“Did he then, remember me?” she said in a soft voice, like music. Monsieur Voltaire spoke not a word; he loved her too well to grudge her these few crumbs of comfort.
Seeing she was interested, I began to tell her some of the incidents of our flight from Uzmaiz. I told her of our sojourn at the château of Capello. She remembered Francezka well; and the mention of these things turned the sad current of her thoughts.
“What a charming, gifted creature she was,” said Mademoiselle Lecouvreur, “and how amusing it was, Voltaire, for you, the author, and me, the artist, to see our greatness as we thought it, so burlesqued that night in the little out-of-doors theater! However, that quick transposition showed the child had vast power and originality. And Jacques Haret—what has become of the creature?”
I replied, with truth, that I neither knew nor cared, not wishing to wring Mademoiselle Lecouvreur’s tender heart with the story of Jacques Haret’s latest villainy.
We remained an hour. Several times I would have left, but Monsieur Voltaire detained me by a glance. At last, when Mademoiselle Lecouvreur was inclined 203 to sleep, we departed. Once outside the door, and under the shadow of the tall old houses, Monsieur Voltaire grasped my arm, and said in a voice full of tears:
“Captain Babache, we are watching the setting of a star—we are seeing the Pléiade as she is gradually lost in the universal abysm. Soon, Eternity, with its unbroken, derisive silence, will lie between Adrienne and all whom she loves and who love her—” He suddenly broke off, and went his way in the night.
Before I slept, I repeated every word of what had happened at our interview, to my master, and Madame de Bouillon did not get him in her coach again. After that he spent every hour that he could at Mademoiselle Lecouvreur’s house. He and Monsieur Voltaire no longer avoided each other. There was the truce of God between them for the few days that Adrienne Lecouvreur remained on earth.
Few persons believed that she would be able to play again, but the mere hint of it crammed the Théâtre Français to the doors on that last, unforgettable night. Gaston Cheverny and I had secured seats in the pit of the theater. Gaston had been admitted to the honor of Mademoiselle Lecouvreur’s acquaintance and admired her at a distance, like a star.
There was a breathless excitement in the crowd, something in the air of the theater seemed to communicate excitement. It was like that tremulous stillness which seems to overtake the world when the earth is about to be riven asunder, and volcanoes are making ready to explode in oceans of fire and flame and molten death.
Not one more person, I believe, could have been 204 packed into the theater five minutes before the curtain rose, except in one box that remained empty—the box of the Duchesse de Bouillon. I looked around for Count Saxe, and caught a glimpse of him afar off in the crowd—then he disappeared. Again I saw him passing quite close to me. By some accident, he wore a full suit of black that night—black velvet coat, and black silk small-clothes—perhaps to render himself less conspicuous; but he was a man to be noted in a crowd because of his beauty, even if he had been the veriest oaf alive—or marked out for a great man, if he had been as ugly as I am. That night he was like a perturbed spirit seeking for rest and finding none; unable to drag himself away from that last touching and splendid vision of Adrienne Lecouvreur, and yet, almost unable to bear it.