mine from time immemorial.
+Her beauty, her character were the realization of all my dreams. That
+woman never left me; she died in my house, in my arms, loving to the
+last. Well, when I think of her, it is with a feeling of rage. If I
+strive to recall her, the same as I ever saw her during those five
+years, in all the radiance of love, with her lithe yielding figure, the
+gilded pallor of her cheeks, her oriental Jewish features, regular and
+delicate in the soft roundness of her face, her slow speech as velvety
+as her glance, if I seek to embody that charming vision, it is only in
+order the more fiercely to cry to it: "I hate you!"
+</p>
+<p>
+Her name was Clotilde. At the house of the mutual acquaintances where we
+met, she was known under the name of Madame Deloche, and was said to be
+the widow of a captain in the merchant service. Indeed, she appeared to
+have travelled a great deal. In the course of conversation, she would
+suddenly say: When I was at Tampico; or else: once in the harbour at
+Valparaiso. But apart from this, there was no trace in her manners or
+language of a wandering existence, nothing betrayed the disorder or
+precipitation of sudden departures or abrupt returns. She was a thorough
+Parisian, dressed in perfect good taste, without any of those bur-nooses
+or eccentric <i>sarapés</i> by which one recognizes the wives of officers and
+sailors who are always arrayed in travelling costume.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0070"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:15%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/190.jpg" height="382"
+alt="P179-190
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+When I found that I loved her, my first, my only idea was to ask her in
+marriage. Someone spoke on my behalf. She simply replied that she would
+never marry again. Henceforth I avoided meeting her; and as my thoughts
+were too wholly absorbed and occupied by her to allow me to work,
+I determined to travel. I was busily engaged in preparations for my
+departure, when one morning, in my own apartment, in the midst of all
+the litter of opened drawers and scattered trunks, to my great surprise,
+I saw Madame Deloche enter.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Why are you leaving?" she said softly. "Because you love me? I also
+love. I love you. Only (and here her voice shook a little) only, I am
+married." And she told me her history.
+</p>
+<p>
+It was a romance of love and desertion. Her husband drank, struck her!
+At the end of three years they had separated Her family, of whom she
+seemed very proud, held a high position in Paris, but ever since her
+marriage had refused to receive her. She was the niece of the Chief
+Rabbi. Her sister, the widow of a superior officer, had married for the
+second time a Chief Ranger of the woods and forests of Saint-Germain. As
+for her, ruined by her husband, she had fortunately had a very thorough
+education and possessed some accomplishments, by which she was able to
+augment her resources. She gave music lessons in various rich houses
+of the Chaussée d'Antin and Faubourg Saint Honoré, and gained an ample
+livelihood.
+</p>
+<p>
+The story was touching, although somewhat lengthy, full of the
+pretty repetitions, the interminable incidents that entangle feminine
+discourse.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0071"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:25%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/192.jpg" height="509"
+alt="P181-192
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Indeed she took several days to relate it. I had hired for us two, a
+little house in the Avenue de l'Impératrice, standing between the silent
+streets and peaceful lawns. I could have spent a year listening to and
+looking at her, without a thought for my work. She was the first to send
+me back to my studio, and I could not prevent her from again taking up
+her lessons. I was touched by her concern for the dignity of her life.
+I admired the proud spirit, notwithstanding that I could not help being
+rather humiliated at her expressed determination to owe nothing save to
+her own exertions. We were therefore separated all day long, and only
+met in the evening in our little house.
+</p>
+<p>
+With what joy did I not return home, what impatience I felt when she was
+late, and how happy I was when I found her there before me! She would
+bring me back bouquets and choice flowers from her journeys to Paris.
+Often I pressed upon her some present, but she laughingly said she was
+richer than I; and in truth her lessons must have been very well paid,
+for she always dressed in an expensively elegant manner, and the black
+dresses which, with coquettish care for her complexion and style of
+beauty she preferred, had the dull softness of velvet, the brilliancy
+of satin and jet, a confusion of silken lace, which revealed to the
+astonished eye, under an apparent simplicity, a world of feminine
+elegance in the thousand shades contained in a single colour.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0072"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:24%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/194.jpg" height="395"
+alt="P183-194
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Moreover her occupation was by no means laborious, she said. All her
+pupils, daughters of bankers or stock brokers, loved and respected her;
+and many a time she would show me a bracelet or a ring, that had been
+presented as a mark of gratitude for her care. Except for our work, we
+never left one another, and we went nowhere. Only on Sundays she went
+off to Saint-Germain to see her sister, the wife of the Chief Ranger,
+with whom she was now reconciled. I would accompany her to the station.
+She would return the same evening, and often in the long summer days, we
+would agree to meet at some station on the way, by the riverside or in
+the woods. She would tell me about her visit, the children's good looks,
+the air of happiness that reigned in the household. My heart bled for
+her, deprived of the pleasures of family life as she was doomed to be;
+and my tenderness increased tenfold in order to make her forget the
+falseness of her position, so painful to a woman of her character.
+</p>
+<p>
+What a happy time of perfect confidence, and how well I worked! I
+suspected nothing. All she said seemed so true, so natural. I could only
+reproach her with one thing. When talking of the houses she frequented,
+and the different families of her pupils, she would indulge in a
+superabundance of imaginary details and fancied intrigues, which she
+invented without any <i>apropos</i>.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0073"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:23%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/196.jpg" height="464"
+alt="P185-196
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Calm herself, she was ever conjuring up romances around her, and her
+life was spent in composing dramatic situations. These idle fancies
+disturbed my happiness. I, who longed to leave the world and society, in
+order to devote myself exclusively to her, found her too much taken up
+by indifferent subjects. However, I could easily excuse this defect in a
+young and unhappy woman, whose life had been hitherto a sad romance, the
+issue of which could not be foreseen.
+</p>
+<p>
+Once only did a suspicion or rather a presentiment cross my mind. One
+Sunday evening she failed to return home. I was in despair. What could
+I do? Go to Saint-Germain? I might compromise her. Nevertheless, after a
+dreadful night of anguish, I had decided on starting, when she arrived,
+looking pale and worried. Her sister was ill, she had been obliged to
+stay and nurse her. I believed all she told me, not distrusting the
+overflow of words called forth by the slightest question, which swamped
+the principal matter in a deluge of idle details: such as the hour of
+arrival, the rudeness of a guard, the lateness of the train. Twice or
+three times in the same week, she returned to Saint-Germain and slept
+there; then, her sister's illness over, she resumed her regular and
+peaceful existence.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0074"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:16%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/198.jpg" height="451"
+alt="P187-198
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Unfortunately, shortly after this, she in her turn fell ill. She came
+back one day from her lessons, shivering, wet, and fevered. Inflammation
+of the lungs set in; from the first her case was serious, and soon&mdash;the
+doctor told me&mdash;hopeless. My despair was maddening. Then I thought only
+of soothing her last moments. The family she loved so well, of which she
+was so proud, I would bring to her deathbed. Without letting her know,
+I first wrote to her sister at Saint-Germain, and I went off at
+once myself to her uncle, the Chief Rabbi. I hardly remember at what
+unreasonable hour I reached his house. Great catastrophes throw such a
+confusion into life and upset every detail. I fancy the good Rabbi was
+dining. He came out into the hall, wondering and amazed, to speak to me.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Monsieur," I said to him, "there are moments when all hatred must
+cease."
+</p>
+<p>
+He turned his venerable face towards me with a bewildered look.
+</p>
+<p>
+I resumed:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Your niece is dying!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"My niece! But I have no niece; you are mistaken."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh, Sir! I implore you, lay aside all foolish family rancour. I am
+speaking of Madame Deloche, the wife of Captain&mdash;&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+"I do not know Madame Deloche. You are mistaken, my son, I assure you."
+</p>
+<p>
+And he gently pushed me toward the door, taking me for a hoaxer or
+a madman. I must in fact have appeared very odd. What I heard was so
+unexpected, so terrible. She had lied to me then. Wherefore?
+</p>
+<p>
+Suddenly an idea flashed across me. I directed the cabman to drive me
+to the address of one of those pupils of whom she had so often spoken to
+me, the daughter of a well-known banker.
+</p>
+<p>
+I inquired of the servant: "Madame Deloche?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"There is no one here of that name."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes, I know that. It is a lady who gives music lessons to your young
+ladies."
+</p>
+<p>
+"We have no young ladies here, not even a piano. I don't know what you
+mean."
+</p>
+<p>
+And he angrily shut the door in my face.
+</p>
+<p>
+I made no further inquiries. I felt sure of meeting with the same
+answer, the same disappointment. On my return to our little house,
+they gave me a letter with the postmark of Saint-Germain. I opened
+it, instinctively guessing the contents. The Chief Ranger also had no
+knowledge of Madame Deloche. Moreover he had neither wife nor child.
+</p>
+<p>
+This was the last blow. Thus for five years each of her words had been
+a lie. A thousand jealous thoughts took possession of me, and madly,
+hardly knowing what I was about, I entered the room in which she was
+dying. All the questions that were torturing me burst forth over that
+bed of suffering: "Why did you go to Saint-Germain on Sundays? Where did
+you spend your days? Where did you spend that night? Come, answer
+me." And I bent over her, seeking in the depths of her still proud and
+beautiful eyes answers that I awaited with anguish; but she remained
+mute and impassive.
+</p>
+<p>
+I resumed, trembling with rage: "You never gave any lessons. I have been
+everywhere. Nobody knows you. Whence came that money, those laces, those
+jewels?" She threw me a glance full of despairing sadness, and that was
+all. In truth, I ought to have spared her, and allowed her to die in
+peace. But I had loved her too well. My jealousy was stronger than my
+pity. I continued: "For five years you have deceived me, lying to me
+every day, every hour. You knew my whole life, and I knew nothing of
+yours. Nothing, not even your name. For it is not yours, is it, the name
+you bear? Ah liar! liar! What, she is going to die, and I do not even
+know by what name to call her! Come, tell me who you are? Whence come
+you? Why did you intrude into my life? Speak! Tell me something!"
+</p>
+<p>
+Vain efforts! Instead of answering, she with difficulty turned her face
+to the wall, as though she feared that her last glance might betray her
+secret. And thus the unhappy creature died! Died without a word, liar to
+the last.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0075"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/202.jpg" height="215" width="313"
+alt="P191-202
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="image-0076"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/206.jpg" height="696" width="519"
+alt="P195-206
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0012"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    THE COMTESSE IRMA.
+</h2>
+<p>
+"<i>M. Charles d'Athis, literary man, has the honour to inform you of the
+birth of his son Robert.</i>
+</p>
+<p>
+"<i>The child is doing well.</i>"
+</p>
+<p>
+Some dozen years ago, all literary and artistic Paris received this
+little note on the glossiest of paper, embossed with the arms of the
+Counts of d'Athis-Mons, of whom the last Charles d'Athis had&mdash;while
+still young&mdash;succeeded in making for himself a genuine reputation as a
+poet.
+</p>
+
+
+<br />
+<center>
+<img alt="207 (118K)" src="images/207.jpg" height="1001" width="584" />
+</center>
+<br />
+
+<p>
+"The child is doing well." And the mother? Of her there was no mention
+in the note. Every one knew her but too well. She was the daughter of an
+old poacher of Seine et Oise; a quondam model, named Irma Salle, whose
+portrait had figured in every exhibition, as the original had in every
+studio. Her low forehead, lip curled like an antique, this chance return
+of the peasant's face to primitive lines&mdash;a turkey herd with Greek
+features&mdash;the slightly tanned skin common to all whose childhood
+is spent in the open air, giving to fair hair reflections of pale
+silkiness, adorned this minx with a kind of wild originality, completed
+by a pair of magnificently green eyes, burning beneath heavy eyebrows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One night, on leaving a <i>bal de l'Opéra</i>, d'Athis had taken her to sup
+with him, and though this was two years ago, the supper still continued.
+But, whereas Irma had become completely a part of the poet's life,
+this intimation of the child's birth, curt and haughty as it was,
+sufficiently indicated how little she was considered by him. And in
+truth, in this temporary household, the woman was scarcely more than a
+housekeeper, showing in the management of the gentleman-poet's house
+the hard shrewdness of her dual nature of peasant and courtesan; and
+endeavouring, at no matter what price, to render herself indispensable.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0078"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:28%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/208.jpg" height="302"
+alt="P197-208
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Too rustic, and too stupid to understand anything of d'Athis' genius, of
+those fine verses, fashionable and refined, which made of him a sort of
+Parisian Tennyson, she nevertheless understood how to bend to all his
+whims, and be silent under his contempt; as if in the depths of that
+peasant nature lurked something of the boor's humble admiration for his
+lord. The birth of the child only served to accentuate her unimportance
+in the house.
+</p>
+<p>
+When the dowager Comtesse d'Athis-Mons, the mother of the poet, a
+distinguished and very great lady, learned that a grandson was born to
+her, a sweet little Vicomte, duly recognized and authenticated by the
+author of his being,* she was seized with a wish to see and kiss the
+child. It was, to be sure, a rather bitter reflection for the former
+reader to Queen Marie-Amélie to think that the heir of such a great name
+should have such a mother; but, keeping strictly to the terms of
+the <i>billets de faire pari</i> the venerable lady could forget that the
+creature existed.
+</p>
+<p>
+* According to French law, an unmarried man recognizing his illegitimate
+child, thereby confers on him all the rights of a legitimate one,
+including both title and fortune.
+</p>
+<p>
+When she went to see the child out at nurse, she chose the days on which
+she would be sure not to meet any one; she admired him, spoilt him, took
+him to her heart, worshipped him with that grandmotherly adoration which
+is the last love of a woman's life, giving her an excuse for living
+a few years longer in order to see the little ones springing up and
+growing around her. Then when the baby Vicomte was a little bigger and
+returned to live with his father and mother, a treaty was made, for
+the Comtesse could not give up her beloved visits; at the sound of the
+grandmother's ring, Irma humbly and silently disappeared, or else the
+child was taken to his grandmother's house, and thus spoilt by his
+two mothers. He loved them equally, somewhat astonished to feel in
+the warmth of their caresses, a kind of exclusive-ness, a wish to
+monopolize. D'Athis, careless of everything but his verses, absorbed by
+his growing fame, was content to adore his little Robert, to talk of him
+to everyone and to imagine that the child belonged to him, and him only.
+This illusion did not last.
+</p>
+<p>
+"I should like to see you married," his mother said to him one day.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Yes, but how about the child?" "Don't worry yourself about that. I have
+picked out for you a young girl of good family but poor, who adores you.
+I have introduced Robert to her, and they are already great friends.
+Besides, the first year I will keep the darling with me. Afterwards, we
+shall see."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0079"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/211.jpg" height="400"
+alt="P200-211
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+"And&mdash;the mother?" hesitated the poet, reddening a little, for it was
+the first time that he had spoken of Irma to his mother.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0080"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:27%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/212.jpg" height="361"
+alt="P201-212
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+"Pooh!" replied the old dowager, laughing, "we will settle something
+handsome on her, and I am quite sure she will soon be married also. The
+<i>bourgeois</i> of Paris is not particular."
+</p>
+<p>
+That very evening, d'Athis, who had never been desperately in love
+with his mistress, spoke to her of these arrangements and found her as
+usual&mdash;submissive and apparently docile to his will. But the next
+day, when he returned home, he found that mother and child had flown.
+Finally, they were discovered in a wretched hut on the borders of the
+Forest of Rambouillet, with Irma's father; and when the poet arrived he
+found his son, his young prince, in his velvet and lace, jumping on
+the old poacher's knee, playing with his pipe, running after the hens,
+delighted to shake his fair curls in the fresh air. D'Athis, though much
+upset by emotion, pretended to laugh the affair off, and wished at once
+to take his fugitives home with him. But Irma did not see the matter
+in the same light. She had been dismissed; she took her child with her.
+What more natural? Nothing short of the poet's promise that he would
+give up all thoughts of marriage decided her to return. Moreover, she
+made her own conditions. It had been too long forgotten that she was
+Robert's mother. Always to disappear and hide whenever Madame d'Athis
+appeared, was no longer possible for her. The child was growing too old
+for her to be exposed to such humiliations before him. It was therefore
+agreed that as Madame d'Athis had refused to be brought into contact
+with her son's mistress, she should no longer go to his house, but that
+the child should be brought to her every day.
+</p>
+<p>
+Then began for the old grandmother a regular torture. Every day fresh
+pretexts were made to keep the child away; he had coughed, it was too
+cold, it was raining. Then came his walks, rides, gymnastic exercises.
+The poor old lady never saw her grandson. At first she tried complaining
+to d'Athis; but women alone have the secret of carrying on these little
+warfares. Their ruses remain invisible, like the hidden stitches which
+catch back the folds and laces of their dress. The poet could see
+nothing of it; and the saddened grandmother spent her life in waiting
+for her darling's visit, in watching for him in the street, when he
+walked out with a servant; and these furtive kisses and hasty glances
+only augmented her maternal passion without satisfying it.
+</p>
+<p>
+During this time, Irma Salle&mdash;always by means of the child&mdash;succeeded in
+gaining ground in the father's heart. She was the recognized head of the
+house now, received visitors, gave parties, settled herself as a woman
+who means to remain where she is. Still she took care to say from time
+to time to the little Vicomte, before his father: "Do you remember the
+chickens at Grandpapa Salle's? Shall we go back and see them?"
+</p>
+<a name="image-0081"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:30%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/215.jpg" height="362"
+alt="P204-215
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+And by this everlasting threat of departure, she paved the way to the
+end she had in view&mdash;marriage.
+</p>
+<p>
+It took her five years to become a Comtesse, but at length she gained
+her point. One day, the poet came in fear and trembling to announce to
+his mother that he had decided to marry his mistress, and the old lady,
+instead of being indignant hailed the calamity as a deliverance, seeing
+but one thing in the marriage; the possibility of once more entering her
+son's door, and of freely indulging her affection for her little Robert.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0082"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:30%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/216.jpg" height="325"
+alt="P205-216
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+In truth, the real honeymoon was for the grandmother. D'Athis, after
+this rash act, wished to be away from Paris for a time. He felt uneasy
+there. And as the child, clinging to his mother's skirts ruled the
+house, they all established themselves in Irma's native country, within
+hail of old father Salle's chickens. It was indeed the most curious, the
+most ill-assorted household that could be imagined. Grandmama d'Athis
+and Grandpapa Salle met each night at the evening toilet of their
+grandson. The old poacher, his short black pipe wedged into the corner
+of his mouth; and the former reader at the Tuileries, with her silvery
+hair, and her imposing manner, together watched the lovely child rolling
+before them on the carpet, and admired him equally. The one brought
+him from Paris the newest, most expensive, most showy toys; the other
+manufactured for him the most splendid whistles from bits of elder; and,
+by Jove! the Dauphin hesitated between them!
+</p>
+<p>
+Upon the whole, among all these beings grouped as it were by force
+around a cradle, the only really unhappy one was Charles d'Athis. His
+elegant and patrician inspiration suffered from this life in the depths
+of a forest, like a delicate Parisian woman for whom the country air is
+too strong. He could no longer work, and far from that terrible Paris
+who shuts her gates so quickly against the absent, he felt himself
+already nearly forgotten. Fortunately the child was there, and when the
+child smiled, the father thought no more of his successes as a poet, nor
+of the past of Irma Salle.
+</p>
+<p>
+And now, would you know the finale of this singular drama? Read the
+brief note bordered with black, that I received only a few days ago, and
+which is the last page of this truly Parisian adventure:
+</p>
+<p>
+"<i>M. le Comte and Mme. la Comtesse d'Athis grieve to inform you of the
+death of their son Robert!</i>"
+</p>
+<p>
+Unhappy creatures! Imagine them all four gazing at each other before
+that empty cradle!
+</p>
+<a name="image-0083"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/218.jpg" height="249" width="210"
+alt="P207-218
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="image-0084"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/219.jpg" height="435" width="379"
+alt="P208-219
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="image-0085"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/222.jpg" height="710" width="409"
+alt="P211-222
+">
+</center>
+
+<a name="2H_4_0013"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div>
+
+<h2>
+    THE CONFIDENCES OF AN ACADEMIC COAT.
+</h2>
+<h3>
+    That morning was the dawn of a glorious day for the sculptor Guillardin.
+</h3>
+<p>
+Elected on the previous day a member of the <i>Institut</i>, he was about
+to inaugurate before the five Academies gathered together in solemn
+concourse, his academic coat, a magnificent garment ornamented with
+green palm-leaves, resplendent in its new cloth and silken embroidery,
+colour of hope. The blessed coat, opened ready to slip on, lay spread on
+an arm-chair, and Guillardin contemplated it tenderly as he arranged the
+bow of his white tie.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Above all no hurry," thought the good fellow. "I have plenty of time."
+</p>
+<p>
+The fact is that in his feverish impatience he had dressed a couple of
+hours too soon; and the beautiful Madame Guillardin&mdash;always very slow
+over her dressing&mdash;had positively declared that on this day she would
+only be ready at the precise moment&mdash;not a minute earlier, do you hear!
+</p>
+<p>
+Unfortunate Guillardin! What could he do to kill the time?
+</p>
+<p>
+"Well, all the same, I will try on my coat," he said, and gently as
+though he were handling tulle and lace, he lifted the precious frippery,
+and having donned it with infinite precaution, he placed himself in
+front of his looking-glass. Oh! what a charming picture the
+mirror disclosed to him! What an amiable little Academician, freshly
+hatched, happy, smiling, grizzled, and protuberant, with arms too short
+in proportion to his figure, which in the new sleeves acquired a stiff
+and automatic dignity!
+</p>
+<a name="image-0086"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:16%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/224.jpg" height="422"
+alt="P213-224
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+Thoroughly satisfied with his appearance, Guillardin marched up and
+down, bowed as though entering the Academy, smiled to his colleagues of
+the fine arts, and assumed academical attitudes. Nevertheless, whatever
+pride one may feel at one's personal appearance, it is impossible to
+remain two hours in full dress, before a looking-glass. At last our
+Academician felt somewhat fatigued, and fearful lest he should rumple
+his coat, made up his mind to take it off and lay it back very carefully
+on the arm-chair. Then seating himself opposite on the other side of the
+fireplace, with his legs stretched out and his two hands crossed over
+his dress waistcoat, he began to indulge in sweet dreams as he gazed at
+the green coat.
+</p>
+<p>
+Like the traveller who, arrived at the end of his journey, likes
+to remember the dangers and difficulties that have beset his path,
+Guillardin retraced his life, year by year, from the day when he began
+to learn modelling in Jouffroy's studio. Ah! the outset is hard in that
+confounded profession. He remembered the fireless winters, the sleepless
+nights, the endless walks in search of work, the desperate rage
+experienced at feeling so small, so lost, and unknown in the immense
+crowd that pushes, hustles, upsets, and crushes. And yet all alone,
+without patronage or money, he had managed to rise. By sheer talent,
+sir! And his head thrown back, and eyes half-shut, the worthy man kept
+repeating out loud to himself: "By sheer talent. Nothing but talent."
+</p>
+<a name="image-0087"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figright" style="width:32%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/226.jpg" height="321"
+alt="P215-226
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+A long burst of laughter, dry and creaky like an old man's laugh,
+suddenly interrupted him. Slightly startled, Guillardin glanced around
+the room. He was alone, quite alone, <i>tête-à-tête</i> with his green coat,
+the ghost of an Academician solemnly spread out opposite him, on the
+other side of the fire. And still the insolent laugh rang on. Then as
+he looked at it more intently, the sculptor almost fancied that his coat
+was no longer in the place where he had put it, but really seated in the
+arm-chair, with tails turned up, and sleeves resting on the arms of the
+chair, the fronts puffed out with an appearance of life. Incredible as
+it may seem, it was this thing that was laughing. Yes, it was from this
+singular green coat that arose the uncontrollable fits of laughter by
+which it was agitated, shaken and convulsed, causing it to jerk its
+tails, throw itself back in the chair, and at moments place its two
+sleeves against its sides, as though to check this supernatural and
+inextinguishable excess of mirth. At the same time, a feeble voice, sly
+and mischievous, could be heard saying between two hiccups: "Oh dear,
+oh dear, how it hurts one to laugh like this! How it hurts one to laugh
+like this!" "Who the devil is there, for mercy's sake?" asked the poor
+Academician with wide staring eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+The voice continued still more slyly and mischievously:
+</p>
+<p>
+"But it's I, Monsieur Guillardin, I, your palm-embroidered coat, waiting
+for you to start for the reception. I must crave pardon for having so
+unseasonably interrupted your musing; but really it is too funny to hear
+you talk of your talent! I could not restrain myself. Come, you can't be
+serious? Can you conscientiously believe that your talent has sufficed
+to raise you so rapidly to the point you have attained in life; that it
+has given you all you possess: honours, position, fame, fortune? Do
+you really think that possible, Guillardin? Examine yourself, my dear
+friend, before answering; go down, far, far down, into your inmost
+conscience. Now, answer me? Don't you see you dare not?"
+</p>
+<p>
+"And yet," stammered Guillardin, with comical hesitation, "I've.... I've
+worked a great deal."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh yes, a great deal, you have fagged tremendously. You are a toiler,
+a drudge, you knock off a great deal of work. You count your task by the
+hour, like a cabdriver. But the spark, my dear boy, which, like a golden
+bee flits through the brain of the true artist, and emits from its wings
+both light and music, when has it ever visited you? Not once, and you
+are well aware of it. It has always frightened you, that divine little
+bee! And yet it is this only that gives real talent. Ah! I know many who
+also work, but very differently from you, with all the anxiety and fever
+of sincere research, and yet who will never reach the point you have
+attained. Look here, acknowledge this much, now we are alone. Your one
+talent has been marrying a pretty woman."
+</p>
+<p>
+"Monsieur!" interrupted Guillardin, turning purple. The voice proceeded
+unchanged: "Ah well! This burst of indignation is a good sign. It proves
+to me what all the world knows indeed; that you are certainly more fool
+than knave. Come, come, you need not roll such furious eyes at me. In
+the first place, if you touch me, if you make the least crease or tear
+in me, it will be impossible to go to the reception to-day, and then,
+what will Madame Guillardin say? For after all, it is to her that all
+the glory of this great day is due.
+</p>
+<a name="image-0088"><!--IMG--></a>
+<div class="figleft" style="width:13%;">
+        <img width="100%"
+        src="images/230.jpg" height="383"
+alt="P219-230
+">
+</div>
+
+<p>
+It is she whom the five Academies are about to receive, and I can assure
+you that if I appeared at the <i>Institut</i> on her pretty person, still
+so elegant and slender notwithstanding her age, I should cut a very
+different figure than with you. Confound it, Monsieur Guillardin,
+we must look facts in the face! You owe everything to that woman;
+everything, your house, your forty thousand francs (sixteen hundred
+pounds) a year, your cross of the Legion of Honour, your laurels, your
+medals."
+</p>
+<p>
+And with the gesture of a one-armed man, the green coat, with its empty
+embroidered sleeve, pointed out to the unfortunate sculptor the glorious
+insignia hung up on the walls of his alcove. Then, as though wishing
+the better to torment his victim, to assume every aspect, and every
+attitude, the cruel coat drew nearer the fire, and leaning forward on
+his arm-chair with a little old-fashioned and confidential air, he spoke
+familiarly, in the tone of a long-established intimacy:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Come, old boy, what I've said seems to upset you. Yet it is better you
+should know what everybody is aware of. And who could tell you better
+than your own coat? Let us reason a little. What had you when you
+married? Nothing. What did your wife bring you? Nothing. Then how do
+you explain your present fortune? You are going to repeat again that you
+have, worked very hard. But my poor friend, working day and night, with
+all the patronage and the orders from government which have certainly
+not been wanting to you since your marriage, you have never made more
+than fifteen thousand francs (six hundred pounds) a year. Can you for
+one moment suppose that was sufficient to keep up an establishment like
+yours? Remember that the beautiful Madame Guillardin has always been
+cited as a model of elegance, frequenting the richest society. Of course
+I am well aware that shut up as you were from morning till night in your
+studio, you never gave a thought to all this. You were satisfied with
+saying to your friends: 'I have a wife who is a surprisingly skilful
+manager. With what I gain, she not only pays our expenses, but manages
+also to put by money.' It was you who were surprising, poor man! The
+truth was that you had married one of those pretty little unscrupulous
+creatures of which Paris is full, an ambitious flirt, serious in what
+concerned your interests and unprejudiced in regard of her own, knowing
+how to reconcile your affairs and her pleasures. The life of these
+women, my dear fellow, resembles a dance programme in which sums would
+be placed side by side with the dancers' names. Yours reasoned in the
+following manner: 'My husband has no talent, no fortune, no good looks
+either; but he is an excellent man, good-natured, credulous, as little
+in the way as possible. Provided he leaves me free to amuse myself as
+I choose, I can undertake to give him all he lacks!' And from that day
+forth, money, orders, decorations from all countries kept pouring
+in upon your studio, with their pretty metallic sound and their
+many-coloured ribbons. Look at the row on my lapel. Then one fine
+morning, Madame was seized with the fancy&mdash;a fancy of beauty on the
+wane&mdash;to be the wife of an Academician, and it is her delicately
+gloved hand that has opened before you one by one all the doors of the
+sanctuary. Ah! my poor old fellow, your colleagues alone can tell you
+what all these green palms have cost you!"
+</p>
+<p>
+"You lie, you lie!" screamed Guillardin, half choked by indignation.
+</p>
+<p>
+"Ah no! my old friend, indeed I do not lie. You need only to look
+around you presently, when you enter the reception hall. You will see a
+malicious gleam in every eye, a smile at the corner of every lip,
+while they will whisper as you pass by: 'Here is the beautiful Madame
+Guillardin's husband.' For you will never be anything else in life, my
+dear fellow, but the husband of a pretty woman."
+</p>
+<p>
+This time, Guillardin could bear it no longer. Pale with rage, he
+bounded forward, to seize and dash into the fire, after first tearing
+from it the pretty green palm wreath, this insolent and raving coat; but
+a door opens and a well-known voice, tinged with a mixture of contempt
+and mild condescension, opportunely awakes him from his horrible
+nightmare:
+</p>
+<p>
+"Oh! that is just like you, asleep at the corner of the fire on such an
+important day!"
+</p>
+<p>
+And Madame Guillardin stands before him, tall and still handsome,
+although rather too imposing with her almost natural pink complexion,
+her powdered hair, and the exaggerated brilliancy of her painted eyes.
+With the gesture of the superior woman, she takes up the green-palmed
+coat, and briskly, with a little smile, helps her husband to don it;
+while he, poor man, still trembling with the horrors of his nightmare,
+draws a deep sigh of relief and thinks to himself: "Thank goodness! It
+was a dream!"
+</p>
+<a name="image-0089"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/235.jpg" height="503" width="369"
+alt="P224-235
+">
+</center>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Artists' Wives, by Alphonse Daudet
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+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Artists' Wives, by Alphonse Daudet
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Artists' Wives
+
+Author: Alphonse Daudet
+
+Illustrator: De Bieler, Myrbach; and Rossi
+
+Translator: Laura Ensor
+
+Release Date: September 5, 2007 [EBook #22522]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARTISTS' WIVES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+ARTISTS' WIVES
+
+By Alphonse Daudet
+
+Translated by Laura Ensor
+
+Illustrated by De Bieler, Myrbach; And Rossi
+
+[Illustration: Frontispiece]
+
+[Illustration: Titlepage]
+
+[Illustration: p007-018]
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+_Stretched at full length, on the great divan of a studio, cigar in
+mouth, two friends--a poet and a painter--were talking together one
+evening after dinner_.
+
+_It was the hour of confidences and effusion. The lamp burned softly
+beneath its shade, limiting its circle of light to the intimacy of the
+conversation, leaving scarcely distinct the capricious luxury of the
+vast walls, cumbered with canvases, hangings, panoplies, surmounted by a
+glass roof through which the sombre blue shades of the night penetrated
+unhindered. The portrait of a woman, leaning slightly forward, as if to
+listen, alone stood out a little from the shadow; young with intelligent
+eyes, a grave and sweet mouth and a spirituel smile which seemed to
+defend the husband's easel from fools and disparagers. A low chair
+pushed away from the fire, two little blue shoes lying on the carpet,
+indicated also the presence of a child in the house; and indeed from the
+next room, within which mother and child had but just disappeared,
+came occasional bursts of soft laughter, of childish babble; the
+pretty flutterings of a nest going off to sleep. All this shed over the
+artistic interior a vague perfume of family happiness which the poet
+breathed in with delight:_
+
+"_Decidedly, my dear fellow?" he said to his friend, "you were in the
+right. There are no two ways of being happy. Happiness lies in this and
+in nothing else. You must find me a wife!_"
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_Good Heavens, no! not on any account. Find one for yourself, if you are
+bent upon it. As for me, I will have nothing to do with it._
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_And why?_
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_Because--because artists ought never to marry._
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_That's rather too good. You dare to say that, and the lamp does not
+go out suddenly, and the walls don't fall down upon your head! But just
+think, wretch, that for two hours past, you have been setting before me
+the enviable spectacle of the very happiness you forbid me. Are you by
+chance like those odious millionaires whose well-being is in-creased by
+the sufferings of others, and who better enjoy their own fireside when
+they reflect that it is raining out of doors, and that there are plenty
+of poor devils without a shelter?_
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_Think of me what you will. I have too much affection for you to help
+you to commit a folly--an irreparable folly._
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_Come! what is it? You are not satisfied? And yet it seems to me that
+one breathes in happiness here, just as freely as one does the air of
+heaven at a country window._
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_You are right, I am happy, completely happy, I love my wife with all my
+heart. When I think of my child, I laugh aloud to myself with pleasure.
+Marriage for me has been a harbour of calm and safe waters, not one in
+which you make fast to a ring on the shore, at the risk of rusting
+there for ever, but one of those blue creeks where sails and masts are
+repaired for fresh excursions into unknown countries, I never worked as
+well as I have since my marriage. All my best pictures date from then._
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_Well then!_
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_My dear fellow, at the risk of seeming a coxcomb, I will say that I
+look upon my happiness as a kind of miracle, something abnormal and
+exceptional. Yes! the more I see what marriage is, the more I look back
+with terror at the risk I ran. I am like those who, ignorant of the
+dangers they have unwittingly gone through, turn pale when all is over,
+amazed at their own audacity._
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_But what then are these terrible dangers?_
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_The first and greatest of all, is the loss or degradation of one's
+talent. This should count, I think, with an artist. For observe that
+at this moment, I am not speaking of the ordinary conditions of life. I
+grant you, that in general marriage is an excellent thing, and that the
+majority of men only begin to be of some account when the family circle
+completes them or makes them greater. Often, indeed, it is necessary to
+a profession. A bachelor lawyer cannot even be imagined. He would not
+have the needful air of weight and gravity. But for all of us, painters,
+poets, sculptors, musicians, who live outside of life, wholly occupied
+in studying it, in reproducing it, holding ourselves always a little
+remote from it, as one steps back from a picture the better to see it, I
+say that marriage can only be the exception. To that nervous, exacting,
+impressionable being, that child-man that we call an artist, a special
+type of woman, almost impossible to find, is needful, and the safest
+thing to do is not to look for her. Ah! how well our great Delacroix,
+whom you admire so much, understood that! What a fine existence was his,
+bounded by his studio wall, devoted exclusively to Art! I was looking
+the other day at his cottage at Champrosay and the prim little garden
+full of roses, where he sauntered alone for twenty years! It has the
+calm and the narrowness of celibacy. Well now! think for a moment of
+Delacroix married, father of a family, with all the preoccupations of
+children to bring up, of money matters, of illnesses; do you believe his
+work would have been the same?_
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_You cite Delacroix, I reply Victor Hugo. Do you think that marriage
+hampered him for instance, while writing so many admirable books?_
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_I think as a matter of fact, that marriage did not hamper him in
+anything. But all husbands have not the genius that obtains pardon,
+nor a halo of glory with which to dry the tears they cause to flow. It
+cannot be very amusing to be the wife of a genius. There are plenty of
+labourers' wives who are happier._
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_A curious thing, all the same, this special pleading against marriage,
+by a married man, who is happy in being so._
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_I repeat that I don't give myself as an example. My opinion is formed by
+all the sad things I have seen elsewhere; all the misunderstandings
+so frequent in the households of artists, and caused solely by their
+abnormal life. Look at that sculptor who, in full maturity of age and
+talent, has just exiled himself, leaving wife and children behind him.
+Public opinion condemns him, and certainly I offer no excuse for him.
+And, nevertheless, I can well understand how he arrived at such a point!
+Here was a fellow who adored his art, and had a horror of the world, and
+society. The wife, though amiable and intelligent, instead of shielding
+him from the social obligations he loathed, condemned him for some
+ten years to all the exactions they involved. Thus she induced him to
+undertake a lot of official busts, horrible respectabilities in velvet
+skull caps, frights of women utterly devoid of grace; she disturbed him
+ten times a day with importunate visitors, and then every evening
+laid out for him a dress suit and light gloves, and dragged him from
+drawing-room to drawing-room. You will tell me he could have rebelled,
+could have replied point-blank: "No!" But don't you know that the very
+fact of our sedentary existences leaves us more than other men dependent
+on domestic influence? The atmosphere of the home envelopes us, and if
+some touch of the ideal does not lighten it, soon wearies and drags us
+down. Moreover, the artist as a rule puts what force and energy he
+has into his work, and after his solitary and patient struggles, finds
+himself left with no will to oppose to the petty importunities of life.
+With him, feminine tyrannies have free play. No one is more easily
+conquered and subdued. Only, beware! He must not be made to feel the
+yoke too heavily. If one day the invisible bonds with which he is
+surreptitiously fettered are drawn too tight and arrest the artistic
+effort, he will all at once tear them asunder, and, mistrusting his own
+weakness, will fly like our sculptor, over the hills and far away._
+
+_The wife of this sculptor was astounded at his flight. The unhappy
+creature is still wondering: "What can I have done to him?" Nothing.
+She simply did not understand him. For it is not enough to be good and
+intelligent to be the true helpmate of an artist, A woman must also
+possess infinite tact, smiling abnegation; and all this is found only by
+a miracle in a young creature, curious though ignorant as regards life.
+She is pretty, she has married a well-known man, received everywhere;
+why should she not wish to show herself a little on his arm? Is it
+not quite natural? The husband, on the contrary, growing intolerant
+of society as his talent progresses, finding time short, and art
+engrossing, refuses to be exhibited. Behold them both miserable, and
+whether the man gives in or resists, his life is henceforward turned
+from its course, and from its tranquillity. Ah! how many of these
+ill-matched couples have I known, where the wife was sometimes
+executioner, sometimes victim, but more often executioner, and nearly
+always unwittingly so! The other evening I was at Dargenty's, the
+musician. There were but a few guests, and he was asked to play. Hardly
+had he begun one off those pretty mazurkas with a Polish rhythm, which
+make him the successor of Chopin, when his wife began to talk, quite
+low at first, then a little louder. By degrees the fire of conversation
+spread. At the end of a minute I was the only listener. Then he shut the
+piano, and said to me with a heart-rent smile: "It is always like this
+here--my wife does not care for music." Can you imagine anything more
+terrible than to marry a woman who does not care for your art? Take my
+word for it, my friend, and don't marry. You are alone, you are free;
+keep as precious things, your liberty and your loneliness._
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_That is all very well! You talk at your ease of solitude. Presently,
+when I am gone, if some idea occurs to you, you will gently follow it
+by the side of your dying embers, without feeling around you that
+atmosphere of isolation, so vast, so empty, that in it inspiration
+evaporates and disperses. And one may yet fear to be alone in the hours
+of work; but there are moments of discouragement and weariness, when
+one doubts oneself ones art even. That is the moment when it must be
+happiness to find a faithful and loving heart, ever ready to sympathize
+with one's depression, to which one may appeal without fearing to
+disconcert a confidence and enthusiasm that are, in fact, unalterable.
+And then the child. That sweet unconscious baby smile, is not that the
+best moral rejuvenescence one can have? Ah! I have often thought over
+that. For us artists, vain as all must be who live by success, by that
+superficial esteem, capricious and fleeting, that we call the vogue; for
+us, above all others, children are indispensable. They alone can console
+us for growing old. All that we lose, the child gains. The success we
+have missed, we think: "He will have it" and in proportion as our hair
+grows thin, we have the joy of seeing it grow again, curly, golden, full
+of life, on a little fair head at our side._
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_Ah, poet! poet! have you thought also of all the mouthfuls by which
+with the end of pen or brush we must nourish a brood?_
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_Well! say what you like, the artist is made for family life, and
+that is so true, that those among us who do not marry, take refuge in
+temporary companionships, like travellers who, tired of being always
+home-less, end by settling in a room in some hotel, and pass their lives
+under the hackneyed notice of the signboard: "Apartments by the month or
+night?"_
+
+
+THE PAINTER.
+
+_Such are all in the wrong. They accept the worries of wedlock and will
+never know its joys._
+
+
+THE POET.
+
+_"You acknowledge then that there are some joys?"_
+
+
+_Here the painter, instead of replying, rose, searched out from among
+drawings and sketches a much-thumbed manuscript, and returning to his
+companion:_
+
+_"We might argue like this," said he, "for ever so long without either
+convincing the other. But since, notwithstanding my observations, you
+seem determined to try marriage, here is a little work I beg you to
+read. It is written--I would have you note--by a married man, much in
+love with his wife, very happy in his home, an observer who, spending
+his life among artists, amused himself by sketching one or two such
+households as I spoke of just now. From the first to the last line of
+this book, all is true, so true that the author would never publish it.
+Read it, and come to me when you have read it. I think you will have
+changed your mind."_
+
+_The poet took the manuscript and carried it home with him; but he did
+not keep the little book with all the needful care, for I have been able
+to detach a few leaves from it and boldly offer them to the public._
+
+[Illustration: p023-034]
+
+
+
+
+MADAME HEURTEBISE.
+
+She was certainly not intended for an artist's wife, above all for
+such an artist as this outrageous fellow, impassioned, uproarious and
+exuberant, who, with his nose in the air and bristling moustaches,
+rushed through life defiantly flaunting the eccentric and whirlwind-like
+name of Heurtebise,* like a challenge thrown down to all the absurd
+conventionalities and prejudices of the _bourgeois_ class. How, and by
+what strange charm had the little woman, brought up in a jeweller's
+shop, behind rows of watch chains and strings of rings, found the means
+of captivating this poet?
+
+* Hit the blast (literally).
+
+Picture to yourself the affected graces of a shopwoman with
+insignificant features, cold and ever-smiling eyes, complacent and
+placid physiognomy, devoid of real elegance, but having a certain love
+for glitter and tinsel, no doubt caught at her father's shopwindow,
+making her take pleasure in many-coloured satin bows, sashes and
+buckles; and her hair glossy with cosmetic, stiffly arranged by the
+hairdresser over a small, obstinate, narrow forehead, where the total
+absence of wrinkles told less of youth than of complete lack of thought.
+Such as she was, however, Heurtebise loved and wooed her, and as he
+happened to possess a small income, found no difficulty in winning her.
+
+What pleased her in this marriage was the idea of wedding an author,
+a well-known man, who would take her to the theatre as often as she
+wished. As for him, I verily believe that her sham elegance born of the
+shop, her pretentious manners, pursed up mouth, and affectedly uplifted
+little finger, fascinated him and appeared to him the height, of
+Parisian refinement; for he was born a peasant and in spite of his
+intelligence remained one to the end of his days.
+
+[Illustration: p025-036]
+
+Tempted by a quiet happiness and the family life of which he had been so
+long deprived, Heurtebise spent two years far from his friends, buried
+in the country, or in out-of-way suburban nooks, within easy distance
+of that great city Paris, which overexcited him even while he yet sought
+its attenuated atmosphere, just like those invalids who are recommended
+sea air, but who, too delicate to bear it in all its strength, are
+compelled to inhale it from a distance of some miles. From time to time,
+his name appeared in a newspaper or magazine at the end of an article;
+but already the freshness of style, the bursts of eloquence, were
+lacking by which he had been formerly known. We thought: "He is too
+happy! his happiness has spoilt him."
+
+However, one day he returned amongst us, and we immediately saw that he
+was not happy. His pallid countenance, drawn features contracted by a
+perpetual irritability, the violent manners degenerated into a nervous
+rage, the hollow sound of his once fine ringing laugh, all showed that
+he was an altered man. Too proud to admit that he had made a mistake,
+he would, not complain, but the old friends who gathered round him
+were soon convinced that he had made a most foolish marriage, and that
+henceforth his life must prove a failure. On the other hand, Madame
+Heurtebise appeared to us, after two years of married life, exactly the
+same as we had beheld her in the vestry on her wedding day. She wore
+the same calm and simpering smile, she had as much as ever the air of
+a shopwoman in her Sunday clothes, only she had gained self-possession.
+She talked now. In the midst of artistic discussions into which
+Heurtebise passionately threw himself, with arbitrary assertions, brutal
+contempt, or blind enthusiasm, the false and honeyed voice of his
+wife would suddenly make irruption, forcing him to listen to some idle
+reasoning or foolish observation invariably outside of the subject
+of discussion. Embarrassed and worried, he would cast us an imploring
+glance, and strive to resume the interrupted conversation. Then at last,
+wearied out by her familiar and constant contradiction, by the silliness
+of her birdlike brain, inflated and empty as any cracknel, he held his
+tongue, and silently resigned himself to let her go on to the bitter
+end. But this determined silence exasperated Madame, seemed to her
+more insulting, more disdainful than anything. Her sharp voice became
+discordant, and growing higher and shriller, stung and buzzed, like
+the ceaseless teasing of a fly, till at last her enraged husband in his
+turn, burst out brutal and terrific.
+
+She emerged from these incessant quarrels, which always ended in tears,
+rested and refreshed, as a lawn after a watering, but he remained
+broken, fevered, incapable of work, Little by little his very violence
+was worn out One evening when I was present at one of these odious
+scenes, as Madame Heurtebise triumphantly left the table, I saw on her
+husband's face bent downwards during the quarrel and now upraised, an
+expression of scorn and anger that no words could any longer express.
+The little woman went off shutting the door with a sharp snap, and he,
+flushed, with his eyes full of tears, and his mouth distorted by an
+ironical and despairing smile, made like any school-boy behind his
+master's back, an atrocious gesture of mingled rage and pain. After a
+few moments, I heard him murmur, in a voice strangled by emotion: "Ah,
+if it were not for the child, how I would be off at once!"
+
+For they had a child, a poor little fellow, handsome and dirty, who
+crawled all over the place, played with dogs bigger than himself, with
+the spiders in the garden, and made mud-pies. His mother only noticed
+him to declare him "disgusting" and that she had not put him out to
+nurse.
+
+[Illustration: p029-040]
+
+She clung in fact to all the little shopkeeper traditions of her youth,
+and the untidy home in which she went about from early morn in elaborate
+costumes and astonishingly dressed hair, recalled the back-shops so dear
+to her heart, rooms black with filth and want of air, where in the
+short intervals of rest from commercial life, badly cooked meals were
+hurriedly eaten, at a bare wooden table, listening all the while for the
+tinkle of the shop-bell. With this class, nothing has importance but
+the street, the street with its passing purchasers and idlers, and its
+overflowing holiday crowd, that on Sundays throng the side walks and
+pavements. And how bored she was, wretched creature, in the country, how
+she regretted the Paris life! Heurtebise, on the contrary, required
+the country for his mental health. Paris still bewildered him like some
+countrified boor on his first visit. His wife could not understand it,
+and bitterly complained of her exile. By way of diversion she invited
+her old acquaintances, and when her husband was absent they amused
+themselves by turning over his papers, his memoranda, and the work he
+was engaged upon.
+
+"Do look, my dear, how funny it is. He shuts himself up to write this.
+He paces up and down, talking to himself. As for me, I understand
+nothing of what he does."
+
+And then came endless regrets, and recollections of her past life.
+
+"Ah! if I had known. When I think that I might have married Aubertot and
+Fajon, the linen-drapers." She always spoke of the two partners at the
+same time, as though she would have married the firm. Neither did she
+restrain her feelings in her husband's presence.
+
+[Illustration: p031-042]
+
+She disturbed him, prevented all work, settling down with her friends in
+the very room he was writing in, and filling it with the silly
+chatter of idle women, who talked loud, full of disdain for a literary
+profession which brought in so little, and whose most laborious hours
+always resemble a capricious idleness. From time to time Heurtebise
+strove to escape from the life which he felt was daily becoming more
+dismal. He rushed off to Paris, hired a small room at an hotel, tried to
+fancy he was a bachelor; but suddenly he thought of his son, and with a
+desperate longing to embrace him hurried back the same evening into the
+country.
+
+[Illustration: p032-043]
+
+On these occasions, in order to avoid the inevitable scene on his
+return, he took a friend back with him and kept him there as long as he
+could. As soon as he was no longer alone face to face with his wife,
+his fine intellect awoke and his interrupted schemes of work little by
+little and one after the other came back to him. But what anguish it was
+when his friends left! He would have kept his guests for ever, clinging
+to them by all the strength of his _ennui_. With what sadness would he
+accompany us to the stand of the little suburban omnibus which bore us
+back to Paris! and when we left, how slowly he turned homewards over the
+dusty road, with rounded shoulders and listless arms, listening to the
+vanishing wheels.
+
+In truth their _tete-a-tete_ life had become unbearable, and to avoid
+it, he tried always to keep his house full. With his easy goodnature,
+his weariness and indifference, he was soon surrounded by a lot of
+literary starvelings. A set of scribblers, lazy, cracked day-dreamers,
+settled down upon him and became more at home than himself; and as his
+wife was but a fool, incapable of judging, because they talked more
+loudly, she found them charming and very superior to her husband. The
+days were spent in idle discussions. There was a clash of empty words,
+a firing of smallest shot, and poor Heurtebise, motionless and silent
+in the midst of the tumult, merely smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
+Sometimes, however, towards the end of an interminable repast, when all
+his guests, elbows on table, began around the brandy flasks one of
+those lengthy maundering conversations, benumbing like clouds of tobacco
+smoke, an immense feeling of disgust would seize hold of him, and not
+having the courage to turn out all these poor wretches, he would himself
+disappear and remain absent for a week.
+
+[Illustration: p034-045]
+
+"My house is full of imbeciles," he said one day to me. "I dare not
+return." With this kind of existence, he no longer wrote. His name was
+never seen, and his fortune, squandered in a perpetual craving to have
+people in his house, disappeared in the outstretched hands around him.
+
+[Illustration: p035-046]
+
+It was a long time since we had met when I received one morning a line
+of his dear little handwriting, formerly so firm, now trembling and
+uncertain. "We are in Paris. Come and see me. I am so dull." I found him
+with his wife, his child and his dogs, in a lugubrious little apartment
+in the Batignolles. The disorder which in this narrow space could not be
+spread about, seemed more hideous even than in the country. While the
+child and dogs rolled about in rooms the size of a chessboard
+compartment, Heurtebise; who was ill, lay with his face to the wall, in
+a state of utter prostration. His wife, dressed out as usual, and ever
+placid, hardly looked at him. "I don't know what is the matter with
+him," she said to me with a gesture of indifference. On seeing me he had
+for a moment a return of gaiety, and a minute of his old hearty laugh,
+but it was soon stifled. As they had kept up in Paris all their suburban
+habits, there appeared at the breakfast hour, in the midst of this
+household disorganized by poverty and illness, a parasite, a seedy
+looking little bald man, cranky and peevish, of whom they always spoke
+as "the man who has read Proudhon." It was thus that Heurtebise, who
+probably had never known his name, introduced him to everybody. When he
+was asked "Who is that?" he unhesitatingly replied, "Oh! a very clever
+fellow, who has thoroughly studied Proudhon." His knowledge was
+certainly not very apparent, for this deep thinker rarely made himself
+heard except to complain at table of an ill-cooked roast or a spoilt
+sauce. On this occasion, the man who had read Proudhon declared that the
+breakfast was detestable, which however did not prevent his devouring
+the larger half of it himself.
+
+How long and lugubrious this meal by the bedside of my sick friend
+appeared to me! The wife gossiped as usual, with a tap now and then to
+the child, a bone to the dogs, and a smile to the philosopher. Not once
+did Heurtebise turn towards us, and yet he was not asleep. I hardly know
+whether he thought. Dear, valiant fellow! In those paltry and ceaseless
+struggles, the mainspring of his strong nature had broken, and he was
+already beginning to die. The silent death agony, which however was
+rather an abandonment of life, lasted several months; and then Madame
+Heurtebise found herself a widow. Then, as no tears had dimmed her clear
+eyes, as she always bestowed the same care on her glossy locks, and as
+Aubertot and Fajon were still available, she married Aubertot and Fajon.
+Perhaps it was Aubertot, perhaps it was Fajon, perhaps even both of
+them. In any case, she was able to resume the life she was fitted for,
+and the voluble gossip and eternal smile of the shopwoman.
+
+[Illustration: p038-049]
+
+[Illustration: p041-052]
+
+
+
+
+THE CREDO OF LOVE.
+
+To be the wife of a poet! that had been the dream of her life! but
+ruthless fate, instead of the romantic and fevered existence she sighed
+for, had doomed her to a peaceful, humdrum happiness, and married her to
+a rich man at Auteuil, gentle and amiable, perhaps indeed a trifle
+old for her, possessed of but one passion,--perfectly inoffensive and
+unexciting--that of horticulture. This excellent man spent his days
+pruning, scissors in hand, tending and trimming a magnificent collection
+of rose trees, heating a greenhouse, watering flower beds; and really it
+must be admitted that, for a poor little heart hungering after an ideal,
+this was hardly sufficient food. Nevertheless for ten years her life
+remained straightforward and uniform, like the smooth sanded paths in
+her husband's garden, and she pursued it with measured steps, listening
+with resigned weariness to the dry and irritating sound of the
+ever-moving scissors, or to the monotonous and endless showers that fell
+from the watering pots on to the leafy shrubs. The rabid horticulturist
+bestowed on his wife the same scrupulous attention he gave to his
+flowers. He carefully regulated the temperature of the drawing-room,
+overcrowded with nosegays, fearing for her the April frosts or March
+sun; and like the plants in pots that are put out and taken in at stated
+times, he made her live methodically, ever watchful of a change of
+barometer or phase of the moon.
+
+She remained like this for a long time, closed in by the four walls
+of the conjugal garden, innocent as a clematis, full however of wild
+aspirations towards other gardens, less staid, less humdrum, where the
+rose trees would fling out their branches untrained, and the wild growth
+of weed and briar be taller than the trees, and blossom with unknown and
+fantastic flowers, luxuriantly coloured by a warmer sun. Such gardens
+are rarely found save in the books of poets, and so she read many
+verses, all unknown to the nurseryman, who knew no other poetry than a
+few almanac distichs such as:
+
+     Quand il pleut a la Saint-Medard,
+     Il pleut quarante jours plus tard.*
+
+     * When it rains on Saint Medard's day,
+     It rains on for forty more days.
+
+At haphazard, the unfortunate creature ravenously devoured the paltriest
+rhymes, satisfied if she found in them lines ending in "love" and
+"passion"; then closing the book, she would spend hours dreaming and
+sighing: "That would have been the husband for me!"
+
+It is probable that all this would have remained in a state of vague
+aspiration, if at the terrible age of thirty, which seems to be the
+decisive critical moment for woman's virtue, as twelve o'clock is for
+the day's beauty, the irresistible Amaury had not chanced to cross her
+path. Amaury was a drawing-room poet, one of those fanatics in dress
+coat and grey kid gloves, who between ten o'clock and midnight, go
+and recite to the world their ecstasies of love, their raptures, their
+despair, leaning mournfully against the mantel-piece, in the blaze of
+the lights, while seated around him women, in full evening dress, listen
+entranced behind their fans.
+
+This one might pose as the very ideal of his kind; with his vulgar but
+irresistible countenance, sunken eye, pallid complexion, hair cut short
+and moustaches stiffly plastered with cosmetic. A desperate man such
+as women love, hopeless of life but irreproachably dressed, a lyric
+enthusiast, chilled and disheartened, in whom the madness of inspiration
+can be divined only in the loose and neglected tie of his cravat. But
+also what success awaits him, when he delivers in a strident voice
+a tirade from his poem, the _Credo of Love_, more especially the one
+ending in this extraordinary line:
+
+     Moi, je crois a l'amour comme je crois en Dieu! *
+
+     * I believe in love as I believe in God.
+
+[Illustration: p045-56]
+
+Mark you, I strongly suspect the rascal cares as little for God, as for
+the rest; but women do not look so closely. They are easily caught by
+a birdlime of words, and every time Amaury recites his _Credo of Love_,
+you are certain to see all round the drawing-room rows upon rows of
+little rosy mouths, eagerly opening, ready to swallow the taking bait
+of mawkish sentimentality. Just fancy! A poet who has such beautiful
+moustaches and who believes in love as he believes in God.
+
+For the nurseryman's wife this proved indeed irresistible. In three
+sittings she was conquered. Only, as at the bottom of this elegiac
+nature there was some honesty and pride, she would not stoop to any
+paltry fault. Moreover the poet himself declared in his _Credo_, that
+he only understood one way of erring: that which was openly declared and
+ready to defy both law and society. Taking therefore the _Credo of Love_
+for her guide, the young woman one fine day escaped from the garden at
+Auteuil and went off to throw herself into her poet's arms.--"I can no
+longer live with that man! Take me away!"
+
+In such cases the husband is always _that man_, even when he is a
+horticulturist.
+
+For a moment Amaury was staggered. How on earth could he have imagined
+that an ordinary little housewife of thirty would have taken in earnest
+a love poem, and followed it out literally? However he put the best face
+he could on his over-good fortune, and as the lady had, thanks to her
+little Auteuil garden, remained fresh and pretty, he carried her off
+without a murmur. The first days, all was delightful. They feared lest
+the husband should track them. They thought it advisable to hide under
+fictitious names, change hotels, inhabit the most remote quarters of the
+town, the suburbs of Paris, the outlying districts.
+
+[Illustration: p047-058]
+
+In the evening they stealthily sallied forth and took sentimental walks
+along the fortifications. Oh the wonderful power of romance! The more
+she was alarmed, the more precautions, window blinds and lowered veils,
+were necessary, the greater did her poet seem. At night, they opened the
+little window of their room and gazing at the stars rising on high above
+the signal lights of the neighbouring railway, she made him repeat again
+and again his wonderful verses:
+
+     Moi, je crois a l'amour comme je crois en Dieu.
+
+And it was delightful!
+
+[Illustration: p048-059]
+
+Unfortunately it did not last. The husband left them too much
+undisturbed. The fact is, _that man_ was a philosopher. His wife gone,
+he had closed the green door of his oasis and quietly set about trimming
+his roses again, happy in the thought that these at least, attached
+to the soil by long roots, would not be able to run away from him. Our
+reassured lovers returned to Paris and then suddenly the young woman
+felt that some change had come over her poet. Their flight, fear of
+detection, and constant alarms,--all these things which had fed
+her passion existing no longer, she began to understand and see the
+situation clearly.
+
+[Illustration: p049-060]
+
+Moreover, at every moment, in the settling of their little household,
+in the thousand paltry details of every day life, the man she was living
+with showed himself more thoroughly.
+
+The few and scarce generous, heroic or delicate feelings he possessed
+were spun out in his verses, and he kept none for his personal use.
+He was mean, selfish, above all very niggardly, a fault love seldom
+forgives. Then he had cut off his moustaches, and was disfigured by
+the loss. How different from that fine gloomy fellow with his carefully
+curled locks, as he appeared one evening declaiming his _Credo_, in the
+blaze of two chandeliers! Now, in the enforced retreat he was undergoing
+on her account, he gave way to all his crotchets, the greatest of which
+was fancying himself always ill. Indeed, from constantly playing at
+consumption, one ends by believing in it. The poet Amaury was fond of
+decoctions, wrapped himself up in plaisters, and covered his chimney
+piece with phials and powders. For some time the little woman took up
+quite seriously her part of a nursing sister. Her devotion seemed to
+excuse her fault and give an object to her life. But she soon tired of
+it. In spite of herself, in the stuffy room where the poet sat wrapped
+in flannel, she could not help thinking of her little garden so sweetly
+scented, and the kind nurseryman seen from afar in the midst of
+his shrubs and flowerbeds, appeared to her as simple, touching and
+disinterested, as this other one was exacting and egotistical.
+
+At the end of a month, she loved her husband, really loved him, not with
+the affection induced by habit, but with a real and true love. One day
+she wrote him a long letter full of passion and repentance. He did
+not vouchsafe a reply. Perhaps he thought she was not yet sufficiently
+punished. Then she despatched letter after letter, humbled herself,
+begged him to allow her to return, saying she would die rather than
+continue to live with that man. It was now the lover's turn to be called
+"that man." Strange to say, she hid herself from him to write; for
+she believed him still in love, and while imploring her husband's
+forgiveness, she feared the exaltation of her lover.
+
+"He will never allow me to leave," she said to herself.
+Accordingly, when by dint of supplications she obtained forgiveness
+and the nurseryman--I have already mentioned that he was a
+philosopher,--consented to take her back, the return to her own home
+bore all the mysterious and dramatic aspect of flight. She literally
+eloped with her husband. It was her last culpable pleasure. One evening
+as the poet, tired of their dual existence, and proud of his regrown
+moustaches, had gone to an evening party to recite his _Credo of Love_,
+she jumped into a cab that was awaiting her at the end of the street and
+returned with her old husband to the little garden at Auteuil, for ever
+cured of her ambition to be the wife of a poet. It is true that this
+fellow was not much of a poet!
+
+[Illustration: p055-066]
+
+
+
+
+THE TRANSTEVERINA.
+
+The play was just over, and while the crowd, with its many varied
+impressions, hurried away and poured out under the glare of the
+principal portico of the theatre, a few friends, of whom I was one,
+awaited the poet at the artists' entrance in order to congratulate him.
+His production had not, indeed, been very successful. Too powerful to
+suit the timid and trivial imagination of the public of our day, it
+was quite beyond the range of the stage, limited as that is by
+conventionalities and tolerated traditions. Pedantic criticism declared:
+"It is not fit for the stage!" and the scoffers of the boulevards
+revenged themselves for the emotion these magnificent verses had given
+them by repeating: "It won't pay!" As for us, we were proud of the
+friend who had dared to roll forth in a ringing peal, his splendid
+golden rhymes, flashing the best product of his genius beneath the
+artificial and murderous light of the lustres, and presenting his
+personages in life-like size, heedless of the optical illusion of the
+modern stage, of the dimness of opera-glass and defective vision.
+
+Amid a motley crowd of scene shifters, firemen, and _figurants_ muffled
+up in comforters, the poet approached us, his tall figure bent double,
+his coat collar chillily turned up over his thin beard and long grizzled
+hair. He seemed depressed. The scant applause of the hired claque and
+literary friends confined to a corner of the house foretold a limited
+number of representations, choice and rare spectators, and posters
+rapidly replaced without giving his name a chance of being known. When
+one has worked twenty of talent and life, this obstinate refusal of
+the public to comprehend is wearying and disheartening, and one ends by
+thinking: "Perhaps after all they are right." Fear paralyses and words
+fail. Our acclamations and enthusiastic greetings somewhat cheered him.
+"Really do you think so? Is it well done? 'Tis true I have given all I
+knew." And his feverish hands anxiously clutched ours, his eyes full
+of tears sought a sincere and reassuring glance. It was the imploring
+anguish of the sick person, asking the doctor: "It is not true, I'm
+not going to die?" No! poet, you will not die. The operettas and fairy
+pieces that have had hundreds of representations and thousands of
+spectators will be long since forgotten, scattered to the winds with
+their last playbills, while your work will ever remain fresh and living.
+
+As we stood on the now deserted pavement, exhorting and cheering him, a
+loud contralto voice vulgarised by an Italian accent burst upon us.
+
+"Hullo, artist! enough _pouegie_. Let's go and eat the _estoufato!_"
+
+[Illustration: p058-069]
+
+At the same moment a stout woman wrapped up in a hooded cape and a red
+tartan shawl linked her arm in that of our friend, in a manner so
+brutal and despotic that his countenance and attitude became at once
+embarrassed.
+
+"My wife," he said, then turning towards her with a hesitating smile:
+
+"Suppose we take them home and show them how you make an _estoufato?_"
+
+Flattered in the conceit of her culinary accomplishments, the Italian
+graciously consented to receive us, and five or six of us started off
+for the heights of Montmartre where they dwelt, to share their stewed
+beef.
+
+I confess I took a certain interest in the artist's home life. Since his
+marriage our friend had led a very secluded existence, almost always in
+the country; but what I knew of his life whetted my curiosity. Fifteen
+years before, when in all the freshness of a romantic imagination,
+he had met in the suburbs of Rome a magnificent creature with whom he
+immediately fell desperately in love. Maria Assunta, her father, and a
+brood of brothers and sisters inhabited one of those little houses of
+the Transtevera with walls uprising from the waters of the Tiber, and an
+old fishing boat rocking level with the door. One day he caught sight of
+the handsome Italian girl, with bare feet in the sand, red skirt tightly
+pleated around her, and unbleached linen sleeves tucked up to the
+shoulders, catching eels out of a large gleaming wet net. The silvery
+scales glistening through the meshes full of water, the golden river
+and scarlet petticoat, the beautiful black eyes deep and pensive, which
+seemed darkened in their musing by the surrounding sunlight struck the
+artist, perhaps even rather trivially, like some coloured print on the
+titlepage of a song in a music-seller's window.
+
+[Illustration: p060-071]
+
+It so chanced that the girl was heart-whole, having till now bestowed
+her affections on a big tom-cat, yellow and sly, also a great fisher of
+eels, who bristled up all over when anyone approached his mistress.
+
+[Illustration: p061-072]
+
+Beasts and men, our lover managed to tame all these folk, was married at
+Santa-Maria of the Transtevera and brought back to France the beautiful
+Assunta and her _cato_.
+
+Ah! poor fellow, he ought also to have brought away at the same time
+some of the sunlight of that country, a scrap of the blue sky, the
+eccentric costume and the bulrushes of the Tiber, and the large swing
+nets of the _Ponte Rotto_; in fact the frame with the picture. Then he
+would have been spared the cruel disenchantment he experienced when,
+having settled in a modest flat on the fourth storey, on the heights of
+Montmartre, he saw his handsome Transteverina decked out in a crinoline,
+a flounced dress, and a Parisian bonnet, which, constantly out of
+balance on the top of her heavy braids, assumed the most independent
+attitudes. Under the clear cold light of Parisian skies, the unfortunate
+man soon perceived that his wife was a fool, an irretrievable fool. Not
+a single idea even lurked in the velvety depths of those beautiful black
+eyes, lost in infinite contemplation. They glittered like an animal's
+in the calm of digestion, or in a chance gleam of light, nothing more.
+Withal the lady was common, vulgar, accustomed to govern by a slap all
+the little world of her native hut, and the least opposition threw her
+into uncontrollable rages.
+
+Who would have guessed that the fine mouth, straitened by silence into
+the purest shape of an antique face, would suddenly open to let flow
+torrents of vulgar abuse? Without respect for herself or for him, out
+loud, in the street, at the theatre, she would pick a quarrel with him,
+and indulge in scenes of fearful jealousy. To crown all, devoid of
+any artistic feeling, she was completely ignorant of her husband's
+profession and language, of manners, in fact of everything. The little
+French she could be taught, only made her forget Italian, and the result
+was that she composed a kind of half and half jargon which had the most
+comical effect. In short this love story, begun like one of Lamartine's
+poems, was ending like a novel of Champfleury's. After having for a long
+time struggled to civilise this wild woman, the poet saw he must abandon
+the task. Too honourable to leave her, probably still too much in love,
+he made up his mind to shut himself up, see no one, and work hard. The
+few intimate friends he admitted to his house, saw that they embarrassed
+him and ceased to come.
+
+[Illustration: p064-075]
+
+Hence it was that for the last fifteen years he had been living boxed up
+in his household like in a leper's cell.
+
+As I pondered over this wretched existence, I watched the strange couple
+walking before me. He, slender, tall and round-shouldered.
+
+[Illustration: p065-076]
+
+She, squarely built, heavy, shaking her shawl by an impatient shrug
+of her shoulders, with a free gait like a man's. She was tolerably
+cheerful, her speech was loud, and from time to time she turned round to
+see if we followed, familiarly shouting and calling by name those of us
+she happened to know, accentuating her words by much gesticulation as
+she would have hailed a fishing boat on the Tiber. When we reached their
+house, the _concierge_, furious at seeing so noisy a crew at such an
+unearthly hour, tried to prevent our entry. The Italian and he had a
+fearful row on the staircase. We were all dotted about on the winding
+stairs dimly lighted by the dying gas, ill at ease, uncomfortable,
+hardly knowing if we ought not to come down again.
+
+"Come, quick, let us go up," said the poet in a low tone, and we
+followed him silently, while, leaning over the banisters that shook
+under her weight and anger, the Italian let fly a volley of abuse in
+which Roman imprecations alternated with the vocabulary of the
+back slums. What a return home for the poet who had just roused the
+admiration of artistic Paris, and still retained in his fevered eyes
+the dazzling intoxication of his first performance! What a humiliating
+recall to every-day life!
+
+It was only by the fireside in his little sitting room that the icy
+chill caused by this silly adventure was dispelled, and we should soon
+have completely forgotten it, had it not been for the piercing voice and
+bursts of laughter of the signora whom we heard in the kitchen telling
+her maid how soundly she had rated that _choulato!_ When the table was
+laid and supper ready, she came and seated herself amongst us, having
+taken off her shawl, bonnet and veil, and I was able to examine her at
+my leisure. She was no longer handsome. The square face, the broad heavy
+jaw, the coarse hair turning grey, and above all the vulgar expression
+of the mouth, contrasted singularly with the eternal and meaningless
+reverie of the dreamy gaze. Resting her elbows on the table, familiar
+and shapeless, she joined in the conversation without for an instant
+losing sight of her plate. Just over her head, proud amid all the
+melancholy rubbish of the drawing-room, a large portrait signed by an
+illustrious name, stood out of the surrounding shade,--it was Maria
+Assunta at twenty. The purple costume, the milky white of the pleated
+wimple, the bright gold of the over-abundant imitation jewelry, set off
+magnificently the brilliancy of a sunny complexion, the velvety shades
+of the thick hair growing low on the forehead, which seemed to be united
+by an almost imperceptible down to the superb and straight line of
+the eyebrows. How could such an exuberance of life and beauty have
+deteriorated and become such a mass of vulgarity? And curiously while
+the Transteverina talked, I interrogated her lovely eyes, so deep and
+soft on the canvas.
+
+[Illustration: p068-079]
+
+The excitement of the meal had put her in a good humour. To cheer up
+the poet, to whom his mingled failure and glory were doubly painful,
+she thumped him on the back, laughed with her mouth full, saying in her
+hideous jargon, that it was not worth while for such a trifle to fling
+oneself head downwards from the _campanile del Duomo_.
+
+[Illustration: p069-080]
+
+"Isn't it true, _il cato?_" she added turning to the old tom-cat
+crippled by rheumatism, snoring in front of the fire. Then suddenly, in
+the middle of an interesting discussion, she screamed out to her husband
+in a voice senseless and brutal as the crack of a rifle:
+
+"Hey! artist! _la lampo qui filo!_"
+
+The poor fellow immediately interrupted his conversation to wind up the
+lamp, humble, submissive, anxious to avoid the scene he dreaded, and
+which in spite of all, he did not escape.
+
+On returning from the theatre we had stopped at the _Maison d'Or_ to get
+a bottle of choice wine to wash down the _estoufato_. All along the road
+Maria Assunta had piously carried it under her shawl, and on her arrival
+she had placed it on the table where she could cast tender looks upon
+it, for Roman women are fond of good wine. Already twice or three times
+mistrustful of her husband's absence of mind, and the length of his
+arms, she had said:
+
+"Mind the _boteglia_--you're going to break it."
+
+At last, as she went off to the kitchen to take up with her own hands
+the famous _estoufato_, she again called out to him:
+
+"Whatever you do, don't break the _boteglia_."
+
+Unluckily, the moment his wife had disappeared, the poet seized the
+opportunity to talk about art, theatres, success, so freely and with so
+much gusto and vivacity, that--crash! By a gesture more eloquent than
+the others, the wonderful bottle was thrown down and fell to the ground
+in a thousand pieces. Never have I beheld such terror. He stopped short,
+and became deadly pale. At the same moment, Assunta's contralto was
+heard in the next room, and the Italian appeared on the threshold with
+flashing eyes, lips swollen with rage, red with the heat of the kitchen
+range.
+
+"The _boteglia!_" she roared in a terrible voice.
+
+Then timidly bending down to me, he whispered:
+
+"Say it's you."
+
+And the poor devil was so frightened, that I felt his long legs tremble
+under the table.
+
+[Illustration: p075-086]
+
+
+
+
+A COUPLE OF SINGERS.
+
+How could they help falling in love? Handsome and famous as they both
+were, singing in the same operas, living each night during five whole
+acts the same artificial and passionate existence. You cannot play with
+fire without being burnt. You cannot say twenty times a month: "I love
+you!" to the sighing of a flute or the tremolos of a violin, without at
+last being caught by the emotion of your own voice. In course of time,
+passion awoke in the surrounding harmonies, the rhythmical surprises,
+the gorgeousness of costume and scenery. It was wafted to them through
+the window that Elsa and Lohengrin threw wide open on a night vibrating
+with sound and luminousness:
+
+"Come let us breathe the intoxicating perfumes."
+
+It slipped in between the white columns of the Capulets' balcony, where
+Romeo and Juliet linger in the dawning light of day:
+
+"It was the nightingale, and not the lark."
+
+And softly it caught Faust and Marguerite in a ray of moonlight, that
+rose from the rustic bench to the shutters of their little chamber, amid
+the entangled ivy and blossoming roses:
+
+"Let me once more gaze upon thy face."
+
+Soon all Paris knew their love and became interested in it. It was the
+wonder of the season. The world came to admire the two splendid stars
+gently gravitating towards each other in the musical firmament of the
+Opera House. At last one evening, after an enthusiastic recall, as the
+curtain fell, separating the house full of noisy applause and the
+stage littered with bouquets, where the white gown of Juliet swept
+over scattered camellia blossoms, the two singers were seized with an
+irresistible impulse, as though their love, a shade artificial, had but
+awaited the emotion of a splendid success to reveal itself.
+
+[Illustration: p077-088]
+
+Hands were clasped, vows exchanged, vows consecrated by the distant
+and persistent plaudits of the house. The two stars had made their
+conjunction.
+
+After the wedding, some time passed before they were again seen on the
+stage. Then, when their holiday was ended, they reappeared in the
+same piece. This reappearance was a revelation. Until then, of the two
+singers, the man had been the most prized. Older and more accustomed to
+the public, whose foibles and preferences he had studied, he held the
+pit and boxes under the spell of his voice. Beside him, the other one
+seemed but an admirably gifted pupil, the promise of a future genius;
+but her voice was young and had angles in it, just as her shoulders were
+too slight and thin. And when on her return she appeared in one of her
+former parts, and the full rich, powerful sound poured out in the very
+first notes, abundant and pure, like the water of some sparkling spring,
+there ran through the house such a thrill of delight and surprise, that
+all the interest of the evening was concentrated on her. For the young
+woman, it was one of those happy days, in which the ambient atmosphere
+becomes limpid, light and vibrating, wafting towards one all the
+radiance and adulations of success. As for the husband, they almost
+forgot to applaud him, and as a dazzling light ever seems to make the
+shade around it darker, so he, found himself relegated, as it were, to
+the most insignificant part of the stage, as if he were neither more nor
+less than a mere walking gentleman.
+
+After all, the passion that was revealed in the songstress's acting, in
+her voice full of charm and tenderness, was inspired by him. He alone
+lent fire to the glances of those deep eyes, and that idea ought to have
+made him proud, but the comedian's vanity proved stronger. At the end
+of the performance he sent for the leader of the _claque_ and rated him
+soundly. They had missed his entry and his exit, forgotten the recall at
+the third act; he would complain to the manager, &c.
+
+Alas! In vain he struggled, in vain did the paid applause greet him,
+the good graces of the public, henceforth bestowed on his wife, remained
+definitively acquired to her. She was fortunate too in a choice of parts
+appropriate to her talent and her beauty, in which she appeared with all
+the assurance of a woman of the world entering a ball-room, dressed in
+the colours best suited to her, and certain of an ovation. At each fresh
+success the husband was depressed, nervous, and irritable. This vogue
+which left him and so absolutely became hers only, seemed to him a kind
+of robbery. For a long while he strove to hide from every one, more
+especially from his wife, this unavowable anguish; but one evening, as
+she was going up the stairs leading to her dressing-room, holding up
+with both hands her skirt-laden with bouquets, carried away by her
+triumphal success, she said to him with a voice still overcome by the
+excitement of applause: "We have had a magnificent house to-night." He
+replied: "You think so!" in such an ironical and bitter tone, that the
+young wife suddenly understood all.
+
+Her husband was jealous! Not with the jealousy of a lover, who will
+only allow his wife to be beautiful for him, but with the jealousy of an
+artist, cold, furious, implacable. At times, when she stopped at the end
+of an air and multitudes of bravos were thrown to her from outstretched
+hands, he affected an indifferent and absent manner, and his listless
+gaze seemed to say to the spectators: "When you have finished
+applauding, I'll sing."
+
+Ah! the applause, that sound like hail reechoing so delightfully through
+the lobbies, the house, and the side scenes, once the sweets of it are
+tasted, it is impossible to live without it. Great actors do not die of
+illness or old age, they cease to exist when applause no longer greets
+them. At the indifference of the public, this one was really seized with
+a feeling of despair. He grew thin, became peevish and bad-tempered. In
+vain did he reason with himself, look his incurable folly well in the
+face, repeat to himself before he came on the stage:
+
+"And yet she is my wife, and I love her!"
+
+In the artificial atmosphere of the stage the true sentiment of life
+vanished at once. He still loved the wife, but detested the singer. She
+realized it, and as one nurses an invalid, watched the sad mania. At
+first she thought of lessening her success, of making a sparing use and
+not giving the full power of her voice and talent; but her resolutions
+like those of her husband could not withstand the glare of the
+footlights. Her talent, almost unconsciously, overstepped her will. Then
+she humbled herself before him, belittled herself. She asked his advice,
+inquired if he thought her interpretation correct, if he understood the
+part in that way.
+
+Of course he was never satisfied. With assumed goodnature, in the tone
+of false friendship that comedians use so much amongst each other, he
+would say, on the evenings of her greatest successes:
+
+"You must watch yourself, dear, you are not doing very well just now,
+not improving."
+
+At other times he tried to prevent her singing:
+
+"Take care, you are lavishing yourself. You are doing too much. Don't
+wear out your luck. Believe me, you ought to take a holiday."
+
+He even condescended to the most paltry pretexts. Said she had a cold,
+was not in good voice. Or else he would try to pick some mean stage
+quarrel:
+
+"You took up the end of the duet too quickly; you spoilt my effect. You
+did it on purpose."
+
+He never saw, poor wretch, that it was he who hindered her bye play,
+hurrying on with his cue in order to prevent any applause, and in his
+anxiety to regain the public ear, monopolizing the front of the stage,
+leaving his wife in the background. She never complained, for she loved
+him too well; moreover success makes us indulgent and every evening
+she was compelled to quit the shade in which she strove to conceal and
+efface herself, to obey the summons enthusiastically calling her to the
+footlights. This singular jealousy was soon noticed at the theatre, and
+their fellow actors made fun of it. They overwhelmed the singer with
+compliments about his wife's singing. They thrust under his eyes the
+newspaper article in which after four long columns devoted to the star,
+the critic bestowed a few lines to the fast fading vogue of the husband.
+One day, having just read one of these articles, he rushed into his
+wife's dressing-room, holding the open paper in his hand and said to
+her, pale with rage:
+
+"The fellow must have been your lover." He had indeed reached this
+degree of injustice. In fact the unhappy woman, praised and envied,
+whose name figured in large type on the play bills and might be read on
+all the walls of Paris, who was seized upon as a successful advertising
+medium and placed on the tiny gilt labels of the confectioner or
+perfumer, led the saddest and most humiliating of lives. She dared not
+open a paper for fear of reading her own praises, wept over the flowers
+that were thrown to her and which she left to die in a corner of her
+dressing-room, that she might avoid perpetuating at home the cruel
+memories of her triumphant evenings. She even wanted to quit the stage,
+but her husband objected.
+
+[Illustration: p084-095]
+
+"It will be said that I make you leave it." And the horrible torture
+continued for both.
+
+One night of a first representation, the songstress was going to the
+front, when somebody said to her: "Mind what you are about. There is
+a cabal in the house against you." She laughed at the idea. A cabal
+against her? And for what reason, Good Heavens! She who only met with
+sympathy, who did not belong to any coterie! It was true however. In
+the middle of the opera, in a grand duet with her husband, at the moment
+when her magnificent voice had reached the highest pitch of its compass,
+finishing the sound in a succession of notes, even and pure like the
+rounded pearls of a necklace, a volley of hisses cut her short. The
+audience was as much moved and surprised as herself. All remained
+breathless, as though each one felt prisoner within them the passage
+she had not been able to finish. Suddenly a horrible, mad idea flashed
+across her mind. He was alone on the stage, in front of her. She gazed
+at him steadily and saw in his eyes the passing gleam of a cruel smile.
+The poor woman understood all. Sobs suffocated her.
+
+She could only burst into tears and blindly disappear through the
+crowded side scenes.
+
+It was her own husband who had had her hissed!
+
+[Illustration: p086-097]
+
+[Illustration: p088-099]
+
+
+
+
+A MISUNDERSTANDING -- THE WIFE'S VERSION.
+
+What can be the matter with him? What can he complain of? I cannot
+understand it. And yet I have done all I could to make him happy. To be
+sure, I don't say that instead of a poet I would not rather have married
+a notary or a lawyer, something rather more serious, rather less vague
+as a profession; nevertheless, such as he was he took my fancy.
+I thought him a trifle visionary, but charming all the same, and
+well-mannered; besides he had some fortune, and I thought that once
+married poetizing would not prevent him from seeking out some good
+appointment which would set us quite at ease.
+
+[Illustration: p089-100]
+
+[Illustration: p090-101]
+
+He, too at that time seemed to find me to his taste. When he came to see
+me at my aunt's in the country, he could not find words enough to admire
+the order and arrangement of our little house, kept like a convent, "It
+is so quaint!" he used to say. He would laugh and call me all sorts of
+names taken from the poems and romances he had read. That shocked me a
+little I confess; I should have liked him to be more serious. But it
+was not until we were married and settled in Paris, that I felt all the
+difference of our two natures.
+
+I had dreamed of a little home kept scrupulously bright and clean;
+instead of which, he began at once to encumber our apartment with
+useless old-fashioned furniture, covered with dust, and with faded
+tapestries, old as the hills. In everything it was the same. Would you
+believe that he obliged me to put away in the attic a sweetly
+pretty Empire clock, which had come to me from my aunt, and some
+splendidly-framed pictures given me by my school friends. He thought
+them hideous. I am still wondering why? For after all, his study was one
+mass of lumber, of old smoky pictures; statuettes I blushed to look at,
+chipped antiquities of all kinds, good for nothing; vases that would not
+hold water, odd cups, chandeliers covered with verdigris.
+
+[Illustration: p094-105]
+
+By the side of my beautiful rosewood piano, he had put another, a little
+shabby thing with all the polish off, half-the notes wanting, and so
+old and worn that one could hardly hear it. I began to think: "Good
+gracious! is an artist then, really a little mad? Does he only care for
+useless things, and despise all that is useful?"
+
+When I saw his friends', the society he received, it was still worse.
+Men with long hair, great beards, scarcely combed, badly dressed, who
+did not hesitate to smoke in my presence, while to listen to them made
+me quite uncomfortable, so widely opposed were their ideas to mine. They
+used long words, fine phrases, nothing natural, nothing simple. Then
+with all this, not a notion of ordinary civilities: you might ask them
+to dinner twenty times running, and there would be never a call, never
+a return of any kind. Not even a card or a bonbon on New Year's day.
+Nothing. Some of these gentry were married and brought their wives to
+see us. You should have seen the style of these persons! For every day
+wear, superb toilettes such as thank heaven, I would wear at no time!
+And so ill-arranged, without order or method. Hair loose, skirts
+trailing, and such a bold display of their talents! There were some who
+sang like actresses, played the piano like professors, all talked on
+every subject just like men. I ask you, is this reasonable?
+
+Ought serious women once married to think of anything but the care of
+their household? This is what I tried to make my husband understand,
+when he was vexed at seeing me give up my music. Music is all very well
+when one is a little girl and has nothing better to do. But candidly,
+I should consider myself very ridiculous if I sat down every day to the
+piano.
+
+[Illustration: p098-109]
+
+Oh! I am quite aware that his great complaint against me is that I
+wished to draw him from the strange society I considered so dangerous
+for him. "You have driven away all my friends?" he often used to say
+reproachfully. Yes, I did do so, and I don't regret it. Those creatures
+would have ended by driving him crazy. After leaving them, he would
+often spend the night in making rhymes and in marching up and down and
+talking aloud. As if he were not already sufficiently eccentric and
+original in himself without being excited by others! What caprices, what
+whims have I not put up with! Suddenly one morning, he would appear in
+my room: "Quick, get your hat--we are off to the country." Then one
+must leave everything, sewing, household affairs, take a carriage, go
+by rail, spend a mint of money! And I, who only thought of economy! For
+after all, it is not with fifteen thousand francs (six hundred pounds)
+a year that one can be counted rich in Paris or make any provision for
+one's children. At first he used to laugh at my observations, and try
+to make me laugh; then when he saw how firmly I was resolved to remain
+serious, he found fault with my simplicity and my taste for home. Am
+I to blame because I detest theatres and concerts, and those artistic
+soirees to which he wished to drag me, and where he met his old
+acquaintances, a lot of scatterbrains, dissipated and Bohemian?
+
+At one time, I thought he was becoming more reasonable. I had managed to
+with-draw him from his good-for-nothing circle of friends, and to gather
+round us a society of sensible people, well-settled in life, who might
+be of use to us. But no! Monsieur was bored. He was always bored,
+from morning till night. At our little soirees, where I was careful to
+arrange a whist table and a tea table, all as it should be, he would
+appear with such a face! in such a temper! When we were alone, it was
+just the same. Nevertheless, I was full of little attentions. I used to
+say to him: "Read me something of what you are doing." He recited to me
+verses, tirades, of which I understood nothing, but I put on an air of
+interest, and here and there made some little remark, which by the way,
+inevitably had the knack of annoying him. In a year, working night and
+day, he could only make of all his rhymes, one single volume which never
+sold, I said to him: "Ah! you see," just in a reasoning spirit, to bring
+him to something more comprehensible, more remunerative, He got into a
+frightful rage, and afterwards sank into a state of gloomy depression
+which made me very unhappy. My friends advised me as well as they could:
+"You see, my dear, it is the ennui and bad temper of an unoccupied man.
+If he worked a little more, he would not be so gloomy."
+
+Then I set to work, and all my belongings too, to seek him an
+appointment, I moved heaven and earth, I made I don't know how many
+visits to the wives of government officials, heads of departments; I
+even penetrated into a minister's office. It was a surprise I reserved
+for him, I said to my-self: "We shall see whether he will be pleased
+this time," At length, the day when I received his nomination in a
+lovely envelope with five big seals, I carried it myself to his table,
+half wild with joy. It was provision for the future, comfort, self
+content, the tranquillity of regular work. Do you know what he did? He
+said: "He would never forgive me." After which he tore the minister's
+letter into a thousand pieces, and rushed out, banging the doors. Oh!
+these artists, poor unsettled brains taking life all the wrong way! What
+could be done with such a man? I should have liked to talk to him, to
+reason with him. In vain. Those were indeed right, who had said to me:
+"He is a madman." Of what use moreover to talk to him? We do not
+speak the same language. He would not understand me, any more than I
+understand him. And now, here we must sit and look at each other. I see
+hatred in his glance, and yet I have true affection for him. It is very
+painful.
+
+
+   *   *   *   *   *
+
+
+A MISUNDERSTANDING -- THE HUSBAND'S VERSION.
+
+I had thought of everything, taken all my precautions. I would not have
+a Parisian, because Parisian women alarm me. I would not have a rich
+wife because she might be too exacting and extravagant. I also
+dreaded family ties, that terrible network of homely affections, which
+monopolizes, imprisons, dwarfs and stifles. My wife was the realization
+of my fondest dreams. I said to myself: "She will owe me everything."
+
+[Illustration: p091-102]
+
+What pleasure to educate this simple mind to the contemplation of
+beauty, to initiate this pure soul to my enthusiasms and hopes, to give
+life, in short, to this statue! The fact is she had the air of a
+statue, with her great serious calm eyes, her regular Greek profile, her
+features, which although rather too marked and severe, were softened by
+the rose-tinted bloom of youth and the shadow of the waving hair. Added
+to all this was a faint provincial accent that was my especial joy, an
+accent to which with closed eyes, I listened as a recollection of happy
+childhood, the echo of a tranquil life in some far away, utterly unknown
+nook. And to think that now, this accent has become unbearable to me!
+But in those days, I had faith. I loved, I was happy, and disposed to
+be still more so. Full of ardour for my work, I had as soon as I was
+married begun a new poem, and in the evening I read to her the verses
+of the day. I wished to make her enter completely into my existence. The
+first time or two, she said to me: "Very pretty," and I was grateful
+to her for this childish approbation, hoping that in time she would
+comprehend better what was the very breath of my life.
+
+Poor creature! How I must have bored her! After having read her my
+verses, I explained them to her, seeking in her beautiful astonished
+eyes the hoped-for gleam of light, ever fancying I should surprise it.
+
+[Illustration: p095-106]
+
+I obliged her to give me her opinion and I passed over all that was
+foolish to retain only what a chance inspiration might contain of good.
+I so longed to make of her my true help mate, the real artist's wife!
+But no! She could not understand. In vain did I read to her the great
+poets, choosing the strongest, the tenderest,--the golden rhymes of the
+love poems fell upon her ear as coldly and tediously as a hailstorm.
+Once I remember, we were reading _la Nuit d'Octobre_; she interrupted
+me, to ask for something more serious! I tried then to explain to her
+that there is nothing in the world more serious than poetry, which is
+the very essence of life, floating above it like a glory of light,
+in the % vibrations of which words and thoughts are elevated and
+transfigured. Oh! what a disdainful smile passed over her pretty mouth
+and what condescension in her glance! As though a child or a madman had
+spoken to her.
+
+What have I not thus wasted of strength and useless eloquence! Nothing
+was of any use. I stumbled perpetually against what she called good
+sense, reason, that eternal excuse of dried up hearts and narrow minds.
+And it was not only poetry that bored her. Before our marriage, I had
+believed her to be a musician. She seemed to understand the pieces
+she played, aided by the underlinings of her teacher. Scarcely was she
+married when she closed her piano, and gave up her music.
+
+[Illustration: p099-110]
+
+Can there be anything more melancholy than this abandonment by the young
+wife of all that had pleased in the young girl? The reply given, the
+part ended, the actress quits her costume. It was all done with a view
+to marriage; a surface of petty accomplishments, of pretty smiles, and
+fleeting elegance. With her the change was instantaneous. At first I
+hoped that the taste I could not give her, an artistic intelligence and
+love of the beautiful, would come to her in spite of herself, through
+the medium of this wonderful Paris, with its unconscious refining
+influence on eyes and mind. But what can be done with a woman who does
+not know how to open a book, to look at a picture, who is always bored
+and refuses to see anything? I soon understood that I must resign myself
+to have by my side nothing but a housewife, active and economical,
+indeed very economical. According to Proudhon, a woman, nothing more. I
+could have shaped my course accordingly; so many artists are in the same
+plight! But this modest role was not enough for her.
+
+Little by little, slyly, silently, she managed to get rid of all my
+friends. We had not made any difference in our talk because of * her
+presence. We talked as we always had done in the past, but she never
+understood the irony or the fantasy of our artistic exaggerations, of
+our wild axioms, or paradoxes, in which-an idea is travestied only to
+figure more brilliantly. It only irritated and puzzled her. Seated in
+a quiet corner of the drawing-room, she listened and said nothing,
+planning all the while how she should eliminate one by one those who
+so much shocked her. Notwithstanding the seeming friendliness of the
+welcome, there could already be felt in my rooms that thin current
+of cold air, which warns that the door is open and that it is time to
+leave.
+
+My friends once gone, she replaced them by her own. I found myself
+surrounded by an absurd set of worthies, strangers to art, who hated
+poetry and scorned it because "it made no money." On purpose the names
+of fashionable writers who manufacture plays and novels by the dozen
+were cited before me, with the remark: "So and so makes a great deal of
+money!"
+
+Make money! this is the all-important point for these creatures, and
+I had the pain of seeing my wife think with them. In this fatal
+atmosphere, her provincial habits, her mean and narrow views were made
+still more odious by an incredible stinginess.
+
+Fifteen thousand francs (six hundred pounds) a year! It seemed to me
+that with this income we could live without fear of the morrow. Not
+at all! She was always grumbling, talking of economy, reform, good
+investments. As she overpowered me with these dull details, I felt all
+desire and taste for work ebb away from me. Sometimes she came to
+my table and scornfully turned over the scattered half-written
+pages:--"Only that!" she would say, counting the hours lost upon the
+insignificant little lines. Ah I if I had listened to her, my glorious
+title of poet, which it has taken me so many years to win, would be now
+dragged through the black mire of sensational literature. And when
+I think that to this selfsame woman I had at first opened my heart,
+confided all my dreams; and when I think that the contempt she now
+shows me because I do not make money dates from the first days of our
+marriage; I am indeed ashamed, both of myself and of her.
+
+I make no money! That explains everything, the reproach of her glance,
+her admiration for fruitful commonplaces, culminating in the steps she
+took but lately to obtain for me I don't know what post in a government
+office.
+
+At this, however, I resisted. No defence remains to me but this, a force
+of inertia, which yields to no assault, to no persuasion. She may speak
+for hours, freeze me with her chilliest smile, my thought ever escapes
+her, will always escape her. And we have come to this! Married and
+condemned to live together, leagues of distance separate us; and we are
+both too weary, too utterly discouraged, to care to make one step that
+might draw us together. It is horrible!
+
+[Illustration: p108-119]
+
+[Illustration: p111-122]
+
+
+
+
+ASSAULT WITH VIOLENCE.
+
+
+MR. PETITBRY, Chamber Counsel.
+
+_To Madame Nina de B., at her Aunt's house, in Moulins_.
+
+Madame, conformably to the wishes of Madame your aunt, I have looked
+into the matter in question. I have noted down one by one all the
+different points and submitted your grievances to the most scrupulous
+investigation. Well, on my soul and conscience, I do not find the
+fruit ripe enough, or to speak plainly, I do not consider that you have
+sufficient grounds to justify your petition for a judicial separation.
+Let us not forget that the French law is a very downright kind of thing,
+totally devoid of delicate feeling for nice distinctions. It recognizes
+only acts, serious, brutal acts, and unfortunately it is these acts
+we lack. Most assuredly I have been deeply touched while reading the
+account of the first year of your married life, so very painful to you.
+You have paid dearly for the glory of marrying a famous artist, one of
+those men in whom fame and adulation develop monstrous egotism, and who
+under penalty of shattering the frail and timid life that would attach
+itself to theirs, must live alone. Ah! madame, since the commencement of
+my career, how many wretched wives have I not beheld in the same cruel
+position as yourself! Artists who live only by and for the public, carry
+nothing home to their hearth but fatigue from glory, or the melancholy
+of their disappointments. An ill-regulated existence, without compass
+or rudder, subversive ideas contrary to all social conventionality,
+contempt of family life and its happiness, cerebral excitement sought
+for in the abuse of tobacco and strong drink, without mentioning
+anything else, this constitutes the terrible artistic element from which
+your dear Aunt is desirous of withdrawing you; but I must repeat, that
+while I fully comprehend her anxiety, nay her remorse even at having
+consented to such a marriage, I cannot see that matters have reached a
+point calculated to warrant your petition.
+
+I have, however, set down the outlines of a judicial memorandum, in
+which your principal grievances are grouped and skilfully brought into
+prominence. Here are the principal divisions of the work:
+
+1 deg.. _Insulting conduct of Monsieur towards Madame's family_.--Refusal
+to receive our Aunt from Moulins, who brought us up, and is tenderly
+attached to us.--Nicknames such as _Tata Bobosse_, Fairy Carabossa,
+and others, bestowed on that venerable old maid, whose back is slightly
+bent.--Jests and quips, drawings in pen and pencil of the aforesaid and
+her infirmity.
+
+2 deg.. _Unsociableness_.--Refusal to see Ma-dame's friends, to make wedding
+calls, to send cards, to answer invitations, etc.
+
+3 deg.. _Wanton extravagance_.--Money lent without acknowledgment to all
+kinds of Bohemians.--Open house and free quarters, turning the house
+into an inn.--Constant subscriptions for statues, tombs, and productions
+of unfortunate fellow artists.--Starting an artistic and literary
+magazine!!!
+
+4 deg.. _Insulting conduct to Madame_.--Having said out loud when alluding
+to us: "What a fool!"
+
+5 deg.. _Cruelty and violence_.--Excessive brutality on the part of
+Monsieur.--Rage on the slightest pretext.--Breakage of china and
+furniture.--Scandalous rows, offensive expressions.
+
+
+All this, as you see, dear Madame, constitutes a somewhat respectable
+amount of evidence, but is not however sufficient. We lack assault with
+violence. Ah! if we had only an assault with violence, a tiny little
+assault before witnesses, our case would be grand! But now that you have
+put a hundred and fifty miles between your husband and yourself we can
+scarcely hope for an incident of this kind. I say "hope" because in the
+present state of affairs, a brutal act on the part of this man would be
+the most fortunate thing that could befall you.
+
+I remain, Madame, awaiting your commands, your devoted and obedient
+servant,
+
+Petitbry.
+
+PS.--Violence before witnesses, of course!
+
+[Illustration: p115-126]
+
+
+_To Monsieur Petitbry, in Paris_.
+
+What, Sir! have we come to such a pass as this! Is this what your laws
+have made of antique French chivalry! So then, when a misunderstanding
+is often sufficient to separate two hearts for ever, your law courts
+require acts of violence to justify such a separation. Is it not
+scandalous, unjust, barbarous, outrageous? To think that in order to
+regain her freedom, my poor darling will be obliged to run her neck
+into the halter, to abandon herself to all the fury of that monster,
+to excite it even. But no matter, our mind is made up. An assault with
+personal violence is necessary. Well! we will have it. No later than
+to-morrow, Nina will return to Paris, How will she be received? What
+will take place there? I cannot think of it without a shudder. At this
+idea my hand trembles, my eyes become dimmed. Ah! Monsieur. Ah! Monsieur
+Petitbry. Ah!
+
+Nina's unhappy Aunt.
+
+
+
+MR. MARESTANG, ATTORNEY At the Law Court of the Seine.
+
+_To Monsieur Henri de B., Literary man in Paris_.
+
+Be calm, be calm, be calm! I forbid your going to Moulins or rushing off
+in pursuit of the fugitive. It is more judicious and safer to await her
+return in your own house, by your fireside. In point of fact, what has
+taken place? You refused to receive that ridiculous and ill-natured old
+maid; your wife has gone to join her. You should have expected as much.
+Family ties are very strong in the heart of such an extremely youthful
+bride. You were in too great a hurry. Remember that this Aunt brought
+her up, that she has no other relations in the world. She has her
+husband, you will say. Ah! my dear fellow, between ourselves we may
+admit that husbands are not always amiable. I know one more especially
+who in spite of his good heart is so nervous, so violent! I am well
+aware that hard work and artistic preoccupations have a good deal to do
+with it. Be that as it may, the bird has been scared, and has flown back
+to its former cage. Don't be alarmed, it won't stay there long. Either
+I am very much mistaken or the Parisian of yesterday will soon weary of
+the antiquated surroundings, and ere long regret the vivacities of her
+poet. Above all don't stir.
+
+Your old friend,
+
+Marestang.
+
+
+_To Monsieur Marestang, attorney in Paris_.
+
+At the same moment with your rational and friendly letter, I received a
+telegram from Moulins, announcing Nina's return. Ah! what a true prophet
+you were! She is coming back this evening, all alone, just as she left
+me, without the slightest advance on my part. The thing now will be to
+arrange so easy and agreeable a life for her, that she shall never
+again be tempted to leave me. I have laid in a stock of tenderness and
+patience during her week's absence. There is only one point on which
+I remain inflexible: I will not again receive that horrible _Tata
+Bobosse_, that blue stocking of 1820, who gave me her niece only in the
+hopes that my modest fame would serve to heighten hers. Remember, my
+dear Marestang, that ever since my marriage this wicked little old woman
+has always come between my wife and me, pushing her hump into all our
+amusements at the theatres, the exhibitions, in society, in the country,
+everywhere in fact. And you wonder after that, at my having displayed
+a certain haste in getting rid of her, and packing her off to her good
+town of Moulins. Indeed, my dear fellow, you have no idea of all the
+harm those old maids, suspicious and ignorant of life, are capable of
+doing in a young household. This one had stuffed my wife's pretty
+little head full of false, old fashioned, preposterous ideas, trumpery
+sentimentality of the time of Ipsiboe or young Florange: "Ah! if my
+lady love saw me!" For her, I was a poate, the poate one sees on the
+frontispieces of Renduel or Ladvocat, crowned with laurels, a lyre
+on his hips, and his short velvet-collared cloak blown aside by a
+Parnassian gust of wind. That was the husband she had promised her
+niece, and you may fancy how terribly my poor Nina must have been
+disappointed. Nevertheless I admit that I was very bungling with the
+dear child. As you say, I wanted to go ahead too rapidly, I frightened
+her. It was my part gently to modify all that the rather narrowing and
+false education of the convent and the sentimental dreams of the Aunt
+had effected, leaving the provincial perfume time to evaporate. However
+all this can be repaired since she is returning. She is returning, my
+dear friend! This evening, I shall go and meet her at the station and we
+shall walk home arm in arm, reconciled and happy.
+
+Henri de B.
+
+
+_Nina de B. to her Aunt in Moulins_.
+
+He was waiting for me at the station and greeted me with a smile and
+open arms, as though I were returning from some ordinary journey. You
+can imagine that I put on my iciest appearance. Directly I reached home,
+I shut myself up in my room, where I dined alone, pleading fatigue.
+After which, I locked myself in. He came to bid me good-night through
+the key-hole, and to my great surprise, went away on tiptoe without
+anger or importunity. This morning, I called on Monsieur Petitbry, who
+gave me detailed instructions as to the way I was to act, the hour,
+place, witnesses. Ah! my dear Aunt, if you knew how frightened I am as
+the hour draws near.
+
+[Illustration: p121-132]
+
+His violence is so dreadful. Even when he is gentle like yesterday, his
+eyes have flashes of lightning. However, I will try and be courageous in
+thinking of you, my darling Aunt. Besides, as Monsieur Petitbry said to
+me, it is only a short painful moment to get over, and then we will both
+resume our former quiet life, so calm and happy.
+
+Nina de B.
+
+[Illustration: p122-134]
+
+[Illustration: p123-134]
+
+
+_From the same to the same_.
+
+Dear Aunt, I am writing to you from my bed, torn by the emotions of
+that terrible scene. Who could have supposed that things would take this
+turn? Nevertheless I had taken every precaution. I had warned Marthe and
+her sister, who were to come at one o'clock, and I had chosen for the
+great scene the moment when on leaving the table, the servants are
+clearing away in the dining-room next to the study. From early morn
+my plans were laid; an hour of scales and exercises on the piano, the
+_Cloches du Monastere_, the _Reveries de Rosellen_, all the pieces
+he hates. This did not prevent his working away without betraying the
+slightest irritability. At breakfast, the same patience. A detestable
+breakfast, scraps, and the sweet dishes he loathes. And if you had seen
+my costume! A dress with a cape some five years out of date, a little
+black silk apron, and uncurled hair! In vain I sought for some signs
+of irritation, that well-known straight line that Monsieur hollows out
+between his eyebrows at the least annoyance. Well no! nothing! Really I
+might have thought they had changed my husband. He said to me in a calm
+and rather sad tone:
+
+"Ah, you have done your hair in the old way."
+
+I hardly answered, not wishing to hurry on matters before my witnesses
+had arrived, and then, strangely enough, I felt somewhat moved and upset
+beforehand by the scene I was trying to get up. At last, after a few
+still shorter replies on my part, he rose from the table and went into
+his own room. I followed him trembling. I heard my friends stationing
+themselves in the little drawing-room, and Pierre who came and went,
+arranging the glasses and silver. The decisive moment had arrived. He
+must now be brought to the needful point of violence, and it seemed
+to me this would be easy, after all I had done since the morning to
+irritate him.
+
+When I entered his study I must have been very pale. I felt myself in
+the lion's cage. The thought flashed across me: "Suppose he killed me!"
+He did not present a very terrible appearance, however, leaning back on
+his divan, a cigar in his mouth.
+
+"Do I disturb you?" I asked in my most ironical voice.
+
+He replied gently:
+
+"No. You see. I am not working."
+
+Myself, viciously:
+
+"Ah! indeed you don't work then at all, now?"
+
+He still very mild.
+
+"You are mistaken, my dear. On the contrary, I work a great deal. Only
+our craft is one in which a great deal of work can be done without
+having a tool in hand."
+
+"And what may you be doing at this moment? Ah! yes, I know, your play
+in verse; always the same thing for the last two years. It is certainly
+lucky that your wife had a fortune! That allows you to idle at your
+ease."
+
+I thought he would have sprung upon me at this. Not a bit of it. He came
+up to me and took hold of my hands gently:
+
+"Come, is it to be always the same thing? Are we to begin our life of
+warfare again? If so, why did you come back?"
+
+I confess I felt rather moved by his sad and affectionate tone; but
+I thought of you, my poor Aunt, of your exile, of his harsh conduct
+towards us, and that gave me courage. I said to him the bitterest, most
+wounding things I could think of--I know not what--that I wished to
+heaven I had never married an artist; that at Moulins, every one pitied
+me; that I found my friends married to magistrates, serious, influential
+men, in good positions, while he--If even he made money--But no,
+Monsieur would work for fame only! and what fame!
+
+[Illustration: p127-138]
+
+At Moulins no one knew him; at Paris, his pieces were hissed. His books
+did not sell. And so on, and so on. My brain seemed to whirl round as
+all the malicious words came from me one after the other. He looked
+at me without replying, in chilly anger. Of course this coldness
+exasperated me still more. I was so much excited, that I no longer
+recognized my own voice, raised to an extraordinary pitch, and the last
+words I screamed at him--I can't remember what unjust and mad remark
+it was--seemed to buzz indistinctly in my ears. For a moment, I thought
+Monsieur Petitbry's assault with violence was an accomplished fact.
+Pallid, with set teeth Henri made two steps towards me:
+
+"Madame!"
+
+Then suddenly, his anger fell, his face became impassive again, and
+he looked at me with so scornful, insolent and calm a glance, that my
+patience came to an end. I raised my hand, and gave him the best box on
+the ear I ever gave in my life. At the noise, the door opened, and my
+witnesses appeared solemn and indignant.
+
+"Monsieur! this is infamous!"
+
+"Yes, isn't it?" said the poor fellow, showing his red cheek.
+
+You can imagine my confusion. Happily, I took the line of fainting, and
+melting into torrents of tears, which relieved me greatly. At present,
+Henri is in my room. He watches by me, nurses me, and is really
+most kind. What can I do? What a checkmate! This will not prove very
+satisfactory to Monsieur Petitbry.
+
+Nina de B.
+
+[Illustration: p129-140]
+
+[Illustration: p130-141]
+
+[Illustration: p133-144]
+
+
+
+
+BOHEMIA AT HOME.
+
+I hardly fancy it would be possible to find in the whole of Paris, a
+more lively and peculiar house than that of the sculptor Simaise. Life
+there is one continual round of festivities. At whatever hour you drop
+in upon them, a sound of singing and laughter, or the jingle of a piano,
+guitar, or tamtam greets you. You can never enter the studio without
+finding a waltz going on, or a set of quadrilles, or a game of
+battledore and shuttlecock, or else it is cumbered with all the litter
+and preparations for a ball; shreds of tulle and ribbons lying scattered
+among the sculptor's chisels; artificial flowers hanging over the busts,
+and spangled skirts spreading over groups of moist clay.
+
+[Illustration: p134-145]
+
+The fact is that four big t daughters of sixteen to twenty-five years
+of age, all very pretty indeed, take up a great deal of room; and when
+these young ladies whirl round with their hair streaming down their
+backs, with floating ribbons, long pins, and showy ornaments, it really
+seems as if instead of four there were eight, sixteen, thirty-two Misses
+Simaise, as dashing the one as the other, talking and laughing loudly,
+with the hoydenish manner peculiar to artists' daughters, with the
+studio jests, the familiarity of students, and knowing also better than
+anyone how to dismiss a creditor or blow up a tradesman impertinent
+enough to present his bill at an inopportune moment.
+
+[Illustration: p135-146]
+
+These young damsels are the real mistresses of the house. From early
+dawn the father works, chisels, models unceasingly, for he has no
+settled income. At first he was ambitious and strove to do good work;
+some early successful exhibitions promised him future fame; but the
+necessity of providing for the support of his family, the clothing,
+feeding and future establishment of his children, threw him back
+into the ordinary work of the trade. As for Madame Simaise, she never
+attended to anything.
+
+Very handsome when she married, very much admired in the artistic world
+into which her husband introduced her, at first satisfied with being
+only a pretty woman, later on she resigned herself to the part of a
+woman who had been pretty. A creole by birth, at least such was her
+pretension--although it was asserted that her parents had never left
+Courbevoie,--she spent the days from morning to night in a hammock swung
+up in turn in all the different rooms of the house, fanning herself and
+taking siestas, full of contempt for the material details of everyday
+life. She had so often sat to her husband as model for Hebes and Dianas,
+that she fancied her only duty was to pass through life carrying some
+emblem of a goddess, such as a crescent on her head or a goblet in her
+hand. Indeed the disorder of the establishment was a sight in itself.
+The least thing necessitated a full hour's search.
+
+"Have you seen my thimble? Marthe, Eva, Genevieve, Madeleine, who has
+seen my thimble?"
+
+The drawers, in which books, powder, rouge, spangles, spoons and fans
+are tossed at haphazard, though crammed full, contain absolutely nothing
+useful; moreover they belong to strange pieces of furniture, curious,
+battered and incomplete. And how peculiar is the house itself! As they
+are constantly changing their residence, they never have time to settle
+anywhere, and this merry household seems to be perpetually awaiting the
+setting to rights indispensable after a ball. Only so many things are
+lacking, that it is not worth while settling, and as long as they can
+put on a bit of finery, display themselves out of doors with something
+of a meteor flash, a semblance of style and appearance of luxury, honour
+is saved! Encampment does not in any way distress this migratory tribe.
+Through the half-opened doors, their poverty is betrayed by the four
+bare walls of an unfurnished chamber, or the litter of an overcrowded
+room. It is bohemianism in the domestic circle, a life full of
+improvidence and surprises.
+
+At the very moment when they sit down to table, they suddenly perceive
+that everything is wanting, and that the breakfast must be sent out for
+at once. In this manner hours are spent rapidly, bustling and idling,
+and herein lies a certain advantage. After a late breakfast, one does
+not need to dine, but can sup at the ball, which fills up nearly every
+evening. These ladies also give evening parties. Tea is drunk out of
+all kinds of queer receptacles, goblets, old tankards, ancient glasses,
+Japanese shells, the whole chipped and cracked by the constant moves.
+
+[Illustration: p138-149]
+
+The serene calm of both mother and daughters in the midst of this
+poverty is truly admirable. They have indeed other ideas running through
+the brain than mere housekeeping details. One has plaited her hair
+like a Swiss girl, another is curled like any English baby, and Madame
+Simaise, from the top of her hammock, lives in the beatitude of her
+former beauty. As for father Simaise, he is always delighted. As long
+as he hears the merry laugh of his daughters around him, he is ready
+cheerfully to assume all the weight of this disorderly existence. To him
+are addressed in a coaxing manner such requests as: "Papa, I want a
+bonnet. Papa, I must have a dress." Sometimes the winter is severe. They
+are in such request, receive so many invitations. Pooh! the father has
+but to get up a couple of hours earlier. They will have a fire only in
+the studio, where all the family will gather. The girls will cut out and
+make their own dresses, while the hammock ropes swing slowly to and fro,
+and the father works on, perched upon his high stool.
+
+[Illustration: p139-150]
+
+Have you ever met these ladies in society? The moment they appear there
+is a commotion. It is long since the first two came out, but they are
+always so well adorned and so smart, that they are in great request as
+partners. They have as much success as the younger sisters, almost as
+much as the mother in former days; moreover they carry off their tawdry
+jewelry and finery so well, and have such charming easy manners, with
+the giddy laugh of spoilt children, and such a Spanish way of flirting
+with a fan. Nevertheless they do not get married. No admirer has ever
+been able to get over the sight of that singular home. The wasteful and
+useless extravagance, the want of plates, the profusion of old tapestry
+in holes, of antique and ungilt lustres, the draughty doors, the
+constant visits of creditors, the slatternly appearance of the young
+ladies in slipshod slippers and dressing gowns, put to flight the best
+intentioned. In truth, it is not everyone who could resign himself to
+hang up the hammock of an idle woman in his home for the rest of his
+life.
+
+I am very much afraid that the Misses Simaise will never marry. They
+had, however, a golden and unique opportunity during the Commune. The
+family had taken refuge in Normandy, in a small and very litigious town,
+full of lawyers, attorneys, and business men. No sooner had the father
+arrived, than he looked out for orders. His fame as a sculptor was of
+service to him, and as in the public square of the town there happened
+to be a statue of Cujas done by him, all the notabilities of the place
+wanted to have their busts done.
+
+[Illustration: p141-152]
+
+The mother at once fastened up the hammock in a corner of the studio,
+and the young ladies organized a few parties. They at once met with
+great success. Here at least, poverty seemed but an accident due to
+exile; the disorder of the establishment was accounted for. The handsome
+girls laughed loudly themselves at their destitution.
+
+[Illustration: p142-153]
+
+They had started off without anything; and nothing could be had now
+Paris was closed. It lent to them an extra charm. It called to mind
+travelling gipsies, combing their beautiful hair in barns, and quenching
+their thirst in streams. The least poetical compared them in their minds
+to the exiles of Coblentz, those ladies of Marie-Antoinette's court who,
+obliged to fly in haste, without powder or hoops, or bedchamber women,
+were driven to all sorts of makeshifts, learning to wait upon themselves,
+and keeping up the frivolity of the French court, the piquant smile of
+the lost patches.
+
+[Illustration: p143-154]
+
+Every evening a throng of dazzled lawyers crowded Simaise's studio. To
+the sounds of a hired piano, all this little world danced the polka,
+waltzed, schottisched,--they still schottische in Normandy. "I shall
+end by marrying off one," thought old Simaise; and the fact is if one
+had gone off, all the others would have followed suit. Unluckily the
+first never went off, but it was a near touch. Amongst the numerous
+partners of these young ladies, in that corps de ballet of lawyers,
+attorneys and solicitors, the most rabid dancer was a widowed lawyer,
+who was extremely attentive to the eldest daughter. He was called by
+them "the first dancing attorney," in memory of Moliere's ballets, and
+certainly, considering the rate at which the fellow whirled round, Papa
+Simaise might well build the greatest hopes on him. But then business
+men do not dance like everybody else. This fellow, all the time he was
+waltzing, reflected silently: "The Simaise family is charming. Tra, la
+la, la la la, but it's useless their trying to hurry me on, la la la, la
+la la. I shall not propose till the gates of Paris are reopened. Tra la
+la, and I shall be able to make all necessary inquiries, la la la!" Thus
+thought the first dancing attorney, and in fact, directly the blockade
+of Paris was raised, he got his information about the family, and the
+marriage did not come off.
+
+Since then, the poor little creatures have missed many other chances.
+However, this has in no way spoilt the happiness of the singular
+household. On the contrary, the more they live, the merrier they are.
+Last winter they changed quarters three times, were sold up once, and
+notwithstanding all this, gave two large fancy balls!
+
+[Illustration: p145-156]
+
+[Illustration: p146-157]
+
+[Illustration: p149-160]
+
+
+
+
+FRAGMENT OF A WOMAN'S LETTER FOUND IN THE RUE NOTRE-DAME-DES-CHAMPS
+
+... What it has cost me to marry an artist! Oh, my dear! if I had known!
+but young girls have singular ideas about so many things. Just imagine
+that at the Exhibition, when I read in the catalogue the addresses of
+far-away quiet streets at the further end of Paris, I pictured to myself
+peaceable, stay-at-home lives, devoted to work and the family circle,
+and I said to myself (feeling beforehand a certainty that I should be
+dreadfully jealous), "That is the sort of husband to suit me. He will
+always be with me. We shall spend our days together; he at his picture
+or sculpture, while I read or sew beside him, in the concentrated light
+of the studio." Poor dear innocent! I had not the faintest idea then
+what a studio really was, nor of the singular creatures one meets there.
+Never, in gazing at those statues of bold undressed goddesses had the
+idea occurred to me that there were women daring enough to--and that
+even I myself----. Otherwise, I can assure you I should never have
+married a sculptor. No, indeed, most decidedly not! I must own, they
+were all against this marriage at home; notwithstanding my husband's
+fortune, his already famous name, and the fine house he was having built
+for us two. It was I alone who would have it so. He was so elegant, so
+charming, so eager. I thought, however, he meddled a little too much
+about my dress, and the arrangement of my hair: "Do your hair like this;
+so," and he would amuse himself by placing a flower in the midst of
+my curls with far greater skill than any one of our milliners. So much
+experience in a man was alarming, wasn't it? I ought to have distrusted
+him. Well, you will see. Listen.
+
+[Illustration: p151-162]
+
+We returned from our honeymoon. While I was busy settling myself in my
+pretty and charmingly furnished rooms, that paradise you know so well,
+my husband, from the moment of his arrival, had set to work and spent
+the days at his studio, which was away from the house. When he returned
+in the evening, he would talk to me with feverish eagerness of his next
+subject for exhibition.
+
+[Illustration: p152-163]
+
+The subject was "a Roman lady leaving the bath." He wanted the marble
+to reproduce that faint shiver of the skin at the contact of air, the
+moisture of the delicate textures clinging to the shoulders, and all
+sorts of other fine things which I no longer remember. Between you and
+me, when he speaks to me of his sculpture, I do-not always understand
+him very well. However, I used to say confidently: "It will be very
+pretty," and already I saw myself treading the finely sanded walks
+admiring my husband's work, a beautiful marble sculpture gleaming white
+against the green hangings; while behind me I heard whispered: "the wife
+of the sculptor."
+
+[Illustration: p153-164]
+
+At last one day, curious to see how our Roman lady was getting on, the
+idea occurred to me, to go and take him by surprise in his studio, which
+I had not yet visited. It was one of the first times I had gone out
+alone, and I had made myself very smart, I can tell you. When I arrived,
+I found the door of the little garden leading to the ground floor, wide
+open. So I walked straight in; and, conceive my indignation, when I
+beheld my husband in a white smock like a stone mason, with ruffled
+hair, hands grimed with clay, and in front of him, upright on a
+platform, a woman, my dear, a great creature, almost undressed,
+and looking just as composed in this airy costume as though it were
+perfectly natural.
+
+[Illustration: p154-165]
+
+Her wretched clothes covered with mud, thick walking boots, and a round
+hat trimmed with a feather out of curl, were thrown beside her on a
+chair. All this I saw in an instant, for you may imagine how I fled.
+Etienne would have spoken to me--detained me; but with a gesture of
+horror at the clay-covered hands, I rushed off to mama, and reached her
+barely alive. You can imagine my appearance.
+
+[Illustration: p155-166]
+
+"Good heavens, dear child! what is the matter?"
+
+I related to mama what I had seen, where this dreadful woman was, and
+in what costume. And I cried, and cried. My mother, much moved, tried to
+console me, explained to me that it must have been a model.
+
+"What! but it is abominable; no one ever told me about that before I was
+married!"
+
+Hereupon Etienne arrived, greatly distressed, and tried in his turn to
+make me understand that a model is not a woman like other women, and
+that besides sculptors cannot get on without them; but these reasons
+had no effect upon me, and I stoutly declared I would have nothing to
+do with a husband who spent his days _tete-a-tete_ with young ladies in
+such a costume.
+
+"Come, my dear Etienne," said poor mama, trying hard to arrange
+everything peaceably, "could you not out of respect for your wife's
+feelings, replace this creature by a dummy, a lay figure?"
+
+My husband bit his moustaches furiously.
+
+"Quite impossible, dear mother."
+
+"Still, my dear, it seems to me--a bright idea! milliners have
+pasteboard heads on which they trim bonnets. Well, what can be done for
+a head, could it not be done for----?" It seems this is not possible.
+
+At least, this was what Etienne tried to demonstrate at great length,
+with all sorts of details and technical words. He really looked very
+unhappy. I watched him out of the corner of my eye while I dried my
+tears, and I saw that my grief affected him deeply. At last, after
+an endless discussion, it was agreed that since the model was
+indispensable, I should be there whenever she came. There chanced to
+be on one side of the studio a very convenient little lumber-room, from
+which I could see without being seen. I ought to be ashamed, you will
+say, of being jealous of such kind of creatures, and of showing my
+jealousy. But, my pet, you must have gone through these emotions before
+you can offer an opinion about them.
+
+Next day, the model was to be there. I therefore summoned up my courage,
+and installed myself in my hiding-place, with the express condition that
+at the least tap at the partition my husband should come to me at once.
+Scarcely had I shut myself in, when the dreadful model I had seen
+the other day arrived, dressed Heaven knows how, and so wretched in
+appearance, that I asked myself how I could have been jealous of a woman
+who could walk abroad without a scrap of white cuff at her wrists,
+and in an old shawl with green fringe. Well, my dear, when I saw this
+creature throw off shawl and dress in the middle of the studio, and
+begin to undress in the coolest and boldest manner, it had an effect
+upon me I cannot describe. I choked with rage. I thumped at the
+partition. Etienne came to me. I trembled; I was pale. He laughed at me,
+gently re-assured me, and returned to his work. By this time the woman
+was standing up, half-naked, her thick hair loosened and hanging down
+her back in glossy heaviness. It was no longer the poor wretch of a
+moment ago, but already almost a statue, notwithstanding her common and
+listless air. My heart died within me. However, I said nothing. All at
+once, I heard my husband cry: "The left leg; the left leg forward." And
+as the model did not understand him at once, he went to her, and--Oh! I
+could contain myself no longer. I knocked. He did not hear me. I knocked
+again, furiously. This time he ran to me, frowning a little at being
+disturbed in the heat of work. "Come, Armande, do be reasonable!"
+Bathed in tears, I leant my head upon his shoulder, and sobbed out: "I
+can't bear it, my dear, I can't; indeed, I can't!"
+
+[Illustration: p159-170]
+
+At this, without answering me, he went sharply into the studio, and made
+a sign to that horror of a woman, who dressed herself and departed.
+
+For several days, Etienne did not return to the studio. He remained
+at home with me, would not go out, refused even to see his friends;
+otherwise he was quite kind and gentle, but he had such a melancholy
+air. Once I asked him timidly: "You are not working any more?" which
+earned me this reply: "One can't work without a model." I had not the
+courage to pursue the subject, for I felt how much I was to blame,
+and that he had a right to be vexed with me. Nevertheless, by dint of
+caresses and endearments, I cajoled him into returning to his studio and
+trying to finish the statue--how do they say it? out of his head, from
+imagination, in short, by mama's process. To me, this seemed quite
+feasible; but it gave the poor fellow endless trouble. Every evening
+he came in, with irritated nerves and more and more discouraged; almost
+ill, indeed. To cheer him up, I used often to go and see him. I always
+said: "It is charming." But, as a fact, the statue made no progress
+whatever. I don't even know if he worked at it. When I arrived, I would
+find him always smoking on his divan, or perhaps, rolling up pellets of
+clay, which he angrily threw against the opposite wall.
+
+One afternoon, when I was gazing at the unfortunate Roman lady, who,
+half modelled, had been so long in stepping out of her bath, an idea
+occurred to me. The Roman lady was about the same figure as myself;
+perhaps at a pinch I might----
+
+"What do you mean by a well-turned leg?" I asked my husband suddenly.
+
+He explained it to me at great length, showing me all that was still
+lacking to his statue, and which he could by no means give it without a
+model. Poor fellow! He had such a heart-broken air as he said this. Do
+you know what I did? Well, I bravely picked up the drapery which was
+lying in a corner, I went into my hiding-place; then, very softly
+without saying a word, while he was still looking at his statue, I
+placed myself on the platform in front of him, in the costume and
+attitude in which I had seen that abominable model. Ah my dear I What
+emotion I felt when he raised his eyes! I could have laughed and
+cried. I was blushing all over. And that tiresome muslin took so
+much arranging. Never mind! Etienne was so delighted that I was soon
+re-assured. Indeed, to hear him, my dear, you might suppose----.
+
+[Illustration: p162-173]
+
+[Illustration: p164-175]
+
+[Illustration: p165-176]
+
+
+
+
+A GREAT MAN'S WIDOW
+
+No one was astonished at hearing she was going to marry again.
+Notwithstanding all his genius, perhaps even on account of his genius,
+the great man had for fifteen years led her a hard life, full of
+caprices and mad freaks that had attracted the attention of all
+Paris. On the high road to fame, over which he had so triumphantly and
+hurriedly travelled, like those who are to die young, she had sat behind
+him, humbly and timidly, in a corner of the chariot, ever fearful of
+collisions. Whenever she complained, relatives, friends, every one was
+against her: "Respect his weaknesses," they would say to her, "they are
+the weaknesses of a god. Do not disturb him, do not worry him. Remember
+that your husband does not belong exclusively to you. He belongs much
+more to Art, to his country, than to his family. And who knows if
+each of the faults you reproach him with has not given us some sublime
+creation?" At last, however, her patience was worn out, she rebelled,
+became indignant and even unjust, so much indeed, that at the moment of
+the great man's death, they were on the point of demanding a judicial
+separation and ready to see their great and celebrated name dragged into
+the columns of a society paper.
+
+After the agitation of this unhappy match, the anxieties of the last
+illness, and the sudden death which for a moment revived her former
+affection, the first months of her widowhood acted on the young woman
+like a healthy calming water-cure. The enforced retirement, the quiet
+charm of mitigated sorrow, lent to her thirty-five years a second youth
+almost as attractive as the first.
+
+[Illustration: p167-178]
+
+Moreover black suited her, and then she had the responsible and rather
+proud look of a woman left alone in life, with all the weight of a great
+name to carry honourably. Mindful of the fame of the departed one, that
+wretched fame that had cost her so many tears, and now grew day by day,
+like a magnificent flower nourished by the black earth of the tomb, she
+was to be seen draped in her long sombre veils holding interviews with
+theatrical managers and publishers, busying herself in getting her
+husband's operas put again on the stage, superintending the printing of
+his posthumous works and unfinished manuscripts, bestowing on all these
+details a kind of solemn care and as it were the respect for a shrine.
+
+It was at this moment that her second husband met her. He too was a
+musician, almost unknown it is true, the author of a few waltzes
+and songs, and of two little operas, of which the scores, charmingly
+printed, were scarcely more played than sold. With a pleasant
+countenance, a handsome fortune that he owed to his exceedingly
+_bourgeois_ family, he had above all an infinite respect for genius,
+a curiosity about famous men, and the ingenuous enthusiasm of a still
+youthful artist. Thus when he met the wife of the great man, he was
+dazzled and bewildered. It was as though the image of the glorious muse
+herself had appeared to him. He at once fell in love, and as the widow
+was beginning to receive a few friends, he had himself presented to her.
+There his passion grew in the atmosphere of genius that still lingered
+in all the corners of the drawing-room. There was the bust of the
+master, the piano he composed on, his scores spread over all the
+furniture, melodious even to look at, as though from between their
+half-opened pages, the written phrases re-echoed musically. The actual
+and very real charm of the widow surrounded by those austere memories as
+by a frame that became her, brought his love to a climax.
+
+[Illustration: p169-180]
+
+After hesitating a long time, the poor fellow at last proposed, but
+in such humble and timid terms! "He knew how unworthy he was of her. He
+understood all the regret she would feel, in exchanging her illustrious
+name for his, so unknown and insignificant." And a thousand other
+artless phrases in the same style. In reality, the lady was indeed very
+much flattered by her conquest; however, she played the comedy of a
+broken heart, and assumed the disdainful, wearied airs of a woman whose
+life is ended without hopes of renewal. She, who had never in her life
+been so quiet and comfortable as since the death of her great man, she
+actually found tears with which to mourn for him, and an enthusiastic
+ardour in speaking of him. This, of course, only inflamed her youthful
+adorer the more and made him more eloquent and persuasive.
+
+In short, this severe widowhood ended in a marriage; but the widow did
+not abdicate, and remained--although married--more than ever the widow
+of a great man; well knowing that herein lay, in the eyes of her second
+husband, her real prestige. As she felt herself much older than he, to
+prevent his perceiving it, she overwhelmed him with her disdain, with
+a kind of vague pity, and unexpressed and offensive regret at her
+condescending marriage. However, he was not wounded by it, quite the
+contrary. He was so convinced of his inferiority and thought it so
+natural that the memory of such a man should reign despotically in her
+heart! In order the better to maintain in him this humble attitude, she
+would at times read over with him the letters the great man had
+written to her when he was courting her. This return towards the past
+rejuvenated her some fifteen years, lent her the assurance of a handsome
+and beloved woman, seen through all the wild love and delightful
+exaggeration of written passion. That she had since then changed her
+young husband cared little, loving her on the faith of another, and
+drawing therefrom I know not what strange kind of vanity. It seemed
+to him that these passionate appeals added to his own, and that he
+inherited a whole past of love.
+
+A strange couple indeed! It was in society, however, that they presented
+the most curious spectacle. I sometimes caught sight of them at the
+theatre. No one would have recognized the timid and shy young woman, who
+formerly accompanied the _maestro_, lost in the gigantic shadow he cast
+around him. Now, seated upright in the front of the box, she displayed
+herself, attracting all eyes by the pride of her own glance. It might be
+said that her head was surrounded by her first husband's halo of glory,
+his name re-echoing around her like a homage or a reproach. The other
+one, seated a little behind her, with the subservient physiognomy of one
+ready for every abnegation in life, watched each of her movements, ready
+to attend to her slightest wish.
+
+At home, the peculiarity of their attitude was still more noticeable. I
+remember a certain evening party they gave a year after their marriage.
+The husband moved about among the crowd of guests, proud but rather
+embarrassed at gathering together so many in his own house. The wife,
+disdainful, melancholy, and very superior, was on that evening more than
+ever the widow of a great man! She had a peculiar way of glancing at her
+husband from over her shoulder, of calling him "my poor dear friend," of
+casting on him all the wearisome drudgery of the reception, with an air
+of saying: "You are only fit for that." Around her gathered a circle of
+former friends, those who had been spectators of the brilliant debuts of
+the great man, of his struggles, and his success. She simpered to them;
+played the young girl! They had known her so young! Nearly all of
+them called her by her Christian name, "Anais." They formed a kind of
+conaculum, which the poor husband respectfully approached, to hear his
+predecessor spoken of. They recalled the glorious first nights, those
+evenings on which nearly every battle was won, and the great man's
+manias, his way of working; how, in order to summon up inspiration, he
+insisted on his wife being by his side, decked out in full ball dress.
+"Do you remember, Anais?" And Anais sighed and blushed.
+
+It was at that time that he had written his most tender pieces, above
+all _Savonarole_, the most passionate of his creations, with a grand
+duet, interwoven with rays of moonshine, the perfume of roses and the
+warbling of nightingales. An enthusiast sat down and played it on the
+piano, amid a silence of attentive emotion. At the last note of the
+magnificent piece, the lady burst into tears. "I cannot help it," she
+said, "I have never been able to hear it without weeping." The great
+man's old friends surrounded his unhappy widow with sympathetic
+expressions, coming up to her one by one, like at a funereal ceremony,
+to give a thrilling clasp to her hand. "Come, come, Anais, be
+courageous." And the drollest thing was to see the second husband,
+standing by the side of his wife, deeply touched and affected, shaking
+hands all round, and accepting, he too, his share of sympathy. "What
+genius! what genius!" he repeated as he mopped his eyes. It was at the
+same time ridiculous and affecting.
+
+[Illustration: p174-185]
+
+[Illustration: p177-188]
+
+
+
+
+THE DECEIVER.
+
+I have loved but one woman in my life, the painter D------ said one day
+to us.
+
+I spent five years of perfect happiness and peaceful and fruitful
+tranquillity with her. I may say that to her I owe my present celebrity,
+so easy was work, and so spontaneous was inspiration by her side. Even
+when I first met her, she seemed to have been mine from time immemorial.
+Her beauty, her character were the realization of all my dreams. That
+woman never left me; she died in my house, in my arms, loving to the
+last. Well, when I think of her, it is with a feeling of rage. If I
+strive to recall her, the same as I ever saw her during those five
+years, in all the radiance of love, with her lithe yielding figure, the
+gilded pallor of her cheeks, her oriental Jewish features, regular and
+delicate in the soft roundness of her face, her slow speech as velvety
+as her glance, if I seek to embody that charming vision, it is only in
+order the more fiercely to cry to it: "I hate you!"
+
+Her name was Clotilde. At the house of the mutual acquaintances where we
+met, she was known under the name of Madame Deloche, and was said to be
+the widow of a captain in the merchant service. Indeed, she appeared to
+have travelled a great deal. In the course of conversation, she would
+suddenly say: When I was at Tampico; or else: once in the harbour at
+Valparaiso. But apart from this, there was no trace in her manners or
+language of a wandering existence, nothing betrayed the disorder or
+precipitation of sudden departures or abrupt returns. She was a thorough
+Parisian, dressed in perfect good taste, without any of those bur-nooses
+or eccentric _sarapes_ by which one recognizes the wives of officers and
+sailors who are always arrayed in travelling costume.
+
+[Illustration: p179-190]
+
+When I found that I loved her, my first, my only idea was to ask her in
+marriage. Someone spoke on my behalf. She simply replied that she would
+never marry again. Henceforth I avoided meeting her; and as my thoughts
+were too wholly absorbed and occupied by her to allow me to work,
+I determined to travel. I was busily engaged in preparations for my
+departure, when one morning, in my own apartment, in the midst of all
+the litter of opened drawers and scattered trunks, to my great surprise,
+I saw Madame Deloche enter.
+
+"Why are you leaving?" she said softly. "Because you love me? I also
+love. I love you. Only (and here her voice shook a little) only, I am
+married." And she told me her history.
+
+It was a romance of love and desertion. Her husband drank, struck her!
+At the end of three years they had separated Her family, of whom she
+seemed very proud, held a high position in Paris, but ever since her
+marriage had refused to receive her. She was the niece of the Chief
+Rabbi. Her sister, the widow of a superior officer, had married for the
+second time a Chief Ranger of the woods and forests of Saint-Germain. As
+for her, ruined by her husband, she had fortunately had a very thorough
+education and possessed some accomplishments, by which she was able to
+augment her resources. She gave music lessons in various rich houses
+of the Chaussee d'Antin and Faubourg Saint Honore, and gained an ample
+livelihood.
+
+The story was touching, although somewhat lengthy, full of the
+pretty repetitions, the interminable incidents that entangle feminine
+discourse.
+
+[Illustration: p181-192]
+
+Indeed she took several days to relate it. I had hired for us two, a
+little house in the Avenue de l'Imperatrice, standing between the silent
+streets and peaceful lawns. I could have spent a year listening to and
+looking at her, without a thought for my work. She was the first to send
+me back to my studio, and I could not prevent her from again taking up
+her lessons. I was touched by her concern for the dignity of her life.
+I admired the proud spirit, notwithstanding that I could not help being
+rather humiliated at her expressed determination to owe nothing save to
+her own exertions. We were therefore separated all day long, and only
+met in the evening in our little house.
+
+With what joy did I not return home, what impatience I felt when she was
+late, and how happy I was when I found her there before me! She would
+bring me back bouquets and choice flowers from her journeys to Paris.
+Often I pressed upon her some present, but she laughingly said she was
+richer than I; and in truth her lessons must have been very well paid,
+for she always dressed in an expensively elegant manner, and the black
+dresses which, with coquettish care for her complexion and style of
+beauty she preferred, had the dull softness of velvet, the brilliancy
+of satin and jet, a confusion of silken lace, which revealed to the
+astonished eye, under an apparent simplicity, a world of feminine
+elegance in the thousand shades contained in a single colour.
+
+[Illustration: p183-194]
+
+Moreover her occupation was by no means laborious, she said. All her
+pupils, daughters of bankers or stock brokers, loved and respected her;
+and many a time she would show me a bracelet or a ring, that had been
+presented as a mark of gratitude for her care. Except for our work, we
+never left one another, and we went nowhere. Only on Sundays she went
+off to Saint-Germain to see her sister, the wife of the Chief Ranger,
+with whom she was now reconciled. I would accompany her to the station.
+She would return the same evening, and often in the long summer days, we
+would agree to meet at some station on the way, by the riverside or in
+the woods. She would tell me about her visit, the children's good looks,
+the air of happiness that reigned in the household. My heart bled for
+her, deprived of the pleasures of family life as she was doomed to be;
+and my tenderness increased tenfold in order to make her forget the
+falseness of her position, so painful to a woman of her character.
+
+What a happy time of perfect confidence, and how well I worked! I
+suspected nothing. All she said seemed so true, so natural. I could only
+reproach her with one thing. When talking of the houses she frequented,
+and the different families of her pupils, she would indulge in a
+superabundance of imaginary details and fancied intrigues, which she
+invented without any _apropos_.
+
+[Illustration: p185-196]
+
+Calm herself, she was ever conjuring up romances around her, and her
+life was spent in composing dramatic situations. These idle fancies
+disturbed my happiness. I, who longed to leave the world and society, in
+order to devote myself exclusively to her, found her too much taken up
+by indifferent subjects. However, I could easily excuse this defect in a
+young and unhappy woman, whose life had been hitherto a sad romance, the
+issue of which could not be foreseen.
+
+Once only did a suspicion or rather a presentiment cross my mind. One
+Sunday evening she failed to return home. I was in despair. What could
+I do? Go to Saint-Germain? I might compromise her. Nevertheless, after a
+dreadful night of anguish, I had decided on starting, when she arrived,
+looking pale and worried. Her sister was ill, she had been obliged to
+stay and nurse her. I believed all she told me, not distrusting the
+overflow of words called forth by the slightest question, which swamped
+the principal matter in a deluge of idle details: such as the hour of
+arrival, the rudeness of a guard, the lateness of the train. Twice or
+three times in the same week, she returned to Saint-Germain and slept
+there; then, her sister's illness over, she resumed her regular and
+peaceful existence.
+
+[Illustration: p187-198]
+
+Unfortunately, shortly after this, she in her turn fell ill. She came
+back one day from her lessons, shivering, wet, and fevered. Inflammation
+of the lungs set in; from the first her case was serious, and soon--the
+doctor told me--hopeless. My despair was maddening. Then I thought only
+of soothing her last moments. The family she loved so well, of which she
+was so proud, I would bring to her deathbed. Without letting her know,
+I first wrote to her sister at Saint-Germain, and I went off at
+once myself to her uncle, the Chief Rabbi. I hardly remember at what
+unreasonable hour I reached his house. Great catastrophes throw such a
+confusion into life and upset every detail. I fancy the good Rabbi was
+dining. He came out into the hall, wondering and amazed, to speak to me.
+
+"Monsieur," I said to him, "there are moments when all hatred must
+cease."
+
+He turned his venerable face towards me with a bewildered look.
+
+I resumed:
+
+"Your niece is dying!"
+
+"My niece! But I have no niece; you are mistaken."
+
+"Oh, Sir! I implore you, lay aside all foolish family rancour. I am
+speaking of Madame Deloche, the wife of Captain----"
+
+"I do not know Madame Deloche. You are mistaken, my son, I assure you."
+
+And he gently pushed me toward the door, taking me for a hoaxer or
+a madman. I must in fact have appeared very odd. What I heard was so
+unexpected, so terrible. She had lied to me then. Wherefore?
+
+Suddenly an idea flashed across me. I directed the cabman to drive me
+to the address of one of those pupils of whom she had so often spoken to
+me, the daughter of a well-known banker.
+
+I inquired of the servant: "Madame Deloche?"
+
+"There is no one here of that name."
+
+"Yes, I know that. It is a lady who gives music lessons to your young
+ladies."
+
+"We have no young ladies here, not even a piano. I don't know what you
+mean."
+
+And he angrily shut the door in my face.
+
+I made no further inquiries. I felt sure of meeting with the same
+answer, the same disappointment. On my return to our little house,
+they gave me a letter with the postmark of Saint-Germain. I opened
+it, instinctively guessing the contents. The Chief Ranger also had no
+knowledge of Madame Deloche. Moreover he had neither wife nor child.
+
+This was the last blow. Thus for five years each of her words had been
+a lie. A thousand jealous thoughts took possession of me, and madly,
+hardly knowing what I was about, I entered the room in which she was
+dying. All the questions that were torturing me burst forth over that
+bed of suffering: "Why did you go to Saint-Germain on Sundays? Where did
+you spend your days? Where did you spend that night? Come, answer
+me." And I bent over her, seeking in the depths of her still proud and
+beautiful eyes answers that I awaited with anguish; but she remained
+mute and impassive.
+
+I resumed, trembling with rage: "You never gave any lessons. I have been
+everywhere. Nobody knows you. Whence came that money, those laces, those
+jewels?" She threw me a glance full of despairing sadness, and that was
+all. In truth, I ought to have spared her, and allowed her to die in
+peace. But I had loved her too well. My jealousy was stronger than my
+pity. I continued: "For five years you have deceived me, lying to me
+every day, every hour. You knew my whole life, and I knew nothing of
+yours. Nothing, not even your name. For it is not yours, is it, the name
+you bear? Ah liar! liar! What, she is going to die, and I do not even
+know by what name to call her! Come, tell me who you are? Whence come
+you? Why did you intrude into my life? Speak! Tell me something!"
+
+Vain efforts! Instead of answering, she with difficulty turned her face
+to the wall, as though she feared that her last glance might betray her
+secret. And thus the unhappy creature died! Died without a word, liar to
+the last.
+
+[Illustration: p191-202]
+
+[Illustration: p195-206]
+
+
+
+
+THE COMTESSE IRMA.
+
+"_M. Charles d'Athis, literary man, has the honour to inform you of the
+birth of his son Robert._
+
+"_The child is doing well._"
+
+Some dozen years ago, all literary and artistic Paris received this
+little note on the glossiest of paper, embossed with the arms of the
+Counts of d'Athis-Mons, of whom the last Charles d'Athis had--while
+still young--succeeded in making for himself a genuine reputation as a
+poet.
+
+"The child is doing well." And the mother? Of her there was no mention
+in the note. Every one knew her but too well. She was the daughter of an
+old poacher of Seine et Oise; a quondam model, named Irma Salle, whose
+portrait had figured in every exhibition, as the original had in every
+studio. Her low forehead, lip curled like an antique, this chance return
+of the peasant's face to primitive lines--a turkey herd with Greek
+features--the slightly tanned skin common to all whose childhood
+is spent in the open air, giving to fair hair reflections of pale
+silkiness, adorned this minx with a kind of wild originality, completed
+by a pair of magnificently green eyes, burning beneath heavy eyebrows.
+
+[Illustration: p196-207]
+
+One night, on leaving a _bal de l'Opera_, d'Athis had taken her to sup
+with him, and though this was two years ago, the supper still continued.
+But, whereas Irma had become completely a part of the poet's life,
+this intimation of the child's birth, curt and haughty as it was,
+sufficiently indicated how little she was considered by him. And in
+truth, in this temporary household, the woman was scarcely more than a
+housekeeper, showing in the management of the gentleman-poet's house
+the hard shrewdness of her dual nature of peasant and courtesan; and
+endeavouring, at no matter what price, to render herself indispensable.
+
+[Illustration: p197-208]
+
+Too rustic, and too stupid to understand anything of d'Athis' genius, of
+those fine verses, fashionable and refined, which made of him a sort of
+Parisian Tennyson, she nevertheless understood how to bend to all his
+whims, and be silent under his contempt; as if in the depths of that
+peasant nature lurked something of the boor's humble admiration for his
+lord. The birth of the child only served to accentuate her unimportance
+in the house.
+
+When the dowager Comtesse d'Athis-Mons, the mother of the poet, a
+distinguished and very great lady, learned that a grandson was born to
+her, a sweet little Vicomte, duly recognized and authenticated by the
+author of his being,* she was seized with a wish to see and kiss the
+child. It was, to be sure, a rather bitter reflection for the former
+reader to Queen Marie-Amelie to think that the heir of such a great name
+should have such a mother; but, keeping strictly to the terms of
+the _billets de faire pari_ the venerable lady could forget that the
+creature existed.
+
+* According to French law, an unmarried man recognizing his illegitimate
+child, thereby confers on him all the rights of a legitimate one,
+including both title and fortune.
+
+When she went to see the child out at nurse, she chose the days on which
+she would be sure not to meet any one; she admired him, spoilt him, took
+him to her heart, worshipped him with that grandmotherly adoration which
+is the last love of a woman's life, giving her an excuse for living
+a few years longer in order to see the little ones springing up and
+growing around her. Then when the baby Vicomte was a little bigger and
+returned to live with his father and mother, a treaty was made, for
+the Comtesse could not give up her beloved visits; at the sound of the
+grandmother's ring, Irma humbly and silently disappeared, or else the
+child was taken to his grandmother's house, and thus spoilt by his
+two mothers. He loved them equally, somewhat astonished to feel in
+the warmth of their caresses, a kind of exclusive-ness, a wish to
+monopolize. D'Athis, careless of everything but his verses, absorbed by
+his growing fame, was content to adore his little Robert, to talk of him
+to everyone and to imagine that the child belonged to him, and him only.
+This illusion did not last.
+
+"I should like to see you married," his mother said to him one day.
+
+"Yes, but how about the child?" "Don't worry yourself about that. I have
+picked out for you a young girl of good family but poor, who adores you.
+I have introduced Robert to her, and they are already great friends.
+Besides, the first year I will keep the darling with me. Afterwards, we
+shall see."
+
+[Illustration: p200-211]
+
+"And--the mother?" hesitated the poet, reddening a little, for it was
+the first time that he had spoken of Irma to his mother.
+
+[Illustration: p201-212]
+
+"Pooh!" replied the old dowager, laughing, "we will settle something
+handsome on her, and I am quite sure she will soon be married also. The
+_bourgeois_ of Paris is not particular."
+
+That very evening, d'Athis, who had never been desperately in love
+with his mistress, spoke to her of these arrangements and found her as
+usual--submissive and apparently docile to his will. But the next
+day, when he returned home, he found that mother and child had flown.
+Finally, they were discovered in a wretched hut on the borders of the
+Forest of Rambouillet, with Irma's father; and when the poet arrived he
+found his son, his young prince, in his velvet and lace, jumping on
+the old poacher's knee, playing with his pipe, running after the hens,
+delighted to shake his fair curls in the fresh air. D'Athis, though much
+upset by emotion, pretended to laugh the affair off, and wished at once
+to take his fugitives home with him. But Irma did not see the matter
+in the same light. She had been dismissed; she took her child with her.
+What more natural? Nothing short of the poet's promise that he would
+give up all thoughts of marriage decided her to return. Moreover, she
+made her own conditions. It had been too long forgotten that she was
+Robert's mother. Always to disappear and hide whenever Madame d'Athis
+appeared, was no longer possible for her. The child was growing too old
+for her to be exposed to such humiliations before him. It was therefore
+agreed that as Madame d'Athis had refused to be brought into contact
+with her son's mistress, she should no longer go to his house, but that
+the child should be brought to her every day.
+
+Then began for the old grandmother a regular torture. Every day fresh
+pretexts were made to keep the child away; he had coughed, it was too
+cold, it was raining. Then came his walks, rides, gymnastic exercises.
+The poor old lady never saw her grandson. At first she tried complaining
+to d'Athis; but women alone have the secret of carrying on these little
+warfares. Their ruses remain invisible, like the hidden stitches which
+catch back the folds and laces of their dress. The poet could see
+nothing of it; and the saddened grandmother spent her life in waiting
+for her darling's visit, in watching for him in the street, when he
+walked out with a servant; and these furtive kisses and hasty glances
+only augmented her maternal passion without satisfying it.
+
+During this time, Irma Salle--always by means of the child--succeeded in
+gaining ground in the father's heart. She was the recognized head of the
+house now, received visitors, gave parties, settled herself as a woman
+who means to remain where she is. Still she took care to say from time
+to time to the little Vicomte, before his father: "Do you remember the
+chickens at Grandpapa Salle's? Shall we go back and see them?"
+
+[Illustration: p204-215]
+
+And by this everlasting threat of departure, she paved the way to the
+end she had in view--marriage.
+
+It took her five years to become a Comtesse, but at length she gained
+her point. One day, the poet came in fear and trembling to announce to
+his mother that he had decided to marry his mistress, and the old lady,
+instead of being indignant hailed the calamity as a deliverance, seeing
+but one thing in the marriage; the possibility of once more entering her
+son's door, and of freely indulging her affection for her little Robert.
+
+[Illustration: p205-216]
+
+In truth, the real honeymoon was for the grandmother. D'Athis, after
+this rash act, wished to be away from Paris for a time. He felt uneasy
+there. And as the child, clinging to his mother's skirts ruled the
+house, they all established themselves in Irma's native country, within
+hail of old father Salle's chickens. It was indeed the most curious, the
+most ill-assorted household that could be imagined. Grandmama d'Athis
+and Grandpapa Salle met each night at the evening toilet of their
+grandson. The old poacher, his short black pipe wedged into the corner
+of his mouth; and the former reader at the Tuileries, with her silvery
+hair, and her imposing manner, together watched the lovely child rolling
+before them on the carpet, and admired him equally. The one brought
+him from Paris the newest, most expensive, most showy toys; the other
+manufactured for him the most splendid whistles from bits of elder; and,
+by Jove! the Dauphin hesitated between them!
+
+Upon the whole, among all these beings grouped as it were by force
+around a cradle, the only really unhappy one was Charles d'Athis. His
+elegant and patrician inspiration suffered from this life in the depths
+of a forest, like a delicate Parisian woman for whom the country air is
+too strong. He could no longer work, and far from that terrible Paris
+who shuts her gates so quickly against the absent, he felt himself
+already nearly forgotten. Fortunately the child was there, and when the
+child smiled, the father thought no more of his successes as a poet, nor
+of the past of Irma Salle.
+
+And now, would you know the finale of this singular drama? Read the
+brief note bordered with black, that I received only a few days ago, and
+which is the last page of this truly Parisian adventure:
+
+"_M. le Comte and Mme. la Comtesse d'Athis grieve to inform you of the
+death of their son Robert!_"
+
+Unhappy creatures! Imagine them all four gazing at each other before
+that empty cradle!
+
+[Illustration: p207-218]
+
+[Illustration: p208-219]
+
+[Illustration: p211-222]
+
+
+
+
+THE CONFIDENCES OF AN ACADEMIC COAT.
+
+That morning was the dawn of a glorious day for the sculptor Guillardin.
+
+Elected on the previous day a member of the _Institut_, he was about
+to inaugurate before the five Academies gathered together in solemn
+concourse, his academic coat, a magnificent garment ornamented with
+green palm-leaves, resplendent in its new cloth and silken embroidery,
+colour of hope. The blessed coat, opened ready to slip on, lay spread on
+an arm-chair, and Guillardin contemplated it tenderly as he arranged the
+bow of his white tie.
+
+"Above all no hurry," thought the good fellow. "I have plenty of time."
+
+The fact is that in his feverish impatience he had dressed a couple of
+hours too soon; and the beautiful Madame Guillardin--always very slow
+over her dressing--had positively declared that on this day she would
+only be ready at the precise moment--not a minute earlier, do you hear!
+
+Unfortunate Guillardin! What could he do to kill the time?
+
+"Well, all the same, I will try on my coat," he said, and gently as
+though he were handling tulle and lace, he lifted the precious frippery,
+and having donned it with infinite precaution, he placed himself in
+front of his looking-glass. Oh! what a charming picture the
+mirror disclosed to him! What an amiable little Academician, freshly
+hatched, happy, smiling, grizzled, and protuberant, with arms too short
+in proportion to his figure, which in the new sleeves acquired a stiff
+and automatic dignity!
+
+[Illustration: p213-224]
+
+Thoroughly satisfied with his appearance, Guillardin marched up and
+down, bowed as though entering the Academy, smiled to his colleagues of
+the fine arts, and assumed academical attitudes. Nevertheless, whatever
+pride one may feel at one's personal appearance, it is impossible to
+remain two hours in full dress, before a looking-glass. At last our
+Academician felt somewhat fatigued, and fearful lest he should rumple
+his coat, made up his mind to take it off and lay it back very carefully
+on the arm-chair. Then seating himself opposite on the other side of the
+fireplace, with his legs stretched out and his two hands crossed over
+his dress waistcoat, he began to indulge in sweet dreams as he gazed at
+the green coat.
+
+Like the traveller who, arrived at the end of his journey, likes
+to remember the dangers and difficulties that have beset his path,
+Guillardin retraced his life, year by year, from the day when he began
+to learn modelling in Jouffroy's studio. Ah! the outset is hard in that
+confounded profession. He remembered the fireless winters, the sleepless
+nights, the endless walks in search of work, the desperate rage
+experienced at feeling so small, so lost, and unknown in the immense
+crowd that pushes, hustles, upsets, and crushes. And yet all alone,
+without patronage or money, he had managed to rise. By sheer talent,
+sir! And his head thrown back, and eyes half-shut, the worthy man kept
+repeating out loud to himself: "By sheer talent. Nothing but talent."
+
+[Illustration: p215-226]
+
+A long burst of laughter, dry and creaky like an old man's laugh,
+suddenly interrupted him. Slightly startled, Guillardin glanced around
+the room. He was alone, quite alone, _tete-a-tete_ with his green coat,
+the ghost of an Academician solemnly spread out opposite him, on the
+other side of the fire. And still the insolent laugh rang on. Then as
+he looked at it more intently, the sculptor almost fancied that his coat
+was no longer in the place where he had put it, but really seated in the
+arm-chair, with tails turned up, and sleeves resting on the arms of the
+chair, the fronts puffed out with an appearance of life. Incredible as
+it may seem, it was this thing that was laughing. Yes, it was from this
+singular green coat that arose the uncontrollable fits of laughter by
+which it was agitated, shaken and convulsed, causing it to jerk its
+tails, throw itself back in the chair, and at moments place its two
+sleeves against its sides, as though to check this supernatural and
+inextinguishable excess of mirth. At the same time, a feeble voice, sly
+and mischievous, could be heard saying between two hiccups: "Oh dear,
+oh dear, how it hurts one to laugh like this! How it hurts one to laugh
+like this!" "Who the devil is there, for mercy's sake?" asked the poor
+Academician with wide staring eyes.
+
+The voice continued still more slyly and mischievously:
+
+"But it's I, Monsieur Guillardin, I, your palm-embroidered coat, waiting
+for you to start for the reception. I must crave pardon for having so
+unseasonably interrupted your musing; but really it is too funny to hear
+you talk of your talent! I could not restrain myself. Come, you can't be
+serious? Can you conscientiously believe that your talent has sufficed
+to raise you so rapidly to the point you have attained in life; that it
+has given you all you possess: honours, position, fame, fortune? Do
+you really think that possible, Guillardin? Examine yourself, my dear
+friend, before answering; go down, far, far down, into your inmost
+conscience. Now, answer me? Don't you see you dare not?"
+
+"And yet," stammered Guillardin, with comical hesitation, "I've.... I've
+worked a great deal."
+
+"Oh yes, a great deal, you have fagged tremendously. You are a toiler,
+a drudge, you knock off a great deal of work. You count your task by the
+hour, like a cabdriver. But the spark, my dear boy, which, like a golden
+bee flits through the brain of the true artist, and emits from its wings
+both light and music, when has it ever visited you? Not once, and you
+are well aware of it. It has always frightened you, that divine little
+bee! And yet it is this only that gives real talent. Ah! I know many who
+also work, but very differently from you, with all the anxiety and fever
+of sincere research, and yet who will never reach the point you have
+attained. Look here, acknowledge this much, now we are alone. Your one
+talent has been marrying a pretty woman."
+
+"Monsieur!" interrupted Guillardin, turning purple. The voice proceeded
+unchanged: "Ah well! This burst of indignation is a good sign. It proves
+to me what all the world knows indeed; that you are certainly more fool
+than knave. Come, come, you need not roll such furious eyes at me. In
+the first place, if you touch me, if you make the least crease or tear
+in me, it will be impossible to go to the reception to-day, and then,
+what will Madame Guillardin say? For after all, it is to her that all
+the glory of this great day is due.
+
+[Illustration: p219-230]
+
+It is she whom the five Academies are about to receive, and I can assure
+you that if I appeared at the _Institut_ on her pretty person, still
+so elegant and slender notwithstanding her age, I should cut a very
+different figure than with you. Confound it, Monsieur Guillardin,
+we must look facts in the face! You owe everything to that woman;
+everything, your house, your forty thousand francs (sixteen hundred
+pounds) a year, your cross of the Legion of Honour, your laurels, your
+medals."
+
+And with the gesture of a one-armed man, the green coat, with its empty
+embroidered sleeve, pointed out to the unfortunate sculptor the glorious
+insignia hung up on the walls of his alcove. Then, as though wishing
+the better to torment his victim, to assume every aspect, and every
+attitude, the cruel coat drew nearer the fire, and leaning forward on
+his arm-chair with a little old-fashioned and confidential air, he spoke
+familiarly, in the tone of a long-established intimacy:
+
+"Come, old boy, what I've said seems to upset you. Yet it is better you
+should know what everybody is aware of. And who could tell you better
+than your own coat? Let us reason a little. What had you when you
+married? Nothing. What did your wife bring you? Nothing. Then how do
+you explain your present fortune? You are going to repeat again that you
+have, worked very hard. But my poor friend, working day and night, with
+all the patronage and the orders from government which have certainly
+not been wanting to you since your marriage, you have never made more
+than fifteen thousand francs (six hundred pounds) a year. Can you for
+one moment suppose that was sufficient to keep up an establishment like
+yours? Remember that the beautiful Madame Guillardin has always been
+cited as a model of elegance, frequenting the richest society. Of course
+I am well aware that shut up as you were from morning till night in your
+studio, you never gave a thought to all this. You were satisfied with
+saying to your friends: 'I have a wife who is a surprisingly skilful
+manager. With what I gain, she not only pays our expenses, but manages
+also to put by money.' It was you who were surprising, poor man! The
+truth was that you had married one of those pretty little unscrupulous
+creatures of which Paris is full, an ambitious flirt, serious in what
+concerned your interests and unprejudiced in regard of her own, knowing
+how to reconcile your affairs and her pleasures. The life of these
+women, my dear fellow, resembles a dance programme in which sums would
+be placed side by side with the dancers' names. Yours reasoned in the
+following manner: 'My husband has no talent, no fortune, no good looks
+either; but he is an excellent man, good-natured, credulous, as little
+in the way as possible. Provided he leaves me free to amuse myself as
+I choose, I can undertake to give him all he lacks!' And from that day
+forth, money, orders, decorations from all countries kept pouring
+in upon your studio, with their pretty metallic sound and their
+many-coloured ribbons. Look at the row on my lapel. Then one fine
+morning, Madame was seized with the fancy--a fancy of beauty on the
+wane--to be the wife of an Academician, and it is her delicately
+gloved hand that has opened before you one by one all the doors of the
+sanctuary. Ah! my poor old fellow, your colleagues alone can tell you
+what all these green palms have cost you!"
+
+"You lie, you lie!" screamed Guillardin, half choked by indignation.
+
+"Ah no! my old friend, indeed I do not lie. You need only to look
+around you presently, when you enter the reception hall. You will see a
+malicious gleam in every eye, a smile at the corner of every lip,
+while they will whisper as you pass by: 'Here is the beautiful Madame
+Guillardin's husband.' For you will never be anything else in life, my
+dear fellow, but the husband of a pretty woman."
+
+This time, Guillardin could bear it no longer. Pale with rage, he
+bounded forward, to seize and dash into the fire, after first tearing
+from it the pretty green palm wreath, this insolent and raving coat; but
+a door opens and a well-known voice, tinged with a mixture of contempt
+and mild condescension, opportunely awakes him from his horrible
+nightmare:
+
+"Oh! that is just like you, asleep at the corner of the fire on such an
+important day!"
+
+And Madame Guillardin stands before him, tall and still handsome,
+although rather too imposing with her almost natural pink complexion,
+her powdered hair, and the exaggerated brilliancy of her painted eyes.
+With the gesture of the superior woman, she takes up the green-palmed
+coat, and briskly, with a little smile, helps her husband to don it;
+while he, poor man, still trembling with the horrors of his nightmare,
+draws a deep sigh of relief and thinks to himself: "Thank goodness! It
+was a dream!"
+
+[Illustration: p224-235]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Artists' Wives, by Alphonse Daudet
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