'What a scene it would make for a parting!' murmured the young man, adding, in a somewhat louder tone:
Until the hour when from the vault above us
Glares down the frowning visage of the moon . . .
Had any observant passer-by happened to hear these two lines from Victor Hugo he would have recognised a man of letters by the way in which they were delivered. The solitary speaker bore indeed a name well to the fore in the literature of the day. But names so quickly disappear and get forgotten in the incessant onward rush of new works, self-assertive claims, and fleeting reputations that the successes of ten years ago seem as distant and as vague as those of another age. Two dramas of modern life, a little too directly inspired by the younger Dumas, had brought this young man—he was thirty-five or more, but he looked barely thirty—momentary renown, and he had not yet spoilt his name by putting it at the bottom of hastily written articles or upon the covers of indifferent novels. He was known only as the author of 'La Goule' and 'Entre Adultères,' two plays of unequal merit, full of a pessimism frequently conventional, but powerful in their trenchant analysis, their smart dialogue, and their painful striving after the Ideal. In 1879 these plays were already three years old, and Claude Larcher, who had allowed himself to drift into a life of idle pleasure, was beginning to accept lucrative and easy work, being no longer fit to make any fresh and long-sustained effort.
Like many analytical writers, he was accustomed to study and probe himself incessantly, though all his introspection had not the least influence upon his actions. The most trifling occurrences served as a pretext for indulging in examination of himself and his destiny, but long-continued dualism of this kind only resulted in keeping his perceptive faculties uselessly and painfully alert. The sight of this peaceful street and the thought of Victor Hugo immediately reminded him of the resolutions he had been vainly formulating for some months past to lead a retired life of regular work. He reflected that he had a novel on order for a magazine, a play to write that had already been accepted, and reviews to send to a 'daily,' whilst, instead of being seated at his table in the Rue de Varenne, here he was gadding about at ten o'clock at night dressed like an idler and a snob. He would pass the remainder of the evening and a part of the night at a soirée given by the Comtesse Komof, a Russian lady of fashion living in Paris, whose receptions at the grand mansion in the Rue de Bel-Respiro were as magnificent as they were mixed. He was about to do even worse. He had come to fetch another writer, ten years younger than himself, who had till that moment led precisely the noble life of hard work for which he himself so longed, in one of the houses in this modest and quiet Rue Coëtlogon.
René Vincy—that was the name of his young colleague—had just leapt with one bound into the full glare of publicity, thanks to one of those strokes of literary luck which do not occur twice in a generation. The 'Sigisbée,' a comedy in one act and in verse, a fanciful, dreamy work, written without any hopes of practical success, had brought him sudden fame. Like our dear François Coppée's 'Le Passant,' it had taken the blasé capital by storm, and had called forth not only unanimous applause in the Théâtre Français, but a chorus of praise in the newspapers next day. Of this astonishing success Claude could claim a share. Was he not the first in whose hands the manuscript of the 'Sigisbée' had been placed? Had he not taken it to Colette Rigaud, the famous actress of the House of Molière? And Colette, having fallen in love with the principal part, had smoothed away all obstacles. It was he, Claude Larcher, who, consulted by Madame Komof upon the choice of a play to be performed in her salon, had suggested the 'Sigisbée;' the Comtesse had acted upon his suggestion, and the performance was to take place that evening. Claude, who had undertaken to chaperon the young poet, had come at the appointed hour to the Rue Coëtlogon, where René Vincy lived with his married sister.
This extreme kindness of an already successful author towards a mere novice was not entirely devoid of a tinge of irony and pride. Claude Larcher, who spent his time in slandering the wealthy and cosmopolitan world in which the Comtesse Komof moved, and in which he himself was always mixing, felt his vanity slightly tickled by being able to dazzle his friend with the glamour of his fashionable connections. At the same time the malicious cynic was amused by the simplicity of the poet and by his childish awe of that magic and meaningless word—Society. He had already enjoyed, as much as a play, Vincy's shyness during their first visit to the Comtesse a few days before, and thoughts of the fever of expectancy in which René must now be made him smile as he approached the house in which his young friend lived.
'And to think that I was just as foolish as that once!' he murmured, remembering that he, too, as well as René, had had his début; then he thought, 'That is a feeling of which those who have always lived in that kind of world have no idea; and how absurd it is for us to go and visit these people!'
Whilst philosophising in this manner Claude had stopped before another gate on the left, and, finding it locked, had rung the bell. The passage to which this gate gave access belonged to a three-storeyed house separated from the street by a narrow strip of garden. The porter's lodge was under the arch at the end of the passage, but either the concierge was absent or the pull at the bell had not been sufficiently vigorous, for Claude was obliged to tug a second time at the rusty ring that hung at the end of a long chain. He had time, therefore, to examine this dull, dismal-looking house, in which there was only one window lit up. This was on the ground floor, and belonged to the suite of rooms occupied by the Fresneaus, four windows of which looked out upon the little garden.
Mademoiselle Emilie Vincy, the poet's sister, had married one Maurice Fresneau, a teacher, whose colleague Claude had been upon first coming to Paris—a début of which the pampered author of 'La Goule' was weak enough to be ashamed. How happy he would have been had he been able to say that he had frittered away his patrimony at cards or upon women! He, however, kept up a close acquaintance with his former colleague, out of gratitude for pecuniary services rendered long ago. He had at first interested himself in René chiefly for the sake of this old comrade of less happy days, but had afterwards yielded to the charm of the young man's nature. How often, when tired of his artificial life and tortured by painful indolence and bitter passions, had he not come to obtain an hour's rest in René's modest room, next to that in which the light was now burning, and which was the dining-room. In the short interval that elapsed between his two rings, and thanks to the swift imagination of his artistic mind, this room suddenly rose up before him—symbolical of the purity of soul hitherto preserved by his friend. The poet and his sister had with their own hands nailed to the wall some thin red cloth adorned here and there with a few engravings, chosen with the consummate taste of a lonely thinker—some studies by Albert Dürer, Gustave Moreau's 'Hélène' and 'Orphée,' and one or two etchings by Goya. The iron bedstead, the neatly kept table, the bookcase filled with well-bound books, the red parquetting of the floor forming a frame to the carpet in the centre—how Claude had loved this familiar scene, with these words from the 'Imitatio' written over the door by René in his boyish days: Cella continuata dulcescit! Larcher's thoughts, at first ironical, had become suddenly modified by the images his brain had conjured up, and he felt moved by the idea that this entry into society through the portals of the Komof mansion was after all a great event for a child of twenty-five who had always lived in this house. What a heart full of ideals he was about to carry into that pleasure-loving and artificial Society that crowded the Comtesse's salons!
'What a pity he should have to go!' he exclaimed, his reverie broken by the click of the lock, adding, as he pushed the gate open, 'But it was I who advised him to accept the invitation, and who got him dressed for to-night.' He had, indeed, taken René to his tailor, his hosier, his bootmaker, and even his hatter, in order to proceed to what he jestingly called his investiture. 'The dangers of contact with the world ought to have been thought of before. . . . But how foolish of me to meet troubles half way! He will be presented to four or five women, he will be invited to dinner two or three times, he will forget to call again, he will forget—and he will be forgotten.'