“Why Gabrielle should manage to look as if she were going to her first communion when she wears the lowest dress in the room, I cannot understand!” said her sister-in-law enviously. “But no one could suspect her of impropriety whatever she was doing—they would think she was saying her prayers!”
As for Jean, he said to himself that night, as he had said to himself a hundred times before in the long ten days which followed Salvi’s visit:
“I must have been mistaken, she is too beautiful—she cannot be false.”
Louis had been in such a frantic state all day that Jean was astonished at his bounding vivacity to-night. At breakfast he had lost a temper which Jean had never known him to possess, struck a terrified servant, and filled the house with irritated nerves. At lunch he had wept and only an hour before the first guest arrived Jean had been forced to give him brandy, while Louis lay in a collapse on the sofa, moaning and asking for a revolver.
Now, however, the hour had made the man. He received his guests with a perfect mixture of respect and affability, and with careful shades of manner which expressed to a nicety his reverential delight in receiving his royal guests, his cordial appreciation of the presence of certain members of the best French world (friends and relatives of Gabrielle), his camaraderie with men and women of talent, and the temporary vogue of mere originality; and a patronizing pleasure at the appearance of the less important pupils. Torialli stood a little behind him, and kept as much in the background as his friends would let him. He was honestly delighted to see his secretary receiving the big world, and he had set his heart on Louis’ success. So apparently had Madame Torialli, for she said so at intervals throughout the evening.
La Salvi came alarmingly early; she timed her arrival to take place during the long dead time of the soirée, while the princes were quarrelling in their dressing-rooms over their respective costumes, and taking drinks to strengthen their nerves for the ordeal of the Revue, which could not take place until the professional artists had finished their evening’s work at the different theatres.
Louis hastened half way downstairs to greet her. Gabrielle Torialli leaned over the top of the staircase, one slim ringless hand on the banisters between. La Salvi shot a glance up at her, past her obsequious host, out of her bright, malicious little eyes.
“Ah! my dear Monsieur Flaubert!” she said. “How early I am. You see, I am so anxious to see you! But this isn’t a new house at all! It’s a magician’s palace! Why, what an interior! I shall never forget it! The truth is I am fatigued, I can hardly stand, and I said to myself, ‘If I don’t go early I shan’t have any time there at all!’ I’m like Cinderella, I must run away before the clock strikes twelve!”
Louis Flaubert’s face was a study. If she was so tired, did she intend to sing? He dared not ask her; Gabrielle had been so certain that she would sing for him; but the crudity of a direct request appalled him. It seemed as if all Paris was listening over the banisters to hear.
The royal princes in the garden, swearing bitterly over the enormous difficulty of getting into black tights for their first scene—what would they say if they did not hear La Salvi? Perhaps, if he got her alone into the garden, he would dare to ask the boon. But no! La Salvi would not go into the garden.