'No more than a mouse,' replied the girl.
'And you too, my big beauty,' she said to her husband, on entering the dining-room, where the professor was once more at his exercises. 'I have told Constant to get up and dress quietly,' adding, with a proud smile, 'what a triumph for René to-night, provided that these grand folks don't turn up their noses at his verse! But I'm sure they'll not do that; his poetry is too good—almost as good as he is himself!'
'It is to be hoped that all these fine ladies will not spoil him as you do,' exclaimed Fresneau, 'for it would end by his losing his head. No, no,' he went on, in order to flatter his wife's feelings, 'it is a pleasure to see how modest he is, even in success.'
And Emilie kissed her husband tenderly for those words.
CHAPTER III
A LOVER AND A SNOB
The two young men got into the cab and were soon being rapidly driven along the Rue du Cherche-Midi in order to reach the Boulevard du Montparnasse, and so follow, by way of the Invalides, the long line of avenues that crosses the Seine by the Pont de l'Alma and leads almost direct to the Arc de Triomphe. At first both remained perfectly silent, René amusing himself by watching for the well-known landmarks of a neighbourhood in which all the reminiscences of his childhood and youth were centred. The pane of glass through which he gazed was clouded with a thin vapour, a fitting symbol of the cloud that separated the world he had just left from that which lay before him. There was not an angle in the Rue du Cherche-Midi that was not as familiar to him as the walls of his own room—from the tall dark building of the military prison to the corner of the quiet Rue de Bagneux, where Rosalie dwelt. The remembrance of the charming girl whom he had so unceremoniously quitted that evening passed through his mind, but caused him no pain. The sensation he felt was like dreaming with open eyes, so little did the individual who had trodden these streets in his dreary and obscure youth resemble the rich and celebrated writer now seated next to Claude Larcher. Celebrated—for all Paris had flocked to see his piece; rich—for 'Le Sigisbée,' first performed in September, had already brought him in twenty-five thousand francs by February. Nor was this source of revenue likely to be soon exhausted. 'Le Sigisbée' had been put into the same bill with 'Le Jumeau,' a three-act comedy by a well-known author that would have a long run. The play, too, was selling well in book form, and the rights of translation and of representation in the provinces were being turned to good account. But all this was only a beginning, for René had several other works in reserve—a volume of philosophical poems entitled 'On the Heights,' a drama in verse dealing with the Renaissance, to be called 'Savonarola,' and a half-finished story of deep passion for which the writer had as yet found no title.
As the cab rolled along, the intoxication produced by thoughts of past success, as well as by ambitious plans for the future, was intensified by the excitement of his entering into Society. The feelings of this grown-up child were similar to those of a girl going to her first ball. He was a prey to a fit of nerves that almost made him feel beside himself. This power of amplifying even to fanciful dimensions impressions of utter mediocrity in themselves is both the misfortune and happiness of poets. To that power is due those transitions, almost startling in their suddenness, from the heights of optimism to the depths of pessimism, from exultation to despair; these lend to the imagination, and consequently to the disposition and feelings, a continual pendulum-like motion—an instability of terrible portent to the women who become attached to these vacillating souls. Amongst such souls, however, there are some in whom this dangerous quality does not exclude true affection. This was the case with René. The involuntary comparison between the present and the past so suddenly provoked by the familiar aspect of the streets brought his thoughts round to the more experienced friend who had witnessed his rapid change of fortune. In obedience to one of those simple impulses which form such a charming trait in the young—affording as they do a beautiful but rare example of the invincible bond between the inner and the outer man—he grasped the hand of his silent companion, saying: 'How kind you have been to me!'. . . And seeing Claude's eyes turned upon him in some astonishment, he continued: 'If you had not been so encouraging when I made my first attempts I should never have brought you "Le Sigisbée," and if you had not recommended it to Mademoiselle Rigaud it would now be mouldering on some manager's shelf. If you had not spoken to the Comtesse Komof my piece would not be performed at her house, and I should not be going there this evening. I am happy, very happy, and I owe it all to you! Ah! mon ami, you may think me as silly as a schoolboy, but you cannot imagine how often I have dreamt of that world into which you are now taking me, where the mere dresses of the women are poems, and where joy and grief are set in exquisite frames!'
'Would that these women had souls of the same stuff as their dresses!' exclaimed Claude with a smile. 'But you surprise me,' he went on; 'do you think that you will be in Society because you are received by Madame Komof, a foreign countess who keeps open house, or by any of the lion-hunters whom you will meet there, and who will tell you that they are at home every afternoon? You will go out a good deal, if you like that kind of thing, but you will be no more in Society than I or any other artist or even genius, simply because you were not born in it, and because your family is not in it. You will be received and made much of. But try to marry into one of these families and you will see what they will tell you. And a good thing for you, too. Good heavens! if you only knew these women whom you picture to yourself as being so refined, so elegant, so aristocratic! Mere bundles of vanity, dressed by Worth or Laferrière . . . Why, there are not ten in the whole of Paris capable of true feeling. The most honest are those who take a lover because they like him. Were you to dissect them, you would find in place of a heart a dressmaker's bill, half-a-dozen prejudices which serve as principles, and a mad desire to eclipse some other woman. What fools we are to be here in this vehicle—two fairly sensible men with work to do at home—you all of a tremble at the idea of mixing with so-called grandes dames, and I . . .!'
'What has Colette been doing to-day?' asked René quietly, a little put out by the asperity of his friend's words, though not laying much weight upon arguments applied with such evident rancour. These furious outbursts were nearly always caused, as he knew, by some coquetry on the part of the actress with whom Claude was madly in love, and who delighted in fooling him, though loving him in her way. It was one of those attachments, based on hatred and sensuality, which both torture and degrade the heart, and which transform their victim into a wild beast, one of the features peculiar to this sort of passion being the frequency with which it is liable to suffer crises as sharp and violent as the physical ideas on which it feeds.