I wrote a note to Alfred Nobel, with whom I had all along kept in touch by correspondence,—perhaps in the eleven years eleven letters had passed between us,—to acquaint him with our presence in Paris. He came without delay to look us up. I found him unchanged, except that he had grown somewhat gray, but he was more deeply than ever immersed in his labors and inventions. My Own took a keen interest in his chemical investigations, which he explained in detail with the help of his crucibles and other apparatus when, a few days later, having invited us to dinner, he did the honors of his house and his laboratory. He still lived very much aloof from the world; the only house which he frequently visited was Madame Juliette Adam’s, and he took us there.
The author of Païenne and editor of the Nouvelle Revue lived in her own house in the street named after her the Rue Juliette Lambert. As every one knows, Madame Adam was a great patriote, which at that epoch signified a representative of the idea of revanche. And I can remember that in our very first call she steered the conversation into a political channel. But just then was one of the moments when it was generally believed that the war of revenge, predicted for sixteen years, was coming. Herr von Bismarck was in want of a military law valid for seven years, and in the German parliament the method of “War in Sight” was employed as is usual on such occasions. The recipe is a sure one: with a view to this all military demands are readily granted. Furthermore, the Schnäbele incident on the frontier happened, and on the horizon, slowly mounting, appeared General Boulanger’s black horse. What an outpouring of amateur political opinion there was! Wherever one went this question was asked, Will it break out? In the newspapers, and still more in the air, there was the anticipation of some great event. In the Chat noir, that famous artists’ Gschnas-Café (the ancestor of all the cabarets that now flood the world), Caran d’Ache was conducting his magic lantern “L’Épopée,” Napoleonic war scenes, and cela fait vibrer la fibre patriotique. Madame Adam also vibrated.
And she invited us in a most friendly way to a great evening reception which was to take place at her house within a few days. Of that soirée I have preserved a rather lively recollection.
The little house in the Rue Juliette Lambert was filled with guests from the first landing of the staircase to the farthest corner of the salon. On the threshold of the salon door stood Madame Adam, an imposing and captivating figure. She wore a dark-red velvet gown with long train, diamonds on the bosom, and diamonds in her white hair massed high. Her face under this white hair looked still youthful,—somewhat in the style of Marie Geistinger as la belle Hélène. Of course, as the duty of a hostess required, she gave each person a gracious word with a gracious smile.
“Ah, dear baron,” she said to my husband, “I am so much attracted toward you because the country which you describe so excellently in your books, the semibarbarous Caucasus, is so fascinating to me.”
Certainly, it was well known how much everything Russian fascinated Madame Adam, the glorifier of Aksákof and of General Skóbelef. “How can a woman ever busy herself so much with politics?” was my thought at that time. “How much that is disagreeable, and sometimes ridiculous, she brings upon herself by that! And how can one bother herself with editing a review into the bargain?”
Many distinguished men—artists, authors, politicians—were gathered in Madame Adam’s salons, and many pretty women. Madame Napoleon Ney was pointed out to us as one of the most famous beauties of Parisian society. Unfortunately, one could not make the acquaintance of all the interesting persons present; the throng was so dense that one had to stay in his corner and be contented with talking to a few in his own vicinity. And for the most part one had to be still and listen, for—as was the custom in Paris—the guests were served with all sorts of artistic delectations: a pianist played Hungarian melodies; an author of great promise, but as yet unknown, read a few short stories; and Mademoiselle Brandés, at that time not yet engaged at the Théâtre Français, declaimed a poem. But even here, amid this artistic and social gayety, the dark word “War” was buzzing through the room; here and there the names of Bismarck and Moltke and Schnäbele were heard, and prophecies that next spring it surely would come to something were boldly uttered, but without detracting from the spirit of cheerfulness that prevailed; these vaticinations probably aroused fine hopes in the hostess, enthusiastic for her country’s glory as she was. I was no longer so indifferent in the presence of these things as I had been during my youth. I already hated war fervently, and this frivolous trifling with the possibility of it seemed to me as lacking in conscience as in common sense.
It was a great joy to us to meet in Paris a friend from the Caucasus, Princess Tamara of Georgia. The beautiful young widow had been established in the French capital for a year with her two half-grown girls; she lived in a fascinatingly furnished mansion in the Elysée quarter. We were very frequently invited to her functions, and always found a large company there, Russians for the most part. General Baron Frederiks, who afterward became, and is still, chief master of ceremonies to the Tsar, was a friend of the house.
We cultivated literary society extensively. A Dr. Löwenthal, who had written to me on account of my Inventarium einer Seele when we were still in the Caucasus, and with whom, after an ardent exchange of ideas, we two had become close friends, made us acquainted with Max Nordau. The greatly celebrated author of “Conventional Lies,” although then only thirty-eight, had very thick snow-white hair, which was very effective with his black beard, black eyes, and interesting face. There were some unforgettable hours which we four spent in conversation about God’s magnificent world and the conventional, lie-ridden world of humanity.
In the Buloz house, where we attended a ball a few days after the Adam soirée, there was not so strong a flavor of politics as in the home of the Nouvelle revue; here homage was paid to only two things, the Revue des deux mondes and the Académie Française. The Buloz house had the reputation of being a center of the literary and intellectual life of Paris. On Madame Buloz’s Tuesdays half of the Forty Immortals were to be found there, and of course all the collaborators of the Revue, from which the Academy so often draws its recruits. The solid old palais in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, with its ground floor devoted to the offices of the monthly, and its big reception rooms on the floor above, had a grave and dignified air. The furnishings of the salon were of rich and substantial plainness. The tone all through the house was rather stiff, puristic, erudite—in short, academic. The same tone, you know, that permeates the so often uncut pages of the articles in the old Revue. The married life of the husband and wife seemed to be exemplary. M. Buloz, a man of serious and steady look, and at the same time amiable, of about forty, with full red beard trimmed to a point—liking best of all to talk about his Revue, the conduct of which cost him much labor, for he read every line of the manuscripts that were sent in, and sternly repelled any encroachment of frivolous realism—who could have suspected at that time that a few years later he would be compelled to part from his Revue, and that under such frivolous circumstances as he would never have permitted one of his colleagues to incorporate in a novel? Most surprising and startling for the whole serious milieu came the sudden discovery that M. Buloz had wasted nearly all his property, besides incurring a million in debts,—all for a woman. A separation resulted—whether Madame Buloz got one or whether she pardoned him I do not know—but a separation from his Revue, the proud paternal inheritance. He was forced to leave the management; and the monthly, which ever since its foundation, for more than a half century, had borne the name of Charles Buloz, both father and son, came out with the name of Brunetière.