One after the other I will resuscitate these three women, I will make them pose before my eyes, according to the taste of my memory, as if the irreparable, and such an irreparable, were not between us! One after the other they come back to sit in this studio where I am writing these lines. One after the other I listen to them telling me, the first her joy, the second her sorrow, and the third the fury of her jealousy and the fever of her indignation; and yet to-day I do not know before which of the three women, and during which of the three periods I suffered the most, my suffering being the greater because I was obliged to be silent; and behind each of the confidences little Favier gave me, whether she were happy, melancholy, or angry, I could see the hard silhouette of the elegant rival, to whose caprices this joy, sorrow or anger were subordinated. Oh, God! what punishment for hybrid sentiments, those sentiments which have not the courage to go to the end in the logic of sacrifice or gratification, I experienced during those sittings! But still I would like to begin them again. I am writing of misery again and composing more elegies. Let me get on with the facts, facts, facts!
The first period, that of joy, was not of long duration. The scene which marked its culminating point took place on the fourth of these sittings. The scene, though a fine expression, merely consisted of a conversation without any other incident than Camille’s entry into the studio with a bunch of roses—large, heavy roses of all shades—some pale with the dewy pallor of her face, others blonde and almost of the same golden tint as her beautiful hair, others as red as her pretty mouth with its lower lip so tightly rolled, others dark, which by contrast appeared to light up her bloodless colour that morning. The question was, which of these flowers I should choose for her to hold in her hand. I wished to paint her in an absolute unity of tone, like Gainsborough’s blue boy. She had to stand wearing a dress of blue gauze, that of her part, with blue silk mittens, blue velvet at the neck, blue ribbons at the sleeves, her feet in blue satin shoes, with no jewels but sapphires and turquoises on a ground of peacock blue velvetine, with no head-dress but the blonde cloud of her fine hair, with the back of one of her hands resting upon her supple hip, while she offered a rose with her other hand.
“It is my youth that I will offer Jacques,” she said to me that morning while we studied the pose together; “my twenty-two years and my happiness. I am so happy now!”
“You don’t experience any more evil temptations, then?” I asked.
“Do you remember?” she replied, laughing and blushing at the same time. “No, I don’t feel them now. I turned Tournade out of my dressing-room, and pretty quickly, I can assure you. But do you know what pleases me most? I never see that ugly woman now; you remember, Madam de Bonnivet. She does not come to the theatre, and the other day Jacques ought to have dined with her, but he did not go. I am quite sure of that, for he wrote his letter of excuse in my presence. It was the evening Bressoré could not act: there was a change of bill and I was free for the evening. I wanted so badly to ask him if we could spend it together, but I did not dare. He suggested it himself, and now every day I have a fresh proof of his tenderness. He is coming for me presently to take me to lunch. Ah! how I love him, how I love him! How proud I am of loving him!”
What answer could I make to such phrases, and what could I do but allow her to remain enraptured by this illusion as she was enraptured by the scent of the roses which she inhaled, closing as she did so her clear azure eyes—another note of blue in the harmony which I sought? What could I do but suffer in silence at the idea that this recrudescence of tenderness in the sensual and complex Molan was, without doubt, a trick. Some harshness on the other woman’s part was certainly the cause of it. Camille took for the marks of passionate ardour the fever of excitation into which Madam de Bonnivet had thrown Jacques without gratifying it. When a woman has, as the pretty actress so nicely put it, her twenty years of age and her youth to offer, she cannot guess that in her arms her lover is thinking of another woman, and exalting his senses by her image! That morning I kept silent as to what I knew. To make her laugh and keep myself from weeping, I told her the story of a real duchess of the eighteenth century, who wished to give her miniature to her lover before he took the field with the troops. She went to the painter with her eyes so fatigued by the tender folly of her good-bye that the painter declared he would not continue the portrait if she did not become more virtuous, for her beauty had changed so.
“Ah!” the duchess said as she put her arms round her lover’s neck in the painter’s presence, “if that is the case, then life is too short to have one’s portrait painted.”
“Ah! how true what he has just been saying is, Jacques!” Camille cried as she went to meet Jacques who came in at that moment. I can see her now leaning her loving head upon the knave’s shoulder, the latter being condescending, indulgent, almost tender, because I was there to assist at this foolish explosion of affection. This picture is a very good résumé of the first period which might be entitled: Camille happy!
Camille sad! That was title of the second period which began almost immediately and lasted much longer. The scene which sums up the period in my memory is one quite unlike that of the roses, the scent of which she inhaled with such confident ecstasy, and that of the kiss she gave Jacques with such charming shamelessness. This time it was about the eleventh or twelfth sitting. I had noticed for some days that my model’s expression had changed. I had not dared to question her, for I was just as much afraid to learn that Jacques treated her well as that he treated her badly. That morning she was to come at half-past ten, and it was not ten yet. I was engaged in looking through a portfolio of drawings after the old Florentine masters, without succeeding in engrossing myself in their study. That is what takes the place of opium with me in my bad moments. Usually merely looking at these sketches recalls to me the frescoes of Ghirlandajo, of Benozzo, of Fra Filippo Lippi, of Signorelli, and many others; I find intact in me that fervour for the ideal which made me almost mad in my youth, when I went from little town to little town, from church to church, and from cloister to cloister.
In those days a half-effaced silhouette of the Madonna, hardly visible upon a bit of wall eaten up by the sun, was enough to make me happy for an afternoon. The profiles of virgins dreamed by the old Tuscans, the bent figures of their young lords in their puffy doublets, the minute horizons in their vast landscapes, with battlements and campaniles upon the eminences, roads bordered by cypress trees and valleys glistening with running water—all this charm of primitive art was there imprisoned in this portfolio of sketches and ready to emerge from it to charm my fantasy. But my imagination was elsewhere, occupied with this problem in æsthetics very far distant from the frescoes and convents of Pisa or Sienne. “Camille was very sad again yesterday. Has the absurd Jacques resumed with the absurd Madam de Bonnivet?” That was what I was asking myself, instead of by the help of my sketches revisiting Italy, dear divine Italy, the land of beauty.