THE IRON VIRGIN
For there is order in the streets, but in the soul—confusion.
—Maxim Gorky.
The carriage stood awaiting them in the Place Boïeldieu. Chardon told the coachman to drive rapidly; then closed the door upon Madame Patel and himself. Cautiously traversing the crowded boulevards they reached the Madeleine; a sharp turn to the left, down the Rue Royale, they were soon crossing the vast windy spaces of the Place de la Concorde and there he spoke to his companion.
"It was a glorious victory! The Opéra Comique looked like a battlefield after the conflict." Chardon's voice trembled as if with timidity. Madame Patel turned from the half-opened window.
"Yes, a glorious triumph. And he is not here to enjoy it, to exult over his detractors." Her tone was bitter as winter.
"My poor friend," the other answered as he laid his hand gently on her arm. She shuddered. "Are you cold? Shall I close the window?" "Thanks, no; it is too warm. How long this ride seems! Yet he always delighted in it after conducting." Chardon was silently polite. They were riding now at high speed along the Avenue Montaigne which the carriage had entered after leaving the Champs Élysées. From the Quai de Billy to the Quai de Passy their horses galloped over naked well-lighted avenues. The cool of the river penetrated them and the woman drew herself back into the corner absorbed in depressing memories. Along Mirabeau and Molitor, after passing the Avenue de Versailles; and when the street called Boileau appeared the carriage, its lanterns shooting tiny shafts of light on the road, headed for the Hameau, named after the old poet of Auteuil. There it stopped. Madame Patel and Chardon, a moment later, were walking slowly down the broad avenue of trees through which drawled the bourdon of the breeze this night in early May.
It was one o'clock when they entered the pretty little house, formerly the summer retreat of the dead composer Patel. A winner of the Prix de Rome he had produced many operas and oratorios until his death, just a year previous to the première of "The Iron Virgin." Of its immense success widow and librettist were in no doubt. Had they not witnessed it an hour earlier! Such furore did not often occur at the Comique. All recollection of Patel's mediocre work was wiped away in the swelter and glow of this passionate music, more modern than Wagner, more brutal than Richard Strauss. "Who would have believed that the old dried-up mummy had such a volcano in his brain?"—this the bereaved woman had overheard as she descended the marble stairway of the theatre, and Chardon hurried her to the carriage fearing that the emotions of the evening—the souvenirs of the dead, the shouting of the audience and the blaring of the band as it had saluted her trembling, bowing figure in the box—finally would prove too strong for her. He, too, had come in for some of the applause, a sort of inverted glory which like a frosty nimbus envelopes the head of the librettist. Now he recalled all this and rejoiced that his charge was safely within doors.
Madame Patel retained only one servant in her dignified, miniature household, for she was not rich; but the lamps were burning brightly, and on the table stood cold food, wine and fruit. The music-room was familiar to her late husband's associate. Patel's portrait hung over the fireplace. It represented in hard, shallow tones the face of a white-haired, white-bearded man whose thin lips, narrow nose and high forehead proclaimed him an ascetic of art. The deep-set eyes alone told of talent—their gaze inscrutable and calculating; a disappointed life could be read in every seam of the brow.