Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  “But why should we wait?” she said, as they walked on; and she passed her arm through Lewis’s, drawing him closer to her with an involuntary movement of which she was barely conscious, for she was thinking, and intently, of the temptations that beset a young man in an art school, amid art students and models and young women from Kensington.

  She was glad that she was spending some months in Paris, for during those months she would be able to save Lewis from himself. “From himself,” she repeated to herself, for it was too much to suppose that a young man would live without a mistress. If he had lived all these months without one it was as much as might be expected. “He said it was memories of me that enabled him to do so.” The temptation whispered in her ear, and she wished Lewis would cease speaking of the studio; she already began to hate it, with its models and its young women. Again the temptation whispered that, if she did not give herself to Lewis, he would sooner or later go to live with one of the models; and worse still, perhaps, with one of the American girls, whom he would marry in the end, and once he was married he would be lost to her for ever. Even if he did not marry she would lose him, for the woman that gives herself to a man is always much more to him than any other woman can be. She could not think else. Unless she became his mistress, she would be, and very soon, no more to him than a sort of younger Mrs. Thorpe.

  And the thought of losing Lewis, and becoming no more to him than a mere acquaintance or a friend, was odious to her. She must have him all to herself, and her way became clearer as they passed through the Rond Point. The Rue Pierre Charron ascended a little, and they walked slowly, Lewis talking all the while of the studio. “If he goes on talking about that studio any more I shall bid him good-bye at the door,” she said to herself; and she was about to bid him farewell, when Lewis said:

  “May I not come upstairs?”

  At that moment a sudden weakness fell upon her, and she answered:

  “If you like; but it’s rather late.”

  “The concierge is in bed,” he answered; and all they could hear was the beating of their own hearts. Mrs. Bentham had a key, and as soon as they entered the drawing-room she said that she would feel more comfortable when she had got into a tea-gown.... She passed into her room, and had not left him more than a minute when it began to seem to Lewis that she was gone an hour. He was standing thinking of nothing in particular, when a thought came into his mind of Lily Saunders’s drawing. She admired his figure, and Lucy would admire it if she saw it. But she mustn’t come back and catch him in the middle of his undressing. It wouldn’t take long. He could undress more quickly than she could, who had stays to unclasp. He was standing in the pose of the dancing faun when the door of her bedroom swung over the carpet and she came into the room.

  “Lewis, Lewis! What have you done?” And then she began to laugh. “Is that the pose you chose for the class?”

  “No,” he answered; “it would be impossible to keep this pose for long. The pose I took for the class is a simpler one”; and he threw himself into the pose. “Which do you like better?”

  “I don’t know that I care for naked men.”

  “We are so used to seeing people clothed,” he answered, “that nakedness seems comical to us; isn’t that so? I will show you another pose”; and when he had taken it, he told her the lines in his figure the class had appreciated. “So, Lucy, a naked man isn’t beautiful in your eyes?”

  “I don’t know that he is,” she answered. “But I dare say that Lily Saunders has a different opinion.”

  “But you don’t think that I ever give a thought to Lily. If you saw her you wouldn’t think so.”

  “She’s very clever, you say.”

  “She sometimes does a good drawing. I think she’d sell the drawing she did from me. I’d buy it for you, for though you don’t like a naked man in the flesh, you might like him in charcoal.”

  CHAP. XVIII.

  “SO YOU’VE BEEN all this time in Paris without going anywhere except at the Louvre; not even to Notre Dame?” Lucy said.

  And he answered that he remained outside out of deference to his feeling, the inside of a church bringing to his mind too vividly the ideas out of which a church rises and the uses to which it is put.

  “So you’ve been nowhere except to cafés and brasseries and theatres?”

  “I’ve been to the Luxembourg Museum, and know the gardens very well.”

  “You’ve been to Versailles?” He had heard of Versailles, but never of Trianon nor of Le Petit Trianon.

  “History doesn’t interest you?”

  “I don’t know that it does. One can’t know everything, and a choice is incumbent.”

  “You don’t know who built Versailles?”

  “I don’t know that I do.”

  “Louis XIV. You’ve heard of him?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of him; but you see, Lucy, I’ve to get my living. I didn’t come to Paris for sight-seeing, but for education.”

  “My darling, I’m not reproaching you. One man knows one thing — another, another. We all live in different worlds, and perhaps that is the reason why we attract one another. If you were a lord and owned many thousands of acres, it is quite possible that you might never have looked my way.” He refused to admit that this was so. “Would you,” he asked, “ not have looked my way if I were a rich man?” and she conceded this much — that if he were a rich man he might not have captured her imagination.

  “And if you were an art student I mightn’t have loved you.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she answered; and it seeming to him that his confession had failed to please, he took her in his arms:

  “As you are I love you; what you would be if you were an art student I don’t know; nor do you know if you would have loved me if I were a lord whose only interests were hunting and shooting.”

  “When you kiss me like that you can do with me as you like,” she answered; and she fell to kissing him: “Wait; lie still and let me look at you”; and, raising herself on her elbow, she toyed with his curls, and bending over, kissed him on the eyes and mouth. “The time will come, darling, when you will care for me no longer.”

  “But why look forward to that time?”

  “You should have answered me that that time will never come; and you’d have answered so if you loved me truly. True love doesn’t look ahead. And if—”

  She checked the words that had risen up in her mind, deeming that it were wiser not to speak them. He did not press her to speak them, for he guessed that the unspoken words were, “If I were younger you would love me better”; and after looking into her eyes, and examining her ears, her teeth, her hands, and declaring himself enraptured with her loveliness, he said to himself she must be about thirty-five — ten years older than I.

  “Of what are you thinking, Lewis?”

  “About Versailles,” he said. “Do go on talking. Tell who built Versailles.”

  “My darling, you’re not interested in the history of France.”

  He pleaded, and she began: “Versailles was built by Louis XIV., a great King, who had many mistresses, like Solomon, and the most romantic of all his mistresses was Mademoiselle de la Vallière; and the story runs that the King, while hunting in the forests, heard her say to her companions, who were pressing her to tell whom she would like to marry if she might choose from all the men in France, that the King had always been her hero and her lover, and that if her dream didn’t come true — and she knew well enough that it couldn’t — she would never marry. This romantic avowal, overheard romantically, so flattered Louis that he ordered her to his Court, and loved her till he met Madame de Montespan, one of Mademoiselle de la Vallière’s school-fellows. To be cut out by one of her school-fellows was Louise’s fate. One is always robbed by one’s best friend; and finding that the King was for ever wearied of her, and would never pick up her thread again, Louise retired to a convent. Madame de Montespan was superseded by Madame de Maintenon. But, Lewis, I cannot relate two centuries
of French history in a single night.”

  “Not in detail, but tell me who succeeded Louis XIV.?”

  “Louis XV.”

  “Was he given to mistresses?” he asked.

  She answered: “More than any other man”; and he begged her to relate the rise and fall of the great Madame de Pompadour, her name having captured his imagination.

  “How we have declined,” he said at the end of the long narrative. “Once I thought Julia Baron, Blanche d’Antigny, Marie Pellegrin and Léonie Leblanc wonderful. They are but cocottes, whereas Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry were courtesans in the finest sense of the word. But how is it that you know French history so well?” And Lucy answered that English history had no interest for her whatever, but French history was her favourite study, and of all periods the Napoleonic was her specialty. She had been collecting Napoleonic relics for years past. He asked if Napoleon was before or after the Reign of Terror. She answered “After,” and he wanted to know how long it lasted.

  “About eighteen months. But to understand the French Revolution you must know something of the preceding reigns. Louis XIV. was succeeded by his great grandson, and, strange to say, Louis XV. was succeeded by his grandson, the Dauphins having died. It doesn’t surprise me that you were not tempted to visit Versailles, for without some knowledge of French history Versailles is merely a great formal palace overlooking formal gardens. But I cannot go on talking. Lewis, your arm is beautiful. Hold it so that I can see it. I like to follow the lines. If I were an artist I’d like to draw your arm. Did anybody in the studio draw your arm, Lewis, beautifully?”

  “Lily Saunders did a very pretty drawing. She got the movement of the arm very well. I think she’d give me the drawing if I were to ask for it. She’d sell it certainly. Would you care to have the drawing?”

  “No, I don’t think I would,” Lucy answered pettishly. “I don’t like to think of those American girls sitting around, their eyes fixed upon you. I don’t like to think of any woman seeing you.”

  “But I am to Lily Saunders no more than a statue —

  Antinous, the dancing faun, or Hermaphroditus—”

  “I wouldn’t have you speak of yourself in connection with a statue of the decadence,” Lucy interjected; and looking over himself, Lewis said:

  “Well, there are traces of the woman in me. But why should you be jealous of Lily?”

  “I’m jealous because I know she’d like to get you away from me, and, if they knew, how furious they would all be! Who was the other, Rose Post?”

  CHAP. XIX.

  “SO LOUIS WOULD not impose any new taxes?” Lewis asked, and Lucy began to tell that when Louis XVI. came to the throne the treasury was empty, and that no new taxes could be imposed on the people, so heavily were they taxed already. It was the peasants and the middle classes that paid taxes before the Revolution; the nobles were exempt from taxation. The wars of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. were paid for by the people, and likewise the palaces of the Kings. Of all, King Louis XV. was the most extravagant; the presents he made to his innumerable mistresses were paid for by the people and the middle classes, and the expenses of the Court of Louis XVI. were very heavy, and there was no money to meet them, no money to pay for the endless sinecures. Everything was dragged out of the people; the people paid for everything. A reform was imminent, and the beginning of the reformation was Louis XVI.’s refusal to impose any further taxes, for he, being a good man, said that if any further taxes were imposed they must be imposed by the nation itself, and the nation was represented by a great council known as Les États Généraux, which consisted of delegates from the people, the clergy, and the aristocracy. It had not been summoned for nearly two hundred years. Louis XVI. summoned it as the only way out of the difficulty — a very great one, because the aristocracy was averse from every project of reformation; reformation meant curtailment of their privileges and taxation. But Lucy could not tell him much about the session of Les États Généraux; she only remembered that Count Mirabeau came in as a representative of Le Tiers États, that is, the people, and through his eloquence it was agreed that the clergy, the nobles, and the representatives of the people should all sit together, “and so Les États Généraux became more and more democratic, and things, darling, began to go from bad to worse, till at length the people, enraged at the troops that were as usual drawn about Paris, during the second session of Les États Généraux — Of course you will understand, darling, that I’m speaking from memory. This is merely the roughest sketch. What was I saying?... till the people, enraged at the sight of the military, ran off to the Invalides and seized all the weapons stored there, and with these overcame the guards at the Bastille and liberated the prisoners.”

  “What happened then?”

  “As well as I remember, the law-abiding citizens formed into a militia guard with a view to the maintenance of law and order; but the people were now thoroughly roused, and a great mob went away to Versailles and invaded the palace. Marie Antoinette, after hastily putting on her stockings and throwing a shawl over her shoulders, escaped to Paris, and the Royal household remained there for some months — I cannot remember how long — till at length it became apparent that their lives were not safe in Paris. Then the Queen’s lover, Comte Fersen, arranged that the King and Queen should escape across the frontier, which they might easily have done if they had been more careful to keep their identities hidden at the various stopping-places. As well as I remember, Louis might have got away if he hadn’t waited while a chicken was cooked. At Varens he was overtaken and escorted back to Paris, he and Marie Antoinette.”

  “Was Comte Fersen her lover?”

  “Not in the sense that we are lovers, she had no lovers, then, in the sense that we are lovers”; and Lucy told all that was known in favour of the theory that Marie Antoinette’s Swedish lover was but a friend.

  “Can a passion ever be platonic?” Lewis asked; and the question was discussed for a long while.

  “They rarely saw each other; only at long intervals. One interval was ten years, I believe,” she said. “The nobles,” she continued, “were, so far as I can see, the undoing of the King and Queen, for they would not permit any reformation. Marie Antoinette would have liked some reform of the very expensive Court, the strictness of whose etiquette was almost unbearable to her. Versailles must have been one of the coldest palaces in the world. Hot air was unknown in those days, and the etiquette was that the maids of honour should assist at the Queen’s dressing. They were supposed to come in as soon as she came from her bathroom.”

  “Did they take baths in those days?” Lewis asked.

  “Well, that is a question,” Lucy answered, “but it is on record that the Queen’s chemise had to be passed through the hands of several ladies, the highest in rank handing her the chemise, and if a lady of the Court scratched at the door (the custom then was not to knock, but to scratch), the door was opened to her, and the Queen was kept waiting for her chemise, and sometimes these interruptions happened five or six times. One day it happened seven, and then the Queen said: ‘This is unbearable, and must cease. I cannot stand so long waiting for my chemise.’”

  “But was the Queen naked all the while?”

  Lucy did not think that she sat naked among her maids of honour, and she replied to Lewis that she supposed that the Queen waited in her dressing-gown.

  “But if there were no baths at that time?” Lewis interjected, for he liked the idea of the Queen standing naked while the maids of honour went again and again to the door to admit a late-corner.

  “It was the tedium of the etiquette of the Court of Versailles that forced Marie Antoinette to take refuge in the Petit Trianon, a present from her husband, and there all the Court used to go and pretend to be milkmaids. In hoops they milked the cows and churned the milk, in hoops and silk stockings. We must go to the Petit Trianon. You won’t care about Versailles, but the trees all around the Petit Trianon are most beautiful. Its rural aspects have been preserved
in memory of the Queen”; and Lucy began to speak of Louis XV., who was a great botanist, and used the Petit Trianon for the cultivation of rare trees and shrubs. “He used to spend hours with his gardener considering,” she said, “the acclimatisation of the many strange species that were brought to him from abroad.”

  “Flowers and women seem to have filled his life, and from end to end,” Lewis said, and he thought, as he lay amid the pillows, he envied Louis XV. his mistresses, for however successful he might be, there was no prospect of outdoing the King. “He should have died,” he said, turning to his mistress and kissing her, “surrounded by all the beautiful women, and been carried to the grave by them. How did he die?”

  “In no wise as you would have had him die,” Lucy answered. “He died of virulent smallpox, so that when his grave at St. Denis was opened by the Revolutionists, the body had disappeared into a black liquid, whereas some of the Kings that had died hundreds of years before presented as fair an appearance as if they had died yesterday.”

  “A gruesome story,” was Lewis’s comment. “It is as if Nature wished to avenge herself for excess.” And they were glad to get back to the gardens and woodlands about the Petit Trianon. “So Marie Antoinette and her maids of honour used to milk the cows and all those beautiful neat-herds in hoops and patches, and all the courtiers in their silken breeches, sword on thigh, have passed away; and the world is the same as if they had never been?”

  “Not the same,” Lucy answered, “for we are thinking of them.”

  “But our thoughts cannot bring them back, even if we were to think intensely.”

  “They might if we were to think very intensely,” she said; “but thoughts are always wandering, and by the will of Providence that guides the world, so that the past may really be the past.”

  Lewis did not understand, and begged of her to explain, and she said: