“Oh, what a beautiful day! How good it is to live!” murmured the Countess.
The painter contemplated both mother and daughter in the dazzling light. Certainly, they were different, but at the same time so much alike that the latter was veritably a continuation of the former, made of the same blood, the same flesh, animated by the same life. Their eyes, above all, those blue eyes flecked with tiny black drops, of such a brilliant blue in the daughter, a little faded in the mother, fixed upon him a look so similar that he expected to hear them make the same replies. And he was surprised to discover, as he made them laugh and talk, that before him were two very distinct women, one who had lived and one who was about to live. No, he did not foresee what would become of that child when her young mind, influenced by tastes and instincts that were as yet dormant, should have expanded and developed amid the life of the world. This was a pretty little new person, ready for chances and for love, ignored and ignorant, who was sailing out of port like a vessel, while her mother was returning, having traversed life and having loved!
He was touched at the thought that she had chosen himself, and that she preferred him still, this woman who had remained so pretty, rocked in that landau, in the warm air of springtime.
As he expressed his gratitude to her in a glance, she divined it, and he thought he could feel her thanks in the rustle of her robe.
In his turn he murmured: “Oh, yes, what a beautiful day!”
When they had taken up the Duchess, in the Rue de Varenne, they spun along at a swift pace toward the Invalides, crossed the Seine, and reached the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, going up toward the Arc de triomphe de l’Etoile in the midst of a sea of carriages.
The young girl was seated beside Olivier, riding backward, and she opened upon this stream of equipages wide and wondering eager eyes. Occasionally, when the Duchess and the Countess acknowledged a salutation with a short movement of the head, she would ask “Who is that?” Bertin answered: “The Pontaiglin,” “the Puicelci,” “the Comtesse de Lochrist,” or “the beautiful Madame Mandeliere.”
Now they were following the Avenue of the Bois de Boulogne, amid the noise and the rattling of wheels. The carriages, a little less crowded than below the Arc de Triomphe, seemed to struggle in an endless race. The cabs, the heavy landaus, the solemn eight-spring vehicles, passed one another over and over again, distanced suddenly by a rapid victoria, drawn by a single trotter, bearing along at a reckless pace, through all that rolling throng, bourgeois and aristocratic, through all societies, all classes, all hierarchies, an indolent young woman, whose bright and striking toilette diffused among the carriages it touched in passing a strange perfume of some unknown flower.
“Who is that lady?” Annette inquired.
“I don’t know,” said Bertin, at which reply the Duchess and the Countess exchanged a smile.
The leaves were opening, the familiar nightingales of that Parisian garden were singing already among the tender verdure, and when, as the carriage approached the lake, it joined the long file of other vehicles at a walk, there was an incessant exchange of salutations, smiles, and friendly words, as the wheels touched. The procession seemed now like the gliding of a flotilla in which were seated very well-bred ladies and gentlemen. The Duchess, who was bowing every moment before raised hats or inclined heads, appeared to be passing them in review, calling to mind what she knew, thought, or supposed of these people, as they defiled before her.
“Look, dearest, there is the lovely Madame Mandeliere again—the beauty of the Republic.”
In a light and dashing carriage, the beauty of the Republic allowed to be admired, under an apparent indifference to this indisputable glory, her large dark eyes, her low brow beneath a veil of dusky hair, and her mouth, which was a shade too obstinate in its lines.
“Very beautiful, all the same,” said Bertin.
The Countess did not like to hear him praise other women. She shrugged her shoulders slightly, but said nothing.
But the young girl, in whom the instinct of rivalry suddenly awoke, ventured to say: “I do not find her beautiful at all.”
“What! You do not think her beautiful?” said the painter.
“No; she looks as if she had been dipped in ink.”
The Duchess, delighted, burst into laughter.
“Bravo, little one!” she cried. “For the last six years half the men in Paris have been swooning at the feet of that negress! I believe that they sneer at us. Look at the Comtesse de Lochrist instead.”
Alone, in a landau with a white poodle, the Countess, delicate as a miniature, a blond with brown eyes, whose grace and beauty had served for five or six years as the theme for the admiration of her partisans, bowed to the ladies, with a fixed smile on her lips.
But Nanette exhibited no greater enthusiasm than before.
“Oh,” she said, “she is no longer young!”
Bertin, who usually did not at all agree with the Countess in the daily discussions of these two rivals, felt a sudden irritation at the stupid intolerance of this little simpleton.
“Nonsense!” he said. “Whether one likes her or not, she is charming; and I only hope that you may become as pretty as she.”
“Pooh! pooh!” said the Duchess. “You notice women only after they have passed the thirtieth year. The child is right. You admire only passee beauty.”
“Pardon me!” he exclaimed; “a woman is really beautiful only after maturing, when the expression of her face and eyes has become fully developed!”
He enlarged upon this idea that the first youthful freshness is only the gloss of riper beauty; he demonstrated that men of the world were wise in paying but little attention to young girls in their first season, and that they were right in proclaiming them beautiful only when they passed into their later period of bloom.
The Countess, flattered, murmured: “He is right; he speaks as an artist. The youthful countenance is very charming, but it is always a trifle commonplace.”
The painter continued to urge his point, indicating at what moment a face that was losing, little by little, the undecided grace of youth, really assumed its definite form, its true character and physiognomy.
At each word the Countess said “Yes,” with a little nod of conviction; and the more he affirmed, with all the heat of a lawyer making a plea, with the animation of the accused pleading his own cause, the more she approved, by glance and gesture, as if they two were allied against some danger, and must defend themselves against some false and menacing opinion. Annette hardly heard them, she was so engrossed in looking about her. Her usually smiling face had become grave, and she said no more, carried away by the pleasure of the rapid driving. The sunlight, the trees, the carriage, this delightful life, so rich and gay—all this was for her!
Every day she might come here, recognized in her turn, saluted and envied; and perhaps the men, in pointing her out to one another, would say that she was beautiful. She noticed all those that appeared to her distinguished among the throng and inquired their names, without thinking of anything beyond the mere sound of the syllables, though sometimes they awoke in her an echo of respect and admiration, when she realized that she had seen them often in the newspapers or heard stories concerning them. She could not become accustomed to this long procession of celebrities; it seemed unreal to her, as if she were a part of some stage spectacle. The cabs filled her with disdain mingled with disgust; they annoyed and irritated her, and suddenly she said:
“I think they should not allow anything but private carriages to come here.”
“Indeed, Mademoiselle!” said Bertin; “and then what becomes of our equality, liberty and fraternity?”
Annette made a moue that signified “Don’t talk about that!” and continued:
“They should have a separate drive for cabs—that of Vincennes, for instance.”
“You are behind the times, little one, and evidently do not know that we are swimming in the full tide of democracy. But, if you wish to see this pla
ce free from any mingling of the middle class, come in the morning, and then you will find only the fine flower of society.”
He proceeded to describe graphically, as he knew well how to do, the Bois in the morning hours with its gay cavaliers and fair Amazons, that club where everyone knows everyone else by their Christian names, their pet names, their family connections, titles, qualities, and vices, as if they all lived in the same neighborhood or in the same small town.
“Do you come here often at that hour?” Annette inquired.
“Very often; there is no more charming place in Paris.”
“Do you come on horseback in the mornings?”
“Yes.”
“And in the afternoon you pay visits?”
“Yes.”
“Then, when do you work?”
“Oh, I work—sometimes; and besides, you see, I have chosen a special entertainment suited to my tastes. As I paint the portraits of beautiful women, it is necessary that I should see them and follow them everywhere.”
“On foot and on horseback!” murmured Annette, with a perfectly serious face.
He threw her a sidelong glance of appreciation, which seemed to say: “Ah! you are witty, even now! You will do very well.”
A breath of cold air from far away, from the country that was hardly awake as yet, swept over the park, and the whole Bois, coquettish, frivolous, and fashionable, shivered under its chill. For some seconds it caused the tender leaves to tremble on the trees, and garments on shoulders. All the women, with a movement almost simultaneous, drew up over their arms and chests their wraps lying behind them; and the horses began to trot, from one end of the avenue to the other, as if the keen wind had flicked them like a whip.
The Countess’s party returned quickly, to the silvery jingle of the harness, under the slanting red rays of the setting sun.
“Shall you go home?” inquired the Countess of Bertin, with whose habits she was familiar.
“No, I am going to the club.”
“Then, shall we set you down there in passing?”
“Thank you, that will be very convenient.”
“And when shall you invite us to breakfast with the Duchess?”
“Name your day.”
This painter in ordinary to the fair Parisians, whom his admirers christened “a Watteau realist” and his detractors a “photographer of gowns and mantles,” often received at breakfast or at dinner the beautiful persons whose feature he had reproduced, as well as the celebrated and the well known, who found very amusing these little entertainments in a bachelor’s establishment.
“The day after tomorrow, then. Will the day after tomorrow suit you, my dear Duchess?” asked Madame de Guilleroy.
“Yes, indeed; you are charming! Monsieur Bertin never thinks of me when he has his little parties. It is quite evident that I am no longer young.”
The Countess, accustomed to consider the artist’s home almost the same as her own, replied:
“Only we four, the four of the landau—the Duchess, Annette, you and I, eh, great artist?”
“Only ourselves,” said he, alighting from the carriage, “and I will have prepared for you some crabs a l’alsacienne.”
“Oh, you will awaken a desire for luxury in the little one!”
He bowed to them, standing beside the carriage door, then entered quickly the vestibule of the main entrance to the club, threw his topcoat and cane to a group of footmen, who had risen like soldiers at the passing of an officer; mounted the broad stairway, meeting another brigade of servants in knee-breeches, pushed open a door, feeling himself suddenly as alert as a young man, as he heard at the end of the corridor a continuous clash of foils, the sound of stamping feet, and loud exclamations: “Touche!” “A moi.” “Passe!” “J’en ai!” “Touche!” “A vous!”
In the fencing-hall the swordsmen, dressed in gray linen, with leather vests, their trousers tight around the ankles, a sort of apron falling over the front of the body, one arm in the air, with the hand thrown backward, and in the other hand, enormous in a large fencing-glove, the thin, flexible foil, extended and recovered with the agile swiftness of mechanical jumping-jacks.
Others rested and chatted, still out of breath, red and perspiring, with handkerchief in hand to wipe off faces and necks; others, seated on a square divan that ran along the four sides of the hall, watched the fencing—Liverdy against Landa, and the master of the club, Taillade, against the tall Rocdiane.
Bertin, smiling, quite at home, shook hands with several men.
“I choose you!” cried the Baron de Baverie.
“I am with you, my dear fellow,” said Bertin, passing into the dressing-room to prepare himself.
He had not felt so agile and vigorous for a long time, and, guessing that he should fence well that day, he hurried as impatiently as a schoolboy ready for play. As soon as he stood before his adversary he attacked him with great ardor, and in ten minutes he had touched him eleven times and had so fatigued him that the Baron cried for quarter. Then he fenced with Punisimont, and with his colleague, Amaury Maldant.
The cold douche that followed, freezing his palpitating flesh, reminded him of the baths of his twentieth year, when he used to plunge head first into the Seine from the bridges in the suburbs, in order to amaze the bourgeois passers-by.
“Shall you dine here?” inquired Maldant.
“Yes.”
“We have a table with Liverdy, Rocdiane, and Landa; make haste; it is a quarter past seven.”
The dining-room was full, and there was a continuous hum of men’s voices.
There were all the nocturnal vagabonds of Paris, idlers and workers, all those who from seven o’clock in the evening know not what to do and dine at the club, ready to catch at anything or anybody that chance may offer to amuse them.
When the five friends were seated the banker Liverdy, a vigorous and hearty man of forty, said to Bertin:
“You were in fine form this evening.”
“Yes, I could have done surprising things today,” Bertin replied.
The others smiled, and the landscape painter, Amaury Maldant, a thin little bald-headed man with a gray beard, said, with a sly expression:
“I, too, always feel the rising of the sap in April; it makes me bring forth a few leaves—half a dozen at most—then it runs into sentiment; there never is any fruit.”
The Marquis de Rocdiane and the Comte Landa sympathized with him. Both were older than he, though even a keen eye could not guess their age; clubmen, horsemen, swordsmen, whose incessant exercise had given them bodies of steel, they boasted of being younger in every way than the enervated good-for-nothings of the new generation.
Rocdiane, of good family, with the entree to all salons, though suspected of financial intrigues of many kinds (which, according to Bertin, was not surprising, since he had lived so much in the gaming-houses), married, but separated from his wife, who paid him an annuity, a director of Belgian and Portuguese banks, carried boldly upon his energetic, Don Quixote-like face the somewhat tarnished honor of a gentleman, which was occasionally brightened by the blood from a thrust in a duel.
The Comte de Landa, a good-natured colossus, proud of his figure and his shoulders, although married and the father of two children, found it difficult to dine at home three times a week; he remained at the club on the other days, with his friends, after the session in the fencing-hall.
“The club is a family,” he said, “the family of those who as yet have none, of those who never will have one, and of those who are bored by their own.”
The conversation branched off on the subject of women, glided from anecdotes to reminiscences, from reminiscences to boasts, and then to indiscreet confidences.
The Marquis de Rocdiane allowed the names of his inamoratas to be guessed by unmistakable hints—society women whose names he did not utter, so that their identity might be the better surmised. The banker Liverdy indicated his flames by their first names. He would say: “I was at that time th
e best of friends with the wife of a diplomat. Now, one evening when I was leaving her, I said to her, ‘My little Marguerite’”—then he checked himself, amid the smiles of his fellows, adding “Ha! I let something slip. One should form a habit of calling all women Sophie.”
Olivier Bertin, very reserved, was accustomed to declare, when questioned:
“For my part, I content myself with my models.”
They pretended to believe him, and Landa, who was frankly a libertine, grew quite excited at the idea of all the pretty creatures that walked the streets and all the young persons who posed undraped before the painter at ten francs an hour.
As the bottle became empty, all these gray-beards, as the younger members of the club called them, acquired red faces, and their kindling ardor awakened new desires.
Rocdiane, after the coffee, became still more indiscreet, and forgot the society women to celebrate the charms of simple cocottes.
“Paris!” said he, a glass of kummel in his hand, “The only city where a man never grows old, the only one where, at fifty, if he is sound and well preserved, he will always find a young girl, as pretty as an angel, to love him.”
Landa, finding again his Rocdiane after the liqueurs, applauded him enthusiastically, and mentioned the young girls who still adored him every day.
But Liverdy, more skeptical, and pretending to know exactly what women were worth, murmured: “Yes, they tell you that they adore you!”
“They prove it to me, my dear fellow,” exclaimed Landa.
“Such proofs don’t count.”
“They suffice me!”
“But, sacrebleu! they do mean it,” cried Rocdiane. “Do you believe that a pretty little creature of twenty, who has been going the rounds in Paris for five or six years already, where all our moustaches have taught her kisses and spoiled her taste for them, still knows how to distinguish a man of thirty from a man of sixty? Pshaw! what nonsense! She has seen and known too many of them. Now, I’ll wager that, down in the bottom of her heart, she actually prefers an old banker to a young stripling. Does she know or reflect upon that? Have men any age here? Oh, my dear fellow, we grow young as we grow gray, and the whiter our hair becomes the more they tell us they love us, the more they show it, and the more they believe it.”
The Guy De Maupassant Megapack: 144 Novels and Short Stories Page 200