Torialli came forward briskly. He by no means relished Pauline’s behaviour to Flaubert, and his bow to Jean was of the stiffest and shortest. Madame Torialli, however, looked at Jean with a flash of sympathy; her eyes seemed to say: “Be patient; I know you have talent; you shall soon have an opportunity of showing it.”
She was the most wholly graceful woman Jean had ever seen; it was as if she had bloomed all her life in some summer garden and had learned the secret poise of a flower and the easy hoverings of a butterfly. If she came up to a difficulty it melted away; if she looked at an embarrassment it vanished.
Torialli, on the other hand, was made of a stouter and harder substance; he was a big man with a bald head and heavy eyebrows, under which the eyes sprang, round balls of vigorous fire. He was full of feeling, irritable and impatient, easily depressed and warm-hearted. Much of his original nature and some of the real strength of his genius had been weakened by the easiness of his success. It had fallen upon him—his success—in mid-career, blunting his finest faculties and developing at a fierce rate his vanity and greed. The artist and the business instinct still struggled violently at times, but for the most part the business instinct had won.
Perhaps Madame had helped it to win. She adored artists much as Delilah adored the strength of Samson, but like Delilah she took the earliest opportunity of delivering Torialli to the Philistines.
“Now, Mademoiselle,” said Torialli, not without an undertone of malice. “We will see how the holidays have improved your voice. It ought to be as eager to get out as a well-bred hunter kept a week in the stable. We will begin, please, with the air of Herodiade, ‘Prophète bien aimé.’ Monsieur, you will conduct Mademoiselle to the piano. Gabrielle, do you remain?”
Madame Torialli smiled at Jean.
“If Pauline and Monsieur D’Ucelles permit,” she said modestly, sailing into one of the stalls. “I am not a critic, Monsieur, merely a lover!”
“There is no person so exacting as a lover!” ventured Jean in an undertone.
“What a discovery!” cried Gabrielle, and she laughed with a spontaneous infectious gaiety, in which even Torialli joined.
“Now, Gabrielle, no jokes!” he said warningly. “We are here to work. Commencez, Mademoiselle!”