“Thank you,” said Jacques. Without doubt his fatuity had been sufficiently fed. It displeased him to triumph too openly over a Tournade or a Figon, for he went on: “Allow me just a little criticism?”
Camille cast a fresh glance at him now, somewhat uneasily, as she went on putting the rouge on her face, and he began to quote two insignificant remarks I had made concerning the excessive emphasis at two places in her part. One of them concerned the manner in which the actress had to say to a friend, “I do not want him,” speaking of the husband she loved; the other was a gesture on recognizing the writing on the address of a letter.
I could not help admiring the change of look and voice in both of them in the course of this little discussion. The sudden seriousness of their faces showed how, in spite of his vanity in himself, and his passion for her, the reality of their personality was there in the technicality of their art. They had forgotten the existence of Tournade, Figon, and myself. On their part the two men about town pretended to talk of things which interested them, which we could not understand. I heard the names of horses, no doubt famous at that time, mentioned: Farfadet, Shannon, Little Duck and Fichue Rosse, alternating with the professional phrases of the author and the actress. Ah, how quickly the shrewd Molan had appropriated the two poor ideas I had given him without mentioning their origin! His sole consideration for my feelings was to call me to support his thesis!
“Ask Vincent, for he has studied faces.”
“Ah, well!” he said to me a few minutes later as we were leaving before Tournade and Figon, “we will leave her a prey to the beasts, like a Christian martyr, though she may be neither a Christian nor a martyr. You saw that she conceals a little roughness under her pre-Raphaelite profile, like many of her fellows. Now we have gone, those two funny fellows will occupy her attention. What a singular machine a woman is! You would think that a watertight bulkhead separated the lover from the ordinary woman.”
“Does she often lose her temper like that?” I asked him; “and why do those two fellows put up with such treatment?”
“Bah!” he replied with his habitual modesty, “she would have said much more to them to prove that I was the only person she loved. For between ourselves I know that Tournade is courting her. Do you think that in their eyes the pleasure of saying while they are standing at a bar about midnight imbibing a drink through a straw, ‘We were with little Favier just now, how quaint she is?’ counts for nothing.” Then as we reached our box and I made as if to enter he said: “No! no! you forget we must first pay Madam de Bonnivet a visit.”
“Whose invitation I will refuse. That is agreed.” He took my arm and one of the staff opened most respectfully for us the communicating door between the stage and the auditorium. As we mounted the staircase my friend continued: “As a recompense to you, I will let you into one of the details of the plan which will enable me to get rid of Camille this evening. You will see what a good idea it is. With women, especially actresses, I believe in tremendous untruths. Remember the receipt. They are the only sort which succeed, because they do not believe any one would have the audacity to invent such stories. Presently during the last act I shall have a letter brought to me which I shall pretend to read. You are there! I shall display great astonishment and scribble a few words upon my card which I leave with you. Then I shall go out. Camille will have seen it all and will be uneasy. She will play her great scene with nervous force. That is what is required. Afterwards you will take my card to her, on which I shall explain that Fomberteau—you know him well, don’t you? No. He is one of the few critics who has not picked holes in the Duchess, and on that account Camille loves him—that Fomberteau has had this evening an altercation with a colleague and wants to see me so that I may act on his behalf. I shall not be able to refuse. You will confirm the story. She believes you and the feat will be accomplished. But Madam de Bonnivet’s box is 32, and we have passed it. Good, here it is.”
He knocked at the door as he said this, but the knock was more deferential than the one just before had been at the dressing-room door.
A man in a black coat opened the door to us with a smile, greeted us and disappeared. It was Bonnivet to whom I was introduced, then I was presented to Madam de Bonnivet, and then to the Vicomte de Senneterre, who was the “beater.” I was soon sitting upon one of the chairs vacated by one of these gentlemen. The lady was picking bits of frosted raisin from a box with a pair of golden tongs. She ate them, showing her small white teeth as she did so with a sort of sensual cruelty.