He explained elaborately to Margot his reasons for esteeming Monsieur Flaubert; they really added up very respectably, from the fact that he had been with Torialli for ten years to his frank appreciation of Margot’s golden voice.
“Bah!” exclaimed that young person, “dress an eel in gold and he will, still squirm! Why does he come into a room rubbing his hands? He has a bad conscience and he looks like a cat that has stolen the cream. You say I know nothing against him—everything is against him—I do not like the way he does his hair!”
Jean shrugged his shoulders; it was no use trying to argue with Margot; she lived too near the sources of sensation to be easily hoodwinked by ideas.
Jean would have liked to hoodwink her because it would have given him company in the process in which he became daily more and more involved of hoodwinking himself.
At last he had begun his career, but there were moments when he found himself wondering what his career was. He was everybody’s servant and nobody’s master. Music seemed to recede further and further into the distant horizon. For days together all he had of it was the sound of a distant piano; sometimes he was out all day, delivering notes and seeing business people for Louis Flaubert, or Madame Torialli would ask him to organize a little party, a day in the country, or an evening At Home. These last occupations, however, if they were not music, had at least about them an indefinable charm. They seemed to make Jean indifferent to the salary that was never paid, to the extra evening hours no one seemed to be surprised at his resigning for the general good of the Toriallis. After all he had, as Louis often pointed out to him, his great opportunities. He took almost all his meals in the Boulevard Malesherbes, and he met the best people in Paris. Madame Torialli treated him as a friend, almost as a son. Signor Torialli treated him as a fellow musician. Jean often played at the Toriallis’ At Homes; he began to have a vogue in Paris; he was called “that good little fellow at the Toriallis’”; and people smiled indulgently when they mentioned him; but whether the indulgence was for Jean or for the Toriallis never appeared. Romain met him at one of the Toriallis’ At Homes. His smile seemed to have even more humour in it than usual; he did not refer to any of his previous ideas for Jean.
“So, my dear boy,” he said, “we meet again. You are bien installé here, I take it. I am so glad you have been wise and given up your music.”
“But I have not,” Jean cried in amazement. “That is what I am here for!”
“Tut! tut!” said his uncle. “You must be jesting, Jean; every one knows the good Toriallis have no time for the fine arts; they have only time for receipts! Share them! Share them, my dear boy! for if you do not you will very surely be made to pay them! There are only two ways of getting on in this world—taking and sharing! For my own part I think sharing is the best, the responsibility is divided, and there is nothing I trust so greatly as a self-interest which is identical with our own. Ah, Madame Torialli, I am congratulating my young nephew on his position with your husband. If I were twenty years younger I should wish I were in his place.” Madame Torialli smiled very gravely and gently; her eyes sought Jean’s with an affectionate expression.
“I am wondering what your uncle means,” she said. “And I am afraid that it is not perhaps quite kind. I am such a simple person.” And then she looked back at Romain, who chuckled.
“Twenty years ago, Madame,” he said, “I should have been a simple person, too. We might then have met upon an equality.”