SIXTH REFLECTION
Ventrillon brushed the hat of eight reflections until it shone again. He had eaten no luncheon, and was compelled to walk all the way, but he had become accustomed to both these facts. Besides, from under the gay awnings of the cafés along the boulevards people pointed him out to one another as he passed, and that was a compensation. As he neared the doorway of Volland’s his heart was beginning to swell in his chest, and his head was growing dizzy beneath the refulgent hat.
To the point of discomfort the great exhibition salon was packed with tout Paris. Volland shoved his way about amid richly dressed shoulders, beaming upon them with his little pig-like eyes, and tugging at his goatee with joy. Luminous with electric light, and the only ornament of the barren gray expanse of his walls, the portrait dominated the hall. It was a tremendous success. Not only was it the portrait of the most conspicuous figure in Paris, but the brilliancy of colour and design was sensational. On every hand one heard: “Superb! Magnificent! One expects her to speak!” The crowd, already too closely pressed, increased, but nobody left the salon; for tout Paris was waiting for a still greater sensation. The morning papers had announced that the Belletaille would arrive that afternoon to look upon her portrait for the first time. The Belletaille had seen to that.
A new enthusiasm developed near the door and spread rapidly through the entire assembly. “It is she herself!” they whispered, and made way for her. It was the Belletaille. She was entering.
She advanced to within a few yards of the portrait and halted for a magnificent moment, confronting her painted self.
A young girl whispered excitedly:
“It is exactly like her! One knows not which is which!” Then she gave a little frightened shriek and shrank back into the crowd, for the Belletaille had turned on her like an angry tigress.
It is a curious fact that every one of us carries in his secret heart an image of himself totally different from the person that others see. The hardened portrait painter strives to approximate that image. But the portrait which Ventrillon, the novice, had painted was more like the Belletaille than was the Belletaille herself. For that great lady was, in every moment of her life, hard at work being something else. Perhaps that is the true cause of what followed, and perhaps it is not.
She collected herself. Opening her vanity case with splendid quick movements of those famous chalk-white hands, she took out a little ivory-handled manicure implement to do with it a thing for which it had not been designed.
She advanced upon the portrait, and with the gesture that she had until that moment reserved for slaying the baritone, slashed the tiny knife through and through the canvas until it dangled from the frame in twisting, slattern shreds. Then she turned to face her awestruck audience.
“The Belletaille is beautiful!” she cried in a sonorous middle voice. “None but the hand of time shall dare to deface her!”
Whereupon, with the magnificent walk of her second act of “Tosca,” she strode toward the door. As she reached it, Ventrillon was entering, his young cheeks hot, and his eyes shining with elated expectancy.
Those who saw the ensuing event were to boast of it afterward, and those who had not seen it were to pretend that they had.
“Pig!” she cried full in his face, and swinging high her parasol, broke it over the hat of eight reflections. Carrying the remains of the parasol with her, she stalked, always magnificent, into the street.
Vaguely, Ventrillon removed the ruin from his head, and stared at it, stupefied. The crowd was wild with restrained excitement, but he heard not their whispers, or even their sudden, suppressed little outbursts of high-strung laughter. The portrait was destroyed. The Belletaille hated him. She had made him ridiculous. Tout Paris would reject him. There were now no future commissions on which to count. He was hungry, he had not a sou, and even the hat of eight reflections was a wreck in his hand.
Ventrillon reflected. This was his to-morrow, his to-morrow at Volland’s.