CHAPTER IX.AN EVENING PARTY AT THE MINISTRY.
There was an unusual look to the Faubourg St. Germain that evening. Quiet little streets that were sleeping peacefully at an early hour were awakened by the jolting of omnibuses turned from their usual course; while other streets, where usually the uninterrupted stream and roar of great Parisian arteries prevail, were like a river-bed from which the water has been drained. Silent, empty, apparently enlarged, the entrance was guarded by the outline of a mounted policeman or by the sombre shadows across the asphalt of a line of civic guards, with hoods drawn up over their caps and hands muffled in their long sleeves, saying by a gesture to carriages as they approached: “No one can pass.”
“Is it a fire?” asked a frightened man, putting his head out of the carriage window.
“No, sir; it is the evening party of the Public Instruction.”
The sentry passed on and the coachman drove off, swearing at being obliged to go so far out of his way on that left bank of the Seine, where the little streets planned without system are still somewhat confusing, after the fashion of old Paris.
At a distance, sure enough, the brilliant lights from the two fronts of the Ministry, the bonfires lighted in the middle of the streets because of the cold, the gleam from lines of lanterns on the carriages converging to one spot, threw a halo round the whole quarter like the reflection of a great conflagration, made more brilliant by the limpid blueness of the sky and the frosty dryness of the air. On approaching the house, however, one was reassured by the perfect arrangements of the party; for the conflagration was but the glare of the even white light rising to the eaves of the nearer houses, that rendered visible, as distinctly as by day, the names in gold upon the different public buildings—“Mayory of the Seventh District,” “Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs,” fading off in Bengal flames and fairylike illumination among the branches of some big and leafless trees.
Among those who lingered notwithstanding the chill wind and formed a hedge of curious gazers near the hotel gates was a little pale shadow with awkward, ducklike gait, wrapped from head to foot in a long peasant’s cloak, which allowed nothing of her but two piercing eyes to be visible. She walked up and down, bent with the cold, her teeth chattering, but insensible to the biting frost in the fever and intoxication of her excitement. Occasionally she would rush at some carriage in the row advancing slowly up the Rue de Grenelle with a luxurious noise of jingling harness and champing bits of impatient horses, where daintyforms clad in white were dimly seen behind the misty carriage windows. Then she would return to the entrance where the privilege of a special ticket allowed the carriage of some dignitary to break the line and enter. She pushed the people aside: “Excuse me—just let me look a moment.” Under the blaze from the lamp-stands built in the form of yew trees, under the striped awning of the marquees, the carriage doors, opening with a bang, discharged upon the carpets their freight of rustling satin, billowy tulle and glowing flowers.
The little figure leaned eagerly forward and hardly withdrew herself quickly enough to avoid being crushed by the next carriage to come on.
Audiberte was determined to see for herself how such an entertainment was managed. How proudly she gazed on this crowd and these lights, the soldiers ahorse and afoot, the police and these brilliant goings-on, all this part of Paris turned topsy-turvy in honor of Valmajour’s tabor! For it was being given in his honor and she was sure that his name was on the lips of all these fine and beautiful gentlemen and ladies. From the front entrance on Grenelle Street she rushed to that on Bellechasse Street, through which the empty carriages drove out; there she mingled with the civic guards and the coachmen in immense coats with capes round abraseroflaming in the middle of the street, and was astonished to hear these people talking of every-day matters, the sharp cold of that winter, potatoes freezing in the cellars, of thingsabsolutely foreign to the function and her brother. The slowness of the crawling line of carriages particularly irritated her; she longed to see the last one drive up and be able to say: “Ready at last! Now it will begin. This time it is really commencing.”
But with the deepening of the night the cold became more penetrating; she could have cried with the pain of her nearly frozen feet; but it is pretty rough to cry when one’s heart is so happy!
At last she made up her mind to go home, after taking in all this gorgeousness in one last look and carrying it off in her poor, savage little head as she passed along the dismal streets through the icy night. Her temples throbbed with the fever of ambition and almost burst with dreams and hopes, whilst her eyes were forever dazzled and, as it were, blinded by that illumination to the honor and glory of the Valmajours.
But what would she have said, had she gone in, had she seen all those drawing-rooms in white and gold unfolding themselves in perspective beneath their arcaded doorways, enlarged by mirrors on which fell the flames of the chandeliers, the wall decorations, the dazzling glitter of diamonds and military trappings, the orders of all kinds—palm-shaped, in tufted form, broochlike, or big as Catherine wheels, or small as watch-charms, or else fastened about the neck with those broad red ribbons which make one think of bloody decapitations!
Pell-mell among great names belonging to the Faubourg St. Germain there were present ministers, generals, ambassadors, members of the Institute and the Superior Council of the University. Never in the arena at Aps, no, not even at the tabor matches in Marseilles, had Valmajour had such an audience. To tell the truth, his name did not occupy much space at this festival which was given in his honor. The programme was decorated with marvellous borders from the pen of Dalys, and certainly mentioned “Various Airs on the Tabor” with the name of Valmajour in combination with that of several lyrical pieces; but people did not look at the programme. Only the intimate friends, only those people who are acquainted with everything that is going on, said to the Minister as he stood to receive at the entrance to the first drawing-room:
“So you have a tabor-player?” And he answered, with his thoughts elsewhere:
“Yes, a whim of the ladies.”
He was not thinking much of poor Valmajour that evening, but of another appearance much more important to him. What would people say? Would she be a success? Had not the interest he had taken in the child made him exaggerate her talent? And, very much in love, although he would not have owned it yet to himself, bitten to the bone by the absorbing passion of an elderly man, he felt all the anxiety of the father, husband, lover or milliner of adébutante, one of those sorrowful anxieties such as one often sees in somebodyrestlessly wandering behind the scenes on the night of a first representation. That did not prevent him from being amiable, warm and meeting his guests with both hands outstretched; and what guests,boun Diou!nor from simpering, smiling, neighing, prancing, throwing back his body, twisting and bending with unfailing if somewhat monotonous effusion—but with shades of difference, nevertheless.
Suddenly quitting, almost pushing aside, the guest to whom he was speaking in a low voice and promising endless favors, he flew to meet a stately lady with crimson cheeks and authoritative manner: “Ah, Madame la Maréchale,” and placing in his own the august arm encased in a twenty-button glove, he led his noble guest through the rooms between a double row of obsequious black coats to the concert room, where Mme. Roumestan presided, assisted by her sister.
As he passed through the rooms on his return he scattered kind words and hand-shakes right and left. “Count on me! It’s a settled thing!”—or else he threw rapidly his “How are you, friend?”—or again, in order to warm up the reception and put a sympathetic current flowing through all this solemn society crowd, he would present people to each other, throwing them without warning into each other’s arms: “What! you do not know each other? The Prince of Anhalt!—M. Bos, Senator!” and never noticed that the two men, their names hardly uttered, aftera hasty duck of the head and a “Sir”—“Sir,” merely waited till he was gone to turn their backs on each other with a ferocious look.
Like the greater number of political antagonists, our good Numa had relaxed and let himself out when he had won the fight and come to power. Without ceasing to belong to the party of moral order, this Vendean from the South had lost his fine ardor for the Cause, permitted his grand hopes to slumber, and began to find that things were not so bad after all. Why should these savage hatreds exist between nice people? He yearned for peace and a general indulgence. He counted on music to operate a fusion among the parties, his little fortnightly concerts becoming a neutral ground for artistic and sociable enjoyment, where the most bitterly hostile people might meet each other and learn to esteem one another in a spot apart from the passions and torments of politics.
That was why there was such a queer mixture in the invitations; thence also the embarrassment and lack of ease among the guests; therefore also colloquies in low tones suddenly interrupted and that curious going and coming of black coats, the assumed interest seen in looks raised to the ceiling, examining the gilded fluting of the panels, the decorations of the time of the Directory, half Louis XVI, half Empire, with bronze heads on the upright lines of the marble chimneypieces. People were hot and at the same time cold, as if, one might believe, the terrible frost outside,changed by the thick walls and the wadding of the hangings, had been converted into moral cold. From time to time the rushing about of De Lappara and De Rochemaure to find seats for the ladies broke in upon the monotonous strolling about of bored men, or else a stir was made by the sensational entrance of the beautiful Mme. Hubler, her hair dressed with feathers, her profile dry like that of an indestructible doll, with a smile like a stamped coin drawn up to her very eyebrows—a wax doll in a hair-dresser’s window. But the cold soon returned again.
“It is the very devil to thaw out these rooms of the Public Instruction. I am sure the ghost of Frayssinous walks here at night.”
This remark in a loud tone was made by one of a group of young musicians gathered obsequiously round Cadaillac, the manager of the opera, who was sitting philosophically on a velvet couch with his back against the statue of Molière. Very fat, half deaf, with a bristling white moustache, his face puffy and impenetrable, it was hard to find in him the natty and politic youngimpresariounder whose care the “Nabob” had given his entertainments; his eyes alone told of the Parisian joker, his ferocious science of life, his spirit, hard as a blackthorn with an iron ferule, toughened in the fire of the footlights. But full and sated and content with his place and fearful of losing it at the end of his contract, he sheathed his claws and talked little and especially little here; his only criticism on this official and social comedy beinga laugh as silent and inscrutable as that of Leather-Stocking.
“Boissaric, my good fellow,” he asked in a low voice of an ambitious young Toulousian who had just had a ballet accepted at the opera after only ten years of waiting—a thing nobody could believe—“you who know everything, tell me who that solemn-looking man with a big moustache is who talks familiarly to every one and walks behind his nose with as thoughtful an air as if he were going to the funeral of that feature: he must belong to the shop, for he talked theatre to me as one having authority.”
“I don’t think he is an actor, master, I think he is a diplomat. I just heard him say to the Belgian Minister that he had been his colleague a long time.”
“You are mistaken, Boissaric. He must be a foreign general; only a moment ago I heard him perorating in a crowd of big epaulettes and he was saying: ‘Unless one has commanded a large body of men—’”
“Strange!”
They asked Lappara, who happened to pass; he laughed.
“Why, it’s Bompard!”
“Quès aco Bompard?” (Who is this Bompard?)
“A friend of Roumestan’s. How is it you have never met him?”
“Is he from the South?”
“Té!I should say so!”
In truth, Bompard, buttoned tightly into a grandnew suit with a velvet collar, his gloves thrust into his waistcoat, was really trying to help his friend in the entertainment of his guests by a varied but continuous conversation. Quite unknown in the official world, where he appeared to-day for the first time, he may be said to have made a sensation as he carried his faculty for invention from group to group, telling his marvellous visions, his stories of royal love affairs, adventures and combats, triumphs at the Federal shooting-matches in Switzerland, all of which produced the same effects upon his audience—astonishment, embarrassment and disquiet. Here at least there was an element of gayety, but it was only for a few intimates who knew him. Nothing could dispel the cloud ofennuithat penetrated even into the concert room, a large and very picturesque apartment with its two tiers of galleries and its glass ceiling that gave the impression of being under the open sky.
A decoration of green palms and banana-trees, whose long leaves hung motionless in the light of the chandeliers, made a fresh background to the toilettes of the women sitting on numberless rows of chairs placed close together. It was a wave of white moving necks, arms and shoulders rising from their bodices like half-opened flowers, heads dressed with jewelled stars, diamonds flashing against the blue depths of black tresses or waves of gold from the locks of blondes; a mass of lovely figures in profile, full of health, with lines of beauty from waist to throat, or fine slender forms, from a narrow waist clasped by a little jewelledbuckle up to a long neck circled with velvet. Fans of all colors, bright with spangles, shot with hues, danced in butterfly lightness over all and mingled the perfumes of “white rose” or opoponax with the feeble breath of white lilacs and natural fresh violets.
The bored expression on the faces of the guests was deeper here as they reflected that for two mortal hours they must sit thus before the platform on which was spread out in a semicircular row the chorus, the men in black coats, the women in white muslin, impassive as if sitting in front of a camera, while the orchestra was concealed behind copses of green leaves and roses, out of which the arms of the bass-viols reared themselves like instruments of torture. Oh, the torment of the “music stocks”! All of them knew it, for it was one of the cruelest fatigues of the season and of their worldly burden. That is why, looking everywhere, the only happy, smiling face to be found in the immense room was that of Mme. Roumestan—not that ballet-dancer’s smile, common to professional hostesses, which so easily changes to a look of angry fatigue when no one is watching. Hers was the face of a happy woman, a woman loved, just starting on a new life.
O, the endless tenderness of an honest soul which has never throbbed but for one person! She had begun to believe again in her Numa; he had been so kind and tender for some time back. It was like a return; it seemed as if their two hearts were closely knit again after a long parting. Withoutasking whence came this renewal of affection in her husband, she found him loverlike and young once more, as he was the night that she showed him the panel of the hunt; and she herself was still the same fair young Diana, supple and charming in her frock of white brocade, her fair hair simply banded on her brow, so pure and without an evil thought, looking five years younger than her thirty summers!
Hortense was very pretty to-night also; all in blue—blue tulle that enveloped her slender figure like a cloud and lent a soft shade to her brunette face. She was much preoccupied with the début of her musician. She wondered how the spoiled Parisians would like this music from the provinces and whether, as Rosalie had said, the tabor-player ought not to be framed in a landscape of gray olive-trees and hills that look like lace. Silently, though very anxious in the rustle of fans, conversations in low voice and the tuning of the instruments, she counted the pieces that must come before Valmajour appeared.
A blow from the leader with his bow on his desk, a rustling of paper on the platform as the chorus rises, music in hand, a long look of the victims toward the high doorway clogged with black coats, as if yearning to flee, and the first notes of a choral by Glück ring through the room and soar upward to the glassy ceiling where the winter’s night lays its blue sheets of cold.
“Ah, dans ce bois funeste et sombre....”
The concert has begun.
The taste for music has increased greatly in France within the last few years. Particularly in Paris, the Sunday concerts and those given during Holy Week, and the numberless musical clubs, have aroused the public taste and made the works of the great masters known to all, making a musical education the fashion. But at bottom Paris is too full of life, too given over to intellect, really to love music, that absorbing goddess who holds you motionless without voice or thought in a floating web of harmony, and hypnotizes you like the ocean; in Paris the follies that are done in her name are like those committed by a fop for a mistress who is the fashion; it is a passion ofchic, played to the gallery, commonplace and hollow to the point ofennui!
Ennui!
Yes, boredom was the prevailing note of this concert at the Ministry of Public Instruction. Beneath that forced admiration, that expression of simulated ecstasy which belongs to the worldly side of the sincerest woman, the look of boredom rose higher and higher; there soon appeared unmistakable signs that dimmed the brilliant smile and shining eyes and changed completely their charming, languishing poses, like the motion of birds upon the branches or when sipping water drop by drop. On the long rows of endless chairs these fine ladies, one woman after the other, would make their fight, trying to reanimate themselves with cries of “Bravo! Divine! Delicious!” and then, one after another, would succumb to the risingtorpor which ascended like the mists above a sounding sea, driving far away into the distance of indifference all the artists who defiled before them one by one.
And yet the most famous and illustrious artists of Paris were there, interpreting classical music with all the scientific exactness it demands, which, alas, cannot be acquired save at the expense of years. Why, it is thirty years now that Mme. Vauters has been singing that beautiful romanza of Beethoven “L’Apaisement,” and yet never has she done it with more passion than this evening. But it seems as if strings were lacking to the instrument; one can hear the bow scraping on the violin. And behold! of the great singer of former days and of that famous classical beauty there remains nothing else but well studied attitudes, an irreproachable method and that long white hand which at the last stanza brushes aside a tear from the corner of her eye, made deep with charcoal—a tear that translates a sob which her voice can no longer render.
What singer save Mayol, handsome Mayol, has ever sighed forth the serenade from “Don Juan” with such ethereal delicacy—that passion which is like the love of a dragon-fly? Unfortunately people don’t hear it any longer. There is no use for him to rise atiptoe with outstretched neck and draw out the note to its very end, while accompanying it with the easy gesture of a yarn-spinner seizing her wool with two fingers—nothing comes out, nothing! Paris is grateful for pleasures whichare past and applauds all the same; but these used-up voices, these withered and too well-known faces, medals whose design has been gradually eaten away by passing from hand to hand, can never dissipate the heavy fog which infests the Minister’s party. No, notwithstanding every effort which Roumestan makes to enliven it, notwithstanding the enthusiastic bravos which he hurls in his loudest voice into the phalanx of black coats, nor the “Hush!” with which he frightens people who attempt to converse two apartments away, and who thereafter prowl about silent as spectres in that strong illumination and change their places with every precaution in the hopes of finding some distraction, their backs rounded and their arms swinging—or fall completely crushed upon the low arm-chairs, their opera hats suspended between their legs—idiotic and with faces empty of expression!
At one time, it is true, the appearance of Alice Bachellery on the stage wakes up and enlivens the audience; a struggling bunch of curious people assails each of the two doors of the hall in order to see the little diva in her short skirt on the platform, her mouth half open and her long lashes quivering as if with surprise at seeing all this multitude.
“Chaud! chaud! les p’tits pains d’ gruau!” hum the young club-men as they imitate the low-lived gesture that accompanies the end of her refrain. Old gentlemen belonging to the University approach, trembling all over, and turning their good ear toward her, in order not to lose a bitof the fashionable vulgarity. So there is a disappointment when, in her somewhat shrill and limited voice, the little pastry-cook’s boy begins to produce one of the grand airs from “Alceste,” prompted by Mme. Vauters, who is encouraging her from the flies. Then the faces fall and the black coats disperse and begin once more their wandering with all the more freedom, now that the Minister is not watching them; for he has slipped off to the end of the last drawing-room on the arm of M. de Boë, who is quite stunned by the honor accorded him.
Eternal infancy of Love! What though you may have twenty years of law at the Palace of Justice behind you and fifteen years on the Bench; what though you may be sufficiently master of yourself to preserve in the midst of the most agitated assemblies and most ferocious interruptions the fixed idea and the cold-bloodedness of a gull that is fishing in the heart of a storm—nevertheless, if passion shall once enter into your life, you will find yourself the feeblest among the feeble, trembling and cowardly to the point of hanging desperately to the arm of some fool, rather than listen bravely to the slightest criticism of your idol.
“Excuse me—I must leave you—here is theentr’acte—” and the Minister hurries away, casting the youngmaître des requêtesback into that original obscurity of his from which he shall never emerge again. The crowd struggles toward the sideboards; the relieved expression on the faces of all these unfortunate listeners, who have atlast regained the right to move and speak, is sufficient to make Numa believe that his littleprotégéehas just won a tremendous success. People press about him and felicitate him—“Divine! Delicious!” But there is nobody to talk positively to him about the thing that interests him, so that at last he grabs hold of Cadaillac, who is passing near him, walking sidewise and splitting the human stream with his enormous shoulder as a lever.
“Well? well? How did you like her?”
“Why, whom do you mean?”
“The little girl,” said Numa in a tone which he tries to make perfectly indifferent. The other man, who is good enough at fencing, comprehends at once and says without blenching:
“A revelation!”
The lover flushes up as if he were twenty years old—as when, at the Café Malmus, “everybody’s old girl” pressed his foot under the table.
“Then—you think that at the opera—?”
“No sort of question!—but she would have to have a good one to put her on the stage,” said Cadaillac with his silent laugh. And while the Minister rushes off to congratulate Mlle. Alice, the “good one to put her on the stage” continues his march in the direction of the buffet which can be seen, framed by an enormous mirror without a border, at the end of a drawing-room which is all brown and gilded woodwork. Notwithstanding the severity of the hangings and the impudent and pompous air of the butlers, who are certainly chosen from University men who have missedtheir examination, at this spot the nasty tempers and boredom have disappeared in front of the enormous counter crammed with delicate glasses, fruits and pyramids of sandwiches; humanity has regained its rights and these evil looks give way to attitudes of desire and voracity. Through the narrowest space that remains open between two busts or between two heads bending over toward the bit of salmon or chicken wing on their little plate, an arm intrudes, attempting to seize a tumbler or fork or roll of bread, scraping off rice powder on shoulders or on a black sleeve or a brilliant, crude uniform. People chatter and grow animated, eyes glitter, laughter rises under the influence of the foaming wines. A thousand bits of speech cross each other—interrupted remarks, answers to questions already forgotten. In one corner one hears little screams of indignation: “What a brute! How disgusting!” about the scientist Béchut, that enemy of women, who is going on reviling the weaker sex. Then a quarrel among musicians. “But, my dear fellow, beware—you are denying altogether the increase of thequinte.”
“Is it really true she is only sixteen?”
“Sixteen years of the cask and some few extra years of the bottle.”
“Mayol!—O, come now! Mayol!—finished, empty! and to think that the opera gives two thousand francs every night to that thing!”
“Yes, but he has to spend a thousand francs of seats to get his auditorium warm, and then, on thesly, Cadaillac gets all the rest of it away from him playing écarté.”
“Bordeaux!—chocolate!—champagne!—”
“—will have to come and explain himself before the commission.”
“—by raising the ruche a little with bows of white satin.”
In another part of the house Mlle. Le Quesnoy, closely surrounded by friends, recommends her tabor player to a foreign correspondent with an impudent head as flat as that of achoumacreand begs him not to leave before the end of the play; she scolds Méjean, who is not supporting her properly, and calls him a false Southerner, afranciotand a renegade. In the group near by a political discussion has started. One mouth opens in a hateful way with foam about the teeth and says, chewing on the words as if they were musket balls and he would like to poison them:
“Whatever exists in the most destructive of demagogies—”
“—Marat the conservative!” said a voice—but the rest of the sentence was lost in a confused noise of conversations mixed with clattering of plates and glasses, which the coppery tones of Roumestan’s voice all of a sudden dominated: “Ladies! hurry, ladies!—or you will miss the sonata infa!”
There is a silence as of the dead. Then the long procession of trailing trains begins to cross the drawing-room and settle itself once more into the rows of chairs. The women have that despairingface one sees on captives who are returned to prison after an hour’s walk in the open fields. And so the concertos and symphonies follow each other, note after note. Handsome Mayol begins again to draw out that intangible note of his and Mme. Vauters to touch again the loosened cords of her voice. All of a sudden a sign of life appears, a movement of curiosity, just as it was a little while ago when the small Mlle. Bachellery made her entrance. It is the tabor-player Valmajour, the apparition of that proud peasant, his soft felt hat over one ear, his red belt around his waist and his plainsman’s jacket on one shoulder. It was an idea of Audiberte’s, an instinct in her natural feminine taste, to dress him in this way in order to give him greater effect in the midst of all the black coats. Well, well, at last, this at least is new and unexpected—this long tabor which hangs to the arm of the musician, the little fife on which his fingers move hither and yon, and the charming airs to the double music whose movement, rousing and lively, gives a moire-like shiver of awakening to the satin of those lovely shoulders! That worn-out public is delighted with these songs of morning, so fresh and embalmed with country fragrances—these ballads of Old France.
“Bravo! Bravo! Encore!”
And when, with a large and victorious rhythm which the orchestra accompanies in a low note, he attacks the “March of Turenne,” deepening and supporting his somewhat shrill instrument, the success is wild. He has to come back twice, ten times,being applauded first of all by Numa, whom this solitary success has warmed completely and who now takes credit to himself for this “fancy of the ladies.” He tells them how he discovered this genius, explains the great mystery of the fife with three holes and gives various details concerning the ancient castle of the Valmajours.
“Then he really is called Valmajour?”
“Certainly—belongs to the Princes des Baux—he is the last of the line.”
And so this legend starts, scatters, expands, enlarges and becomes at last a regular novel by George Sand.
“I have theparshemintsat my house,” corroborates Bompard in a tone which permits of no question.
But in the midst of all this worldly enthusiasm more or less fabricated there is one little heart which is moved, one young head which is completely intoxicated and takes all these bravos and fables seriously. Without speaking a word, without even applauding, her eyes fixed and lost, her long, supple figure following in the balancing motion of a dream the bars of the heroic march, Hortense finds herself once more down there in Provence on the high terrace overlooking the sun-baked plain, whilst her musician plays for her a morning greeting, as if to one of those ladies in the Courts of Love, and then sticks her pomegranate flower on his tabor with a savage grace. This recollection moves her delightfully, and leaning her head on her sister’s shoulder she murmurs very low: “O, how happyI am!” uttering it with a deep and true accent which Rosalie does not notice at once, but which later on shall become more definite in her memory and shall haunt her like the stammered news of some misfortune.
“Eh! bé!My good Valmajour, didn’t I tell you? What a success!—eh?” cried Roumestan in the little drawing-room where a stand-up supper was being served for the performers. As to this success, the other stars of the concert considered it a bit exaggerated. Mme. Vauters, who was seated in readiness to leave while she waited for her carriage, concealed her spite in a great big cape of lace filled with violent perfumes, while handsome Mayol, standing in front of the buffet, showing in his back his slack nerves and weariness by a peculiar gesture, tore to pieces with the greatest ferocity a poor little plover and imagined that he had the tabor-player under his knife. But little Bachellery did not stoop to any such bad temper. In the midst of a group of young fops, laughing, fluttering and digging her little white teeth into a ham sandwich, like a schoolboy assailed by the hunger of a growing child, she played her game of infancy. She tried to make music on Valmajour’s fife.
“Just see, M’sieur le ministre!”
Then, noticing Cadaillac behind his Excellency, with a sharp twirl of her feet she advanced her forehead like that of a little girl for him to kiss.
“Howdy, uncle!—”
It was a relationship purely fantastic such as they adopt behind the scenes.
“What a make-believe madcap!” grunted the “right man to put one on the stage” behind his white moustache, but not in too loud a voice, because in all probability she was going to become one of his pensioners and a most influential pensioner.
Valmajour stood erect before the chimneypiece with a fatuous air, surrounded by a crowd of women and journalists. The foreign correspondent put his questions to him brutally, not at all in that hypocritical tone he used when interrogating ministers in special audiences; but, without being troubled in the least thereby, the peasant answered him with the stereotyped account his lips were used to: “It all come to me in the night while I listened me to thenightingawlessingin’—”
He was interrupted by Mlle. Le Quesnoy, who offered him a glass of wine and a plate heaped up with good things especially for him.
“How do you do? You see this time I myself am bringing you thegrand-boire.” She had made her speech for a purpose, but he answered her with a slight nod of the head, and, pointing to the chimneypiece, said “All right, all right, put it down there,” and went on with his story.
“So, what the birrud of the Lord could do with one hole....” Without being discouraged, Hortense waited to the end and then spoke to him about his father and his sister.
“She will be very much delighted, will she not?”
“O, yes; it has gone pretty well.”
With a silly smile he stroked his moustache while looking about him with restless eyes. He had been told that the director of the opera desired to make him an offer and he was on the watch for him afar, feeling even at this early moment the jealousy of an actor and astonished that anybody could spend so much time with that good-for-nothing little singing-girl. Filled with his own thoughts, he took no trouble to answer the beautiful young girl standing before him, her fan in her hand, in that pretty, half-audacious attitude which the habit of society gives. But she loved him better as he was, disdainful and cold toward everything which was not his art; she admired him for accepting loftily the compliments which Cadaillac poured upon him with his off-hand roundness:
“Yes, I tell you ... yes, indeed!... I tell you exactly what I mean ... great deal of talent ... very original, very new; I hope no other theatre save the Opera shall have your first appearance.... I must find some occasion to bring you forward. From to-day on, consider yourself as one of the House!”
Valmajour thought of the paper with the government stamp on it which he had in the pocket of his jacket; but the other man, just as if he divined the thought that possessed him, stretched out his supple hand: “There, that engages us both, my dear fellow;” and pointing out Mayol and Mme. Vauters—who were luckily occupied elsewhere, for they would have laughed too loud—he continued:
“Ask your comrades what the given word of Cadaillac means!” At this he turned on his heel and went back into the ball.
Now it had become a party which had spread into less crowded but more animated rooms, and the fine orchestra was taking its revenge for three hours of classical music by giving waltzes of the purest Viennese variety. The lofty personages and solemn people having left, the floors now belonged to the young people, those maniacs of pleasure who dance for the love of dancing and for the intoxication of flying hair and swimming eyes and trains whipped round about their feet. But even then politics could not lose its rights and the fusion dreamt of by Roumestan did not take place. Even of the two rooms where they danced one of them belonged to the Left Centre and the other to the White, a flower de luce White without a stain, in spite of the efforts Hortense made to bind the two camps together! Much sought out as the sister-in-law of the Minister and daughter of the Chief Judge, she saw about her big marriage portion and her influential connections a perfect flock of waistcoats with their hearts outside.
While dancing with her, Lappara, greatly excited, declared that His Excellency had permitted him—but just there the waltz ended and she left him without listening to the rest and came toward Méjean, who did not dance and yet could not make up his mind to leave.
“What a face you make, most solemn man, man most reasonable!”
He took her by the hand: “Sit down here; I have something to say to you—by the authority of my Minister—”
Very much overcome, he smiled, and while noting the trembling of his lips Hortense understood and rose very quickly.
“No, no, not this evening—I can listen to nothing—I am dancing—”
She flew away on the arm of Rochemaure, who had just come to fetch her for the cotillion. He too was very much taken; just in order to imitate Lappara, the good young fellow ventured to pronounce a word which caused her to break out in a gale of gayety that went whirling with her round the entire room, and when the shawl figure was finished she went over toward her sister and whispered in her ear:
“Here we are in a nice mess! Here is Numa, who has promised me to each of his three secretaries!”
“Which one are you going to take?”
Her answer was cut short by the rolling of the tabor.
“The farandole! The farandole!”
It was a surprise for his guests from the Minister—the farandole to close the cotillion—the South to the last go! and so—zou!But how do people dance it? Hands meet each other and join and the two dancing-rooms come together this time. Bompard gravely explains: “This is the way, young ladies,” and he cuts a caper.
And then, with Hortense at its head, the farandoleunrolls itself across the long rows of rooms, followed by Valmajour playing with a superb solemnity, proud of his success and of the looks which his masculine and robust figure in that original costume earn for him.
“Isn’t he beautiful!” cried Roumestan, “isn’t he handsome! a regular Greek shepherd!”
From room to room the rustic dance, more and more crowded and lively, follows and chases the spectre of Frayssinous. Reawakened to life by these airs from the ancient time, the figures on the great tapestries, copied from the pictures of Boucher and Lancret, agitate themselves and the little naked backs of the cupids who are rolling about along the frieze take on a movement in the eyes of the dancers as of a rushing hunt as wild and crazy as their own.
Away down there at the end of the vista Cadaillac has edged up to the buffet with a plate and a glass of wine in his hand; he listens, eats and drinks, penetrated to the very centre of his scepticism by that sudden heat of joy:
“Just remember this, my boy,” said he to Boissaric, “you must always remain to the end at a ball. The women are prettier in their moist pallor, which does not reach the point of fatigue any more than that little white line there at the windows has reached the point of being daylight. There is a little music in the air, some dust that smells nicely, a semi-intoxication which refines a sensation and which one ought to savor as one eats a hot chicken wing washed down with champagnefrappé.—There! just look at that, will you.”
Behind the big mirror without a frame the farandole was lengthening out, with all arms stretched, into a chain alternate of black and light notes softened by the disorder of the toilets and hair and the mussiness that comes from two hours’ dancing.
“Isn’t that pretty, eh?—And the bully boy at the end there, isn’t he smart!” Then he added coldly, as he put down his glass:
“All the same, he will never make a cent.”