CHAPTER LXVI
Which has to do with the Great Orgy of Youth
“Suzanne!”
The shout rang through the great hall of the Moulin Rouge; and the vast crowd of dancing revellers, dressed in fancy dress, stopped their dancing and crowded towards the wide-flung doors that gave entrance from the gardens.
The leader of the orchestra hurried the jigging mazurka to an end, and, with blare of the crashing chords that in music stand for finality, ceased playing the dance-music. He tapped for silence amongst the ranks of the musicians and held out hushing hands. He stood up, turned and glanced at the great tribune of the twelve judges, saw that, arrayed in their splendid robes, they had taken their seats; saw, too, that the gorgeous stream of colour and glittering armour was moving in mass of revellers towards the great doors of the garden entrance:
“The cavalcade!” he grunted.
There was a fluttering of white sheets of paper. Settling himself in his seat, he tapped for attention, swung his baton, and with resulting crash the orchestra burst into the thundering music of a triumphal march.
“Suzanne!”
The shout went up from the hoarse throats of a thousand fantastically-robed students, sounding vibrant in the golden haze and echoing in the blaze of light to the resounding rafters. They drew their swords, Greek and Roman, and they of the courts of the Louis, Crusader and Saracen, and Goth and barbarian; the flashing steel greeted her:
“Suzanne!”
Upon a golden shield, supported high above all heads by four of the most famous models of Paris, she came, her white body statuesque and calm; gleaming rosy-tinted, she stood poised in all her slender beauty—and as the shout went up she smiled.
“Suzanne!”
She knew it well. She was in all the beauty of youth—and her perfect body not only held the glory of the ancient art of the sculpture of Greece, but it had the exquisite mystery of life in its pleasant surface which the art of man cannot utter.
So Suzanne led the procession round the huge hall and was borne towards the tribune where the judges sat.
After the queen of the models came the procession of the rival studios. From amidst the crested helms and glittering steel of Greek and Roman soldiery arose the great figure of the war-goddess Bellona, the fury standing a-tiptoe, sword and shield upraised, head thrust forward snake-like, her scarlet mouth shrieking at topmost pitch the fierce yell to war, her black brows gathered in black hate; before her feet an angry snake, with head upraised, darted a black sullen tongue. As the great travesty of Gérôme’s awful figure of the lust of blood moved along, there shone from out the hollows of her staring eyes a pale green light, cruel and livid. On her gilt chariot she passed, escorted by her bodyguard of Greek and Roman soldiery, and gave place to the classic float on which sat the nude young model, Marcelle, posed as Gérôme’s exquisite statue of Tanagra. Marcelle’s slight and slender girlish figure at this time made her a serious rival to Suzanne, and was markedly affecting the whole ideal of womanly beauty and proportion throughout the studios of France. As she sat, in all the simplicity of pose of a Tanagra figure, the light making her delicate colour glow, the cry of hoarse admiration for Bellona changed to a shout for
“Tanagra!”
And shout of Tanagra gave way to
“Marcelle!”
The swords flashed.
Gérôme’s students passed, giving place to other schools, each in its pageant striving to express the ideals of the art which inspired its chosen master. The rude groups of the barbaric men who wore but the shaggy skins of animals; the wild groups of Merovingian and Carlovingian Franks; the dandified figures of the bewigged and heavy-booted court of the great Louis; the powdered and patched and silken-habited gentlemen of the last Louis; the large-lapelled, long-tail-coated and high-stocked dandies of the Revolution: they all passed with their triumphal cars, and drew the loud acclamations of the boisterous revellers.
The splendid procession circled round the great hall, passed the tribune of the judges to the thrash of the martial music; round and round again. But amidst the frantic din it was soon known that Gérôme’s students had won the honours of the night.
As the gladiators and warriors passed the judges’ tribune the last time before the procession broke up to join the revellers, the twelve judges stood up in solemn silence, and saluted the goddess of war and the exquisite figure of the young woman who sat in all the triumph of her beauty.
They stood whilst Gérôme’s students passed. And as they so stood in strange dignity, the emblems of imperial Rome above them, the battle-axes bound in faggots, and the mottoDeath to Tyrantsemblazoned between, as they so stood beneath the row of heads that dripped the blood of the dead tyrants, there floated across the ages some whisper of the eternal struggle of life, of thesurvival of the fittest, and of the crowning mystery of the incarnation of man through the beauty of woman....
As the clocks struck three, there was a rush of revellers towards the procession of waiters who appeared in white aprons carrying chairs and tables and plates and glasses.
In a trice the place was a great banqueting-hall, white with the napery of a hundred tables.
The students collected about the boards of their different studios, thundering for supper with fist-banged poundings upon the tables, and the singing of songs; which gave way to a roar of applause when the army of waiters reappeared laden with wine and the dishes of the feast. And as they ran backwards and forwards, their white aprons flying, there was the clink of glass amid the babel of a thousand tongues, and the clatter and roar of merry-making.
When Gérôme’s students arose from their table in a body, and the company of gladiators and Greek and Roman soldiery moved in an orderly array towards the judges’ tribune, they were greeted with thunders of applause, which burst out again on their return, laden with the prize of victory, bottles of wine.
They swept round to their tables; and, opening their ranks, took possession of their seats. The massier rapped upon the table, and called for silence.
Standing before them, statuesque in a splendid girdle with the embroidered cloth hanging therefrom before and behind, stood Suzanne, jewels glittering in her ruddy hair.
They all stood up and greeted her with a shout.
The massier filled a glass:
“To the queen—the victors!” he cried.
They all drank to her.
As they sat down, she leaped lightly upon the table; stooped down; took up a bottle of champagne in each hand, and flinging wide the amber wine for baptism of victory over the encircling students, she threw the empty bottle from her. She laughed with mischievous glee, sent the glass and china flying with sandaled foot, to clear a space upon the table, and, raising the bottle, bathed her bare shoulders in the foaming wine before the assembled company.
There was a call for a dance—and the orchestra striking up the quaint pulsing music of a Moorish measure, Suzanne, her feet stepping it upon the snow-white tablecloth, swung her graceful way through a strange haunting dance of Arabia.
With slow step and dainty feet that never hurried, the beautiful young woman strutted, in pride of her body’s perfection, upon the white carpet of the tablecloth.
In the shout of applause that greeted her, she skipped deftly from the table, flung herself upon Noll’s knees, held up his face, kissed him, and with “Thou handsome Englishman!” she laughed, put him gaily from her, proudly went her way, and was lost in the tumultuous throng.
Noll laughed embarrassedly.
She had set the fashion; on to the tables leaped a score of models, in fancy dress, and danced among the glasses; the great revel proceeding with riot and feasting and boisterous merriment.
In the midst of the whirlwind moved Gaston Latour, disguised in his usual affectation of lugubrious and melancholy seriousness. He went arrayed as Midnight Alarms—for trousers he wore a white shirt, his legs solemnly thrust through the sleeves, the cuffs fastened about his ankles with enormous brooches for gaudy sleeve-links, enormous naked indiarubber feet strapped on for boots. This symbolism of hurried midnight dressing was further insisted upon by the lady’s stays that bound the shirt’s tails about his waist, his shoulders bare, save for the great hunting-horn over his chest, and a fireman’s bucket strapped to the top of his head. The pretty little model who was with him, dressed solely in a pair of shoes and Gaston’s corduroy trousers, the braces holding them up, strapped over her white shoulders, replenished this bucket on his head during the evening with heel-taps from the wine-glasses, so that whilst talking confidentially to anyone, Gaston gradually lowered his head until the liquor splashed down upon their faces and trickled down the front of them—a result greeted by Gaston with a loud triumphant blare on the horn.
Gérôme’s students had drawn their tables into a semicircle; and before the centre table, where the massier sat, were two young Frenchmen in the armour of Roman lictors; they were holding up Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott under the armpits, whilst he, dressed as Narcissus, with a bath towel strapped round his loins, and daffodils in his hair, was drunkenly attempting to make a speech.
He showed signs of going to sleep, spite of the occasional shaking up by the lictors; so, amidst loud laughter, they all held out their hands, thumbs down, and Gaston Latour advancing from his seat with a soup-tureen, poured a libation of soup over his hair, and as it trickled down his stupid pallid features, clapped the tureen on his head; the lictors carried him away and laid him upon the floor amongst a heap of black bottles, where he settled to uneasy rest, and mumbled into sleep....
Noll, his strong clean-cut features and his virile youth enhanced by the severe lines of the Roman helmet with its great framing steel cheek-pieces, and his well-set body and his shins glittering in the steel breast-plate and greaves of a classic warrior, sat at the outermost table of the semicircle. Beside him sat Madelaine, her white shoulders gleaming as she nestled close to him in the low-bodiced grey silk dress with great hooped skirt of Velasquez’s infantas. Babette, who sat at her other hand, had seized upon her early in the evening (taking her away without ceremony from Ffolliott, who was even then in a fuddled state from wine-bibbing), and Babette had sternly kept the girl by her side throughout the resulting riot. Indeed, the girl had not needed much compulsion, for she clung to Babette anxiously, and alittle frightened. She was intoxicated with the whirl of her first ball; and she was very weary of Ffolliott. She was a little excited with wine, to which she was not accustomed. She was a little alarmed about Ffolliott—she had been flattered by his attention and proud of having caught his eyes a few days before; she had been thrilled at the prospect of the gown and still more by the gift of the silken stuff for its making—and, when she had stood in it before the mirror, she had realized her wondrous beauty, which it seemed to have suddenly enhanced and brought to view.
Noll touched her hand:
“Madelaine,” said he—“who gave you that dress?”
“That beast!”
She pointed to the drunken figure of Ffolliott, where he slumbered amongst the bottles. “He shall have it back to-morrow—I hate him,” she said passionately; and she leaned against Noll and nestled close to him.
Babette leant over her and whispered to Noll:
“Leave her so. When the procession forms to start for the march to the Latin Quarter, I will take her with me,” she said. And she added gently: “I will watch over her as Betty has watched over me.”
She sighed sadly, and putting her elbow on the table and her chin in the pink palm of her hand, she got a-brooding.
Horace Malahide, in the midst of laughter that greeted a sally of Gaston Latour’s, turned to her. He leaned over to her, and looked into her eyes:
“Babette! serious! and here!”
A tear fell, and she let it fall unheeding.
Horace put his arm about her slender shoulders:
“What, Babette! Has Noll been preaching a sermon?”
She smiled sadly, stroked his cheek, and, drawing down his face to her, she kissed him. He looked such a splendid sunny fellow in his Roman armour:
“No, dear heart,” she whispered—“I, Babette, have been preaching the sermon.”
Horace laughed....
Thus they feasted, danced, and sang until the golden yellow lights of the great hall paled and became but flickering ghosts of flame as the sapphire shadow of the night passed away in blue and purple and lilac before the white dawn. But the students danced on into the daylight....
At last the musicians came down to the floor, and bursting into a triumphant march, the vast crowd of revellers formed into procession, and streamed out after the music into the fresh air of the early morning.
In the streets the early concierges that stood yawning at their gates, stopped their clacking tongues, cut short their scandals, and gaped at the din; the street-sweepers rested from their sordid calling; rag-pickers from their grimy traffic amongst the dust-bins—for an invading army, gorgeously apparelled, was takingpossession of Paris, swarming down her thoroughfares in triumphal splendour, and Bellona, goddess of war, thundered and rattled and swayed behind, dragged at the tail of the frantic riot. Street after street, the sleepy city awoke uneasily and put drowsy heads out of window, vaguely fearful of catastrophe and dread that the devil of revolution had taken possession of the place.
As the stream of revellers poured down the heights, they seized all cabs, and putting their helmets on the heads of the protesting coachmen, Greek warriors danced wildly on the tops of the cabs, adding the rattle of wheels and the cracking of whips to the din.
With shout and yell they captured a number of great drays laden with stone, and pulling down the drivers from their seats and dispossessing the teamsters, Roman charioteers took the reins and sent the great horses trotting and pounding clumsily along at the tail of the gay procession, adding the thunder of their passage to the tumult.
With song and yell and laughter and skylarking and jovial horseplay, they burst upon the great square of the Opera, swarmed up the broad steps, and setting the band in their midst, they took hands and danced in a mighty circle round and round the place....
They got moving again, in gorgeous procession, and headed towards the Louvre, singing student songs, and cheering.
Gaston Latour curdled the blood of passing cabmen by running out into the road and letting the wheels run over his great indiarubber feet whilst he yelled in simulated agony. He then threw himself upon the breast of policemen, and wept bitterly over their shoulders—whilst he chalked innuendos across their backs.
With colours flying, band playing, and gorgeous battle-standards swaying on high, with glint of spears and gleam of armour, the noisy throng passed through the arches of the old-world palace of the Louvre and surged into the courtyard, bringing back for awhile some hint of its ancient magnificence.
The sun arose out of the morning over the edge of the city, painting with golden glory her heights and upper places, and the great towers of Notre Dame blushed in his dazzling magnificence, as, with song and shout and laughter, the youths crossed the river into the Latin Quarter; and the old quays rang to their merriment as it has echoed for generations to the familiar riot and reckless feet of the studentry of this most illustrious university of the world.
Up the narrow way of the road that is called Buonaparte the resounding clamour went, until the great gates of the schools of the Beaux Arts opened and swallowed the gay procession that trooped into its court—the gates swung together with a loud clang, and the orgy spent itself within the staid precincts of the old courtyard that is set about on its several sides with classic columns and the faded stateliness of ancient palaces.
Noll halted outside the gates, saw them shut, and took his wayhomewards to his high garret; and, as he went, his dress of a Roman soldier, that had been so appropriate a part of the night’s frolic, suddenly became incongruous and ridiculous; and the cold clear morning’s light brought a shrewd suspicion that of late he had been at best somewhat of a tomfool. He mounted the steps to his garret weary of all this riot—and there came upon him a sense of loneliness.
Ay, Noll, to what end has been all this frantic skipping?
Ah, youth! that ever plays the gadabout amidst the strenuous tomfooleries, with eager chasing of the wild-goose, whilst through lavish wanton fingers slip unrealized the essential things of life! Even so did the young Adam, as gossips say, toss away the title-deeds of Paradise that he might but take a bite at an untried apple.