The appearance of Colette Rigaud, dressed à la Watteau, was the signal for a burst of applause, which the actress smilingly acknowledged. Even in her gay attire, copied from one of the great painter's fêtes galantes, and in spite of her powdered hair, her patch, and her pale cheeks bedaubed with paint, there was a tone of sadness about her—something in the dreamy look of the eyes and the melancholy expression on the sensual lips that reminded one of Botticelli's madonnas and angels. How many times had not René heard Claude sigh: 'When she has been telling me lies, and then looks at me in her own peculiar way, I begin to pity her instead of getting angry.'
Colette had already attacked the first lines of her part and René's anguish was at its highest pitch, while all around he heard the loud remarks which even well-bred people will make when an artiste appears on a drawing-room stage. 'She's very pretty. Do you think it's the same dress she wears at the theatre? She's a little too thin for my taste. What a sympathetic voice! No, she imitates Sarah Bernhardt too much. I'm in love with the piece, aren't you? To tell you the truth, poetry always sends me to sleep.' The poet's sharp ears caught all these exclamations and many more. They were, however, soon silenced by a loud 'hush!' that came from a knot of young men standing near René, conspicuous among them being a bald-headed individual with rather a prominent nose and a very red face.
The Comtesse thanked him with a wave of her hand, and, turning to her partner, said: 'That's M. Salvaney; he is madly in love with Colette.' Silence was reestablished, a silence broken only by the rustle of dresses and the unfurling of fans.
René now listened in delightful intoxication to the music of his own verses, for by the silence as well as by the murmurs of approval that were occasionally heard he felt, he knew, that his work was as surely captivating this select audience as it had captivated the 'house' on its first night at the Théâtre Français, then filled with tired critics, worn-out reporters, scoffing boulevardiers, and smart women. Gradually his thoughts took him back, in spite of himself, to the period when he had first thought out and then written the little play which was that night procuring him such a new and delightful thrill of gratification, after having so completely changed the tenor of his life. He saw himself once more in the Luxembourg garden at the close of a bright spring day; the charm of the deepening twilight, the smell of the flowers, the dark blue sky seen through the spare foliage, and the marble statues of the queens—all these things had deeply impressed him as he walked with Rosalie, silent, by his side. She had such a simple way of looking up at him with her great black eyes, in which he could read unconscious though tender passion.
It was on that evening that he had first spoken to her of love, there, amidst the scent of the early lilac, whilst the voices of Madame Offarel and Emilie could be heard, indistinctly, in the distance. He had returned to the Rue Coëtlogon a prey to that fever of hope which brings tears to one's eyes and moves one's nature to its inmost depths. Finding it impossible to sleep, he had sat there alone in his room and drawn a comparison between Rosalie and the object of an earlier but less innocent attachment—a girl named Elise, living in the Quartier Latin. He had met her in a brasserie, where he had been taken by the only two comrades he possessed. Faded as she was, Elise could still boast of good looks, in spite of the black under her eyes, the powder all over her face, and the carmine on her lips. She had taken a fancy to him, and although she shocked him dreadfully by her gestures and her mode of thought, by her voice and her expressions, he had continued the acquaintanceship for about six months—six months that had left him nothing but a bitter memory. Being one of those in whom passion leads to affection, he had become attached to the girl in spite of himself, and he had suffered cruelly from her coquetry, the coarseness of her feelings, and the stock of moral infamy that formed the groundwork of the poor creature's nature.
Seated at his writing-table that night, and dreaming ecstatically of Rosalie's purity, he had conceived the idea of a poem in which he should draw a contrast between a coquette and a true, tender-hearted girl. Then, being an ardent admirer of Shakespeare and de Musset, his vulgar love affair with Elise underwent a strange metamorphosis and became an Italian romance. There and then he made a rough sketch of the 'Sigisbée,' and composed fifty lines. It was the simple story of a young Venetian noble, named Lorenzo, who had fallen in love with Princess Cœlia, a cold and cruel coquette. The unhappy swain, after wasting much time and many tears in wooing this unrelenting beauty, was advised by a young Marquis de Sénecé, a French roué on a visit to Venice, to affect an interest in the sweet and pretty Countess Beatrice in order to awaken Cœlia's jealousy. He then discovered that the Countess had long loved him, and when Cœlia, caught in the trap, tried to lead him back, Lorenzo, profiting by experience, said the perfidious lady nay, and gave himself up entirely to the charms of her who loved him without guile.
Colette, as Cœlia, was speaking while Lorenzo sat lamenting. The roué was cynical and Beatrice lost in dreams. These characters, coming straight from the world of Benedict and Perdican, of Rosalind and Fortunio, strutted on and off, enveloped in a ray of poetry as sweet and light as a moonbeam. As René heard the frequent exclamations of 'Charming!' or 'Exquisite!' that escaped from the crowd of women before him he recalled the nights of wakefulness that this or that passage had cost him. There were these pathetic lines, for instance, written by Lorenzo to Cœlia, and afterwards shown by the latter to Beatrice. How sweet Colette's voice became, in spite of its mocking note, as she read them out.
If kisses for kisses the roses could pay
When our lips o'er their petals in ecstasy stray;
If the lilacs and tall slender lilies could guess
How their sweet perfume fills us with sorrowfulness;
If the motionless sky and the sea never still
Could know how with joy at their beauties we thrill;
If all that we love in this strange world below
A soul in exchange on our souls could bestow:
But the sea set around us, the sky set above,
Lilacs, roses, and you, sweet, know nothing of love.
And as he listened the past returned to René more vividly than ever; he was back in his peaceful room again, and felt once more the secret pleasure of rising each morning to resume his unfinished task. By Claude's advice, and from a childish desire to imitate the ways of genius—a foolish but pretty trait in most young writers—he had adopted the method formerly practised by Balzac. In bed by eight o'clock at night, he would get up before four in the morning, and, lighting the fire and the lamp, would make himself some coffee over a little spirit-stove, all prepared for him by his sister in the evening. As the fire burned up brightly and the aroma of the inspiring Mocha filled the little room, he would sit down at the table with Rosalie's portrait before him and begin work. Gradually the noises of Paris grew more distinct as the great city awakened once more to life. Then he would put down his pen and gaze at the engravings that adorned the wall or turn over the leaves of a book. About six o'clock Emilie would make her appearance. In spite of her household cares, this loving sister found time to copy day by day the lines that her brother had written. For nothing in the world would she have allowed one of René's manuscripts to pass into the hands of the printers. Poor Emilie! How happy it would have made her to hear the applause that drowned Colette's voice, and what unalloyed pleasure René's would have been had not the change in his feelings with respect to Rosalie sent a pang of sadness through his heart at the very moment when the play was finishing amidst the enthusiasm of the whole audience.
'It is a glorious success,' said the Comtesse to the young author. 'You will see how these people will fight for you.' And as if to corroborate what might only have been the flattery of a gracious hostess, René could hear, during the hubbub that succeeded the close of the piece, broken sentences that came to him amid the frou-frou of the dresses, the noise of falling chairs, and the commonplaces of conversation.