'Do you know where he lives?' inquired Suzanne. 'He called on me and only left his name.'
No sooner had her note been written and sent than she became a prey to that uncertainty upon which newborn love thrives so well that in those days when the strange but not unintellectual vice of seduction was still fashionable the professors of the art used to dwell upon the importance of invoking the aid of this feverish condition. Would René come or not? If he came, what would he look like?
She would be able to see at once by his face if anything had happened to impair the impression she was sure she had made upon him the other day. The hour that she had fixed in her note at length arrived, and when the poet was announced Suzanne's heart beat faster than did that of her simple lover. She looked at him and read to the bottom of his soul. Yes, she was still to him the Madonna she had pretended to be from the first with that facility of metamorphosis peculiar to these Protei in petticoats. In his soft dark blue eyes she perceived both joy and fear—joy at seeing her again so soon, and in her own home; fear at appearing before this angel of purity after having dared to look for her at the Opera and to wait for her at the corner of the street.
This time the charming actress had devised a new background for her beauty. She was seated near the window, and with some bundles of silk thread and the aid of a few pins was working a pattern upon a drum of green cloth. Behind her the lace curtains were drawn back in their bands, and the visitor's gaze could rest upon the landscape of the Parc Monceau, upon the pale blue sky, the bare trees, the yellow grass, and the dark ivy that grew about the ruins. A February sun lit up this wintry prospect, and its rays fell caressingly upon Suzanne's hair with its soft golden sheen. A white dress, made in fanciful style, with long, wide sleeves and trimmings of violets, gave her the appearance of a lady of the Middle Ages. Her feet, encased in silk stockings of the same shade as the trimming of her dress, were modestly crossed upon a low footstool. Had she been told that less than forty-eight hours ago these same modest feet had wandered across the carpets of what was almost a house of ill-fame, that this hair had been handled by an aged lover who paid her, that she was in fact kept by Desforges, she would probably have denied the statement in perfect sincerity, so closely did her desire to please René make her identify herself with the rôle she was playing.
The poet could not be aware of this. He had spent three days in one continual state of exaltation, feeling his desire increase hourly, and very glad to feel it. The beginning of a passion is as alluring at twenty-five as at thirty-five it is terrifying. Suzanne's note had given him unmistakable proofs that the trifling imprudences which he himself looked upon as a crime had not given great displeasure, but in matters that concern us very closely we always find fresh motives for doubt, and this grown-up child had been silly enough to fear the reception that awaited him. How delighted he was, therefore, to be met with the simple familiarity, the beaming eyes, and the sweet smile of this woman whom, seated in the foreground of the wintry landscape, he immediately compared to those saints whom the early masters set in the midst of green fields and placid lakes. But this was a saint whose gown had been made by the first tailor in Paris, a saint from whom there emanated that odour of heliotrope which had already played such havoc with the poet's senses, and through the opening of whose long, wide sleeves two golden bands were seen clasping an arm as white as snow.
What René had so much feared did not take place. Madame Moraines did not make the slightest allusion either to the Opera or to their meeting at the corner of the street. For some time she continued her work, having quite naturally brought the conversation round from Madame Komof's enthusiasm to the poet's plans for the future. She, who could not have distinguished Béranger from Victor Hugo, or Voltaire from Lamartine, spoke like one entirely devoted to literature. She had met Théophile Gautier two or three times under the Empire, and though she had scarcely looked at him on account of his complete lack of British elegance, this did not prevent her from giving the enthusiastic René a minute description of the great writer. He had interested her to such a degree—she thought she must still have some of his letters.
'I must find them for you,' she said. Then, reminded by this lie, she added, 'I am sorry to have put you to all this inconvenience for your autograph, but my friend leaves for Russia to-morrow.'
'What shall I write?' asked René.
'Whatever you please,' she said, rising to get the book, and placing it on her ivy-mantled desk. She got everything ready for him to make his task easier—opened the ink-pot with its silver top and put a fresh pen in the ivory and gold penholder; in doing this she contrived to touch René lightly in passing to and fro, enveloping him with her sweet perfume and causing his hand to tremble as he copied on the fly-sheet of the book the two verses which kind Madame Ethorel had called a sonnet:
The phantom of a day long dead
Appeared, with hand stretched out to show
A fair white rose whose bloom was fled,
And in my ear it whispered low,
'Where is thy heart of long ago?
Where is that hope thy fond heart chose
So like this rose in days of yore?
Dear was the hope and dear the rose:
How sweet their perfume heretofore
When once they bloomed! They bloom no more.