“Are you going to paint little Favier’s portrait, M. la Croix? Molan told me you were,” she asked. “She is a pretty girl. I hope you will give her another expression though. If the dear master were not here I would say that when she is not talking she is like the classic cow watching the train pass.”
She looked at the man of letters whom she called “dear master” as she spoke with sovereign impertinence. Knowing him to be the lover of this woman to whom she applied this vulgar epigram, what impertinence this was with a harsh laugh as its accompaniment! Her laughter, the voice of her eyes, was pretty but metallic, clear but implacable, a gay laugh which sounded frightfully brutal to me! If one could not—I repeat this as it was the striking impression of this first meeting—imagine real warm tears from those eyes of stony blue, neither could one imagine her stifling a sigh, nor imagine music in her voice, nor indulgence in her gaiety. But that which at once made her distasteful to me was not her words—the meanness of a jealous woman was their justification—it was a curious trait in her personality.
How can I find words for the indefinable shades of expression on her face which three pencil lines and two touches of colour would clearly reproduce How can I explain that something about her which was at the same time insensible and enervated, glacial and crazy, and so plain in the contrast between her banter and her fine aristocratic profile, which was almost ideal: between her jeering laugh and her fine mouth, between the disdainful carriage of her neck and her willingly familiar manners? This pretty delicate head, with its haughty and fragile grace, which had at once evoked in me the image of a queen of elfs with its blonde hair and flowerlike complexion, was, I have since understood, the victim of the most terrible ennui in the world, that which absolute insensibility in the midst of all the good things of the world, and the radical incapacity of enjoying anything when one possesses all one desires, inflicts upon us. Since then, I have thought the “dear master” was very greatly mistaken on his own account, that this ennui, so like that of a man of the world growing old, perhaps came from abuse, and that there was a blasé woman in this weary one. I guessed that she had dared many things with singular intrepidity. But there was no need for these hypotheses upon the secrets of her life for uneasiness to overcome me. The direct way in which she questioned me, who cannot bear questioning, gave me a feeling of insecurity.
“Have you known Molan long?” she asked me.
“About fifteen years,” I replied.
“Have you ever seen him in love except in his books?”
“You will at once intimidate him, madam,” my friend replied for me. “He is not used to your imperial manner.”
She went on, still keeping her eyes fixed on Molan, though addressing me—
“Has little Favier any brains?”
“Oh, yes!” he replied quickly and in good faith. I should have made the same answer to this creature whose accent alone was sufficient to irritate me. I then began an enthusiastic eulogy of the poor girl I hardly knew, and who had surprised me by her sudden vulgarity. Jacques listened to me as I sang the praises of his mistress in a stupor which Madam de Bonnivet construed into a sense of umbrage. She was not the woman to neglect this opportunity of sowing the seeds of discord between two friends. It is my test for all feminine or masculine natures, this instinctive tremor of sympathy or antipathy before the sentiments of others. It was sufficient for Madam de Bonnivet to believe that Jacques and I were united by sincere comradeship, for the temptation to sever this friendship to seize her.