“What time did you get this letter?” I asked him.
“About twenty-five minutes ago. The messenger is waiting. I wanted to see you and know what she said to you. She has lost nothing by waiting. I am going to reply to her in my best style.”
“I should be curious,” I said, “to know by what new scheme you will excuse yourself.”
“I!” he replied as he sat down at a little table and began to write, “by none. I am telling her that I have not the least explanation to give her, and I do not wish her to allow herself another time to play tricks upon me as she did when she sent to Fomberteau.”
“You will not do that,” I interrupted him quickly. “The poor girl loves you with all her heart. She could not bear the doubt. She thought you were lying to her and she wanted to know the truth. Come, is not that natural? Had she not the right? Be just. It is so simple to find another excuse. Rather tell her the truth as she asks for it; it will, too, be less trouble.”
“There is only one slight objection,” Jacques replied as he fastened the note, rang the electric bell to summon the messenger, and gave it to him, “and it is that I should be perfectly happy if Camille quarrelled with me. That is, too, another principle as absolute as the regularity of work. When a man wishes to break with his mistress, the more insignificant the motive the better. My progress is so good in the other direction that I don’t need her any longer to urge on her rival. As you are my 'beater,’ and I know that you are as silent as a tomb, I will tell you everything in spite of those noble phrases about discretion, more especially as up to the present this confidence only compromises me. Last evening I obtained an appointment from Madam de Bonnivet. You would never guess the place though, not in a thousand times. At Pére Lachaise, before the tomb of Musset like the other girl. You don’t think that is very grand, do you? From the cemetery to the carriage is like the sublime to the ridiculous, and it is only one step, and from the carriage to a place of my acquaintance is the programme and only another step. For you know one never ought to take a woman to one’s own home. Under these circumstances Camille quarrels with me, so much the better! But don’t look at me as if you would like to say: 'My dear Molan, you are a monster.’”
If I had still doubted the keen sentiment inspired in me by the charming Camille, the doubt would have been swept away by the cruel emotion I experienced at this cynical speech. I could see the reality of the drama in which I was concerned as a witness; as in some duels the sight of a life very dear to him in danger makes the second paler than the duellist, Little Favier’s passionate love served Jacques as an attack upon the vanity of the blasé woman of the world who was coquettish and coldly perverse without doubt, but also elegant, envied and rich, and afterwards whom his vanity and curiosity attracted. The heart of the poor little actress which had remained naïve and romantic in spite of his disenchanting existence, her true heart—which I had felt to be so true, which had opened with such spontaneity in an hour of inward suffering—was about to be broken, torn and crushed between two prides fighting one against the other—and what prides they were!
This most ferocious and implacable of all prides, that of an almost great lady and an almost great author, both gangrened with egoism by their habitual display, was withered by their constant and detestable study of the effect produced, without which a person does not retain the world’s uncertain prestige. By frightfully certain intuition, I at once measured the depth of the abyss in which my friend of the previous evening unknown to herself was plunged. The extreme clearness of this vision prevented me answering Jacques with indignation, as he no doubt expected and was prepared to amuse himself at my simplicity. He would have chaffed me, and that would have annoyed me. He would have told me in words what his enigmatic smile expressed. “If she pleases you so there is a place for you to take at once as her consoler.” I can give myself the credit for not using that ugly expression. But I lay claim to no other merit. Is there any merit in not profaning in oneself an image which only pleases when it is tender and pure? Strange though it may seem to apply this word to a girl whom I knew to be the mistress of one of my comrades, I respected in Camille that foolish illusion by which her twenty-two years risked on a single card their precious treasure of delicate dreams, naïve tenderness and noble chimeras. I respected in her the dream which she had already made me dream.
During that conversation last evening, the inmost depths of my melancholy had trembled at the thought that had I met her a little sooner, before she gave herself to Molan, understood and pleased her, perhaps this unreasonable and touching child would have turned to me in her need to take up with another artist those ancient and ridiculed parts of muse and inspirer. What maker of beauty, however, has not sighed for the presence near him of a charming woman’s mind, of a dear and devoted face from which to drink in courage in times of lassitude, of two weak but steady hands to clasp in his own weary ones, or a faithful shoulder on which to rest his weary brow. It was enough to have associated this sigh of regret for some minutes with the name of Jacques’ mistress for the hope of a common and spiteful adventure with this poor girl not to need dismissing. But the fact of my not nourishing a dirty gallant project did not prevent my sympathy, which was already unhealthy, growing during this talk with my comrade. That is why instead of writing to Malvina the model, according to the wise plan formed a few hours before, I followed my illogical visit of the morning by one still more illogical in the afternoon, and that imprudent day terminated by a third also foolish visit. An attack of irrationality was beginning. It is not over yet as my pen trembled in my hand at recording Jacques’ brutal phrases. On the point of setting down the details of these two other episodes which finished the prologue of this private tragedy, I had to put down the pen. I had a pain in my memories, just as a person suffers from a badly-closed wound. Nevertheless, by a contradiction which I suffered without being able to explain, a charm arises from these sorrowful souvenirs, a magic and an attraction.
The second visit I paid was, as can easily be guessed, to the poor Blue Duchess herself, as I had begun to call her in my heart; and I forgot the pedantic reminiscence which had inspired Jacques Molan with this name, in making it convey the tender grace, and the fantastic melancholy of one of Watteau’s dreams which are chimerical and caressing, ideal and voluptuous. There was certainly no more difference between the sentimentalism which this pretty child had ingenuously confessed to me on the previous evening, and the practical materialism of her lover, than between the sumptuous new house in the Place Delaborde and the third floor in the modest Rue de la Barouillére where I rang about two o’clock. The faded tints of the badly painted front harmonized with the sordidness of the hall, and the glacial chill of the uncarpeted wooden staircase, the dirty stairs of which sloped towards the street. An air of shabby mediocrity extended over the old building, and the common visiting cards nailed to the doors, at which I was curious enough to look, revealed what sort of tenants dragged out their existence there. These poor houses abound in the old streets near the Faubourg Saint Germain, and as the highest rent is 1,200 francs they are the last haven open to all the waifs of humble middle-class virtue. While I listened to the bell and the sound of approaching footsteps all my impressions were moved at this evidence of sentimental analogy which touched me still more. I wished to discover in the fact that the already well-known actress continued to live here a proof that she had not lied to me when she spoke of her mother’s and her own peaceful life, an obvious sign of a total absence of vanity and an indisputable evidence of her pride. If she had ceased to be modest, she had not sold herself for luxury. She had given herself to love and adoration. Alas! I was very quickly to learn that the temptation for great Parisan elegance, too natural to a fine young creature when she has known and lost it, still composed one of the elements of the moral drama which was being enacted in her.