But to continue, I spent the day before Madam de Bonnivet’s dinner in contemplation. Then when the moment of departure had come, I wished to bid adieu to this picture, or, rather, to ask its pardon. I experienced in the presence of this dream portrait, with which I had spent a sweet romantic week, as much inner remorse as if it had been the image, not of a chimera, but of an actually betrayed fiancée. I can see myself now as I appeared in the large mirror of the studio, walking with my fur coat open like a guilty man towards the canvas, which, after gazing at for the last time, I was about to hide by turning it face towards the wall in an adjoining garret. Did not the Camille Favier of my fancy disappear to give place to another as pretty, as touching perhaps, but not my Camille?
But come, my sweet phantom, one more sigh, one more look, and I will return to reality. Reality was, in fact, a cab waiting at the door to take me through the driving rain to the Rue des Écuries d’Artois, where the fashionable rival of the pretty actress dwelt. What would she say when Jacques told her that I had dined at her rival’s house? He would be sure to tell her in order to enjoy my embarrassment. What would Madam de Bonnivet herself say? Why had she invited me? What did I really know about it? What did I know of her, save that the sight of her gave me a pronounced feeling of antipathy, and Jacques had told me many unpleasant things about her? But my antipathy might be mistaken, and Jacques might be slandering her as he did Camille Favier. “Suppose,” I asked myself, “this coquette is caught in the net? It is not very likely,” I replied, “seeing the hard blue of her eyes, her thin lips, her sharp profile, and the haughty harshness of her face. But still she might!”
It was less probable still, when one came to consider the frequent festivities and the gaiety at the house before which my modest cab stopped in the course of this monologue. I don’t consider myself more stupidly plebeian than most people, but the sensation of arriving at a 600,000 franc house to take part in a fifty pound dinner in a vehicle fare thirty-five sous will always suffice to disgust me with the smart world without anything else. But other things had a similar effect on me, and the Bonnivets’ house was one of them, for it seemed to me most like a parody of architecture, in which the feat has been achieved of mingling twenty-five styles and building a wooden staircase in the English style in a Renaissance framework; the hang-dog faces of the footmen in livery seemed like a gallery of mute insolence to the visitor. How could I bear this adornment of things and people without perceiving its hideous artificiality? How could I help detesting the impression made by this furniture, which smelt of plunder and curiosity shops, for nothing was in its place: eighteenth century tapestry alternated with sixteenth century pictures, with furniture of the days of Louis XV, with modern sliding curtains, and with bits of ancient stoles furnishing off a reclining chair, the back of a couch, or the cushion of a divan! In short, when I was ushered into the boudoir drawing-room where Madam de Bonnivet held her assizes I was a greater partisan than ever of Camille, the brave little actress, as she had appeared to me in the modest room in the Rue de la Barouillére.
The millionairess rival of this poor girl was reclining rather than sitting upon a kind of bed of the purest Empire style, after the manner in which David has immortalized the cruel grace of Madam Récamier, the illustrious patroness of coquettes of the siren order. She wore one of those dresses which are very simple in appearance, but which in reality mark the limit between superior elegance and the other kind. The greatest artists in the business are the only ones successful with them. It consisted of a skirt of a thick dead-black silk which absorbed the light instead of reflecting it. A cuirass, a jet coat of mail, applied to this stuff, showed distinctly the shape of the bust, and allowed the whiteness of the flesh to shine through at the bare places at the shoulders and arms. A jet girdle, a model of those worn in ancient statues on tombs by queens of the Middle Ages, followed the sinuous line of the hips, and terminated in two pendants crossed very low down. Enormous turquoises surrounded by diamonds shone in this pretty woman’s ears. These turquoises and a golden serpent on each arm—two marvellous copies of golden serpents in the Museum at Naples—were the only jewels to lighten this costume, which made her figure look longer and more slender even than it was. Her blonde pallor, heightened by the contrast of this sombre harmony in black and gold, took the delicacy of living ivory. Not a stone shone in her clear golden hair, and it looked as if she had matched the blue of her turquoise with the blue of her eyes, so exactly similar was the shade, except that the blue of these stones, which is supposed to pale when the wearer is in danger, revealed tender and almost loving shades when compared with the metallic and implacable azure of her eyes. She was fanning herself with a large feather fan as black as her dress, on which was a countess’ coronet encrusted in roses. It was without doubt a slight effort towards a definite relationship with the real Bonnivet. I have found out since that she went further than that. But the real Duc de Bonnivet, on the occasion of a charity fête, where Queen Anne had risked claiming a title, had interposed with a lordly and inflexible letter, and all that was left of this thwarted pretension was this coronet, embroidered here and there, without a coat of arms.
Near this slender and dangerous creature, so blonde and white in the dead-black sheath of her spangled corsage and skirt, Senneterre, “the beater,” was sitting on a very low chair, almost a footstool, while Pierre de Bonnivet warmed at the fire the soles of his pumps as he talked to my master Miraut. The latter seemed somewhat surprised, and not very pleased to see me. Dear old master; if he only knew how wrong he was in thinking that I was his rival for a 20,000-franc portrait! But this pastel merchant comes of the race of good giants. Besides his six foot in height, and suppleness from exercise, his porter’s shoulders, broadened still more by his daily boxing, his Francis I profile, sensual, fine, and gluttonous, he has retained, beneath the trickery of the profession, a generous temperament. So he received me with a friendly though a little too patronizing greeting!
“Ah! then you know my pupil?” he said to Madam de Bonnivet. “He has great ability, only he lacks assurance and confidence in himself.”
“But there are so many who have too much of these qualities,” the young woman interposed, casting an evil glance at the pastelist who seemed disconcerted. “He makes up for them.”
“Good!” I thought, “she is not in a good humour, nor even polite. It is quite true that Miraut is a little too conceited. But he is a man of great talent, who has done her a great honour by coming here. How bad-tempered she looks this evening! Bonnivet, too, looks preoccupied in spite of his mask of gaiety! I will stand by what I told Jacques the other day. I would not trust either the woman or the husband. These cold-looking blondes are capable of anything, and so are strong full-blooded men like the husband. Now we shall see Jacques’ manœuvre. To think that he could be so happy quite simply with his little friend! Life is really very badly arranged.”
This fresh internal monologue was almost as distinct as I have written it. This doubling process proved the extreme excitement of my faculties. For my clear, distinct thoughts did not prevent me being all attention to the conversation which was reinforced by the presence of Count and Countess Abel Mosé. He is an accomplished type of the great modern financier. Strange to say, this kind of face which is often met with among the Jews is not displeasing to me. I can see in it the setting of a real passion. For people of this kind the vanity of their club and drawing-room life has at least its realism. In playing the part of the noble host they prove they have mounted one step of the social ladder. The life of fashion is to them a second business, which is in juxtaposition to the other and continues it. It is a step gained; but what a life theirs must be to endure the wear and tear of these two existences, anxious cares alternating with exhausting pleasures, and years made up of days on the Stock Exchange followed by dinners in town. Then, too, Madam Mosé is very beautiful in her oriental fashion, with nothing of the conventional style and irregular features about her! She is the Biblical Judith, the creature with eyes burning like the sands in the desert, over which the soldiers of Holophernes passed. “Who could hate the Hebrews when they have such women?” I said with them.
Five minutes afterwards pretty Madam Éthorel entered with her husband; then—“naturally,” as Miraut said between his teeth, to make me understand that he knew the secrets of this society—Crucé the collector; then came Machault, a professional athlete, whom I have seen fence at the School of Arms; then appeared a certain Baron Desforges, a man of sixty, whose eye at once struck me as being almost too acute, and whose colour was too red, like that of a man of the world grown old. The conversation began to buzz, obligatory questions as to the weather and health being mingled with previous scandals and recollections of the day, which were very often full of ennui and simply mentioned for the sake of something to say. I can still hear some of these phrases.