ARVILLARD LES BAINS,
2d August, ’76.
“Well, it is queer enough, this place from which I am writing to you. Imagine a square hall, very lofty, paved with stones, done in stucco work—a sonorous hall, where the daylight falling through two enormous windows is veiled down to the lowest pane with blue curtains and further obscured by a sort of floating vapor, having a taste of sulphur in it, which clings to one’s clothes and tarnishes one’s gold ornaments. In this hall are people seated near the walls, on benches, chairs and stools round little tables—people who look at their watches every minute, get up and go out, leaving their seats to others, letting one see each time through the half-open door a mob of bathers moving about in the brightly lit vestibule and the flowing white aprons of the serving women who dash here and there. In spite of all this movement, no noise, but a continual murmur of conversation in low voices, newspapers being unfolded, badly oxidized pens scratching on paper, a solemnity as in a church—the whole place bathed and refreshed by the big stream of mineral water arranged in the middle of the hall, the rush of which breaks itself against a disk of metal, is crushed to pieces, separates in jets and turns to powder above the great basins placed one upon the other and all dripping with moisture. This is the inhalation hall.
“I must let you know, my dear girl, that everybody does not inhale in the same way. For instance, the old gentleman who sits in front of me at this moment follows the prescriptions of the doctor to the letter, for I recognize them all. Our feet placed upon a stool and our chest pushed forward, let us pull in our elbows and keep our mouth open all the time to make the inspiration easy. Poor, dear man! How he does inhale, with what a confidence in the result! What little round eyes he has, credulous and devout, which seem to be saying to the spring:
“‘O spring of Arvillard, cure me well; see how I inhale you, see what faith I have in you—’
“Then we have the skeptic, who inhales without inhaling, his back bent, shrugging his shoulders and rolling up his eyes. Then there are the discouraged ones, the people who are really sick and feel the uselessness and nothingness of all this. One poor lady, my neighbor, I see putting her finger quickly to her mouth every little while to see if her glove is not stained at the tip with a red blot. But, all the same, people find some means to be gay. Ladies who belong in the same hotel push their chairs near to each other, form groups, do their embroidery, gossip in a low voice, discuss the newspaper of the baths and the list of strangers just arrived. Young persons bring out their English novels in red covers, priests read their breviaries—there are a great many priests at Arvillard, particularly missionaries with big beards, yellow faces, voices hoarse from having preached so long the word of God. As to me, you know I don’t care about novels, particularly those novels of to-day in which everything happens just like things in everyday life. So for my part I take up my correspondence with two or three designated victims—Marie Tournier, Aurélie Dansaert and you, great big sister whom I adore! Look out for regular journals! Just think, two hours of inhalation in four times, and that every day! Nobody here inhales as much as I do, which is as much as saying that I am a real phenomenon. People look at me a good deal for this reason and I have no little pride in it.
“As to the rest of the treatment—nothing else except the glass of mineral water which I go and drink at the spring in the morning and evening, and which ought to triumph over the obstinate veil which this horrid cold has thrown over my voice. There is the special point of the Arvillard waters and for that reason the singers and songstresses make this place their rendezvous. Handsome Mayol has just left us, with his vocal cords entirely renewed. Mlle. Bachellery, whom you remember—the little diva at your reception—has found herself so well in consequence of the treatment that after having finished three regular weeks she has begun three more, wherefore doth the newspaper of the baths bestow upon her great praise. We have the honor of dwelling in the same hotel with that young and illustrious person, adorned with a tender Bordeaux mother, who at the table d’hôte advertises ‘good appetites’ in the salad and talks of the one-hundred-and-forty-franc bonnet which her young lady wore at the last Longchamps races—a delicious couple, and greatly admired among us all! We go into ecstasies over the childish graces of Bébé, as her mother calls her, over her laughter, her trills, the tossings of her short skirt. We crowd together in front of the sanded courtyard of the hotel in order to see her do her game of croquet with the little girls and little boys—she will play with none but the little ones—to see her run and jump and send her ball like a real street boy.
“‘Look out, I’m going to roquet you, Master Paul!’
“Everybody says of her, ‘What a child she is!’ As for me, I believe that those false childish ways are a part of a rôle which she is playing, just like her skirts with big bows on them and her hair looped up postillon-style. Then she has such an extraordinary way of kissing that great big Bordeaux woman, of suspending herself to her neck, of allowing herself to be cradled and held in her lap before all the world! You know well enough how caressing I am—well, honor bright! it makes me feel embarrassed when I kiss mamma.
“A very singular family, too, but less amusing, consists of the Prince and Princess of Anhalt, of Mademoiselle their daughter, and the governess, chamber-women and suite, who occupy the entire first floor of the hotel and are the grand personages thereof. I often meet the princess on the stair going up step by step on the arm of her husband—a handsome gallant, bursting with health under his military hat turned up with blue. She never goes to the bathing-hall except in a sedan chair and it is heartrending to see that wrinkled and pale face behind the little pane of the chair; father and child walk at the side, the child very wretched-looking, with all the features of her mother and very likely also all of her malady. This little creature, eight years old, who is not allowed to play with the other children and who looks down sadly from the balcony on the games of croquet and the riding-parties at the hotel, bores herself to death. They think that her blood is too blue for such common joys and prefer to keep her in the gloomy atmosphere of that dying mother, by the side of that father who shows his sick wife to the public with an impudent and worn-out face, or give the child over to the servants.
“But heavens, it’s a kind of pest, it’s an infectious disease, this nobility business! These people take their meals by themselves in a little dining-room; they inhale by themselves—because there are separate halls for families—and you can imagine the mournfulness of that companionship—that woman and the little girl together in a great silent vault!