They did not feel any more warmly towards Protestant society; it is frigid, stuck up, gives money only to its own poor, and is exclusively composed of pastors. Protestant churches look too much like their homes, and their homes are as gloomy as their churches. They always have a pastor round for lunch; the servants remonstrate with their masters by quoting chapter and verse from the Bible; they are too afraid of gaiety to have anything to hide, and when conversing with Catholics they keep alluding to their perpetual grudge over the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the Massacre of St Bartholomew.*
The world of the arts, while just as homogeneous, is quite different; every artist is a practical joker who has quarrelled with his family, never wears a top hat and speaks a special language. They spend their lives dodging the bailiffs who come to distrain their goods, and inventing grotesque disguises for masked balls. Nonetheless, they produce a constant stream of masterpieces, and for most of them the abuse of alcohol and women is the very condition of their inspiration, if not of their genius; they sleep during the day, go out for a walk at night, work Heaven knows when, with their heads thrown back, letting their loosely knotted cravats float in the wind while they perpetually roll cigarettes.
The world of the theatre is hardly distinguishable from the world of artists; family life is never paid its proper respect; theatre people are eccentric and inexhaustibly generous. Actors, despite being vain and jealous, always help out their comrades, applaud their successes, adopt the children of actresses suffering from tuberculosis or misfortune, and are inclined to be affected in society, even though, never having received any education, they are often devout and always superstitious. Those who work in the subsidized theatres are a case apart, entirely worthy of our admiration, and they would deserve to be seated at table before a general or a prince; their souls are filled with the sentiments expressed in the masterpieces they perform in our great playhouses. Their memories are prodigious and they are always immaculately turned out.
As for the Jews, Bouvard and Pécuchet, without entirely proscribing them (you have to be a liberal, after all), admitted that they hated finding themselves in their company; they had all sold pince-nez in Germany in their youth, and even in Paris they insisted on preserving – with a piety which, as impartial spectators, our heroes handsomely acknowledged – special practices, an unintelligible vocabulary and butchers from their own race. They all have hooked noses, an exceptional intelligence and base souls intent only on seeking their own advantage; their women, on the other hand, are beautiful, a little on the flabby side, but capable of the deepest feelings. How many Catholics ought to imitate them! But why are their fortunes always incalculable and hidden? In addition, they formed a sort of vast secret society, like the Jesuits and the Freemasons. They had inexhaustible treasures stowed away, nobody knew where, at the service of unspecified enemies, always available for some terrible and mysterious purpose.
2
Music
Already tired of cycling and painting, Bouvard and Pécuchet set out to make a serious study of music. But whereas Pécuchet, that eternal friend of tradition and order, allowed himself to be hailed as the last devotee of bawdy songs and the Domino noir,* Bouvard, a revolutionary if ever there was one, showed himself to be, we have to confess, “a staunch Wagnerian”. In point of fact, he did not know a single score by the “Berlin bawler” (as Pécuchet, always patriotic and ill-informed, cruelly nicknamed him),* since they could not be heard in France, where the Conservatory stagnates in its routine, between Colonne who stammers and Lamoureux* who stutters, nor in Munich, where the tradition has not been preserved, nor in Bayreuth, which has been overrun by snobs to an intolerable degree. It’s nonsensical to try and play them on the piano: the illusion of the stage is necessary, as is putting the orchestra in a buried pit and insisting on darkness in the auditorium. However, always on view to make visitors reel with surprise, the prelude to Parsifal* lay permanently open on the music stand of his piano, between the photographs of César Franck’s penholder and the Primavera of Botticelli.
From the score of The Valkyrie, the “spring scene” had been carefully ripped out. In the table of contents of Wagner’s operas, on the first page, an indignant stroke of red pencil had struck out Lohengrin and Tannhäuser. Rienzi alone of the first operas still survived. To deny its merits was commonplace, and the time had come – Bouvard sensed with his subtle flair – to start promoting the opposite view. Gounod made him laugh, and Verdi made him scream. He was less good, admittedly, than Erik Satie* – who could deny it? Beethoven, however, seemed to him as considerable a figure as some Messiah. Bouvard himself could, without undue false modesty, salute Bach as a precursor. Saint-Saëns has no content and Massenet* no form, he kept saying to Pécuchet, in whose eyes, on the contrary, Saint-Saëns was all content and Massenet all form.
“That’s the reason why the one educates us and the other delights us, but without elevating us,” insisted Pécuchet.
For Bouvard, both of them were equally contemptible. Massenet could come up with a few ideas, but they were vulgar ones – anyway, we’ve had quite enough of ideas. Saint-Saëns had some sense of shape, but it was old-fashioned. They did not know very much about Gaston Lemaire, but they enjoyed making comparisons from time to time, and so they eloquently contrasted Chausson with Chaminade.* Pécuchet, in any case, despite the reticence dictated by his aesthetic code, and even Bouvard himself (for every Frenchman is chivalrous and always puts women first) gallantly awarded to the latter the first place among the composers of the day.
In Bouvard, it was the democrat even more than the musician who condemned the music of Charles Levadé; lingering over the poetry of Mme de Girardin* in the century of steam, universal suffrage and the bicycle is surely tantamount to opposing progress? In any case, since he was a proponent of art for art’s sake, of playing without nuance and singing without inflexion, Bouvard declared that he could not bear to hear him sing. He found that he looked like a musketeer, with mockingly flamboyant manners and the facile elegance of a superannuated sentimentality.
But the subject of their liveliest debates was Reynaldo Hahn.* While his close friendship with Massenet, bringing the cruel and unremitting sarcasm of Bouvard down on his head, also marked him out as a prey to the passionate predilections of Pécuchet, he nonetheless contrived to exasperate the latter through his admiration for Verlaine, an admiration which Bouvard shared. “Set Jacques Normand to music, or Sully Prudhomme, or the Vicomte de Borelli!* Thank God, in the land of the troubadours, there is no lack of poets,” he would add patriotically. And, torn between the Teutonic sonorities of the name of Hahn and the southern ending of his first name Reynaldo, preferring to condemn him out of hatred for Wagner rather than to absolve him because of Verdi, he would conclude, with perfect logic, as he turned to Bouvard:
“Despite the effort of all your fine gentlemen, our lovely land of France is a land of clarity, and French music will be clear or will not be at all,” whereupon he emphasized his verdict by banging on the table to give extra force to his words.
“I pour scorn on your eccentricities from beyond the English Channel and your mists from beyond the Rhine – stop looking to the other side of the Vosges!” he added, gazing at Bouvard with a stern and fixed expression filled with unspoken implications – “Unless it is for the defence of our fatherland! That the Valkyrie can ever give pleasure even in Germany, I very much doubt… But for French ears, it will always be the most infernal torment – and the most cacophonous, not to say the most humiliating for our national pride! Anyway, doesn’t that opera combine the most revolting kind of incest with the most atrocious forms of dissonance? Your music, Monsieur, is full of monsters, and you never know what people will dream up next! Even in nature – even though she is the mother of simplicity – only what is horrible gives you any pleasure. Doesn’t Monsieur Delafosse* write songs about bats, in which the composer’s extravagance is bound to compromise the pianist’s l
ong-standing reputation? Why couldn’t he choose some nice little bird? Songs about sparrows would at least be perfectly Parisian; the swallow has lightness and grace, and the lark is so thoroughly French that Caesar, they say, had his soldiers roast them and stick them on their helmets. But bats!!! The French, always athirst for openness and clarity, will always detest that animal of darkness. In the poetry of Monsieur de Montesquiou, maybe… we can just about allow him that: it’s the whim of a rather blasé grand seigneur – but in music! It won’t be long before someone writes a Requiem for Kangaroos!…” This jest smoothed the wrinkles from Bouvard’s brow.
“Admit that I’ve made you laugh,” said Pécuchet (without any reprehensible fatuousness – we can allow men of wit a certain awareness of their own merits). “Let’s shake on it: you are quite disarmed!”
Mme de Breyves’s Melancholy Summer Vacation
Ariadne, my sister, pierced by what love
Did you die on the shores where you were abandoned?*
1
Françoise de Breyves hesitated for a long time, that evening, before deciding whether to go to the reception at the home of Princess Elisabeth of A***, to the opera or to the Livrays’ play.
At the friends’ house where she had just dined, everyone had left table over an hour ago. She had to make up her mind.
Her friend Geneviève, who was meant to be returning with her, was plumping for the reception at the home of Mme d’A***, whereas, without altogether knowing why, Mme de Breyves would have preferred one of the other two options, or even a third: going home to bed. Her carriage was announced. She still hadn’t reached a decision.
“Really,” said Geneviève, “it’s not very nice of you – I think Rezké is going to sing and I enjoy that. Anyone would think it would have serious consequences for you if you went to Elisabeth’s. For one thing, you know, you haven’t been to a single one of her big receptions this year, and since you’re so close to her, that’s not very nice of you.”
Ever since the death of her husband, which had left her – four years ago – a widow at the age of twenty, Françoise hardly ever did anything without Geneviève, and liked to please her. She put up no further resistance to her request and, after bidding farewell to her hosts and the other guests, who were all sorry to have had so little chance to enjoy the company of one of the most sought-after women in Paris, she said to the footman:
“Take me to the home of the Princess of A***.”
2
The evening at the Princess’s was extremely boring. At one moment Mme de Breyves asked Geneviève:
“So who’s that young man who took you over to the buffet?”
“That’s Monsieur de Laléande, whom I don’t know at all, actually. Do you want me to introduce him? He asked me to, but I didn’t give a definite reply, as he’s quite insignificant and boring – and since he thinks you’re very pretty, he’d never let go of you.”
“Oh, in that case, no!” said Françoise. “He’s rather plain, actually, and rather commonplace, though he does have quite nice eyes.”
“You’re right,” said Geneviève. “And anyway, you’ll be meeting him quite often, it might be awkward for you if you knew him.”
And she added, jokingly, “Though if you would like to get to know him on a more intimate footing, you’re wasting a very fine opportunity.”
“Yes, a very fine opportunity,” said Françoise – and her mind was already on something else.
“After all,” said Geneviève, no doubt overcome by remorse at having been such an unfaithful go-between, and having deprived that young man of a little pleasure for no reason at all, “this is one of the last receptions of the season, it wouldn’t be really serious and it might perhaps be nicer of you.”
“Oh all right then, if he comes back over this way.”
He did not come over. He was at the other end of the salon, opposite them.
“We have to go,” Geneviève said shortly.
“Just another few minutes,” said Françoise.
And on a whim, above all out of a certain desire to flirt with that young man, who must indeed find her very pretty, she started to fix a lingering gaze on him, then looked away, only to gaze at him again. As she stared at him, she did her best to adopt a caressing manner, she didn’t know why – for no particular reason, for the pleasure of it, the pleasure of charity, and to some extent the pleasure of pride, and the pleasure of doing something useless, the pleasure of those who write a name on a tree for some passer-by whom they will never see, or those who cast a bottle into the waves. Time was passing, it was already late; M. de Laléande headed towards the door, which remained open after he had gone out, and Mme de Breyves could see him at the far end of the entrance hall, handing his number to the cloakroom attendant.
“It’s time to go, you’re quite right,” she said to Geneviève.
They rose to their feet. But as chance would have it, a friend of Geneviève needed to have a word with her, leaving Françoise alone by the cloakroom. The only other person there just then was M. de Laléande, who couldn’t find his walking stick. Françoise allowed her gaze to linger on him one last time. He walked by her, lightly brushed Françoise’s elbow with his own, and, his eyes shining, said as he bumped into her, seemingly still looking for his stick, “Come to my place: 5, Rue Royale.”
This was so unexpected, and M. de Laléande was already so assiduously looking for his walking stick, that subsequently she was never entirely sure if it hadn’t been a hallucination. Above all, she felt very afraid, and as the Prince of A*** was passing by just then, she called him over, and said she wanted to make arrangements for an excursion with him the following day, speaking with great volubility. During this conversation, M. de Laléande had gone. After a while, Geneviève came up and the two women left. Mme de Breyves said nothing of what had happened and remained shocked and flattered, though at bottom quite indifferent. After two days, when by chance she thought back on the incident, she started to doubt the reality of M. de Laléande’s words. When she tried to recall them, she was unable to do so fully; she thought that she had heard them as if in a dream, and told herself that the movement he had made with his elbow had just been an accidental moment of clumsiness. Then she quite stopped thinking spontaneously of M. de Laléande, and when by chance she heard someone saying his name, she fleetingly remembered his face but had altogether forgotten the almost hallucinatory encounter by the cloakroom.
She saw him again at the last evening reception to be given that year (it was towards the end of June), though she did not dare ask for him to be introduced to her; and yet, despite finding him almost ugly, and aware of his lack of intelligence, she would really have liked to get to know him. She went up to Geneviève and said to her:
“You may as well introduce me to Monsieur de Laléande. I don’t like to be impolite. But don’t tell him it was I who asked. That would put the onus on me.”
“I’ll do it a bit later if we see him; he isn’t here just now.”
“Well, look for him.”
“He may have gone.”
“No,” said Françoise very quickly, “he can’t have gone, it’s too early. Oh, midnight already! Come on, Geneviève my dear, it’s not all that difficult, you know. The other evening it was you who wanted to. Please do it, I’m really keen.”
Geneviève looked at her in some astonishment and went looking for M. de Laléande; he had already left.
“You see, I was right,” said Geneviève, returning to Françoise.
“I’m dying of boredom here,” said Françoise. “I’ve got a headache; please, let’s leave right now.”
3
Françoise didn’t miss the opera once, and, filled with vague feelings of hope, accepted every invitation to dinner. A fortnight went by, she had not seen M. de Laléande again and often woke up in the middle of the night thinking by what means she might see him. Althoug
h she continued to tell herself repeatedly that he was boring and not handsome, she was more preoccupied by him than by all the wittiest and most charming men. Once the season had finished, there would be no further opportunity of seeing him again; she was resolved to create one and kept mulling over the possibilities.
One evening, she said to Geneviève:
“Didn’t you tell me that you knew a certain Monsieur de Laléande?”
“Jacques de Laléande? Yes and no – he’s been introduced to me, but he has never left his calling card, and I’m not at all well acquainted with him.”
“The fact is, I’ll tell you, well, I have some small or maybe even great interest in seeing him and getting to know him, for reasons that don’t personally concern me and that I can’t disclose to you for a month.” (Between now and then she would have agreed with him on some lie, so that she wouldn’t be caught out; and this thought of a secret known only to the two of them gave her a warm feeling inside.) “Please, try to find some way of doing this for me – the season is over and nothing will be happening, and I won’t be able to have him introduced to me.”
Pleasures and Days Page 9