Leon, now, was drinking milk. By skillfully making this positive young person prattle, one would have all the information one wanted, and one could sort it all out.
"Monsieur Henri Donalger was endowed with a repulsive physiognomy?" he asked.
"Him? His nose was a touch deformed, a small wound of no significance, for which he received a large sum, dear sir. A trifle! It is claimed, on the contrary, that he was very seductive, a talker, a dancer . . . like all naval officers, and he showered her with jewels and extravagant dresses."
"You would willingly marry such a man yourself?"
"Me . . . well, I'll marry anyone to get out of here, where I'm not at home."
Leon, biting his lips, poured her some champagne carefully.
"What if Madame Donalger heard us, she who gives balls in your honor?"
"She would do better to grant me a dowry with her lawyer!"
"Calm down, my dear child. Don't shout such a thing, good Lord!"
"Oh! I know perfectly well that you won't go repeating to her . . . you're starting to do like the other one, who left, one day, in the middle of a reception, slamming the doors! He wanted to marry me. He thought I was the one with the fortune, and, naturally, he preferred me to Eliante; but, when he discovered the truth, he fled. A gentleman of thirty-six, besides much too old for me. And that madwoman Eliante had the nerve to say to me that I had shown myself to be too . . . schoolmarmish for him. You can imagine how we laughed, my uncle and I!"
"I can quite believe it, it's hilarious!"
"He jilted her . . . old friend!"
"Sorry," said Leon suffocating, noting that, decidedly, modern women did not know how to drink, "it's not her he jilted ... it seems."
"Oh! she sent him packing ... in a word, we didn't see him again. A charming fellow, only stuck up ...
"But not stood up?" ventured Leon, who was ending up imagining that he was chatting at home with a friend from the clinic.
"Ah! how funny you are . . . yes, that's it, old friend, he didn't get stood up. . . . No! Thank you, I have had enough champagne. Things are starting to turn a little, you know! . . . Will you look at young Juliette Noret over there, she's drunk. . . . Well, if her mother saw her in that state . . . and that ape Edouard who has put bits of paper down her back! No . . . what a good time we're having today."
"A feast, Mademoiselle Marie! We couldn't have a better time if it was your wedding . . . let's hope you'll get married this winter."
"It's quite possible . . . but I'm not a coquette, you know ... I don't understand what you mean to insinuate?"
"Coquette? No. It's madame your aunt who is that, alas!"
Missie examined him; her watery eye, all drowned in champagne, took on a ferocious expression.
"You think it isn't clear, her existence, eh?"
"I'd never dare affirm anything, mademoiselle, about Madame Donalger, I'm quite certain she is a decent woman . . . of a new kind."
"One is only a decent woman," said Missie in a hard voice, "when one prevents others from suffering."
Leon contemplated her, sighing:
"In vino veritasl"
But he kept himself from helping her out with the Latin, for she probably knew how to speak ill in that language, modern and ancient women having the sad habit of using all the means at their disposal to satisfy their bad passions.
"So, you'll come to my wedding?" asked Missie Cham-erot, softening once again. "That's kind . . . that's very kind . . .I'll giwe you my bouquet . . . unless you marry my aunt . . . then . . . well, you'd be my uncle ..."
"That would seem in order . . . only I don't want to marry anyone, mademoiselle, I'm poor and I don't even have a guaranteed position."
"Bah! a fine boy like you! You can console yourself for anything."
"Too kind, mademoiselle . . . I'm already quite consoled, if it please you."
He threw out this banal phrase, heedlessly, flattered in his young male's vanity, but not at all distracted from his passion for the other, the mysterious one. This one, now, he knew her by heart. The other ... he would think. There remained
the famous spring of jealousy! A woman like her could scorn the neighborhood girls. She would perhaps be afraid of her niece.
Then, they got up from the table, Missie leaning on the young man's arm and laughing nervously. He, trying to be nice.
They formed, the two of them, the conventional handsome couple in the sense that they were as tall as each other, as childlike, with thin shoulders, long arms, the same warmth of complexion, a little sunburnt with a few freckles, but, in their eyes the difference burst out and in their movements the hostility of the races showed through. One, coming from an ancient provincial bourgeois mother, austere, both modest and passionate at the same time, selfishly hiding her heart, miserly in its best sentiments, and laughing at herself to hide a painful pride. The other, born of a suburban bourgeoise, a little coarse, quarrelsome, drunk on her recent freedom, new at everything, working at random, and piling up popularizers in the bottom of her memory to vulgarize more without much gain, so athirst for pleasure, for comfort and to make a splash that she always forgets to wash her hands to reach out for it, and, in summary, declaring herself content with the little which would have made the fortunes of all our grandmothers.
Leon walked with his feet close together, in a slide both smooth and troubled at the same time. Pleasure led him on, and upbringing held him back.
Missie waddled, strutted like a duck.
She was free.
When one is badly brought up from mother to daughter, one generally has that air . . . and it's freedom which is least lacking.
They passed, very united in appearance, in front of Eliante.
"You should dance the last waltz, my children," said Ma-
dame Donalger, who was fanning herself while watching the rapid removal of the small tables.
The harp sighed dying chords. A few couples were turning despite numerous departures.
Leon stiffened:
"Sorry!" he replied brusquely, "I injured myself, a clumsy thing, with a knife, just now—I really couldn't support even the lightest partner."
He braved her with a handsome, proud look.
But Missie intervened, annoyingly eager:
"You don't know how, anyway! It's stupid to not know how at your age! My aunt will show you. It's she who taught me."
"Personally, mademoiselle, I don't want anyone to show me."
"What stubbornness! Eh, my aunt? Invite him!"
He bowed, thanked them and reached the exit, fearing Eliante's mysterious smile. She had added nothing. Besides, everyone was bowing, thanking, taking their leave. The hallway was full of young people, who exchanged joyful remarks along with their overcoats.
Leon made a mistake, put on a garment much too short.
He grumbled:
"Not only mistaking my person, but in addition they lose my overcoat! What a strange house! I've had enough!"
J
M
Y friend, my beloved, my dear little lover, Mr. Fiance, soon to be the husband of my niece, consequently, my nephew
"I am writing you my first and last love letter: "I love you. I love you." '
Eliante Donalger.
"P.S ?"
E.D.
"My dear Eliante,
"I am answering you, for my part, with my first and last insult letter:
"You bore me ..."
Leon Ret lie.
"P.S. ... to tears!"
L.R.
"My darling,
"Since you are crying, there is hope, and I only regret not
seeing it, because that would make me very happy! I am telling you things without embellishing them with phrases, and I do not really know how to go about consoling you, but I know all the same that I shall console you ... for Love consoles for no longer loving.
"I think you no longer love me. All it took was for a girl, in a bit too much of a hurry, to court you for what one calls th
e right reason and to talk to you about me in modern terms . . . you immediately realized that I bored you! So, I bore you, me, the beautiful juggler, the false woman, the actress And it is my great regret ... I would like to amuse you, on the contrary, to surround you with pretty flowers, with real women, with wholesome smiles . . . also with my arms, for, if they are very white, it is to serve you, darling!
"I had foreseen this eclipse of our star, 1 am not surprised by it. What I would really like to know is in what terms the child talked to you about me? I would be hurt to be hated by her. I think she loves me or that she will love me one day, sincerely. But, both of you, you are ignorant of the art of loving . . . which is to wait for the right moment. She, chastely—I maintain she is very innocent—you, brutally, you both want to subdue me, to make of me a very docile horse that will carry you at your pleasure, overcome obstacles under lashes of the whip and that you will abandon in the middle of empty fields, toward evening, when you return to your houses with happiness.
"I have never had a house, and I have never entered, with happiness, under a really hospitable roof.
"I am the opportunist who passes, dances and picks up sequins with which to decorate her dress.
"I asked you for nothing . . . except to let me dance.
"So you do not want to? You will both be cruelly punished for it. I shall force you to be happy together . . . and when
you enter your house . . . you will find the sequins there, but the dancer will have left.
"She was, you will say to one another, a somewhat disconcerting madwoman!"
"The madwoman in the attic, my children . . . and you will see, despite the beauty of the duty to be united, that one cannot live, young or old, chaste or sensuous, without this madwoman. I think you will both be mistaken.
"As for me, you will not betray me. I am too much in love to let myself be betrayed. You will love me, in spite of yourselves, always!
When my husband died, five years ago, I took in, without being obligated by any law, a poor fellow who was dying of hunger because he had been too greedy, 2 and I said to him: 'eat, drink, stay warm, you bear the name of the one who gave me everything, I owe you everything!' I sent for, on his directions, a girl of fifteen, the child of his sister, Madame Cham-erot, who had been placed as an apprentice to a milliner, and I said to this poorly brought-up young girl, an errand-girl 1 * at heart: 'Instead of making hats, you will buy them to put on your head and you will try to forget your former wretchedness, with your workshop words by becoming educated.' These people owe me nothing . . . if they are happy (and I believe my brother-in-law, so long as there is champagne from the Indies will be very happy), but I still owe them everything, a second time, if they suffer on my account.
"You understand, my darling, I am a gentle being . . . very conscious of my actions. No torture of the soul, no joy of the body is unknown to me, and it is quite the least that having silently touched, in the mystery of my divinity, the depths of pain and the depths of pleasure, that I should be able to preserve my friends, my children, from the worst disappointment which would be to realize finally . . . that they will
never be gods! If you possessed me, some of you, you would be too jealous of me . . . you would be like my husband, the poor dear man, who used to say: 'She will be happy only by my will . . . or I shall kill her!'
"He died of it!
"I am neither cruel, nor mean, nor just proud in the modern manner. I humble myself as people wish and when they wish. At a sign from children who approach me (and all the men who approach me, out of curiosity or as despots, they are just my children), I juggle to amuse them, and, if they cry, I cradle them . . . while telling them beautiful stories. I must be pardoned for being . . . happy. But no one will ever know that I carry within myself the great torch of light, the fire which made the saints, the martyrs and the great courtesans, not those who were paid, those who paid for their right to respect by inspiring love! I want, yes darling, to be happy all alone, my arms tightly folded across my breast, my thighs hermetically joined, with the smile of communing virgins. 4
"What better could you wish to teach me, o my dear little children, who jerk around without dignity like puppets hanging on the same string?
"And yet, because I am without doubt mortal, I have the troubling desire to do good, to please, to communicate my warmth, to still be very beautiful sometimes to inspire a taste for beauty. I know that these times are not fertile in grace . . . I am afraid that tomorrow the grace of woman . . . may be recognized as a public utility and be socialized to the point of becoming a banal article, a bazaar object like in '93 5 and that one will find types of tender or amusing women with millions of copies like the creations of the big . . . fashion stores where it is always the same thing. I want to affirm the superiority of the god over that of the organizer of concerts for the poor.
"Beautiful music is not made for the poor. It exasperates
them, and that which would charm a snake generally makes a minor office clerk sneeze during grand recitals. One can be within the grasp of all when one resigns oneself to lower oneself. Why should I lower myself? . . . if I do not need you. It is you who must raise yourself up to me if you desire me. I thought for a moment that / would raise a man in the appreciation of my kind of beauty, that a child would come to me truly born of my love and resembling me. That I would be able to perpetuate the madness of pleasure ... to the point of turning it into some happiness allowed by the crowds. So much for that! The gods are alone, and when they stroll, by chance, on earth, they are pathological cases or buffoons, histrions . . . who are despised!
"They laugh about it ... in the silence of their regained divinity, all doors closed.
"My dear little friend, my child, you whom I recognized at once as a seeker of the god, must you be afraid of me?
"Must you listen to the women of today, my worst enemies?
"They are born tired, today, the granddaughters of reason, and they reason . . . too much.
"... Just as the grandsons of my love stray, the men who are reduced to sharing their flesh among these women. For some, pleasure without conscience, for others friendship without passion.
"Goodnight, my little children, amuse yourselves without me!
"For me, I keep everything, I carry everything away . . . I am your dream . . .
"Divine love in an era where there is no more god.
"Love which burns in an era where the world is cooling down.
"... Listen, little Leon, I did not want to tell you these
things, but I sense that / will not last and I must use my time well, I am grieved that, from the first shock of life against me, the jolt of a quite banal reality against a sweet illusion, you revolt and you look at me as one would look at a stranger.
"Ah! that gaze, at the end of that white ball? I am as simple in spirit as I am complicated in body . . . perhaps I am even simple in both aspects. I did not have any jealousy seeing you talk in Missies ear, I thought: 'He is wrong to give hope ... for it is a crime to have the appearance of promising a love one will not give.' Take good note, I pray you, that I showed myself, from the beginning, with respect to you as I was. You pleased me, I wanted to love you, I chose you as you seemed to choose me, and I told you: 'If I become your mistress, it will mean that I shall love you less.' I cannot yet resign myself to loving you less! There is my only crime.
"And already you try to prove to me that you are well received elsewhere if I do not receive you.
"And already . . . you do worse, you rouse my born enemy, the vulgar woman . . . the decent woman, she who will produce your own unhappiness and your children. Take care, Leon . . . when all is said and done, I can depart into dreams of faraway islands without you. ... I wanted to carry you off. . . with my secret.
"You have not understood?
"You are in such a hurry.
"I am then so old?
"So, let us have this courage to separate immediately . . . or to each of us espouse our ideal.<
br />
"You, a girl who loves you. (She will love you, I am sure of it.)
"Me . . . the land where one is warm . . .
"You see, darling, help me to free myself from my last social links. I have the care of a virgin soul. Take it, it will be what you make it. And the envelope of that soul will become
according to your taste ... if you can love it ... in memory of me.
"Your Eliante . . . who waits."
E.D.
"P.S.—Do not play the proper gentleman, will you?
"Dear madam,
"It is obvious you certainly know the art of love letters just as you know the art of juggling with chinoiseries or with knives.
"I am really touched by the trouble you seem to take on the subject of my future, but I prefer to take care of it later, on my own. The girl of whom we are speaking is charming (so well brought up!), unfortunately, I am not looking for a woman ... to marry."
Your devoted servant Leon Reille
"P.S.—Now, you can continue juggling from afar. It amuses me very much. If you really thought half of what you say, it would be you I would marry. But how many letters have you written in this . . . lofty style and to how many men at the same time? You are Madam Furnace, and I have absolutely no confidence in your . . . burning virtue. There are too many nights on your dress. Perhaps you never take it off, that black dress, only, if you sleep in it, it is the better to show up the whiteness of your skin, and that's hardly clean, my darling."
L.R.
"Poor dear little beloved,
"No, you are not the only one who dares to say: the decent woman is the one who gives in. You have all invented that from your cradle for the greater convenience of your future bed-
rooms, and you have repeated it so often that the most silly women believe it, today, having finally got rid of some divine prejudices. They are born believing it too, and one hears even charming girls declare, their fists in the air, that they will concede, given the chance, in order to assure themselves eternally of rights which are acquired only with a diabolical experience. I know men much better than women, but I never dare undertake anything against the liberty of a man, carnally speaking. That seems to me a crime, and I do not want to be happy at the cost of a crime.
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