“No,” she brutally said, “for me to be able to go to bed all the sooner.”
She turned her back on the young man, who was disconcerted by the harshness of this strange reply, to exchange a few equally amiable words with another gentleman who greeted her. The insolence of the phrases she uttered, she who was usually so gracious, proved quite well that she was hardly mistress of herself. Of what an outburst she would be capable if Madam de Bonnivet, as her attitude towards Jacques at that moment made me fear, gave too bold a display of coquetry. My anxiety was suddenly borne to its highest pitch. I understood that in insisting upon Camille figuring at this party, the cruel woman had not only proposed to put her husband’s suspicions at rest for ever. For that she relied upon other weapons. The dominant trait of her implacable nature was vanity, and this vanity wished to have the actress at her mercy, to revenge herself for the two humiliations she could not forget—the insulting heroism at the rooms, and the return of the bill for the bracelet with the receipt from the priest of Saint François Xaviers.
Wounded in her most secret susceptibilities, she had promised herself that for two or three hours she would keep her rival, who was then in her employ, at her house, to inflame her again and again with the most poignant and powerless jealousy, and leave herself free to pardon her after the punishment and forget her, and also the man of letters whom she had taken from the actress. He had already ceased to interest her, now that he no longer represented another women whose happiness she wished to steal. She would soon give proof of it, and also that the fop was bragging when he thought that he had awakened her to the pleasure of love. In spite of so many and such disturbing emotions, she had left his arms as insensible, as far off as ever that total ravishment by person which metamorphoses a coquette into a slave and enslaves her to the man who has initiated her into this complete intoxication. She acted, however, during this evening as if she had loved Jacques. The desire of torturing the woman by whom she had been so strangely saved and wounded was strong enough in her blasé heart to equal physical pleasure. I gained this evidence upon the spot by watching her in the distance talking, while I was making my way towards the spot where she was laughing with Jacques, though my progress was interrupted at intervals by Machault, further on by Miraut, and then by Bonnivet.
The first of the three said to me: “I have not seen you at the school of arms lately. You missed the Italian fencer, San Giobbe. He is really wonderful.”
“You did not tell me the other day,” the second said, “that you were painting Camille Favier’s portrait. It is very underhand of you to treat your old master in that way!”
“Ah well, M. La Croix,” Bonnivet asked, “are you going to hang anything at the next exhibition?”
I felt inclined to answer the incorrigible fencer: “It is not a question of assaults, parade and laughable combats; do you not see that there is a prospect of a real duel, actual sword thrusts, and the sacrifice of some one’s life?” To my dear master I felt inclined to say: “I shall not make you sell a picture more, shall I? Why play the part with me of a protector who is interested in the work of one of his pupils? Spare me this comedy, and let me try to prevent a catastrophe.” To the husband I would like to have said: “If you had watched over your wife more carefully in the beginning she would not be what she is, and this drama would not be enacted in your drawing-room.” In place of those replies, in each case I uttered a few vain, untruthful words. My desire was to reach Jacques soon enough at least to prevent him being in the vicinity of Madam de Bonnivet while the acting was going on. Perhaps I should succeed, as I was only a couple of paces away from him, when Queen Anne, as if she had guessed that I was this time bearing a message from her rival and should deliver it, decided to call me, and said in a tone of imperceptible raillery—
“Let me present you to the woman in Paris who knows most about the primitive Italians about whom you were talking to me the other evening.”
“Really, sir,” the person to whom I was to be thus linked, an insupportable blue stocking, whose name, if my memory does not deceive me, was Madam de Sermoise, said, “do you admire those idealist masters who are so little appreciated in our days of gross realism? But we shall return to them, and to a noble and lofty art. You have been to Pisa, of course, to Sienna, to San Gemigorano and Perugia?”
O sweet little red and golden towns of lovely green Tuscany, which indent with your towers the heights of the slopes planted with vines and olives! O generous artists with whom I lived so long, and whose visions are to me still my soul’s daily bread! Pardon me if I blasphemed your memory and your cult in replying as I did to the odious pedant. I declared to her that her hostess was making fun of her. I told her that I was a member of the grotesquely modern school of art. But my indignation did not last. Madam de Bonnivet had just asked Camille Favier and Bressoré to begin. She gave the signal for the guests to take their seats before the space reserved for the two actors who were to play; and she made Jacques Molan sit by her side, saying loud enough for me to hear—