A Tragic Idyl

by Paul Bourget

"This is the first time."

"And you have been all winter at Cannes. I can still hear Du Prat calling you Mademoiselle Pierrette. You are too good and too young. Look out for the reaction. And, speaking of Du Prat, have you heard from him?"

"He is still on the Nile with his wife," Hautefeuille replied, "and he insists upon my joining them."

"And you wouldn't go and finish the wedding journey with them. That was even wiser than refusing to play. That is the result of not spending one's honeymoon here on the coast, like everybody else. They get bored with each other even before the housewarming."

"But I assure you that Olivier is very happy," Hautefeuille said, with an emphasis that showed his affection for the man of whom Corancez had spoken so lightly; then, to avoid any further comments upon his absent friend: "But, frankly, do you find this society so amusing?" And he motioned toward the crowd of players around the tables who were growing more and more excited. "It is the paradise of the rastaquouères."

"That's the prejudice of the Parisian," said the Provençal, who still felt bitter against the great city on account of his defeat at the most desirable of clubs. He continued to vent his bitterness; "Rastaquouères. When you have uttered that anathema, you think that you have settled the question; and by dint of repeating it, you blind yourself to the fact that you Parisians are becoming the provincials of Europe. Yes, you no longer produce the really great aristocrats; they are now the English, the Russians, the Americans, the Italians, who have as much elegance and wit as you Parisians, but with real temperament beneath their elegance which you have never had, and with the gayety which you have no more. And the women of these foreign lands. Contrast them with that heartless, senseless doll, that vanity in papier mâché, the Parisian woman."

"In the first place, I am not at all a Parisian," interrupted Pierre Hautefeuille; "I am rather a provincial of provincials. And then, I grant the second part of your paradox; some of these women are remarkable in their fineness and culture, in their brightness and charm. And yet is their charm ever equal, not to that of the Parisienne, I agree, but to that of the real Frenchwoman, with her good sense and her grace, her tact, her intelligence—the poetry of perfect measure and taste?"

He had been thinking aloud, unconscious of the slight smile that passed, almost invisibly, over the ironical lips of his interlocutor. The "Sire" de Corancez was not the man to engage himself in a discussion for which he cared no more than he did for the Pharaohs whose tombs served as the background of their friend's honeymoon. Knowing Hautefeuille's attachment to this man, he had brought up his name in order to give to their conversation an accent of ease and confidence. Hautefeuille's remarks about foreign women, confirming the diagnosis of his love for Madame de Carlsberg, recalled Corancez to the real purpose of this interview. He and his companion were at this moment near the table of trente-et-quarante, at which was seated one of the persons most involved in the execution of his project, the uncle of Miss Marsh, one of the most celebrated of American railroad magnates, Richard Carlyle Marsh, familiarly known as Dickie Marsh, he who was destined, on a fixed day, to lend his yacht unwittingly to the wedding voyage of Madame Bonnacorsi. It was in his company that Corancez was to return with his friend to Cannes, and he wished to interest Hautefeuille in the Yankee potentate in order to facilitate his introduction.

"No," he continued, "I assure you that this foreign colony contains men who are as interesting as their wives. We are apt to overlook this fact, because they are not so pretty to look at.—I see one at this table whom I shall introduce. We met his niece the other day at the Baroness's. He is Marsh, the American. I wish you to see him playing— Good, some one is rising. Don't lose me, we may profit by this and get to the front of the crowd."

And the adroit Southerner managed to push himself and Hautefeuille through the sudden opening of the spectators so that in a moment they were stationed right behind the chair of the croupier, who was in the act of turning the cards. They could command the whole table and every movement of the players.