In and out of Three Normandy Inns

by Anna Bowman Dodd

CHAPTER XXII.

A NINETEENTH-CENTURY BREAKFAST.

The very next morning, after the rain, and the vision I had had of Madame de Sévigné, conjured up by my surroundings and the reading of her letters, Monsieur Paul paid us an early call. He came to beg the loan of our sitting-room, he said. He had had a despatch from a coaching-party from Trouville; they were to arrive for breakfast. The whip and owner of the coach was a great friend of his, he proffered by way of explanation—a certain count who had a genius for friendship—one who also had an artist's talent for admiring the beautiful. He was among those who were in a state of perpetual adoration before the inn's perfections. He made yearly pilgrimages from his chateau above Rouen to eat a noon breakfast in the Chambre des Marmousets. Now, a breakfast served elsewhere than in this chamber would be, from his point of view, to have journeyed to a shrine to find the niche empty. The gift that was begged of us, therefore, was the loan for a few hours of the famous little room.

In less than a half hour we were watching the entrance of the coach by the side of Madame Le Mois. We were all three seated on the green bench.

Faintly at first, and presently gaining in distinctness, came the fall of horses' hoofs and the rumble of wheels along the highway. A little cavalcade was soon passing beneath the archway. First there dashed in two horsemen, who had sprung to the ground almost as soon as their steeds' hoofs struck the paved court-yard. Then there swept by a jaunty dog cart, driven by a mannish figure radiantly robed in white. Swiftly following came the dash and jingle of four coach-horses, bathed in sweat, rolling the vehicle into the court as if its weight were a thing of air. All save one among the gay party seated on the high seats, were too busy with themselves and their chatter, to take heed of their surroundings. A lady beneath her deep parasol was busily engaged in a gay traffic of talk with the groups of men peopling the back seats of the coach. One of the men, however, was craning his neck beyond the heads of his companions; he was running his eye rapidly up and down the long inn facade. Finally his glance rested on us; and then, with a rush, a deep red mounted the man's cheek, as he tore off his derby to wave it, as if in a triumph of discovery. Renard had been true to his promise. He had come to see his friends and to test the famous Sauterne. He flung himself down from his lofty perch to take his seat, entirely as a matter of course, beside us on the green bench.

"What luck, hey?—greatest luck in the world, finding you in, like this. I've been in no end of a tremble, fearing you'd gone to Caen, or Falaise, or somewhere, and that I shouldn't see you after all. Well, how are you? How goes it? What do you think of old Dives and Monsieur Paul, and the rest of it? I see you're settled; you took the palace chamber. Trust American women—they know the best, and get it."

"But these people, who are they, and how did you—?" We were unfeignedly glad to see him, but curiosity is a passion not to be trifled with—after a month in the provinces.

"Oh—the De Troisacs? Old friends of mine—known them years. Jolly lot. Charming fellow, De Troisac—only good Frenchman I've ever known. They're just off their yacht; saw them all yesterday at the Trouville Casino. Said they were running down here for breakfast to-day, asked me, and I came, of course." He laughed as he added: "I said I should come, you remember, to get some of that Sauterne. A man will go any distance for a good bottle of wine, you know."

Meanwhile, in the court-yard, the party on the coach, by means of ladders and the helping of the grooms, were scrambling down from their seats. Renard's friend, the Comte de Troisac, was easily picked out from the group of men. He was the elder of the party—stoutish, with frank eyes and a smiling mouth; he was bustling about from the gaunt grooms to the ladder, and from ladder to the coach-seat, giving his commands right and left, and executing most of them himself. A tall, slim woman, with drooping eyelids, and an air of extreme elegance and of cultivated fatigue, was also easily recognizable as the countess. It took two grooms, two of the gentlemen guests, and her husband to assist her to the ground. Her passage down the steps of the ladder had been long enough, however, to enable her to display a series of pretty poses, each one more effective than the others. When one has an instep of ideal elevation, what is the use of being born a Frenchwoman, unless one knows how to make use of opportunity?

From the dog-cart, that had rattled in across the cobbles with a dash and a spurt, there came quite a different accent and pose. The whitish personage, whom we had mistakenly supposed to be a man, wore petticoats; the male attire only held as far as the waist of the lady. The stiff white shirt-front, the knotted tie—a faultless male knot—the loose driving-jacket, with its sprig of white geranium, and the round straw-hat worn in mannish fashion, close to the level brows, was a costume that would have deceived either sex. Below the jacket flowed the straight lines of a straight skirt, that no further conjectures should be rendered necessary. This lady had a highbred air of singular distinction, accentuated by a tremendously knowing look. She was at once elegant and rakish; the gamin in her was obviously the touch of caviare to season the woman of fashion. The mixture made an extraordinarily attractive ensemble. As she jumped to the ground, throwing her reins to a groom, her jump was a master-stroke; it landed her squarely on her feet; even as she struck the ground her hands were thrust deeply into her pockets. The man seated beside her, who now leaped out after her, seemed timid and awkward by contrast with her alert precision. This couple moved at once toward the bench on which madame was seated. With the coming in of the coach and the cart she had risen, waddling forward to meet the party. Monsieur Paul was at the coach-wheels before the grooms had shot themselves down; De Troisac, with eager friendliness, stretched forth a hand from the top of his seat, exclaiming, with gay heartiness, "Ah, mon bon—comment ça va?"

The mere was as eagerly greeted. Even the countess dismissed her indifference for the moment, as she held out her hand to Madame Le Mois.

"Dear Madame Le Mois—and it goes well with you? And the gout and the rheumatism, they have ceased to torment you? Quelle bonne nouvelle! And here are the dear old cocks and the wounded bantam. The cockatoos—ah, there they are, still swinging in the air! Comme c'est joli—et frais—et que ça sent bon!"

Madame and Monsieur Paul were equally effusive in their inquiries and exclamations—it was clearly a meeting of old friends. Madame Le Mois' face was meanwhile a study. The huge surface was glistening with pleasure; she was unfeignedly glad to see these Parisians:—but there was no elation at this meeting on such easy terms with greatness. Her shrewdness was as alive as ever; she was about to make money out of the visit—they were to have of her best, but they must pay for it. Between her rapid fire of questionings as to the countess's health and the history of her travels, there was as rapid a shower of commands, sometimes shouted out, above all the hubbub, to the cooks standing gaping in the kitchen doorway, or whispered hoarsely to Ernestine and Marianne, who were flying about like wild pigeons, a little drunk with the novelty of this first breakfast of the season.

"Allons, mon enfant—cours—cours—get thy linen, my child, and the silver candélabres. It is to be laid in the Marmousets, thou knowest. Paul will come presently. And the salads, pluck them and bring them in to me—cours—cours."

The great world was all very well, and it was well to be on friendly, even intimate terms, with it; but, Dieu! one's own bread is of importance too! And the countess, for all her delicacy, was a bonne fourchette.

The countess and her friend, after a moment of standing in the court-yard, of patting the pelican, of trying their blandishments on the flamingo, of catching up the bantam, and filling the air with their purring, and caressing, and incessant chatter, passed beneath the low door to the inner sanctum of madame. The two ladies were clearly bent on a few moments of unreserved gossip and that repairing of the toilet which is a religious act to women of fashion the world over.

In the court-yard the scene was still a brilliant one. The gayly painted coach was now deserted. It stood, a chariot of state, as it were, awaiting royalty; its yellow sides gleamed like topaz in the sun. The grooms were unharnessing the leaders, that were still bathed in the white of their sweat. The count's dove-colored flannels were a soft mass against the snow of the chef's apron and cap; the two were in deep consultation at the kitchen door. Monsieur Paul was showing, with all the absorption of the artist, his latest Jumièges carvings to the taller, more awkward of the gentlemen, to the one driven in by the mannish beauty.

The cockatoos had not ceased shrieking from the very beginning of the hubbub; nor had the squirrels stopped running along the bars of their cage, a-flutter with excitement. The peacocks trailed their trains between the coach-wheels, announcing, squawkingly, their delight at the advent of a larger audience. Above the cries of the fowls and the shrieks of the cocks, the chatter of human tongues, the subdued murmur of the ladies' voices coming through the open lattice, and the stamp of horses' hoofs, there swept above it all the light June breeze, rustling in the vines, shaking the thick branches against the wooden facades.

The two ladies soon made their appearance in the sunlit court-yard. The murmur of their talk and their laughter reached us, along with the froufrou of their silken petticoats.

"You were not bored, chère enfant, driving Monsieur d'Agreste all that long distance?"

The countess was smiling tenderly into her companion's face. She had stopped her to readjust the geranium sprig that was drooping in her friend's cover-coat. The smile was the smile of a sympathizing angel, but what a touch of hidden malice there was in the notes of her caressing voice! As she repinned the boutonnière, she gave the dancing eyes, that were brimming with the mirth of the coming retort, the searching inquest of her glance.

"Bored! Dieu, que non!" The black little beauty threw back her throat, laughing, as she rolled her great eyes. "Bored—with all the tricks I was playing? Fernande! pity me, there was such a little time, and so much to do!"

"So little time—only fourteen kilos!" The countess compressed her lips; they were smiling no longer.

"Ah, but you see, I had so much to combat. You had a whole season, last summer, in which to play your game, your solemn game." Here the gay young widow rippled forth a pearly scale of treble laughter. "And I have had only a week, thus far!"

"Yes, but what time you make!"

And this time both ladies laughed, although, still, only one laughed well.

"Ah! those women—how they love each other," commented Renard, as he sat on the bench, swinging his legs, with his eyes following the two vanishing figures. "Only women who are intimate—Parisian intimates—can cut to the bone like that, with a surgeon's dexterity."

He explained then that the handsome brunette was a widow, a certain Baronne d'Autun, noted for her hunting and her conquests; the last on the latter list was Monsieur d'Agreste, a former admirer of the countess; he was somewhat famous as a scientist and socialist, so good a socialist as to refuse to wear his title of duke. The other two gentlemen of the party, who had joined them now, the two horsemen, were the Comtes de Mirant and de Fonbriant. These latter were two typical young swells of the Jockey Club model; their vacant, well-bred faces wore the correct degree of fashionable pallor, and their manners appeared to be also as perfect as their glances were insolent.

Into these vacant faces the languid countess was breathing the inspiration of her smile. Enigmatic as was the latter, it was as simple as an infant's compared to the occult character of her glance. A wealth of complexities lay enfolded in the deep eyes, rimmed with their mystic darkened circlet—that circle in which the Parisienne frames her experience, and through which she pleads to have it enlarged!

A Frenchwoman and cosmetics! Is there any other combination on this round earth more suggestive of the comedy of high life, of its elegance and of its perfidy, of its finish and of its emptiness?

The men of the party wore costumes perilously suggestive of Opera Bouffe models. Their fingers were richly begemmed; their watch-chains were laden with seals and charms. Any one of the costumes was such as might have been chosen by a tenor in which to warble effectively to a soubrette on the boards of a provincial theatre; and it was worn by these fops of the Jockey Club with the air of its being the last word in nautical fashions. Better than their costumes were their voices; for what speech from human lips pearls itself off with such crispness and finish as the delicate French idiom from a Parisian tongue?

I never quite knew how it came about that we were added to this gay party of breakfasters. We found ourselves, however, after a high skirmish of preliminary presentations, among the number to take our places at the table.

In the Chambre des Marmousets, Monsieur Paul, we found, had set the feast with the taste of an artist and the science of an archaeologist. The table itself was long and narrow, a genuine fifteenth century table. Down the centre ran a strip of antique altar-lace; the sides were left bare, that the lustre of the dark wood might be seen. In the centre was a deep old Caen bowl, with grapes and fuchsias to make a mound of soft color. A pair of seventeenth-century candélabres twisted and coiled their silver branches about their rich repoussé columns; here and there on the yellow strip of lace were laid bunches of June roses, those only of the rarer and older varieties having been chosen, and each was tied with a Louis XV love-knot. Monsieur Paul was himself an omniscient figure at the feast; he was by turns officiating as butler, carving, or serving from the side-tables; or he was crossing the court-yard with his careful, catlike tread, a bottle under each arm. He was also constantly appealed to by Monsieur d'Agreste or the count, to settle a dispute about the age of the china, or the original home of the various old chests scattered about the room.

"Paul, your stained glass shows up well in this light," the count called out, wiping his mustache over his soup-plate.

"Yes," answered Monsieur Paul, as he went on serving the sherry, pausing for a moment at the count's glass. "They always look well in full sunlight. It was a piece of pure luck, getting them. One can always count on getting hold of tapestries and carvings, but old glass is as rare as—"

"A pretty woman," interpolated the gay young widow, with the air of a connoisseur.

"Outside of Paris—you should have added," gallantly contributed the count. Everyone went on eating after the light laughter had died away.

The countess had not assisted at this brief conversation; she was devoting her attention to receiving the devotion of the two young counts; one was on either side of her, and both gave every outward and visible sign of wearing her chains, and of wearing them with insistance. The real contest between them appeared to be, not so much which should make the conquest of the languid countess, as which should outflank the other in his compromising demeanor. The countess, beneath her drooping lids, watched them with the indulgent indolence of a lioness, too luxuriously lazy to spring.

The countess, clearly, was not made for sunlight. In the courtyard her face had seemed chiefly remarkable as a triumph of cosmetic treatment; here, under this rich glow, the purity and delicacy of the features easily placed her among the beauties of the Parisian world. Her eyes, now that the languor of the lids was disappearing with the advent of the wines, were magnificent; her use of them was an open avowal of her own knowledge of their splendor. The young widow across the table was also using her eyes, but in a very different fashion. She had now taken off her straw hat; the curly crop of a brown mane gave the brilliant face an added accent of vigor. The chien de race was the dominant note now in the muscular, supple body, the keen-edged nostrils, and the intent gaze of the liquid eyes. These latter were fixed with the fixity of a savage on Charm. She was giving, in a sweet sibilant murmur, the man seated next her—Monsieur d'Agreste, the man who refused to bear his title—her views of the girl.

"Those Americans, the Americans of the best type, are a race apart, I tell you; we have nothing like them; we condemn them because we don't understand them. They understand us—they read us—"

"Oh, they read our books—the worst of them."

"Yes, but they read the best too; and the worst don't seem to hurt them. I'll warrant that Mees Gay—that is her name, is it not?—has read Zola, for instance; and yet, see how simple and innocent—yes—innocent, she looks."

"Yes, the innocence of experience—which knows how to hide," said
Monsieur d'Agreste, with a slight shrug.

"Mees Gay!" the countess cried out across the table, suddenly waking from her somnolence; she had overheard the baroness in spite of the low tone in which the dialogue had been carried on; her voice was so mellifluously sweet, one instinctively scented a touch of hidden poison in it—"Mees Gay, there is a question being put at this side of the table you alone can answer. Pray pardon the impertinence of a personal question—but we hear that American young ladies read Zola; is it true?"

"I am afraid that we do read him," was Charm's frank answer. "I have read him—but my reading is all in the past tense now."

"Ah—you found him too highly seasoned?" one of the young counts asked, eagerly, with his nose in the air, as if scenting an indiscretion.

"No, I did not go far enough to get a taste of his horrors; I stopped at his first period."

"And what do you call his first period, dear mademoiselle?" The countess's voice was still freighted with honey. Her husband coughed and gave her a warning glance, and Renard was moving uneasily in his chair.

"Oh," Charm answered lightly, "his best period—when he didn't sell."

Everyone laughed. The little widow cried beneath her breath:

"Elle a de l'esprit, celle-là—-"

"Elle en a de trop," retorted the countess.

"Did you ever read Zola's 'Quatre Saisons?'" Renard asked, turning to the count, at the other end of the table.

No, the count had not read it—but he could read the story of a beautiful nature when he encountered one, and presently he allowed Charm to see how absorbing he found its perusal.

"Ah, bien—et tout de même—Zola, yes, he writes terrible books; but he is a good man—a model husband and father," continued Monsieur d'Agreste, addressing the table.

"And Daudet—he adores his wife and children," added the count, as if with a determination to find only goodness in the world.

"I wonder how posterity will treat them? They'll judge their lives by their books, I presume."

"Yes, as we judge Rabelais or Voltaire—"

"Or the English Shakespeare by his 'Hamlet.'"

"Ah! what would not Voltaire have done with Hamlet!" The countess was beginning to wake again.

"And Molière? What of his 'Misanthrope?' There is a finished, a human, a possible Hamlet! a Hamlet with flesh and blood," cried out the younger count on her right. "Even Mounet-Sully could do nothing with the English Hamlet."

"Ah, well, Mounet-Sully did all that was possible with the part. He made Hamlet at least a lover!"

"Ah, love! as if, even on the stage, one believed in that absurdity any longer!" was the countess's malicious comment.

"Then, if you have ceased to believe in love, why did you go so religiously to Monsieur Caro's lectures?" cried the baroness.

"Oh, that dear Caro! He treated the passions so delicately, he handled them as if they were curiosities. One went to hear his lecture on Love as one might go to hear a treatise on the peculiarities of an extinct species," was the countess's quiet rejoinder.

"One should believe in love, if only to prove one's unbelief in it," murmured the young count on her left.

"Ah, my dear comte, love, nowadays, like nature, should only be used for decoration, as a bit of stage setting, or as stage scenery."

"A moonlight night can be made endurable, sometimes," whispered the count.

"A clair de lune that ends in lune de miel, that is the true use to which to put the charms of Diana." It was Monsieur d'Agreste's turn now to murmur in the baroness's ear.

"Oh, honey, it becomes so cloying in time," interpolated the countess, who had overheard; she overheard everything. She gave a wearied glance at her husband, who was still talking vigorously to Charm and Renard. She went on softly: "It's like trying to do good. All goodness, even one's own, bores one in the end. At Basniège, for example, lovely as it is, ideally feudal, and with all its towers as erect as you please, I find this modern virtue, this craze for charity, as tiresome as all the rest of it. Once you've seen that all the old women have woollen stockings, and that each cottage has fagots enough for the winter, and your role of benefactress is at an end. In Paris, at least, charity is sometimes picturesque; poverty there is tainted with vice. If one believed in anything, it might be worth while to begin a mission; but as it is—"

"The gospel of life, according to you, dear comtesse, is that in modern life there is no real excitement except in studying the very best way to be rid of it," cried out Renard, from the bottom of the table.

"True; but suicide is such a coarse weapon," the lady answered, quite seriously; "so vulgar now, since the common people have begun to use it. Besides, it puts your adversary, the world, in possession of your secret of discontent. No, no. Suicide, the invention of the nineteenth century, goes out with it. The only refined form of suicide is to bore one's self to death," and she smiled sweetly into the young man's eyes nearest her.

"Ah, comtesse, you should not have parted so early in life with all your illusions," was Monsieur d'Agreste's protest across the table.

"And, Monsieur d'Agreste, it isn't given to us all to go to the ends of the earth, as you do, in search of new ones! This friction of living doesn't wear on you as it does on the rest of us."

"Ah, the ends of the earth, they are very much like the middle and the beginning of things. Man is not so very different, wherever you find him. The only real difference lies in the manner of approaching him. The scientist, for example, finds him eternally fresh, novel, inspiring; he is a mine only as yet half-worked." Monsieur d'Agreste was beginning to wake up; his eyes, hitherto, alone had been alive; his hands had been busy, crunching his bread; but his tongue had been silent.

"Ah—h science! Science is only another anaesthetic—it merely helps to kill time. It is a hobby, like any other," was the countess's rejoinder.

"Perhaps," courteously returned Monsieur d'Agreste, with perfect sweetness of temper. "But at least, it is a hobby that kills no one else. And if of a hobby you can make a principle—"

"A principle?" The countess contracted her brows, as if she had heard a word that did not please her.

"Yes, dear lady; the wise man lays out his life as a gardener does a garden, on the principle of selection, of order, and with a view to the succession of the seasons. You all bemoan the dulness of life; you, in Paris, the torpor of ennui stifles you, you cry. On the contrary, I would wish the days were weeks, and the weeks months. And why? Simply because I have discovered the philosopher's stone. I have grasped the secret of my era. The comedy of rank is played out; the life of the trifler is at an end; all that went out with the Bourbons. Individualism is the new order. To-day a man exists simply by virtue of his own effort—he stands on his own feet. It is the era of the republican, of the individual—science is the true republic. For us who are displaced from the elevation our rank gave us, work is the watchword, and it is the only battle-cry left us now. He only is strong, and therefore happy, who perceives this truth, and who marches in step with the modern movement."

The serious turn given to the conversation had silenced all save the baroness. She had listened even more intently than the others to her friend's eloquence, nodding her head assentingly to all that he said. His philosophic reflections produced as much effect on her vivacious excitability as they might on a restless Skye-terrier.

"Yes, yes—he's entirely right, is Monsieur d'Agreste; he has got to the bottom of things. One must keep in step with modernity—one must be fin de siècle. Comtesse, you should hunt; there is nothing like a fox or a boar to make life worth living. It's better, infinitely better, than a pursuit of hearts; a boar's more troublesome than a man."

"Unless you marry him," the countess interrupted, ending with a thrush-like laugh. When she laughed she seemed to have a bird in her throat.

"Oh, a man's heart, it's like the flag of a defenceless country—anyone may capture it."

The countess smiled with ineffable grace into the vacant, amorous-eyed faces on either side of her, rising as she smiled. We had reached dessert now; the coffee was being handed round. Everyone rose; but the countess made no move to pass out from the room. Both she and the baroness took from their pockets dainty cigarette-cases.

"Vous permettez?" asked the baroness, leaning over coquettishly to Monsieur d'Agreste's cigar. She accompanied her action with a charming glance, one in which all the woman in her was uppermost, and one which made Monsieur d'Agreste's pale cheeks flush like a boy's. He was a philosopher and a scientist; but all his science and philosophy had not saved him from the barbed shafts of a certain mischievous little god. He, also, was visibly hugging his chains.

The party had settled themselves in the low divans and in the Henri IV arm-chairs; a few here and there remained, still grouped about the table, with the freedom of pose and in the comfort of attitude smoking and coffee bring with them.

It was destined, however, that the hour was to be a short one. One of the grooms obsequiously knocked at the door; he whispered in the count's ear, who advanced quickly toward him, the news that the coach was waiting; one of the leaders.

"Desolated, my dear ladies—but my man tells me the coach is in readiness, and I have an impertinent leader who refuses to stand, when he is waiting, on anything more solid than his hind legs. Fernande, my dear, we must be on the move. Desolated, dear ladies—desolated—but it's only au revoir. We must arrange a meeting later, in Paris—"

The scene in the court-yard was once again gay with life and bristling with color. The coach and the dog-cart shone resplendent in the slanting sun's rays. In the brighter sunlight, the added glow in the eyes and the cheeks of the brilliantly costumed group, made both men and women seem younger and fresher than when they had appeared, two hours since. All were in high good humor—the wines and the talk had warmed the quick French blood. There was a merry scramble for the top coach-seats; the two young counts exchanged their seat in their saddles for the privilege of holding, one the countess's vinaigrette, and the other, her long-handled parasol. Renard was beside his friend De Troisac; the horn rang out, the horses started as if stung, dashing at their bits, and in another moment the great coach was being whirled beneath the archway.

"Au revoir—au revoir!" was cried down to us from the throne-like elevation. There was a pretty waving of hands—for even the countess's dislike melted into sweetness as she bade us farewell. There were answering cries from the shrieking cockatoos, from the peacocks who trailed their tails sadly in the dust, from the cooks and the peasant serving-women who had assembled to bid the distinguished guests adieu. There was also a sweeping bow from Monsieur Paul, and a grunt of contented dismissal from Madame Le Mois.

A moment after the departure of the coach the court yard was as still as a convent cloister.

It was still enough to hear the click of madame's fingers, as she tapped her snuff-box.

"The count doesn't see any better than he did—toujours myope, lui" the old woman murmured to her son, with a pregnant wink, as she took her snuff.

"C'est sa façon de tout voir, au contraire, ma mère," significantly returned Monsieur Paul, with his knowing smile.

The mother's shrug answered the smile, as both mother and son walked in different directions—across the sunlit court.