You’ve heard me speak of my cousine de Maisonrouge, that grande belle femme who, after having married, en secondes noces—there had been, to tell the truth, some irregularity about her first union—a venerable relic of the old noblesse of Poitou, was left, by the death of her husband, complicated by the crash of expensive tastes against an income of 17,000 francs, on the pavement of Paris with two little demons of daughters to bring up in the path of virtue. She managed to bring them up; my little cousins are ferociously sages. If you ask me how she managed it I can’t tell you; it’s no business of mine, and a fortiori none of yours. She’s now fifty years old—she confesses to thirty-eight—and her daughters, whom she has never been able to place, are respectively twenty-seven and twenty-three (they confess to twenty and to seventeen). Three years ago she had the thrice-blest idea of opening a well-upholstered and otherwise attractive asile for the blundering barbarians who come to Paris in the hope of picking up a few stray pearls from the écrin of Voltaire—or of Zola. The idea has brought her luck; the house does an excellent business. Until within a few months ago it was carried on by my cousins alone; but lately the need of a few extensions and improvements has caused itself to be felt. My cousin has undertaken them, regardless of expense; in other words she has asked me to come and stay with her—board and lodging gratis—and correct the conversational exercises of her pensionnaire-pupils. I’m the extension, my good Prosper; I’m the improvement. She has enlarged the personnel—I’m the enlargement. I form the exemplary sounds that the prettiest English lips are invited to imitate. The English lips are not all pretty, heaven knows, but enough of them are so to make it a good bargain for me.
Just now, as I told you, I’m in daily relation with three separate pairs. The owner of one of them has private lessons; she pays extra. My cousin doesn’t give me a sou of the money, but I consider nevertheless that I’m not a loser by the arrangement. Also I’m well, very very well, with the proprietors of the two other pairs. One of these is a little Anglaise of twenty—a figure de keepsake; the most adorable miss you ever, or at least I ever, beheld. She’s hung all over with beads and bracelets and amulets, she’s embroidered all over like a sampler or a vestment; but her principal decoration consists of the softest and almost the hugest grey eyes in the world, which rest upon you with a profundity of confidence—a confidence I really feel some compunction in betraying. She has a tint as white as this sheet of paper, except just in the middle of each cheek, where it passes into the purest and most transparent, most liquid, carmine. Occasionally this rosy fluid overflows into the rest of her face—by which I mean that she blushes—as softly as the mark of your breath on the window-pane.
Like every Anglaise she’s rather pinched and prim in public; but it’s easy to see that when no one’s looking elle ne demande qu’à se laisser aller! Whenever she wants it I’m always there, and I’ve given her to understand she can count upon me. I’ve reason to believe she appreciates the assurance, though I’m bound in honesty to confess that with her the situation’s a little less advanced than with the others. Que voulez-vous? The English are heavy and the Anglaises move slowly, that’s all. The movement, however, is perceptible, and once this fact’s established I can let the soup simmer, I can give her time to arrive, for I’m beautifully occupied with her competitors. They don’t keep me waiting, please believe.
These young ladies are Americans, and it belongs to that national character to move fast. “All right—go ahead!” (I’m learning a great deal of English, or rather a great deal of American.) They go ahead at a rate that sometimes makes it difficult for me to keep up. One of them’s prettier than the other; but this latter—the one that takes the extra-private lessons—is really une fille étonnante. Ah par exemple, elle brûle ses vaisseaux, celle-là! She threw herself into my arms the very first day, and I almost owed her a grudge for having deprived me of that pleasure of gradation, of carrying the defences one by one, which is almost as great as that of entering the place. For would you believe that at the end of exactly twelve minutes she gave me a rendezvous? In the Galerie d’Apollon at the Louvre I admit; but that was respectable for a beginning, and since then we’ve had them by the dozen; I’ve ceased to keep the account. Non, c’est une fille qui me dépasse.
The other, the slighter but “smarter” little person—she has a mother somewhere out of sight, shut up in a closet or a trunk—is a good deal prettier, and perhaps on that account elle y met plus de façons. She doesn’t knock about Paris with me by the hour; she contents herself with long interviews in the petit salon, with the blinds half-drawn, beginning at about three o’clock, when every one is à la promenade. She’s admirable, cette petite, a little too immaterial, with the bones rather over-accentuated, yet of a detail, on the whole, most satisfactory. And you can say anything to her. She takes the trouble to appear not to understand, but her conduct, half an hour afterwards, reassures you completely—oh completely!
However, it’s the big bouncer of the extra-private lessons who’s the most remarkable. These private lessons, my good Prosper, are the most brilliant invention of the age, and a real stroke of genius on the part of Miss Miranda! They also take place in the petit salon, but with the doors tightly closed and with explicit directions to every one in the house that we are not to be disturbed. And we’re not, mon gros, we’re not! Not a sound, not a shadow, interrupts our felicity. My cousins are on the right track—such a house must make its fortune. Miss Miranda’s too tall and too flat, with a certain want of coloration; she hasn’t the transparent rougeurs of the little Anglaise. But she has wonderful far-gazing eyes, superb teeth, a nose modelled by a sculptor, and a way of holding up her head and looking every one in the face, which combines apparent innocence with complete assurance in a way I’ve never seen equalled. She’s making the tour du monde, entirely alone, without even a soubrette to carry the ensign, for the purpose of seeing for herself, seeing à quoi s’en tenir sur les hommes et les choses—on les hommes particularly. Dis donc, mon vieux, it must be a drôle de pays over there, where such a view of the right thing for the aspiring young bourgeoises is taken. If we should turn the tables some day, thou and I, and go over and see it for ourselves? Why isn’t it as well we should go and find them chez elles, as that they should come out here after us? Dis donc, mon gros Prosper . . . !
VIII
FROM DR. RUDOLPH STAUB IN PARIS TO DR. JULIUS HIRSCH AT GÖTTINGEN
My dear Brother in Science,
I resume my hasty notes, of which I sent you the first instalment some weeks ago. I mentioned that I intended to leave my hotel, not finding in it real matter. It was kept by a Pomeranian and the waiters without exception were from the Fatherland. I might as well have sat down with my note-book Unter den Linden, and I felt that, having come here for documentation, or to put my finger straight upon the social pulse, I should project myself as much as possible into the circumstances which are in part the consequence and in part the cause of its activities and intermittences. I saw there could be no well-grounded knowledge without this preliminary operation of my getting a near view, as slightly as possible modified by elements proceeding from a different combination of forces, of the spontaneous home-life of the nation.
I accordingly engaged a room in the house of a lady of pure French extraction and education, who supplements the shortcomings of an income insufficient to the ever-growing demands of the Parisian system of sense-gratification by providing food and lodging for a limited number of distinguished strangers. I should have preferred to have my room here only, and to take my meals in a brewery, of very good appearance, which I speedily discovered in the same street; but this arrangement, though very clearly set out by myself, was not acceptable to the mistress of the establishment—a woman with a mathematical head—and I have consoled myself for the extra expense by fixing my thoughts upon the great chance that conformity to the customs of the house gives me of studying the table-manners of my companions, and of observing the French nature at a peculiarly physiological moment, the moment when the satisfaction of the taste, which is the governing quality in its composition, produces a kind of exhalation, an intellectual transpiration, which, though light and perhaps invisible to a superficial spectator, is nevertheless appreciable by a properly adjusted instrument. I’ve adjusted my instrument very satisfactorily—I mean the one I carry in my good square German head—and I’m not afraid of losing a single drop of this valuable fluid as it condenses itself upon the plate of my observation. A prepared surface is what I need, and I’ve prepared my surface.