Chasing the Dream

by Liane De Pougy

  Our after-dinner activities, then, proceeded in a manner that would satisfy the most fervent admirer of this noble quarter of Paris. There was even, if I remember rightly, a brief moment of boredom which was perfectly in tune with requirements.

  I, however, was not in the least bored.

  And I don’t know how it came about, but towards eleven o’clock, when Gallex mentioned he might go out to ‘have a little something’ on the boulevards, when the attaché mentioned a ‘do at the club’ that sounded promising, and when the doctor rose to go and pay an urgent visit to his leading lady patient, there was something like a fire burning in my veins, I was positively happy to see them making ready to go, my temples were throbbing and I couldn’t or didn’t wish to control myself…

  And little Duluc stayed behind.

  He even found it all very natural.

  The next day I was as happy as a lark.

  You may guess what that means.

  Time to read between the lines.

  Oh, Jean! Conjure up in your mind all the things that can go on between two lovers carried away by passion! We were literally besotted with each other. He sent me into frenzies of excitement, the sort of physical obliteration of the senses that makes two people in reality only one and makes them seem like souls without bodies when they are not together.

  It seemed to us, quite sincerely, that we couldn’t ever be separate beings again. He was very proud of this success; I was shaken by it, and thrilled all the same.

  We no longer went out. It was as if little Duluc had been erased from the boulevards. Ah, those lunches in our bedroom, followed by a wave of tiredness again, and a rest, so-called, which promptly tired us out still further!

  In the evenings, we still stayed indoors, just the two of us; but the lights were on everywhere, and a festive air in the house as if I had been entertaining twenty guests; and it was just for us! For him…

  ‘This evening,’ little Duluc would frequently say, ‘this evening, maybe, I’ll take you to the theatre.’

  ‘Yes, lovely.’

  ‘Or else to the Folies Bergère, or the Eldorado. Or we’ll just go out for a walk…’

  ‘Fine, wherever you like.’

  And do you know where we ended up, my dear? No further than the bedroom, a tea tray to hand and me in my dressing gown!

  I did, however, have a visit from a woman friend who announced that she thought I looked a little pale.

  ‘But it suits you very well,’ she told me.

  And she was right.

  It had all been going on for three weeks by this time, three weeks of wildness and excess. I was completely shattered, I was begging for mercy, but in a state of absolute physical fulfilment.

  ‘We love each other, don’t we?’ I would say, taking his head between my hands. ‘You love me… I feel you love me… and I’m all yours too. What I’m feeling is something I’ve never felt before…’

  He would placidly let me maunder on.

  ‘And we shan’t ever separate now, shall we, my little Duluc…? Do you feel the same…? Come on, you have to answer. Quick, tell me something kind and loving to give me pleasure.’

  And he would light a cigarette! Whilst I was off in the land of dreams… yes, for sure, what I’d had was wonderful, I relished this amazing satiation of the senses as it deserved to be relished, but would there be nothing more?

  How comforting it would be to feel a mutual sense of belonging, just to remain here, hand in hand, without saying a word or doing a thing…!

  I imagined another form of happiness must follow in the wake of this brutish, near crazy passion. Some instinct drew me towards this other joy, which would be made out of ideas that haunted me, lovely ideas.

  To be two people in love, to show a side of Josiane de Valneige no one suspected! And in addition, I was thinking what a triumph it would be if I was the one who succeeded in keeping my little Duluc when all my predecessors could not.

  ‘Tell me,’ I asked him one day, ‘how exactly do you love me?’

  ‘How can you possibly not know?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I do know, of course I know… but on top of that, don’t you feel just a trace of real affection for me…? I’d so much wish you to love me, the way I feel I’m going to love you… with proper emotions, it would be so good.’

  And I can still hear his reply.

  ‘My dear Josiane, you are unlike anyone else… you’re full of the maddest ideas!’

  After that day, from the welcome my proposition received from him, it goes without saying, my friend, I clung to it all the more tenaciously.

  Yes, he would love me… yes, I would contrive to force into his heart all the emotions that set mine racing!

  But on one occasion he told me: ‘Don’t expect me for dinner tonight… I’ll be staying on at the club…’

  ‘Well, I’ll come and fetch you!’

  ‘Oh, don’t do that.’

  ‘Are you cross with me?’

  ‘No, but it would look silly.’

  Another time, he didn’t tell me in advance; it was simpler.

  When he returned, looking bored, it was very late. Can you picture such a scene, my friend, Josiane de Valneige in her bed, waiting?

  To sum up, it didn’t take me long to understand…

  I had believed for a while that all this pleasure could turn into a wider fulfilment. Feeling in me the need for true affection, for a bit of blue, as the poets put it, I had imagined I could find it here… and my little Duluc, on his side, had simply come to the end of his repertoire and was in a state of repletion!

  So the thing didn’t drag on long after that.

  What was the point in prolonging a situation that could no longer give me anything and which couldn’t change?

  He left me one night when there was a ball at the Opéra, at which he set about sweeping a new woman off her feet. He left me, delighted by our whole experience and ready, he said, to put right any man who ever dared in his presence speak ill of Josiane de Valneige, who was a truly fine woman; and I, disappointed, I left him without anger but with a little sigh just for myself, which he would not have understood at all.

  So much for having aspirations… that’ll teach you, my girl!

  VI

  To the Same

  I send you here, excellent confidant that you are, a few more pages and a little anecdote.

  I have mentioned N***, of the Cosmopolitan Bank. This N*** was a good man: what he wanted from me was the simple satisfaction of being free to call on Josiane de Valneige, from time to time, to take tea and talk.

  But it was through him that I came to know Martigny, another important financier.

  Important financiers had their own special place in the lives of women like me; they do in everyone’s lives, do they not?

  But what marked out my Martigny as distinct from the others was that he enjoyed the esteem of society in general.

  His correctness in business matters was proverbial and his professional conduct widely admired.

  God knows I’m no bourgeoise, my friend… perhaps I am not bourgeoise enough. But however much one might be… what shall I say?… a free spirit, when a sober-minded, honourable man takes an interest, it is always flattering to a woman.

  There were other ways Martigny had of pleasing me, and the best was that he swore he loved me.

  Where others would only have offered their station in life, the glamour of their wealth, their personal stylishness, this one would speak of true affection… and he was adorably jealous, of everything, of everyone…

  Even of his secretary, a curly fair-haired young man who arrived at my house each morning to bring him the latest up-to-the-minute news, respectfully handing over little cards dense with figures.

  Martigny’s manner as he looked at them, it was wonderful! Yes, really, you’d think all those numbers written there were no concern of his, such trivialities meant nothing to him, what was the Stock Exchange to him, what was money?

  ‘No,’ h
e would murmur indifferently, ‘…I don’t want to know any of this, I don’t want to hear business talk.’

  And to end it, he liked to quote a line we’d heard at the Théâtre-Français:

  The time that’s left shall all be for Zaïre!

  Wasn’t that charming?

  The great financier’s Zaïre couldn’t get over it!

  She being, you understand, a person who naively believed a great financier must talk only of schemes and accounts, read only The Financial Week, go nowhere without a little gold pencil in his hand!

  No, nothing of the sort with Martigny: he exuded disdain, a contempt unique among his kind for all such carryings-on, so thoroughly beneath one!

  I found this quite simply magnificent.

  At last I had met a gentleman, a rare bird, the phoenix of modern times.

  ‘Is it right, then,’ I said to him one day, ‘that I’m the only one who exists for you?’

  And although I could talk to him like this, I still addressed him as vous. It’s a curious thing, there are some men it doesn’t come naturally to call tu, even when we like them a great deal.

  ‘If so,’ I continued, ‘did you know you are about to make me extremely proud and happy?’

  ‘It is my one desire.’

  ‘Is there anything keeping you in Paris?’

  ‘Only you. Do I have any other occupation or concern but to make myself agreeable?’

  ‘Well, in that case, let’s go away, if you’re willing, for a few days to… to the seaside…’

  ‘What…? Well, gladly: just as long as it takes to rent a villa and have it arranged as befits you.’

  Oh, my friend, the idea of leaving Paris for a while, going to some peaceful, little-known spot, with a man who appreciated me, who in all the universe had eyes only for me, wanted only me, it was a dream! Was the impossible by chance going to come true this time? Might I at last be permitted to know a little true emotion and intimacy?

  ‘When do we leave?’

  ‘Straight away, of course! Who needs a villa to be happy?’

  With a good and tender smile, Martigny put me right, and it was agreed we would take flight on the following day.

  I was impatient, I was filled with joy!

  The next day, at the appointed time, I was waiting at the station.

  We were due to meet under the clock. Five minutes late, ten. Heavens, wasn’t he coming? What had happened to him? I was beginning to be seriously alarmed.

  But suddenly, just beside me, and then around me, and all along the pavement, a great din of shouting broke out.

  It was a group of news-sellers bursting on to the streets and the Cour de Rome with the evening editions.

  ‘Get your papers here…! La France…! La Cocarde…! La Patrie…!’ and I don’t know what else. ‘New scandal on the Stock Exchange…! Read all about it…! M. Martigny arrested!’

  He was in Mazas prison!! Martigny! Actually Martigny! And someone next to me said to his neighbour: ‘He thought he was above it all, that one, never seemed to get his hands dirty like the rest of them, always seemed to keep a distance, just so he could plan his frauds better… what a crook!’

  Some time afterwards, I received a letter from him, posted from Mazas. But I was cured of holiday retreats and I quietly left him to his.

  Farewell, friend. When I think back on all these stories, I want to shake you warmly by the hand.

  VII

  To the Same

  I opened my Le Gaulois this morning and out popped the name of M. Plantesol. Noël Plantesol, deputy in the National Assembly, it means nothing to you? Yet he has several excellent reports to his name, on sugar production, another on the waste disposal industry, and a third, the most significant, in support of a project to restore morality to the public streets.

  I know something about it, it was I who corrected the proofs!

  Which is not without its piquant element, and if Gallex the painter had been nicer to me I would have offered him a motif worthy of his modernistic approach: Josiane de Valneige collaborating in the raising of the nation’s morals!

  I do not tell you this, my dear, in order to diminish M. Plantesol, he performs that service very well himself; and that is exactly what I have against him, because at one time I believed in him and I would have been very happy to have believed much longer.

  I made his acquaintance when I was at a table with a group of friends at Les Ambassadeurs for the preview of the Salon.

  He has since explained that he always went to the vernissage because he had once intended becoming a student at the Beaux Arts.

  This varnish-splashing ceremony in the Champs-Elysées is truly most strange. The only people there, all gathered on the pretext of being interested in art, are the ones who couldn’t give tuppence for it! If it’s genuine fun you want, laughter, youth, love, don’t look there. But it is terribly smart.

  Well, I was greatly surprised to meet a man there who wasn’t smart at all, but better than that.

  A tall dark-haired man with eyes that spoke more swiftly than his tongue. And, my dear, what a voice! It resonated like a tolling bell; and the gestures that went with it!

  As for what he said? Plenty of others have said the same, and indeed he repeated his own words; but for me it was all brand new and irresistible. Incidentally, I am not at all displeased to be telling you this story, because it will oblige you to acknowledge that I am not cut from any ordinary cloth.

  Oh yes, it was very strange to hear M. Plantesol in that kind of setting! He had an oratorical and patriotic constitution. Ideas about society, about reforms, about the poor, about the grandeur of politics and the country shot out of him like rockets.

  Ah, those superb ideas, I was literally carried away by them; and those rolling sentences!

  I’m the sort of person who, when anyone talks to me about my country, fills with emotion, and I had never heard talk like this.

  So it was true, then, his type still existed? The altruist, enthusiast, firebrand, achiever? How good it must be to be close to such a man, to be loved by him and to love him!

  I had had enough of spiritless little affairs and, I don’t know why, I felt myself instantly at one with Plantesol in an adventure that was just beginning.

  In the afternoon, I took my Plantesol on a tour of the sculptures.

  The mauve dress I was wearing for the first time at this preview of fashion, my dress and he both scored a triumph. He gave no sign of being put out by it, or embarrassed. On the contrary, he seemed as proud as a peacock to be seen alongside a woman whom everyone stared at and who swapped wordless little smiles with other women as they made their way through the exhibition rooms, among the benches outside and round those lawns that look as sleek as the hair on a baby’s head.

  ‘Look! Who’s Josiane de Valneige with?’

  A few days later everyone knew, and they were saying: ‘She’s with her politician.’

  Kindly believe, my dear, that if I had wanted a minister, I would have had one. It is hardly a rare species, even though totally lacking in interest and, for a woman, any decorative value.

  The minister of today is indistinguishable from the minister of tomorrow, and how could it be otherwise, for the same trappings accompany each of them in turn. They live for a day against a backdrop of gold-chained ushers and they die. There are in nature, it appears, insects whose life-history is the same. And then, it can’t be helped, but the frock-coated splendour of their office leaves me cold; their ladies can keep them!

  With Plantesol at least I had air, I had space: nothing yet done, all to do. Would there not be happiness and fulfilment in being associated with his uplifting ideas, in lending a hand, in featuring, I too, in my own small way, in the press reports – newspapers which otherwise only recorded my presence at launch parties for a new champagne, at first nights or at Longchamp, among the lists of notable courtesans?

  Yes, I was seduced by the prospect of having for my very own a great man on the rise, seduced also
by his noble merits, his convictions, his detachment from all that was not directed at the general good.

  Oh, how impressively he would say: ‘France…! The people…! To work and suffer for the people!’

  One day it moved me so much I was brought to tears, and declared my Plantesol to be unique.

  It was at this period that I came to be seen so frequently in the public gallery of the Chamber of Deputies during sittings. A newspaper asked one day: ‘For whose sake can it be that Josiane de Valneige attends with such devotion?’

  …And indeed it was highly compromising for me.

  I ended up having my own acknowledged seat in the gallery. Some of the diplomats nearby made eyes at me; others, less Parisian, did me the honour of taking me for a spy. A funny lot, the diplomatic corps!

  As for me, it got to the stage where, from my elevated position, I learnt to recognise our legislators by the back of their heads. I contemplated them, all the same, with a degree of respect. It did not last, and it is impossible to imagine anything less inspiring. And we women are accused of talking without having anything to say! But the least among us talking to her tradespeople knows her business better, brings more talent to it, and even wit!

  While I listened to our great patented orators, I watched my Plantesol. He was in the horseshoe-shaped body of the chamber, not sitting but standing, alert and handsome as a lion, a very learned lion, naturally. He had a lorgnette which he kept training on me, lovingly. And I thought: ‘Ah, when he speaks, then we’ll see what eloquence is! Among all this crowd of upstarts, we’ll finally hear an apostle, one who is pure, one who is true!’

  And my Plantesol assumed fantastical proportions.

  ‘Work, my dear, work,’ I used to tell him. ‘Get something done, quickly.’

  And I assure you, my friend, in the role of Egeria – what woman has not longed to play it? – I was really good.

  I have to say that Plantesol, to do him justice, did indeed do something: he had a hand, at least, in the appointment – as postman – of a cousin of the angelic Gérard and the promotion of my god-parent Desormeau in the tax office.