Part 13

Charrigaud neither ate or drank, and said nothing. Although he was scarcely in the conversation, he nevertheless felt its enormous and forbidding stupidity like a weight upon his skull. Impatient, feverish, very pale, he watched the service, tried to catch favorable or ironical impressions of the faces of his guests, and mechanically, with movements more and more accelerated, and in spite of the warnings of his wife, rolled big pellets of bread-crumb between his fingers. When a question was put to him, he answered in a bewildered, distracted, far-away voice:

"Certainly ... certainly ... certainly."

Opposite him, very stiff in her green gown, upon which spangles of green steel glittered with a phosphorescent brilliancy, and wearing an aigrette of red feathers in her hair, Mme. Charrigaud bent to right and to left, and smiled, without ever a word,--a smile so eternally motionless that it seemed painted on her lips.

"What a goose!" said Charrigaud to himself; "what a stupid and ridiculous woman! And what a carnival costume! To-morrow, because of her, we shall be the laughing-stock of Parisian society."

And on her side Mme. Charrigaud, beneath the fixity of her smile, was thinking:

"What an idiot this Victor is! And what a bad appearance he makes! To-morrow we shall catch it on account of his pellets."

The topic of correctness in society being exhausted, there followed an embarrassing lull in the conversation, which Kimberly broke by telling of his last trip to London.

"Yes," said he, "I spent in London an intoxicating week; and, ladies, I witnessed a unique thing. I attended a ritual dinner which the great poet, John-Giotto Farfadetti, gave to some friends to celebrate his betrothal to the wife of his dear Frederic-Ossian Pinggleton."

"How exquisite that must have been!" minced the Countess Fergus.

"You cannot imagine," answered Kimberly, whose look and gestures, and even the orchid that adorned the button-hole of his coat, expressed the most ardent ecstasy.

And he continued:

"Fancy, my dear friends, in a large hall, whose blue walls, though scarcely blue, are decorated with white peacocks and gold peacocks,--fancy a table of jade, inconceivably and delightfully oval. On the table some cups, in which mauve and yellow bonbons harmonized, and in the centre a basin of pink crystal, filled with kanaka preserves ... and nothing more. Draped in long white robes, we slowly passed in turn before the table, and we took, upon the points of our golden knives, a little of these mysterious preserves, which then we carried to our lips ... and nothing more."

"Oh! I find that moving," sighed the countess, "so moving!"

"You cannot imagine. But the most moving thing--a thing that really transformed this emotion into a painful laceration of our souls--was when Frederic-Ossian Pinggleton sang the poem of the betrothal of his wife and his friend. I know nothing more tragically, more superhumanly beautiful."

"Oh! I beg of you," implored the Countess Fergus, "repeat this prodigious poem for our benefit, Kimberly."

"The poem, alas! I cannot. I can give you only its essence."

"That's it, that's it! The essence."

In spite of his morals, in which they cut no figure, Kimberly filled women with mad enthusiasm, for his specialty was subtle stories of transgression and of extraordinary sensations. Suddenly a thrill ran round the table, and the flowers themselves, and the jewels on their beds of flesh, and the glasses on the table-cloth, took attitudes in harmony with the state of souls. Charrigaud felt his reason departing. He thought that he had suddenly fallen into a mad-house. Yet, by force of will, he was still able to smile, and say:

"Why, certainly ... certainly."

The butlers finished passing something that resembled a ham, from which, in a flood of yellow cream, cherries poured like red larvæ. As for the Countess Fergus, half swooning, she had already started for extra-terrestrial regions.

Kimberly began:

"Frederic-Ossian Pinggleton and his friend, John-Giotto Farfadetti, were finishing their daily tasks in the studio which they occupied in common. One was the great painter, the other the great poet; the former short and stout, the latter tall and thin; both alike clad in drugget robes, their heads alike adorned with Florentine BONNETS, both alike neurasthenics, for they had, in different bodies, like souls and lily-twin spirits. John-Giotto Farfadetti sang in his verses the marvelous symbols that his friend, Frederic-Ossian Pinggleton, painted on his canvases, so that the glory of the poet was inseparable from that of the painter, and that their works and their immortal geniuses had come to be confounded in one and the same adoration."

Kimberly stopped for a moment. The silence was religious. Something sacred hovered over the table. He continued:

"The day was nearing its end. A very soft twilight was enveloping the studio in a pallor of fluid and lunar shade. Scarcely could one still distinguish on the mauve walls the long, supple, waving, golden algæ that seemed to move in obedience to the vibration of some deep and magic water. John-Giotto Farfadetti closed the sort of antiphonary on the vellum of which, with a Persian reed, he wrote, or rather engraved, his eternal poems; Frederic-Ossian Pinggleton turned his lyre-shaped easel against a piece of drapery, placed his heart-shaped palette upon a fragile piece of furniture, and the two, facing one another, stretched themselves, with august poses of fatigue, upon a triple row of cushions, of the color of sea-weed."

"Hum!" said Mme. Tiercelet, with a slightly warning cough.

"No, not at all," said Kimberly, reassuringly; "it is not what you think."

And he continued:

"In the centre of the studio, from a marble basin in which the petals of roses were bathing, a violent perfume was rising. And on a little table long-stemmed narcissuses were dying, like souls, in a narrow vase whose neck opened into the calyx of a lily, strangely green and distorted."

"Impossible to forget," said the countess, in a quivering voice, so low that it could scarcely be heard.

And Kimberly, without stopping, went on with his narration:

"Outside, the street became more silent, because deserted. From the Thames came, muffled by the distance, the distracted voices of sirens, the gasping voices of marine boilers. It was the hour when the two friends, giving themselves over to dreaming, preserved an ineffable silence."

"Oh! I see them so clearly!" said Madame Tiercelet, in a tone of admiration.

"And that 'ineffable,' how evocative it is!" applauded the Countess Fergus, "and so pure!"

Kimberly profited by these flattering interruptions to take a swallow of champagne. Then, feeling that he was listened to with more passionate attention than before, he repeated:

"Preserved an ineffable silence. But on this special evening John-Giotto Farfadetti murmured: 'I have a poisoned flower in my heart.' To which Frederic-Ossian Pinggleton answered: 'This evening a sorrowful bird has been singing in my heart.' The studio seemed moved by this unusual colloquy. On the mauve wall, which was gradually losing its color, the gold algæ seemed to spread and contract, and to spread and contract again, in harmony with the new rhythms of an unusual undulation, for it is certain that the soul of man communicates to the soul of things its troubles, its passions, its fervors, its transgressions, its life."

"How true that is!"

This cry, coming from several mouths at once, did not prevent Kimberly from going on with the recital, which thenceforth was to unfold itself amid the silent emotion of his hearers. His voice became even more mysterious.

"This minute of silence was poignant and tragic. 'Oh! my friend!' implored John-Giotto Farfadetti, 'you who have given me everything, you whose soul is so marvelously twin with mine, you must give me something of yourself that I have not yet had, and from the lack of which I am dying.' 'Is it, then, my life that you ask?' said the painter; 'it is yours; you can take it.' 'No, it is not your life; it is more than your life; it is your wife!' 'Botticellina!' cried the poet. 'Yes, Botticellina; Botticellinetta; flesh of your flesh, the soul of your soul, the dream of your dream, the magic sleep of your sorrows!' 'Botticellina! Alas! Alas! It was to be. You have drowned yourself in her, she has drowned herself in you, as in a bottomless lake, beneath the light of the moon. Alas! Alas! It was to be.' Two tears, phosphorescent in the penumbra, rolled from the eyes of the painter. The poet answered: 'Listen to me, oh! my friend! I love Botticellina, and Botticellina loves me, and we shall both die of loving one another, and of not daring to tell one another, and of not daring to unite. She and I are two fragments, long ago separated, of one and the same living being, which for perhaps two thousand years have been seeking and calling one another, and which meet at last to-day. Oh! my dear Pinggleton, unknown life has these strange, terrible, and delicious fatalities. Was there ever a more splendid poem than that which we are living to-night?' But the painter kept on repeating, in a voice more and more sorrowful, this cry: 'Botticellina! Botticellina!' He rose from the triple row of cushions upon which he was lying, and walked back and forth in the studio, feverishly. After some minutes of anxious agitation, he said: 'Botticellina was Mine. Henceforth must she be Thine?' 'She shall be Ours!' replied the poet, imperiously; 'for God has chosen you to be the point of suture for this severed soul which is She and which is I! If not, Botticellina possesses the magic pearl that dissipates dreams, I the dagger that delivers from corporeal chains. If you refuse, we shall love each other in death.' And he added, in a deep tone that resounded through the studio like a voice from the abyss: 'Perhaps it would be better so.' 'No,' cried the painter, 'you shall live. Botticellina shall be Thine, as she has been Mine. I will tear my flesh to shreds, I will tear my heart from my breast, I will break my head against the wall, but my friend shall be happy. I can suffer. Suffering, too, is voluptuousness, in another form!' 'And a voluptuousness more powerful, more bitter, more fierce than any other!' exclaimed John-Giotto Farfadetti, ecstatically; 'I envy your fate, do you know? As for me, I really believe that I shall die either of the joy of my love or of the sorrow of my friend. The hour has come. Adieu!' He rose, like an archangel. At that moment the drapery moved, opening and closing again on an illuminating apparition. It was Botticellina, draped in a flowing robe, of the color of the moonlight. Her floating hair shone around her like artificial fire. In her hand she held a golden key. An ecstasy was on her lips, and the night-sky in her eyes. John-Giotto rushed forward, and disappeared behind the drapery. Then Frederic-Ossian Pinggleton lay down again on the triple row of cushions, of the color of sea-weed. And, while he buried his nails in his flesh, and while the blood streamed from him as from a fountain, the golden algæ, now scarcely visible, gently quivered upon the wall, which was gradually taking on a coating of darkness. And the heart-shaped palette and the lyre-shaped easel resounded long and long, in nuptial songs."

For some moments Kimberly was silent; then, while the emotion that prevailed around the table was choking throats and compressing hearts, he concluded:

"And this is why I have dipped the point of my golden knife in the preserves prepared by kanaka virgins in honor of a betrothal more magnificent than any that our century, in its ignorance of beauty, has ever known."

The dinner was over. They rose from the table in religious silence, but thrilled through and through. In the _salon_ Kimberly was closely surrounded and warmly congratulated. The looks of all the women converged radiantly upon his painted face, surrounding it with a halo of ecstasies.

"Ah! I should so like to have my portrait painted by Frederic-Ossian Pinggleton," cried Mme. de Rambure; "I would give anything to enjoy such happiness."

"Alas! Madame," answered Kimberly, "since the sorrowful and sublime event which I have related, Frederic-Ossian Pinggleton has been unwilling to paint human faces, however charming they may be; he paints only souls."

"And he is right! I should so like to be painted as a soul!"

"Of what sex?" asked Maurice Fernancourt, in a slightly sarcastic tone, visibly jealous of Kimberly's success.

The latter said, simply:

"Souls have no sex, my dear Maurice. They have...."

"Hair on their paws," said Victor Charrigaud, in a very low voice, so as to be heard only by the psychological novelist, to whom he was just then offering a cigar.

And, dragging him into the smoking-room, he whispered:

"Ah! old man! I wish I could shout the most filthy things, at the top of my voice, in the faces of all these people. I have enough of their souls, of their green and perverse loves, of their magic preserves. Yes, yes, to say the coarsest things, to besmear one's self with good black fetid mud for a quarter of an hour,--oh! how exquisite that would be, and how restful! And how it would relieve me of all these nauseating lilies that they have put into my heart! And you?"

But the shock had been too great, and the impression of Kimberly's recital remained. They could no longer interest themselves in the vulgar things of earth,--in topics of society, art, and passion. The Viscount Lahyrais himself, clubman, sportsman, gambler, and trickster, felt wings sprouting all over him. Each one felt the need of collecting his thoughts, of being alone, of prolonging the dream, of realizing it. In spite of the efforts of Kimberly, who went from one to another, asking: "Did you ever drink sable's milk? Ah! then, drink sable's milk; it is ravishing!" the conversation could not be resumed; so that, one after another, the guests excused themselves, and slipped away. At eleven o'clock all had gone.

When they found themselves face to face, alone, Monsieur and Madame looked at each other for a long time, steadily and with hostility, before exchanging their impressions.

"For a pretty fizzle, you know, it is a pretty fizzle," declared Monsieur.

"It is your fault," said Madame, in a tone of bitter reproach.

"Well, that's a good one!"

"Yes, your fault. You paid no attention to anything; you did nothing but roll dirty pellets of bread in your fat fingers. Nobody could get a word out of you. How ridiculous you were! It is shameful."

"Well, you needn't talk," rejoined Monsieur. "And your green gown, and your smiles, and your blunders. It was I perhaps, it was I undoubtedly, who told of Pinggleton's sorrow, who ate kanaka preserves, who painted souls,--I doubtless am the lily-worshipper."

"You are not even capable of being," cried Madame, at the height of her exasperation.

For a long time they hurled insults at one another. And Madame, after having arranged the silverware and the opened bottles in the sideboard, took herself off to her room, and shut herself up.

Monsieur continued to roam about the house in a state of extreme agitation. Suddenly noticing me in the dining-room, where I was putting things a little to rights, he came to me, and, taking me about the waist, he said:

"Ah, Célestine, you do not know the immense delight that you give me. To see a woman who is not a soul! To touch a woman who is not a lily! Kiss me."

You may judge whether I was expecting that.

But the next day, when they read in the "Figaro" an article in which their dinner, their elegance, their taste, their wit, and their social connections were pompously celebrated, they forgot everything, and talked of nothing but their great success. And their soul set sail for more illustrious conquests and more sumptuous snobberies.

"What a charming woman is the Countess Fergus!" said Madame, at lunch, as they were finishing the leavings of the dinner.

"And what a soul!" said Monsieur, in confirmation.

"And Kimberly, would you believe it? There's an astonishing talker for you! And so exquisite in his manners!"

"It is a mistake to make sport of him. After all, his vice concerns no one but himself; it is none of our business."

"Certainly not."

And she added, indulgently:

"Ah! if it were necessary to pick everybody to pieces!"

All day long, in the linen-room, I have amused myself in calling up the queer things that happened in that house,--the passion for notoriety with which, from that time, Madame was so filled that she would prostitute herself to all the dirty journalists who would promise her an article on her husband's books or a word about her costumes and her _salon_, and Monsieur's complacency in letting this vile conduct go on, though perfectly aware of it. With admirable cynicism he said: "At any rate--it is less expensive than paying by the line at the newspaper offices." Monsieur, on his side, fell to the lowest depths of baseness and unscrupulousness. He called that the politics of the _salon_, and society diplomacy.

I am going to write to Paris to have them send me my old master's new book. But how rotten it must be at bottom!

XI

_November 10._

Now all talk of the little Claire has ceased. As was expected, the case has been abandoned. So Joseph and the forest of Raillon will keep their secret forever. Of that poor little human creature no more will be said henceforth than of the body of a blackbird that dies in the woods, in a thicket. The father continues to break stone on the highway, as if nothing had happened, and the town, stirred and roused for a moment by this crime, resumes its usual aspect,--an aspect still more dismal because of the winter. The very bitter cold keeps people shut up in their houses. One can scarcely get a glimpse of their pale and sleepy faces behind the frosty windows, and in the streets one seldom meets anybody except ragged vagabonds and shivering dogs.

To-day Madame sent me on an errand to the butcher's shop, and I took the dogs with me. While I was there, an old woman timidly entered the shop, and asked for meat,--"a little meat to make a little soup for my sick boy." The butcher selected, from the _débris_ piled up in a large copper pan, a dirty bit, half bone, half fat, and, after carefully weighing it, announced:

"Fifteen sous."

"Fifteen sous!" exclaimed the old woman; "but that is impossible! And how do you expect me to make soup out of that?"

"As you like," said the butcher, throwing the piece back into the pan. "Only, you know, I am going to send you your bill to-day. If it is not paid by to-morrow, then the process-server!"

"Give it to me," said the old woman, then, with resignation.

When she had gone, the butcher explained to me:

"Nevertheless, if we did not have the poor to buy the inferior parts, we really should not make enough out of an animal. But these wretches are getting to be very exacting nowadays."

And, cutting off two long slices of good red meat, he threw them to the dogs.

The dogs of the rich,--indeed! they are not poor.

At the Priory events succeed one another. From the tragic they pass to the comical, for one cannot always shudder. Tired of the captain's mischief-making, and acting on Madame's advice, Monsieur has at last brought suit before a justice of the peace. He claims damages and interest for the breaking of his bell-glasses and his frames, and for the devastation of the garden. It seems that the meeting of the two enemies in the office of the justice was really something epic. They blackguarded one another like rag-pickers. Of course, the captain denies, with many oaths, that he has ever thrown stones or anything else into Lanlaire's garden; it is Lanlaire who throws stones into his.

"Have you witnesses? Where are your witnesses? Dare to produce witnesses," screams the captain.

"Witnesses?" rejoins Monsieur; "there are the stones, and all the dirty things with which you have been continually covering my land. There are the old hats, and the old slippers, that I pick up every day, and that everybody recognizes as having belonged to you."

"You lie."

"You are a scoundrel, a drunken rake."

But, it being impossible for Monsieur to bring admissible and conclusive testimony, the justice of the peace, who, moreover, is the captain's friend, invites Monsieur to withdraw his complaint.

"And for that matter, permit me to say to you," concluded the magistrate, "it is highly improbable, it is quite inadmissible, that a valiant soldier, an intrepid officer, who has won all his stripes on fields of battle, amuses himself in throwing stones and old hats upon your land, like a small boy."

"Egad!" vociferates the captain, "this man is an infamous Dreyfusard. He insults the army."

"I?"

"Yes, you! What you are trying to do, you dirty Jew, is to disgrace the army. Long live the army!"

They came near taking each other by the hair, and the justice had much difficulty in separating them. Since then Monsieur has stationed permanently in the garden two invisible witnesses, behind a sort of board shelter, in which are pierced, at the height of a man, four round holes, for the eyes. But the captain, being warned, is lying low, and Monsieur is out the cost of his watchers.

I have seen the captain two or three times, over the hedge. In spite of the frost, he stays in his garden all day long, working furiously at all sorts of things. For the moment he is putting oil-paper caps on his rose-bushes. He tells me of his misfortunes. Rose is suffering from an attack of influenza, and then--with her asthma!... Bourbaki is dead. He died of a congestion of the lungs, from drinking too much cognac. Really, the captain has no luck. And surely that bandit of a Lanlaire has cast a spell over him. He wishes to get the upper hand of him, to rid the country of him, and he submits to me an astonishing plan of campaign.

"Here is what you ought to do, Mademoiselle Célestine. You ought to lodge with the prosecuting attorney at Louviers a complaint against Lanlaire for outrages on morals and an assault on modesty. Ah! that's an idea!"

"But, captain, Monsieur has never outraged my morals or assaulted my modesty."

"Well, what difference does that make?"

"I cannot."

"What! you cannot? But there is nothing simpler. Lodge your complaint, and summon Rose and me. We will come to declare, to certify in a court of justice, that we have seen everything, everything, everything. A soldier's word amounts to something, especially just now, thunder of God! And remember that, after that, it will be easy to rake up the case of little Claire, and involve Lanlaire in it. Ah! that's an idea! Think it over, Mademoiselle Célestine; think it over."

Ah! I have many things, much too many things, to think over just now. Joseph is pressing me for a decision; the matter cannot be postponed. He has heard from Cherbourg that the little café is to be sold next week. But I am anxious, troubled. I want to, and I don't want to. One day the idea pleases me, and the next it doesn't. I really believe that I am afraid that Joseph wants to drag me into terrible things. I cannot come to a decision. He is not brutal in his method of persuasion; he advances arguments, and tempts me with promises of liberty, of handsome costumes, of secure, happy, triumphant life.

"But I must buy the little café," he says to me. "I cannot let such an opportunity go by. And if the Revolution comes? Think of it, Célestine; that means fortune right away. And who knows? The Revolution--ah! bear that in mind--is the best thing possible for the cafés."

"Buy it, at any rate. If it is not I, it will be somebody else."

"No, no, it must be you. Nobody else will do. I am crazy over you. But you distrust me."

"No, Joseph, I assure you."

"Yes, yes; you have bad ideas about me."

I do not know, no, really, I do not know, where, at that moment, I found the courage to ask him: