Several friends of the sculptor assembled in a family council to deliberate concerning the future of the unfortunate, penniless orphan. They had found fifty francs in the catch-all in which Sébastien kept his money on a little commode in the studio, well known to his needy friends, who had recourse to it without scruple. No other patrimony, in cash at all events; only a most superb collection of artistic objects and curios, a few valuable pictures and some scattered outstanding claims hardly sufficient to cover his innumerable debts. They talked of a sale at auction. Felicia, on being consulted, replied that it was a matter of indifference to her whether they sold all or none, but that she begged them, for God's sake, to leave her in peace.
The sale did not take place, however, thanks to the godmother, the excellent Crenmitz, who suddenly made her appearance, as tranquil and gentle as always:
"Don't listen to them, my child, sell nothing. Your old Constance has fifteen thousand francs a year which were intended for you. You shall have the benefit of them now, that's all. We will live together here. I will not be in the way, you will see. You can work at your sculpture, while I keep the house. Does that suit you?"
It was said so affectionately, in the childish accent of foreigners expressing themselves in French, that the girl was deeply moved. Her stony heart opened, a burning flood poured from her eyes and she threw herself, buried herself in the ex-dancer's arms: "Oh! godmother, how good you are! Yes, yes; don't leave me again—stay with me always. Life frightens and disgusts me. I see so much hypocrisy and lying!" And when the old woman had made herself a silky, embroidered nest in the house, which resembled a traveller's camp filled with the treasures of all lands, those two widely different natures took up their life together.
It was no small sacrifice that Constance had made to the little demon, to leave her retreat at Fontainebleau for Paris, which she held in horror. From the day when the ballet-dancer, once famous for her extravagant caprices, who squandered princely fortunes between her five parted fingers, had descended from the realm of apotheoses with a last remnant of their dazzling glare still lingering in her eyes, and had tried to resume the life of ordinary mortals, to administer her little income and her modest household, she had been subjected to a multitude of unblushing attempts at extortion and schemes which were readily successful in view of the ignorance of that poor butterfly, who was afraid of reality and constantly coming in contact with all its unknown difficulties. In Felicia's house the responsibility became far more serious, because of the extravagant methods long ago inaugurated by the father and continued by the daughter, both artists having the utmost contempt for economy. She had other difficulties, too, to overcome. She could not endure the studio, with its permanent odor of tobacco smoke, with the cloud, impenetrable to her, in which artistic discussions and ideas, expressed in their baldest form, were confounded in vague eddies of glowing vapor which invariably gave her the sick headache. The blague was especially terrifying to her. Being a foreigner, a former divinity of the ballet greenroom, fed upon superannuated compliments, gallantries à la Dorat she was unable to understand it, and was dismayed at the wild exaggerations, the paradoxes of those Parisians whose wits were sharpened by the liberty of the studio.
She whose wit had consisted entirely in the agility of her feet was awed by her new surroundings and relegated to the position of a simple companion; and to see that amiable old creature, silent and smiling, sitting in the bright light of the rounded window, her knitting on her knees, like one of Chardin's bourgeoises, or walking quickly up the long Rue de Chaillot where the nearest market was situated, with her cook at her side, one would never have dreamed that the worthy woman had once held kings, princes, all the susceptible portion of the nobility and the world of finance, subject to the whim of her toes and her gauze skirts.
Paris is full of these extinct stars which have fallen back into the crowd.
Some of these celebrities, these conquerors of a former time, retain a gnawing rage in their hearts; others, on the contrary, dwell blissfully upon the past, ruminate in ineffable content all their glorious, bygone joys, seeking only repose, silence and obscurity, wherein they may remember and meditate, so that, when they die, we are amazed to learn that they were still living.
Constance Crenmitz was one of those happy mortals. But what a strange artists' household was that of those two women, equally childlike, contributing to the common stock inexperience and ambition, the tranquillity of an accomplished destiny and the feverish activity of a life in its prime, all the differences indeed that were indicated by the contrast between that blonde, white as a withered rose, who seemed to be dressed, beneath her fair complexion, in a remnant of Bengal fire, and that brunette, with the regular features, who almost invariably enveloped her beauty in dark stuffs, simply made, as if with a semblance of masculinity.
Unforeseen emergencies, caprice, ignorance of even the most trivial things, led to extreme confusion in the management of the household, from which they were sometimes unable to extricate themselves except by enforced privations, by dismissing servants, by reforms laughable in their exaggeration. During one of those crises Jenkins made delicate, carefully veiled offers of assistance which were repelled with scorn by Felicia.