A COUPLE OF SINGERS.

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At the same moment a stout woman wrapped up in a hooded cape and a red tartan shawl linked her arm in that of our friend, in a manner so brutal and despotic that his countenance and attitude became at once embarrassed.

"My wife," he said, then turning towards her with a hesitating smile:

"Suppose we take them home and show them how you make anestoufato?"

Flattered in the conceit of her culinary accomplishments, the Italian graciously consented to receive us, and five or six of us started off for the heights of Montmartre where they dwelt, to share their stewed beef.

I confess I took a certain interest in the artist's home life. Since his marriage our friend had led a very secluded existence, almost always in the country; but what I knew of his life whetted my curiosity. Fifteen years before, when in all the freshness of a romantic imagination, he had met in the suburbs of Rome a magnificent creature with whom he immediately fell desperately in love. Maria Assunta, her father, and a brood of brothers and sisters inhabited one of those little houses of the Transtevera with walls uprising from the waters of the Tiber, and an old fishing boat rocking level with the door. One day he caught sight of the handsome Italian girl, with bare feet in the sand, red skirt tightly pleated around her, and unbleached linen sleeves tucked up to the shoulders, catching eels out of a large gleaming wet net. The silvery scales glistening through the meshes full of water, the golden river and scarlet petticoat, the beautiful black eyes deep and pensive, which seemed darkened in their musing by the surrounding sunlight struck the artist, perhaps even rather trivially, like some coloured print on the titlepage of a song in a music-seller's window.

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It so chanced that the girl was heart-whole, having till now bestowed her affections on a big tom-cat, yellow and sly, also a great fisher of eels, who bristled up all over when anyone approached his mistress.

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Beasts and men, our lover managed to tame all these folk, was married at Santa-Maria of the Transtevera and brought back to France the beautiful Assunta and hercato.

Ah! poor fellow, he ought also to have brought away at the same time some of the sunlight of that country, a scrap of the blue sky, the eccentric costume and the bulrushes of the Tiber, and the large swing nets of thePonte Rotto; in fact the frame with the picture. Then he would have been spared the cruel disenchantment he experienced when, having settled in a modest flat on the fourth storey, on the heights of Montmartre, he saw his handsome Transteverina decked out in a crinoline, a flounced dress, and a Parisian bonnet, which, constantly out of balance on the top of her heavy braids, assumed the most independent attitudes. Under the clear cold light of Parisian skies, the unfortunate man soon perceived that his wife was a fool, an irretrievable fool. Not a single idea even lurked in the velvety depths of those beautiful black eyes, lost in infinite contemplation. They glittered like an animal's in the calm of digestion, or in a chance gleam of light, nothing more. Withal the lady was common, vulgar, accustomed to govern by a slap all the little world of her native hut, and the least opposition threw her into uncontrollable rages.

Who would have guessed that the fine mouth, straitened by silence into the purest shape of an antique face, would suddenly open to let flow torrents of vulgar abuse? Without respect for herself or for him, out loud, in the street, at the theatre, she would pick a quarrel with him, and indulge in scenes of fearful jealousy. To crown all, devoid of any artistic feeling, she was completely ignorant of her husband's profession and language, of manners, in fact of everything. The little French she could be taught, only made her forget Italian, and the result was that she composed a kind of half and half jargon which had the most comical effect. In short this love story, begun like one of Lamartine's poems, was ending like a novel of Champfleury's. After having for a long time struggled to civilise this wild woman, the poet saw he must abandon the task. Too honourable to leave her, probably still too much in love, he made up his mind to shut himself up, see no one, and work hard. The few intimate friends he admitted to his house, saw that they embarrassed him and ceased to come.

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Hence it was that for the last fifteen years he had been living boxed up in his household like in a leper's cell.

As I pondered over this wretched existence, I watched the strange couple walking before me. He, slender, tall and round-shouldered.

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She, squarely built, heavy, shaking her shawl by an impatient shrug of her shoulders, with a free gait like a man's. She was tolerably cheerful, her speech was loud, and from time to time she turned round to see if we followed, familiarly shouting and calling by name those of us she happened to know, accentuating her words by much gesticulation as she would have hailed a fishing boat on the Tiber. When we reached their house, theconcierge, furious at seeing so noisy a crew at such an unearthly hour, tried to prevent our entry. The Italian and he had a fearful row on the staircase. We were all dotted about on the winding stairs dimly lighted by the dying gas, ill at ease, uncomfortable, hardly knowing if we ought not to come down again.

"Come, quick, let us go up," said the poet in a low tone, and we followed him silently, while, leaning over the banisters that shook under her weight and anger, the Italian let fly a volley of abuse in which Roman imprecations alternated with the vocabulary of the back slums. What a return home for the poet who had just roused the admiration of artistic Paris, and still retained in his fevered eyes the dazzling intoxication of his first performance! What a humiliating recall to every-day life!

It was only by the fireside in his little sitting room that the icy chill caused by this silly adventure was dispelled, and we should soon have completely forgotten it, had it not been for the piercing voice and bursts of laughter of the signora whom we heard in the kitchen telling her maid how soundly she had rated thatchoulato!When the table was laid and supper ready, she came and seated herself amongst us, having taken off her shawl, bonnet and veil, and I was able to examine her at my leisure. She was no longer handsome. The square face, the broad heavy jaw, the coarse hair turning grey, and above all the vulgar expression of the mouth, contrasted singularly with the eternal and meaningless reverie of the dreamy gaze. Resting her elbows on the table, familiar and shapeless, she joined in the conversation without for an instant losing sight of her plate. Just over her head, proud amid all the melancholy rubbish of the drawing-room, a large portrait signed by an illustrious name, stood out of the surrounding shade,—it was Maria Assunta at twenty. The purple costume, the milky white of the pleated wimple, the bright gold of the over-abundant imitation jewelry, set off magnificently the brilliancy of a sunny complexion, the velvety shades of the thick hair growing low on the forehead, which seemed to be united by an almost imperceptible down to the superb and straight line of the eyebrows. How could such an exuberance of life and beauty have deteriorated and become such a mass of vulgarity? And curiously while the Transteverina talked, I interrogated her lovely eyes, so deep and soft on the canvas.

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The excitement of the meal had put her in a good humour. To cheer up the poet, to whom his mingled failure and glory were doubly painful, she thumped him on the back, laughed with her mouth full, saying in her hideous jargon, that it was not worth while for such a trifle to fling oneself head downwards from thecampanile del Duomo.

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"Isn't it true,il cato?" she added turning to the old tom-cat crippled by rheumatism, snoring in front of the fire. Then suddenly, in the middle of an interesting discussion, she screamed out to her husband in a voice senseless and brutal as the crack of a rifle:

"Hey! artist!la lampo qui filo!"

The poor fellow immediately interrupted his conversation to wind up the lamp, humble, submissive, anxious to avoid the scene he dreaded, and which in spite of all, he did not escape.

On returning from the theatre we had stopped at theMaison d'Orto get a bottle of choice wine to wash down theestoufato. All along the road Maria Assunta had piously carried it under her shawl, and on her arrival she had placed it on the table where she could cast tender looks upon it, for Roman women are fond of good wine. Already twice or three times mistrustful of her husband's absence of mind, and the length of his arms, she had said:

"Mind theboteglia—you're going to break it."

At last, as she went off to the kitchen to take up with her own hands the famousestoufato, she again called out to him:

"Whatever you do, don't break theboteglia."

Unluckily, the moment his wife had disappeared, the poet seized the opportunity to talk about art, theatres, success, so freely and with so much gusto and vivacity, that—crash! By a gesture more eloquent than the others, the wonderful bottle was thrown down and fell to the ground in a thousand pieces. Never have I beheld such terror. He stopped short, and became deadly pale. At the same moment, Assunta's contralto was heard in the next room, and the Italian appeared on the threshold with flashing eyes, lips swollen with rage, red with the heat of the kitchen range.

"Theboteglia!" she roared in a terrible voice.

Then timidly bending down to me, he whispered:

"Say it's you."

And the poor devil was so frightened, that I felt his long legs tremble under the table.

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How could they help falling in love? Handsome and famous as they both were, singing in the same operas, living each night during five whole acts the same artificial and passionate existence. You cannot play with fire without being burnt. You cannot say twenty times a month: "I love you!" to the sighing of a flute or the tremolos of a violin, without at last being caught by the emotion of your own voice. In course of time, passion awoke in the surrounding harmonies, the rhythmical surprises, the gorgeousness of costume and scenery. It was wafted to them through the window that Elsa and Lohengrin threw wide open on a night vibrating with sound and luminousness:

"Come let us breathe the intoxicating perfumes."

It slipped in between the white columns of the Capulets' balcony, where Romeo and Juliet linger in the dawning light of day:

"It was the nightingale, and not the lark."

And softly it caught Faust and Marguerite in a ray of moonlight, that rose from the rustic bench to the shutters of their little chamber, amid the entangled ivy and blossoming roses:

"Let me once more gaze upon thy face."

Soon all Paris knew their love and became interested in it. It was the wonder of the season. The world came to admire the two splendid stars gently gravitating towards each other in the musical firmament of the Opera House. At last one evening, after an enthusiastic recall, as the curtain fell, separating the house full of noisy applause and the stage littered with bouquets, where the white gown of Juliet swept over scattered camellia blossoms, the two singers were seized with an irresistible impulse, as though their love, a shade artificial, had but awaited the emotion of a splendid success to reveal itself.

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Hands were clasped, vows exchanged, vows consecrated by the distant and persistent plaudits of the house. The two stars had made their conjunction.

After the wedding, some time passed before they were again seen on the stage. Then, when their holiday was ended, they reappeared in the same piece. This reappearance was a revelation. Until then, of the two singers, the man had been the most prized. Older and more accustomed to the public, whose foibles and preferences he had studied, he held the pit and boxes under the spell of his voice. Beside him, the other one seemed but an admirably gifted pupil, the promise of a future genius; but her voice was young and had angles in it, just as her shoulders were too slight and thin. And when on her return she appeared in one of her former parts, and the full rich, powerful sound poured out in the very first notes, abundant and pure, like the water of some sparkling spring, there ran through the house such a thrill of delight and surprise, that all the interest of the evening was concentrated on her. For the young woman, it was one of those happy days, in which the ambient atmosphere becomes limpid, light and vibrating, wafting towards one all the radiance and adulations of success. As for the husband, they almost forgot to applaud him, and as a dazzling light ever seems to make the shade around it darker, so he, found himself relegated, as it were, to the most insignificant part of the stage, as if he were neither more nor less than a mere walking gentleman.

After all, the passion that was revealed in the songstress's acting, in her voice full of charm and tenderness, was inspired by him. He alone lent fire to the glances of those deep eyes, and that idea ought to have made him proud, but the comedian's vanity proved stronger. At the end of the performance he sent for the leader of theclaqueand rated him soundly. They had missed his entry and his exit, forgotten the recall at the third act; he would complain to the manager, &c.

Alas! In vain he struggled, in vain did the paid applause greet him, the good graces of the public, henceforth bestowed on his wife, remained definitively acquired to her. She was fortunate too in a choice of parts appropriate to her talent and her beauty, in which she appeared with all the assurance of a woman of the world entering a ball-room, dressed in the colours best suited to her, and certain of an ovation. At each fresh success the husband was depressed, nervous, and irritable. This vogue which left him and so absolutely became hers only, seemed to him a kind of robbery. For a long while he strove to hide from every one, more especially from his wife, this unavowable anguish; but one evening, as she was going up the stairs leading to her dressing-room, holding up with both hands her skirt-laden with bouquets, carried away by her triumphal success, she said to him with a voice still overcome by the excitement of applause: "We have had a magnificent house to-night." He replied: "You think so!" in such an ironical and bitter tone, that the young wife suddenly understood all.

Her husband was jealous! Not with the jealousy of a lover, who will only allow his wife to be beautiful for him, but with the jealousy of an artist, cold, furious, implacable. At times, when she stopped at the end of an air and multitudes of bravos were thrown to her from outstretched hands, he affected an indifferent and absent manner, and his listless gaze seemed to say to the spectators: "When you have finished applauding, I'll sing."

Ah! the applause, that sound like hail reechoing so delightfully through the lobbies, the house, and the side scenes, once the sweets of it are tasted, it is impossible to live without it. Great actors do not die of illness or old age, they cease to exist when applause no longer greets them. At the indifference of the public, this one was really seized with a feeling of despair. He grew thin, became peevish and bad-tempered. In vain did he reason with himself, look his incurable folly well in the face, repeat to himself before he came on the stage:

"And yet she is my wife, and I love her!"

In the artificial atmosphere of the stage the true sentiment of life vanished at once. He still loved the wife, but detested the singer. She realized it, and as one nurses an invalid, watched the sad mania. At first she thought of lessening her success, of making a sparing use and not giving the full power of her voice and talent; but her resolutions like those of her husband could not withstand the glare of the footlights. Her talent, almost unconsciously, overstepped her will. Then she humbled herself before him, belittled herself. She asked his advice, inquired if he thought her interpretation correct, if he understood the part in that way.

Of course he was never satisfied. With assumed goodnature, in the tone of false friendship that comedians use so much amongst each other, he would say, on the evenings of her greatest successes:

"You must watch yourself, dear, you are not doing very well just now, not improving."

At other times he tried to prevent her singing:

"Take care, you are lavishing yourself. You are doing too much. Don't wear out your luck. Believe me, you ought to take a holiday."

He even condescended to the most paltry pretexts. Said she had a cold, was not in good voice. Or else he would try to pick some mean stage quarrel:

"You took up the end of the duet too quickly; you spoilt my effect. You did it on purpose."

He never saw, poor wretch, that it was he who hindered her bye play, hurrying on with his cue in order to prevent any applause, and in his anxiety to regain the public ear, monopolizing the front of the stage, leaving his wife in the background. She never complained, for she loved him too well; moreover success makes us indulgent and every evening she was compelled to quit the shade in which she strove to conceal and efface herself, to obey the summons enthusiastically calling her to the footlights. This singular jealousy was soon noticed at the theatre, and their fellow actors made fun of it. They overwhelmed the singer with compliments about his wife's singing. They thrust under his eyes the newspaper article in which after four long columns devoted to the star, the critic bestowed a few lines to the fast fading vogue of the husband. One day, having just read one of these articles, he rushed into his wife's dressing-room, holding the open paper in his hand and said to her, pale with rage:

"The fellow must have been your lover." He had indeed reached this degree of injustice. In fact the unhappy woman, praised and envied, whose name figured in large type on the play bills and might be read on all the walls of Paris, who was seized upon as a successful advertising medium and placed on the tiny gilt labels of the confectioner or perfumer, led the saddest and most humiliating of lives. She dared not open a paper for fear of reading her own praises, wept over the flowers that were thrown to her and which she left to die in a corner of her dressing-room, that she might avoid perpetuating at home the cruel memories of her triumphant evenings. She even wanted to quit the stage, but her husband objected.

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"It will be said that I make you leave it." And the horrible torture continued for both.

One night of a first representation, the songstress was going to the front, when somebody said to her: "Mind what you are about. There is a cabal in the house against you." She laughed at the idea. A cabal against her? And for what reason, Good Heavens! She who only met with sympathy, who did not belong to any coterie! It was true however. In the middle of the opera, in a grand duet with her husband, at the moment when her magnificent voice had reached the highest pitch of its compass, finishing the sound in a succession of notes, even and pure like the rounded pearls of a necklace, a volley of hisses cut her short. The audience was as much moved and surprised as herself. All remained breathless, as though each one felt prisoner within them the passage she had not been able to finish. Suddenly a horrible, mad idea flashed across her mind. He was alone on the stage, in front of her. She gazed at him steadily and saw in his eyes the passing gleam of a cruel smile. The poor woman understood all. Sobs suffocated her.

She could only burst into tears and blindly disappear through the crowded side scenes.

It was her own husband who had had her hissed!

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THE WIFE'S VERSION.What can be the matter with him? What can he complain of? I cannot understand it. And yet I have done all I could to make him happy. To be sure, I don't say that instead of a poet I would not rather have married a notary or a lawyer, something rather more serious, rather less vague as a profession; nevertheless, such as he was he took my fancy. I thought him a trifle visionary, but charming all the same, and well-mannered; besides he had some fortune, and I thought that once married poetizing would not prevent him from seeking out some good appointment which would set us quite at ease.P090-101He, too at that time seemed to find me to his taste. When he came to see me at my aunt's in the country, he could not find words enough to admire the order and arrangement of our little house, kept like a convent, "It is so quaint!" he used to say. He would laugh and call me all sorts of names taken from the poems and romances he had read. That shocked me a little I confess; I should have liked him to be more serious. But it was not until we were married and settled in Paris, that I felt all the difference of our two natures.I had dreamed of a little home kept scrupulously bright and clean; instead of which, he began at once to encumber our apartment with useless old-fashioned furniture, covered with dust, and with faded tapestries, old as the hills. In everything it was the same. Would you believe that he obliged me to put away in the attic a sweetly pretty Empire clock, which had come to me from my aunt, and some splendidly-framed pictures given me by my school friends. He thought them hideous. I am still wondering why? For after all, his study was one mass of lumber, of old smoky pictures; statuettes I blushed to look at, chipped antiquities of all kinds, good for nothing; vases that would not hold water, odd cups, chandeliers covered with verdigris.P094-105By the side of my beautiful rosewood piano, he had put another, a little shabby thing with all the polish off, half-the notes wanting, and so old and worn that one could hardly hear it. I began to think: "Good gracious! is an artist then, really a little mad? Does he only care for useless things, and despise all that is useful?"When I saw his friends', the society he received, it was still worse. Men with long hair, great beards, scarcely combed, badly dressed, who did not hesitate to smoke in my presence, while to listen to them made me quite uncomfortable, so widely opposed were their ideas to mine. They used long words, fine phrases, nothing natural, nothing simple. Then with all this, not a notion of ordinary civilities: you might ask them to dinner twenty times running, and there would be never a call, never a return of any kind. Not even a card or a bonbon on New Year's day. Nothing. Some of these gentry were married and brought their wives to see us. You should have seen the style of these persons! For every day wear, superb toilettes such as thank heaven, I would wear at no time! And so ill-arranged, without order or method. Hair loose, skirts trailing, and such a bold display of their talents! There were some who sang like actresses, played the piano like professors, all talked on every subject just like men. I ask you, is this reasonable?Ought serious women once married to think of anything but the care of their household? This is what I tried to make my husband understand, when he was vexed at seeing me give up my music. Music is all very well when one is a little girl and has nothing better to do. But candidly, I should consider myself very ridiculous if I sat down every day to the piano.P098-109Oh! I am quite aware that his great complaint against me is that I wished to draw him from the strange society I considered so dangerous for him. "You have driven away all my friends?" he often used to say reproachfully. Yes, I did do so, and I don't regret it. Those creatures would have ended by driving him crazy. After leaving them, he would often spend the night in making rhymes and in marching up and down and talking aloud. As if he were not already sufficiently eccentric and original in himself without being excited by others! What caprices, what whims have I not put up with! Suddenly one morning, he would appear in my room: "Quick, get your hat—we are off to the country." Then one must leave everything, sewing, household affairs, take a carriage, go by rail, spend a mint of money! And I, who only thought of economy! For after all, it is not with fifteen thousand francs (six hundred pounds) a year that one can be counted rich in Paris or make any provision for one's children. At first he used to laugh at my observations, and try to make me laugh; then when he saw how firmly I was resolved to remain serious, he found fault with my simplicity and my taste for home. Am I to blame because I detest theatres and concerts, and those artistic soirées to which he wished to drag me, and where he met his old acquaintances, a lot of scatterbrains, dissipated and Bohemian?At one time, I thought he was becoming more reasonable. I had managed to with-draw him from his good-for-nothing circle of friends, and to gather round us a society of sensible people, well-settled in life, who might be of use to us. But no! Monsieur was bored. He was always bored, from morning till night. At our little soirees, where I was careful to arrange a whist table and a tea table, all as it should be, he would appear with such a face! in such a temper! When we were alone, it was just the same. Nevertheless, I was full of little attentions. I used to say to him: "Read me something of what you are doing." He recited to me verses, tirades, of which I understood nothing, but I put on an air of interest, and here and there made some little remark, which by the way, inevitably had the knack of annoying him. In a year, working night and day, he could only make of all his rhymes, one single volume which never sold, I said to him: "Ah! you see," just in a reasoning spirit, to bring him to something more comprehensible, more remunerative, He got into a frightful rage, and afterwards sank into a state of gloomy depression which made me very unhappy. My friends advised me as well as they could: "You see, my dear, it is the ennui and bad temper of an unoccupied man. If he worked a little more, he would not be so gloomy."Then I set to work, and all my belongings too, to seek him an appointment, I moved heaven and earth, I made I don't know how many visits to the wives of government officials, heads of departments; I even penetrated into a minister's office. It was a surprise I reserved for him, I said to my-self: "We shall see whether he will be pleased this time," At length, the day when I received his nomination in a lovely envelope with five big seals, I carried it myself to his table, half wild with joy. It was provision for the future, comfort, self content, the tranquillity of regular work. Do you know what he did? He said: "He would never forgive me." After which he tore the minister's letter into a thousand pieces, and rushed out, banging the doors. Oh! these artists, poor unsettled brains taking life all the wrong way! What could be done with such a man? I should have liked to talk to him, to reason with him. In vain. Those were indeed right, who had said to me: "He is a madman." Of what use moreover to talk to him? We do not speak the same language. He would not understand me, any more than I understand him. And now, here we must sit and look at each other. I see hatred in his glance, and yet I have true affection for him. It is very painful.P089-100THE HUSBAND'S VERSION.I had thought of everything, taken all my precautions. I would not have a Parisian, because Parisian women alarm me. I would not have a rich wife because she might be too exacting and extravagant. I also dreaded family ties, that terrible network of homely affections, which monopolizes, imprisons, dwarfs and stifles. My wife was the realization of my fondest dreams. I said to myself: "She will owe me everything."P091-102What pleasure to educate this simple mind to the contemplation of beauty, to initiate this pure soul to my enthusiasms and hopes, to give life, in short, to this statue! The fact is she had the air of a statue, with her great serious calm eyes, her regular Greek profile, her features, which although rather too marked and severe, were softened by the rose-tinted bloom of youth and the shadow of the waving hair. Added to all this was a faint provincial accent that was my especial joy, an accent to which with closed eyes, I listened as a recollection of happy childhood, the echo of a tranquil life in some far away, utterly unknown nook. And to think that now, this accent has become unbearable to me! But in those days, I had faith. I loved, I was happy, and disposed to be still more so. Full of ardour for my work, I had as soon as I was married begun a new poem, and in the evening I read to her the verses of the day. I wished to make her enter completely into my existence. The first time or two, she said to me: "Very pretty," and I was grateful to her for this childish approbation, hoping that in time she would comprehend better what was the very breath of my life.Poor creature! How I must have bored her! After having read her my verses, I explained them to her, seeking in her beautiful astonished eyes the hoped-for gleam of light, ever fancying I should surprise it.P095-106I obliged her to give me her opinion and I passed over all that was foolish to retain only what a chance inspiration might contain of good. I so longed to make of her my true help mate, the real artist's wife! But no! She could not understand. In vain did I read to her the great poets, choosing the strongest, the tenderest,—the golden rhymes of the love poems fell upon her ear as coldly and tediously as a hailstorm. Once I remember, we were readingla Nuit d'Octobre; she interrupted me, to ask for something more serious! I tried then to explain to her that there is nothing in the world more serious than poetry, which is the very essence of life, floating above it like a glory of light, in the % vibrations of which words and thoughts are elevated and transfigured. Oh! what a disdainful smile passed over her pretty mouth and what condescension in her glance! As though a child or a madman had spoken to her.What have I not thus wasted of strength and useless eloquence! Nothing was of any use. I stumbled perpetually against what she called good sense, reason, that eternal excuse of dried up hearts and narrow minds. And it was not only poetry that bored her. Before our marriage, I had believed her to be a musician. She seemed to understand the pieces she played, aided by the underlinings of her teacher. Scarcely was she married when she closed her piano, and gave up her music.P099-110Can there be anything more melancholy than this abandonment by the young wife of all that had pleased in the young girl? The reply given, the part ended, the actress quits her costume. It was all done with a view to marriage; a surface of petty accomplishments, of pretty smiles, and fleeting elegance. With her the change was instantaneous. At first I hoped that the taste I could not give her, an artistic intelligence and love of the beautiful, would come to her in spite of herself, through the medium of this wonderful Paris, with its unconscious refining influence on eyes and mind. But what can be done with a woman who does not know how to open a book, to look at a picture, who is always bored and refuses to see anything? I soon understood that I must resign myself to have by my side nothing but a housewife, active and economical, indeed very economical. According to Proudhon, a woman, nothing more. I could have shaped my course accordingly; so many artists are in the same plight! But this modest rôle was not enough for her.Little by little, slyly, silently, she managed to get rid of all my friends. We had not made any difference in our talk because of * her presence. We talked as we always had done in the past, but she never understood the irony or the fantasy of our artistic exaggerations, of our wild axioms, or paradoxes, in which-an idea is travestied only to figure more brilliantly. It only irritated and puzzled her. Seated in a quiet corner of the drawing-room, she listened and said nothing, planning all the while how she should eliminate one by one those who so much shocked her. Notwithstanding the seeming friendliness of the welcome, there could already be felt in my rooms that thin current of cold air, which warns that the door is open and that it is time to leave.My friends once gone, she replaced them by her own. I found myself surrounded by an absurd set of worthies, strangers to art, who hated poetry and scorned it because "it made no money." On purpose the names of fashionable writers who manufacture plays and novels by the dozen were cited before me, with the remark: "So and so makes a great deal of money!"Make money! this is the all-important point for these creatures, and I had the pain of seeing my wife think with them. In this fatal atmosphere, her provincial habits, her mean and narrow views were made still more odious by an incredible stinginess.Fifteen thousand francs (six hundred pounds) a year! It seemed to me that with this income we could live without fear of the morrow. Not at all! She was always grumbling, talking of economy, reform, good investments. As she overpowered me with these dull details, I felt all desire and taste for work ebb away from me. Sometimes she came to my table and scornfully turned over the scattered half-written pages:—"Only that!" she would say, counting the hours lost upon the insignificant little lines. Ah I if I had listened to her, my glorious title of poet, which it has taken me so many years to win, would be now dragged through the black mire of sensational literature. And when I think that to this selfsame woman I had at first opened my heart, confided all my dreams; and when I think that the contempt she now shows me because I do not make money dates from the first days of our marriage; I am indeed ashamed, both of myself and of her.I make no money! That explains everything, the reproach of her glance, her admiration for fruitful commonplaces, culminating in the steps she took but lately to obtain for me I don't know what post in a government office.At this, however, I resisted. No defence remains to me but this, a force of inertia, which yields to no assault, to no persuasion. She may speak for hours, freeze me with her chilliest smile, my thought ever escapes her, will always escape her. And we have come to this! Married and condemned to live together, leagues of distance separate us; and we are both too weary, too utterly discouraged, to care to make one step that might draw us together. It is horrible!

THE WIFE'S VERSION.

What can be the matter with him? What can he complain of? I cannot understand it. And yet I have done all I could to make him happy. To be sure, I don't say that instead of a poet I would not rather have married a notary or a lawyer, something rather more serious, rather less vague as a profession; nevertheless, such as he was he took my fancy. I thought him a trifle visionary, but charming all the same, and well-mannered; besides he had some fortune, and I thought that once married poetizing would not prevent him from seeking out some good appointment which would set us quite at ease.

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He, too at that time seemed to find me to his taste. When he came to see me at my aunt's in the country, he could not find words enough to admire the order and arrangement of our little house, kept like a convent, "It is so quaint!" he used to say. He would laugh and call me all sorts of names taken from the poems and romances he had read. That shocked me a little I confess; I should have liked him to be more serious. But it was not until we were married and settled in Paris, that I felt all the difference of our two natures.

I had dreamed of a little home kept scrupulously bright and clean; instead of which, he began at once to encumber our apartment with useless old-fashioned furniture, covered with dust, and with faded tapestries, old as the hills. In everything it was the same. Would you believe that he obliged me to put away in the attic a sweetly pretty Empire clock, which had come to me from my aunt, and some splendidly-framed pictures given me by my school friends. He thought them hideous. I am still wondering why? For after all, his study was one mass of lumber, of old smoky pictures; statuettes I blushed to look at, chipped antiquities of all kinds, good for nothing; vases that would not hold water, odd cups, chandeliers covered with verdigris.

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By the side of my beautiful rosewood piano, he had put another, a little shabby thing with all the polish off, half-the notes wanting, and so old and worn that one could hardly hear it. I began to think: "Good gracious! is an artist then, really a little mad? Does he only care for useless things, and despise all that is useful?"

When I saw his friends', the society he received, it was still worse. Men with long hair, great beards, scarcely combed, badly dressed, who did not hesitate to smoke in my presence, while to listen to them made me quite uncomfortable, so widely opposed were their ideas to mine. They used long words, fine phrases, nothing natural, nothing simple. Then with all this, not a notion of ordinary civilities: you might ask them to dinner twenty times running, and there would be never a call, never a return of any kind. Not even a card or a bonbon on New Year's day. Nothing. Some of these gentry were married and brought their wives to see us. You should have seen the style of these persons! For every day wear, superb toilettes such as thank heaven, I would wear at no time! And so ill-arranged, without order or method. Hair loose, skirts trailing, and such a bold display of their talents! There were some who sang like actresses, played the piano like professors, all talked on every subject just like men. I ask you, is this reasonable?

Ought serious women once married to think of anything but the care of their household? This is what I tried to make my husband understand, when he was vexed at seeing me give up my music. Music is all very well when one is a little girl and has nothing better to do. But candidly, I should consider myself very ridiculous if I sat down every day to the piano.

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Oh! I am quite aware that his great complaint against me is that I wished to draw him from the strange society I considered so dangerous for him. "You have driven away all my friends?" he often used to say reproachfully. Yes, I did do so, and I don't regret it. Those creatures would have ended by driving him crazy. After leaving them, he would often spend the night in making rhymes and in marching up and down and talking aloud. As if he were not already sufficiently eccentric and original in himself without being excited by others! What caprices, what whims have I not put up with! Suddenly one morning, he would appear in my room: "Quick, get your hat—we are off to the country." Then one must leave everything, sewing, household affairs, take a carriage, go by rail, spend a mint of money! And I, who only thought of economy! For after all, it is not with fifteen thousand francs (six hundred pounds) a year that one can be counted rich in Paris or make any provision for one's children. At first he used to laugh at my observations, and try to make me laugh; then when he saw how firmly I was resolved to remain serious, he found fault with my simplicity and my taste for home. Am I to blame because I detest theatres and concerts, and those artistic soirées to which he wished to drag me, and where he met his old acquaintances, a lot of scatterbrains, dissipated and Bohemian?

At one time, I thought he was becoming more reasonable. I had managed to with-draw him from his good-for-nothing circle of friends, and to gather round us a society of sensible people, well-settled in life, who might be of use to us. But no! Monsieur was bored. He was always bored, from morning till night. At our little soirees, where I was careful to arrange a whist table and a tea table, all as it should be, he would appear with such a face! in such a temper! When we were alone, it was just the same. Nevertheless, I was full of little attentions. I used to say to him: "Read me something of what you are doing." He recited to me verses, tirades, of which I understood nothing, but I put on an air of interest, and here and there made some little remark, which by the way, inevitably had the knack of annoying him. In a year, working night and day, he could only make of all his rhymes, one single volume which never sold, I said to him: "Ah! you see," just in a reasoning spirit, to bring him to something more comprehensible, more remunerative, He got into a frightful rage, and afterwards sank into a state of gloomy depression which made me very unhappy. My friends advised me as well as they could: "You see, my dear, it is the ennui and bad temper of an unoccupied man. If he worked a little more, he would not be so gloomy."

Then I set to work, and all my belongings too, to seek him an appointment, I moved heaven and earth, I made I don't know how many visits to the wives of government officials, heads of departments; I even penetrated into a minister's office. It was a surprise I reserved for him, I said to my-self: "We shall see whether he will be pleased this time," At length, the day when I received his nomination in a lovely envelope with five big seals, I carried it myself to his table, half wild with joy. It was provision for the future, comfort, self content, the tranquillity of regular work. Do you know what he did? He said: "He would never forgive me." After which he tore the minister's letter into a thousand pieces, and rushed out, banging the doors. Oh! these artists, poor unsettled brains taking life all the wrong way! What could be done with such a man? I should have liked to talk to him, to reason with him. In vain. Those were indeed right, who had said to me: "He is a madman." Of what use moreover to talk to him? We do not speak the same language. He would not understand me, any more than I understand him. And now, here we must sit and look at each other. I see hatred in his glance, and yet I have true affection for him. It is very painful.

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THE HUSBAND'S VERSION.

I had thought of everything, taken all my precautions. I would not have a Parisian, because Parisian women alarm me. I would not have a rich wife because she might be too exacting and extravagant. I also dreaded family ties, that terrible network of homely affections, which monopolizes, imprisons, dwarfs and stifles. My wife was the realization of my fondest dreams. I said to myself: "She will owe me everything."

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What pleasure to educate this simple mind to the contemplation of beauty, to initiate this pure soul to my enthusiasms and hopes, to give life, in short, to this statue! The fact is she had the air of a statue, with her great serious calm eyes, her regular Greek profile, her features, which although rather too marked and severe, were softened by the rose-tinted bloom of youth and the shadow of the waving hair. Added to all this was a faint provincial accent that was my especial joy, an accent to which with closed eyes, I listened as a recollection of happy childhood, the echo of a tranquil life in some far away, utterly unknown nook. And to think that now, this accent has become unbearable to me! But in those days, I had faith. I loved, I was happy, and disposed to be still more so. Full of ardour for my work, I had as soon as I was married begun a new poem, and in the evening I read to her the verses of the day. I wished to make her enter completely into my existence. The first time or two, she said to me: "Very pretty," and I was grateful to her for this childish approbation, hoping that in time she would comprehend better what was the very breath of my life.

Poor creature! How I must have bored her! After having read her my verses, I explained them to her, seeking in her beautiful astonished eyes the hoped-for gleam of light, ever fancying I should surprise it.

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I obliged her to give me her opinion and I passed over all that was foolish to retain only what a chance inspiration might contain of good. I so longed to make of her my true help mate, the real artist's wife! But no! She could not understand. In vain did I read to her the great poets, choosing the strongest, the tenderest,—the golden rhymes of the love poems fell upon her ear as coldly and tediously as a hailstorm. Once I remember, we were readingla Nuit d'Octobre; she interrupted me, to ask for something more serious! I tried then to explain to her that there is nothing in the world more serious than poetry, which is the very essence of life, floating above it like a glory of light, in the % vibrations of which words and thoughts are elevated and transfigured. Oh! what a disdainful smile passed over her pretty mouth and what condescension in her glance! As though a child or a madman had spoken to her.

What have I not thus wasted of strength and useless eloquence! Nothing was of any use. I stumbled perpetually against what she called good sense, reason, that eternal excuse of dried up hearts and narrow minds. And it was not only poetry that bored her. Before our marriage, I had believed her to be a musician. She seemed to understand the pieces she played, aided by the underlinings of her teacher. Scarcely was she married when she closed her piano, and gave up her music.

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Can there be anything more melancholy than this abandonment by the young wife of all that had pleased in the young girl? The reply given, the part ended, the actress quits her costume. It was all done with a view to marriage; a surface of petty accomplishments, of pretty smiles, and fleeting elegance. With her the change was instantaneous. At first I hoped that the taste I could not give her, an artistic intelligence and love of the beautiful, would come to her in spite of herself, through the medium of this wonderful Paris, with its unconscious refining influence on eyes and mind. But what can be done with a woman who does not know how to open a book, to look at a picture, who is always bored and refuses to see anything? I soon understood that I must resign myself to have by my side nothing but a housewife, active and economical, indeed very economical. According to Proudhon, a woman, nothing more. I could have shaped my course accordingly; so many artists are in the same plight! But this modest rôle was not enough for her.

Little by little, slyly, silently, she managed to get rid of all my friends. We had not made any difference in our talk because of * her presence. We talked as we always had done in the past, but she never understood the irony or the fantasy of our artistic exaggerations, of our wild axioms, or paradoxes, in which-an idea is travestied only to figure more brilliantly. It only irritated and puzzled her. Seated in a quiet corner of the drawing-room, she listened and said nothing, planning all the while how she should eliminate one by one those who so much shocked her. Notwithstanding the seeming friendliness of the welcome, there could already be felt in my rooms that thin current of cold air, which warns that the door is open and that it is time to leave.

My friends once gone, she replaced them by her own. I found myself surrounded by an absurd set of worthies, strangers to art, who hated poetry and scorned it because "it made no money." On purpose the names of fashionable writers who manufacture plays and novels by the dozen were cited before me, with the remark: "So and so makes a great deal of money!"

Make money! this is the all-important point for these creatures, and I had the pain of seeing my wife think with them. In this fatal atmosphere, her provincial habits, her mean and narrow views were made still more odious by an incredible stinginess.

Fifteen thousand francs (six hundred pounds) a year! It seemed to me that with this income we could live without fear of the morrow. Not at all! She was always grumbling, talking of economy, reform, good investments. As she overpowered me with these dull details, I felt all desire and taste for work ebb away from me. Sometimes she came to my table and scornfully turned over the scattered half-written pages:—"Only that!" she would say, counting the hours lost upon the insignificant little lines. Ah I if I had listened to her, my glorious title of poet, which it has taken me so many years to win, would be now dragged through the black mire of sensational literature. And when I think that to this selfsame woman I had at first opened my heart, confided all my dreams; and when I think that the contempt she now shows me because I do not make money dates from the first days of our marriage; I am indeed ashamed, both of myself and of her.

I make no money! That explains everything, the reproach of her glance, her admiration for fruitful commonplaces, culminating in the steps she took but lately to obtain for me I don't know what post in a government office.

At this, however, I resisted. No defence remains to me but this, a force of inertia, which yields to no assault, to no persuasion. She may speak for hours, freeze me with her chilliest smile, my thought ever escapes her, will always escape her. And we have come to this! Married and condemned to live together, leagues of distance separate us; and we are both too weary, too utterly discouraged, to care to make one step that might draw us together. It is horrible!

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MR. PETITBRY, Chamber Counsel.

To Madame Nina de B., at her Aunt's house, in Moulins.

Madame, conformably to the wishes of Madame your aunt, I have looked into the matter in question. I have noted down one by one all the different points and submitted your grievances to the most scrupulous investigation. Well, on my soul and conscience, I do not find the fruit ripe enough, or to speak plainly, I do not consider that you have sufficient grounds to justify your petition for a judicial separation. Let us not forget that the French law is a very downright kind of thing, totally devoid of delicate feeling for nice distinctions. It recognizes only acts, serious, brutal acts, and unfortunately it is these acts we lack. Most assuredly I have been deeply touched while reading the account of the first year of your married life, so very painful to you. You have paid dearly for the glory of marrying a famous artist, one of those men in whom fame and adulation develop monstrous egotism, and who under penalty of shattering the frail and timid life that would attach itself to theirs, must live alone. Ah! madame, since the commencement of my career, how many wretched wives have I not beheld in the same cruel position as yourself! Artists who live only by and for the public, carry nothing home to their hearth but fatigue from glory, or the melancholy of their disappointments. An ill-regulated existence, without compass or rudder, subversive ideas contrary to all social conventionality, contempt of family life and its happiness, cerebral excitement sought for in the abuse of tobacco and strong drink, without mentioning anything else, this constitutes the terrible artistic element from which your dear Aunt is desirous of withdrawing you; but I must repeat, that while I fully comprehend her anxiety, nay her remorse even at having consented to such a marriage, I cannot see that matters have reached a point calculated to warrant your petition.

I have, however, set down the outlines of a judicial memorandum, in which your principal grievances are grouped and skilfully brought into prominence. Here are the principal divisions of the work:

1°.Insulting conduct of Monsieur towards Madame's family.—Refusal to receive our Aunt from Moulins, who brought us up, and is tenderly attached to us.—Nicknames such asTata Bobosse, Fairy Carabossa, and others, bestowed on that venerable old maid, whose back is slightly bent.—Jests and quips, drawings in pen and pencil of the aforesaid and her infirmity.

2°.Unsociableness.—Refusal to see Madame's friends, to make wedding calls, to send cards, to answer invitations, etc.

3°.Wanton extravagance.—Money lent without acknowledgment to all kinds of Bohemians.—Open house and free quarters, turning the house into an inn.—Constant subscriptions for statues, tombs, and productions of unfortunate fellow artists.—Starting an artistic and literary magazine!!!

4°.Insulting conduct to Madame.—Having said out loud when alluding to us: "What a fool!"

5°.Cruelty and violence.—Excessive brutality on the part of Monsieur.—Rage on the slightest pretext.—Breakage of china and furniture.—Scandalous rows, offensive expressions.

All this, as you see, dear Madame, constitutes a somewhat respectable amount of evidence, but is not however sufficient. We lack assault with violence. Ah! if we had only an assault with violence, a tiny little assault before witnesses, our case would be grand! But now that you have put a hundred and fifty miles between your husband and yourself we can scarcely hope for an incident of this kind. I say "hope" because in the present state of affairs, a brutal act on the part of this man would be the most fortunate thing that could befall you.

I remain, Madame, awaiting your commands, your devoted and obedient servant,

Petitbry.

PS.—Violence before witnesses, of course!

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To Monsieur Petitbry, in Paris.

What, Sir! have we come to such a pass as this! Is this what your laws have made of antique French chivalry! So then, when a misunderstanding is often sufficient to separate two hearts for ever, your law courts require acts of violence to justify such a separation. Is it not scandalous, unjust, barbarous, outrageous? To think that in order to regain her freedom, my poor darling will be obliged to run her neck into the halter, to abandon herself to all the fury of that monster, to excite it even. But no matter, our mind is made up. An assault with personal violence is necessary. Well! we will have it. No later than to-morrow, Nina will return to Paris, How will she be received? What will take place there? I cannot think of it without a shudder. At this idea my hand trembles, my eyes become dimmed. Ah! Monsieur. Ah! Monsieur Petitbry. Ah!

Nina's unhappy Aunt.

MR. MARESTANG, ATTORNEY At the Law Court of the Seine.

To Monsieur Henri de B., Literary man in Paris.

Be calm, be calm, be calm! I forbid your going to Moulins or rushing off in pursuit of the fugitive. It is more judicious and safer to await her return in your own house, by your fireside. In point of fact, what has taken place? You refused to receive that ridiculous and ill-natured old maid; your wife has gone to join her. You should have expected as much. Family ties are very strong in the heart of such an extremely youthful bride. You were in too great a hurry. Remember that this Aunt brought her up, that she has no other relations in the world. She has her husband, you will say. Ah! my dear fellow, between ourselves we may admit that husbands are not always amiable. I know one more especially who in spite of his good heart is so nervous, so violent! I am well aware that hard work and artistic preoccupations have a good deal to do with it. Be that as it may, the bird has been scared, and has flown back to its former cage. Don't be alarmed, it won't stay there long. Either I am very much mistaken or the Parisian of yesterday will soon weary of the antiquated surroundings, and ere long regret the vivacities of her poet. Above all don't stir.

Your old friend,

Marestang.

To Monsieur Marestang, attorney in Paris.

At the same moment with your rational and friendly letter, I received a telegram from Moulins, announcing Nina's return. Ah! what a true prophet you were! She is coming back this evening, all alone, just as she left me, without the slightest advance on my part. The thing now will be to arrange so easy and agreeable a life for her, that she shall never again be tempted to leave me. I have laid in a stock of tenderness and patience during her week's absence. There is only one point on which I remain inflexible: I will not again receive that horribleTata Bobosse, that blue stocking of 1820, who gave me her niece only in the hopes that my modest fame would serve to heighten hers. Remember, my dear Marestang, that ever since my marriage this wicked little old woman has always come between my wife and me, pushing her hump into all our amusements at the theatres, the exhibitions, in society, in the country, everywhere in fact. And you wonder after that, at my having displayed a certain haste in getting rid of her, and packing her off to her good town of Moulins. Indeed, my dear fellow, you have no idea of all the harm those old maids, suspicious and ignorant of life, are capable of doing in a young household. This one had stuffed my wife's pretty little head full of false, old fashioned, preposterous ideas, trumpery sentimentality of the time of Ipsiboé or young Florange: "Ah! if my lady love saw me!" For her, I was a poâte, the poâte one sees on the frontispieces of Renduel or Ladvocat, crowned with laurels, a lyre on his hips, and his short velvet-collared cloak blown aside by a Parnassian gust of wind. That was the husband she had promised her niece, and you may fancy how terribly my poor Nina must have been disappointed. Nevertheless I admit that I was very bungling with the dear child. As you say, I wanted to go ahead too rapidly, I frightened her. It was my part gently to modify all that the rather narrowing and false education of the convent and the sentimental dreams of the Aunt had effected, leaving the provincial perfume time to evaporate. However all this can be repaired since she is returning. She is returning, my dear friend! This evening, I shall go and meet her at the station and we shall walk home arm in arm, reconciled and happy.

Henri de B.

Nina de B. to her Aunt in Moulins.

He was waiting for me at the station and greeted me with a smile and open arms, as though I were returning from some ordinary journey. You can imagine that I put on my iciest appearance. Directly I reached home, I shut myself up in my room, where I dined alone, pleading fatigue. After which, I locked myself in. He came to bid me good-night through the key-hole, and to my great surprise, went away on tiptoe without anger or importunity. This morning, I called on Monsieur Petitbry, who gave me detailed instructions as to the way I was to act, the hour, place, witnesses. Ah! my dear Aunt, if you knew how frightened I am as the hour draws near.

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