The reply to my question as to the cause of Camille’s sadness was given me by Molan himself. I had not had any private conversation with him since our chance breakfast on the day previous to the first sitting. I did not expect to see him enter my studio that morning more than any other morning, knowing his rule to write four pages before midday, and the vigour with which this methodical purveyor of literature conformed to it. So when his voice disturbed me I was for a moment really apprehensive. The servant had opened the door without me hearing him, reclining as I was upon a divan turning over the portfolio of sketches as if I were rendered unconscious by my excess of anxiety. I had no time to form an hypothesis in my own mind. My unexpected visitor had realized my astonishment from my face, and he anticipated my questions by saying—
“Yes, here I am! You did not expect me, did you? Make your mind easy, I am not come to inform you that Camille has asphyxiated herself with a coke fire of the latest fashion, nor that she has thrown herself into the Seine because of my bad conduct. By the way, the portrait is not a bad one. You have made progress, much progress, with it. But that is not the reason of my visit. Camille will be here directly, and I want you to tell her that I dined with you last evening, and that we did not separate till one o’clock this morning!”
“You have conceived the brilliant idea of involving me in your lies,” I replied irritably “I thought I told you the part did not suit me.”
“I know,” he said in a half apologetic tone obviously destined to wheedle me, “and I understand your scruples so thoroughly that I have left you in peace all this time. But matters progress in the other direction, and if you had been able to assist me, Bonnivet would no longer pass under the Arc de Triomphe. Excuse the pleasantry worthy of the late Paul de Kock. But this time it is not on my account, but for Camille’s sake; I want to spare her an unnecessary sorrow. Have you noticed how sad she has been lately?”
“Yes, and thought it was a sorrow of your making.”
“You are turning to psychology,” he replied not without irony. “It is very much out of fashion, I warn you. But don’t let us exchange epigrams,” he went on seriously. “The little one will be here to pose directly, and if I met her we should be lost. I will put you in possession of the facts in five minutes. I must first tell you that she is again on the track of my flirtation with Queen Anne, on whom, in parenthesis, you have not called and left your card. By the way, give me one and I will leave it for you on my next visit. As the flirtation is at the moment very accentuated, Camille is very, very jealous and very distrustful. In short, yesterday there was the inverse of the other comedy. You recall the dinner trick, don’t you? I received about four o’clock two notes, one from Madam de B—— signifying that ... But the contents of this note would make you jump if I told them to you. In reality you are very naïve and still believe in a woman’s modesty. Confine yourself to the knowledge that in her husband’s absence—he has been called into the country to see a sick relative—Queen Anne had arranged to dine and spend the evening with me. The other note was from Camille, to tell me that in the absence of her mother, who was also called into the country by a sick relative, knowing that I was disengaged for the evening, she had arranged for us to dine and return home together after La Duchesse Curtain.
“So you naturally preferred Madam de B——, and told Camille that you were dining with me?”
“I have not told you everything,” he said. “I thought it better to receive the note too late. For I might have gone out at four o’clock and not have returned to dinner? She will be here directly. Be careful not to mention my visit this morning. Say incidentally, without appearing to intend to do so, that you had some friends to dinner yesterday, and that I was among them. She believes you. When she reaches home she will find a wire from 'yours truly’ confirming the story, and the trick is done, unless Senneterre——”
“What has Senneterre to do with it?” I asked.
“I told you that he was Queen Anne’s platonic lover, and you observed it yourself; he is platonic, and as jealous as if he had the right to be so. Consequently he detests me. He goes still further and watches me. The idea has occurred to him to join hands with Camille. He had the audacity to ask me, in an off-hand way, to introduce him, and four or five times afterwards I found him in her dressing-room. Has she not mentioned it to you? No. He is quite likely to have told her, before last evening, as if by accident, that Bonnivet was leaving Paris with the sole object of letting her loose at me and of putting a spoke in the wheel of the carriage in which Queen Anne has at last consented to ride. Do not be too scandalized, we have only got as far as the carriage. There is no question, too, between us of what some women of the world call so quaintly, 'the little crime.’ But it is a quarter past ten and I must go. Drop me a line this afternoon.”