CHAPTER III
ARRIVAL IN PARIS. A SEPARATION. MARTHE.
PARISIAN LIFE.
I SHALL never forget that arrival in Paris. It was on a Sunday morning, M. Steinheil had warned his sister when to expect us. He talked awhile with the concierge in the lodge, then joined me in the garden, where I was patiently waiting in the pouring rain, and said: "I am extremely sorry. My sister, I hear, has gone to mass, and she has the keys of the house...."
I spent half an hour in the lodge, distressed by the smell of fried onions which came from the kitchen. At last, Mlle. Marguerite Steinheil returned from church. She wore a morning dress which I would not have allowed my maid to wear. It was 9 A.M., and I felt hungry—in spite of the fried onions—but breakfast was not mentioned. I had a painful impression when I entered the house—my home.... The hall was very dusty; there was no carpet, and nothing was ready for the arrival of a young wife. I asked the way to my bedroom, and burst into tears.
Very tenderly, my husband tried to console me. Then he fetched the wedding-presents sent by his friends, dried my tears with his handkerchief, as one does to a crying child, and I partly forgot my sorrow.
Mlle. Steinheil lived with us. She was very affectionate, in her way, but abnormally old-fashioned. My husband was entirely under her domination and under that of all the other members of his family.
The next day I resolved to re-arrange the drawing-room, which was cold, dreary, and as unattractive as could be. I transformed the curtains, changed the position of the furniture, put flowers everywhere, placed here a bergère, there a pretty chiffonnier, there a Louis Seize arm-chair taken from the furniture which had been sent to me from Beaucourt, and everything I disliked I removed to my husband's vast studio.
Delighted at having arranged the salon to my taste I went and fetched Adolphe to show him what I had done. He was quite upset, and began by telling me: "It is rather awkward, all this furniture you have sent up to my studio, and curiously enough you have taken from the studio the very things I need for my pictures, as backgrounds, as ornaments."
At that moment my sister-in-law entered. She glanced around her, looked at her brother, and then, turning to me: "My dear little girl," she said, with an air of outraged piety, "never, you understand me, never has the furniture in this room been touched since the death of our venerated father." Her tone froze me to the marrow, and somewhat incensed me. At the same time I regretted that I had hurt the feelings of my sister-in-law and upset the backgrounds for my husband's paintings....
I had to put everything back in its place. It was painful. I had succeeded in turning that old, solemn and utterly inhospitable room into a pretty and cosy salon, in which there reigned an attractive harmony of lines and colours. Alas, I had to rehang the paintings by Daubigny, Corot and Meissonier where I had found them, close to the frieze, where it was impossible to enjoy their beauty. I had to replace the pieces of furniture one beside the other along the walls, all in a row, and move back the piano into its dark corner. I had draped it with a marvellous and genuine Doge's gown, made of red velvet, which I had discovered in the studio. I took the gown back to the studio, and had to reinstate in their former places all the horrible things I had triumphantly relegated there. And I had to remove from the salon my pretty Louis XVI. furniture and replace the chairs that had been there, stiff, heavy, ungraceful chairs, with such high seats that one had to climb in order to sit on them, and to jump in order to come down.
With a sad heart I undid all my work. I took away the vases and their flowers, the cushions and embroideries I had strewn here and there to give touches of colour and a little life to this gloomy place. Evening was falling; I wanted to light the gas, but my sister-in-law gently but firmly decreed: "It's still light enough... and gas is expensive."