Chapter 6

Guy de Lissac occupied a small summer-house forming a residence situated at the end of a court on Rue D'Aumale. He had given carte-blanche for the arrangement of this bachelor's nest,--a nest in which sitting-hens without eggs succeeded each other rapidly,--to one of those upholsterers who installed, in regulation style, the knickknacks so much in vogue, and who sell at very high prices to Bourse operators and courtesans the spurious Clodions and imitation Boulles that they pick up by chance at auction sales.

Lissac, who had sufficient taste to discover artistic nuggets in the gutters of Paris, had found it very convenient to wake up one fine morning in a little mansion crowded with Japanese bric-à-brac, Chinese satin draperies, tapestries, Renaissance chests and terra-cotta figures writhing upon their sculptured bases. The upholsterer had taste, Lissac had money. The knickknacks were genuine. There was a coquettish attractiveness about the abode that made itself evident in every detail.

This bachelor's suite lacked, however, something personal, something living, some cherished object, the mark of some particular taste, some passion for a period, for a thing, or pictures or books. In this jumble of ill-matched curiosities, where ivory _netzkés_ on tables surrounded Barye bronzes and Dresden figures, there lacked some evidence of an individual character that would give a dominant tone, an original key, to the collection. This worldly dwelling, with its white lacquered bed and Louis XV. canopy and its heads of birds carved in wood like the queen's bed at Trianon, vaguely resembled the apartments of a fashionable woman.

But Guy had hung around here and there a Samouraï sabre, Malay krises, Oriental daggers in purple velvet sheaths, and upon the green tapestry background of the antechamber a panoply on which keen-bladed swords with steel guards were mingled with Scotch claymores with silver hilts, thus giving a masculine character to this hôtel of a fashionable lounger, steeped with the odor of ylang-ylang like the little house of a pretty courtesan.

This Guy enjoyed in Paris a free and easy life, leaving to Vaudrey, his old college-comrade at Grenoble, the pursuit of the pleasures of political life, and, as Lissac said in that bantering tone which is peculiar to Parisian gossip, the relish of the "sweets of power"; for himself, what kept him in Paris was Paris itself, just that and nothing more:--its pleasures, its first nights, its surprises, its women, that flavor of scandal and perfume of refined immorality that seemed peculiar to his time and surroundings.

He had squandered two fortunes, one after the other, without feeling any regret; he had made a brush at journalism, tried finance, won at the Bourse, lost at the clubs, knew everybody and was known by all, had a smiling lip, was sound of tooth, loved the girls, was dreaded by the men, was of fine appearance, and was unquestionably noble, which permitted him to enjoy all the frolics of Bohemian life without sullying himself, having always discovered a forgotten uncle or met some considerate friend to pay his gambling debts and adjust his differences on the Bourse speculations at the very nick of time; just now he was well in the saddle and decidedly attractive, with a sound heart and a well-lined pocket, enjoying, not disliking life, which seemed to him a term of imprisonment to be passed merrily--a Parisian to the finger-tips and to the bottom of his soul, worse than a Parisian in fact, a Parisianized provincial inoculated with _Parisine_, just as certain sick persons are with morphine, judging men by their wit, actions by their results, women by the size of their gloves; as sceptical as the devil, wicked in speech and considerate in thought, still agile at forty, claiming even that this is man's best time--the period of fortune and gallantry--sliding along in life and taking things as he found them, wisely considering that a day's snow or rain lasts no longer than a day's sunshine, and that, after all, a wretched night is soon over.

On leaving Vaudrey the previous night, Lissac had passed part of the night at his club on Place Vendôme. He had played and won. He had gone to sleep over a fashionable novel, very faithfully written, but wearisome in the extreme, and he had awakened late and somewhat heavy-headed. There were fringes of snow upon the window-sills and upon the house facing his little mansion. The roofs were hidden under a large white sheet and half lost in the grayish-white background of the sky.

"Detestable weather! So much the better," thought Lissac, "I shall have no visitors."

"I will see no one," he said to his servant. "In such weather no one but borrowers will come."

He had just finished his déjeuner, plunging a Russian enamelled silver spoon into his egg, his tea smoking at his side in a burnished silver teapot with Japanese designs, when, notwithstanding his orders, the servant handed him a card written in pencil on a scrap of paper torn from a note-book.

"It is not a borrower, monsieur!"

Guy seized the paper disdainfully, thinking, in spite of the servant's opinion, that he would find the name of a beggar who had not even had his name printed on a piece of Bristol-board, and, adjusting his glass, he deciphered the fine writing on the paper; then after involuntarily exclaiming: _Ah! bah_! and _well! well!_ greatly astonished, he said as he rose:

"Show her in!"

He had thrown on a chair his damask napkin of Muscovite pattern, and instinctively glanced at himself in the mirror, just as a coquette might do before a rendezvous, smoothing out his flannel vest and spreading out his cravat that only half-fastened the blue foulard collar of his dressing-gown.

At the moment that he was examining the folds made on his red leather slippers by his ample flannel trousers, a woman half-raised the satin portière, and, standing within a frame formed by the folds of yellow satin, looked at the young man, displaying her brilliant teeth as she smilingly said:

"Good-morning, Guy!"

Lissac went straight toward her with outstretched hands.

She allowed the large satin portière to fall behind her, and after having permitted her little suède gloved hands to be raised for a moment, she boldly abandoned them to Guy, laughing the while, as they looked at each other face to face. He betrayed some little astonishment, gazing at her as a person examines one whom one has not seen for a long time, and the young woman raised her head unabashed, displaying her features in full light, as if submitting to an inspection with confidence.

"You did not expect me, eh?"

"I confess--"

"Doubtless it is a considerable time since you thought of me."

Guy was inclined to bow and, as his only reply, to kiss the tips of her fingers; but he reflected that, since they last met, the parting of his brown locks had been devilishly widened, and he remained standing, answering with the conceit of a handsome man:

"You are mistaken, I often think of you."

She had, with, a sweeping glance around the room, examined the furniture of the apartment, the framed pictures, the designs and the gilding, and, on sitting down near the fire with her little feet crossed, she expressed her opinion:

"Very stylishly ensconced! You always had good taste, I know, my dear Guy."

"I have less now than formerly, my dear Marianne," he said, giving to this airy remark the turn of a compliment.

Marianne shrugged her shoulders and smiled.

"Do you find me very much altered?" she asked abruptly.

"Yes, rejuvenated."

"I don't believe a word of it."

"Upon my honor. You look like a communicant."

"Good heavens! what kind?" said Marianne, laughing in a clear, ringing, but slightly convulsive tone.

He was still looking at her curiously, seated thus near the fireplace.

The bright and sparkling fire cast its reflections on the gold frames in waving and rosy tints that brightened the somewhat pale complexion of this young woman and imparted a warm tone to her small and brilliant gray eyes. She half turned her fair face toward him, her retroussé nose was tiny, spirituelle and mobile, her large sensuous mouth was provoking and seductive, and suggested by its upturned corners, encouragement or a challenge.

She had allowed her cloak, whose fur trimming was well-worn, to slip from her shoulders, exposing her form to the waist; she trembled slightly in her tight-fitting dress, and golden tints played on her bare neck, which was almost hidden under the waves of her copper-colored hair.

She had just taken off her suède gloves with a jerky movement and was abstractedly twisting them between her fingers.

In spite of the somewhat depressing effect of her worn garments, she displayed a natural elegance, a perfect form and graceful movements, and Guy, accustomed as he was to estimate at a glance the material condition of people, divined that this woman felt some embarrassment. She whom he had known four or five years previously so charming amid the din of a life of folly, and the coruscation of an ephemeral luxury, was now burned out like an exploded rocket.

Marianne Kayser!

Of all the women whom he had met, he had certainly loved her the most sincerely, with an absolute love, unreflecting, passionate and half-mad. She was not dissolute but merely turbulent, independent and impatient of restraint. Too poor to be married, too proud to be a courtesan, too rebellious to accept the humiliations of destiny.

She was an orphan, and had been brought up by her uncle, Simon Kayser, a serious painter, indifferent to all that did not concern his art,--its morality, its dignity, its superiority--who had, under cover of his own ignorance, allowed the ardent dreams of his niece and her wayward fits to develop freely like poisonous plants; near this man, in the vicious atmosphere of an old bachelor's disorderly household, Marianne had lived the bitter life of a young woman out of her element, poor, but with every instinct unswervingly leaning towards the enjoyments of luxury.

She had grown up amid the incongruous society of models and artists and, as it were, in the fumes of paradoxes and pipes. A little creature, she served as a plaything for this painter without talent, and he allowed her to romp, bound and leap on the divans like a kitten. Moreover, the child lighted his stove and filled his pipe.

The studio was littered with books. As chance offered, she read them all eagerly and examined with curiosity the pictures drawn by an Eisen or a Moreau, depicting passionate kisses exchanged under arbors, where behind curtains, short silk skirts appeared in a rumpled state. She had rapidly reached womanhood without Kayser's perceiving that she could comprehend and judge for herself.

This falsely inspired man, entirely devoted to mystical compositions, vaguely painted--philosophical and critical, as he said--this thinker, whose brush painted obscure subjects as it might have produced signs, did not dream that the girl growing up beside him was also in love with chimeras, and drawn toward the abyss, not however to learn the mysteries hidden by the clouds, but the mystery of life, the secret of the visions that haunted her, of the disquieting temptations that filled her with such feverish excitement.

If Uncle Kayser could for one moment have descended from the nebulous regions, and touched the earth, he would have found an impatient ardor in the depth of Marianne's glance, and something feverish and restless in her movements. But this huge, ruddy, rotund man, speaking above his rounded stomach, cared only for the morality of art, æsthetic dignity, and the necessity of raising the standard of art, of creating a mission for it, an end, an idea--_art the educator, art the moralizer_,--and allowed this feverish, wearied, impulsive creature, moulded by vice, who bore his name, to wander around his studio like a stray dog.

Isolated, forgotten, the young girl sometimes passed whole days bending over a book, her lips dry, her face pale, but with a burning light in her gray eyes, while her fingers were thrust through her hair, or she rested upon a window-sill, following afar off, some imaginary picture in the depths of the clouds.

The studio overlooked a silent, gloomy street in which no sound was heard save the slow footfalls of weary and exhausted pedestrians. It was stifling behind this window and Marianne's gloomy horizon was this frame of stones against which her wandering thoughts bruised themselves as a bird might break its wings.

Ah! to fly away, to escape from the solemn egotism and the theories of Simon Kayser, and to live the passionate life of those who are free, loved, rich and happy! Such was the dream upon which Marianne nourished herself.

She had perpetually before her eyes, as well as before her life, the gray wall of that high house opposite the painter's studio, pierced with its many eyes, and whether on summer's stifling evenings, the shutters closed--the whole street being deserted, the neighbors having gone into the country--or in winter, with its gray sky, the roofs covered with the snow that was stained all too soon, when the brilliant lights behind the curtains looked like red spots on the varnished paper, Marianne ever felt in her inmost being the bitter void of Parisian melancholy, the overwhelming sadness of black loneliness, of hollow dreams, gnawing like incurable sorrows.

She grew up thus, her mind and body poisoned by this dwelling which she never left except to drag her feet wearily through the galleries of the Louvre, leaning on the arm of her uncle, who invariably repeated before the same pictures, in the loud and bombastic tone of a _comediante_, the same opinions, and grew enthusiastic and excited according as the pictures of the masters agreed with his _style_, his _system_, his _creed_. One should hear him run the gamut of all his great phrases: My _sys-tem!_ Marianne knew when the expression was coming. All these Flemish painters! Painters of snuff-boxes, without any ideal, without grasp! "And the Titian, look at this Titian! Where is _thought_ expressed in this Titian? And _mo-ral-i-ty?_ Titian! A vendor of pink flesh! Art should have a majesty, a dignity, a purity, an ideality very different."

Ah! these words in _ty_, solemn, bombastic, pedantic, with a false ring, they entered Marianne's ears like burning injections.

These visits to the museum impressed her with a gloom such as a ramble in a cemetery would create, she returned to the house with depressing headaches and muttering wrathful imprecations against destiny. She even preferred that studio with its worn-out divans and its worm-eaten tapestries that were slowly shredding away.

There, at least, she was all alone, face to face with herself, consumed by a cowardly fear--the fear of the future--this young girl who had read everything, learned everything, understood everything, knew everything, sullied by all the jokes of the Kayser studio, which, in spite of the exalted, sacrosanct, æsthetic discussions which took place therein, sometimes shockingly resembled a smoking-room--this physical virgin without any virginity of mind, could there take refuge in herself, and there in the solitude to which she was condemned, she questioned herself as to the end to which her present life would lead her.

Of dowry she had none. Her father had left her nothing. Kayser was poor and in debt. She had no occupation. To run about giving private lessons on the piano, seemed to Marianne to degrade her almost to the level of domestic service. Those who wished to pose for the Montyon prize might do so! She never would!

Ah! what sufferings! what would be the end of such a life? Marriage? But who desired her? One of those talentless painters, who ventilated at Kayser's house, not merely their contemptuous theories, but also their down-at-the-heel shoes? To fall from one Bohemian condition to another, from exigency to want, to be the wife of one of these greasy-haired dreamers? Her whole nature shuddered in revolt at this idea. Through the open window, the tepid breath of nature wafted toward her the odor of the rising sap in gentle, warm whiffs that filled her with a feverish astonishment. Stretched on the patched divan, her eyes closed and her lovely form kissed by the tepid breeze, she dreamed, dreamed, dreamed--

The awakening was folly, a rash act, an elopement.

In the house on Rue de Navarin there happened to be one fellow more daring than the rest, he was an artist who, in the jostling daily life, kindled his love at the strange flame that burned in the lustful virgin's eyes. A glance revealed all.

The meeting with a rake determined the life of this girl. She fell, not through ignorance or curiosity, but moved by anger and, as it were, out of bravado. Since she was without social position, motherless and isolated, having no family, without a prop and unloved, well, she threw off the yoke absolutely. She broke through her shackles at one bound. She rebelled!--

She eloped with this man.

He was a handsome fellow, who thirsted for pleasure, and took his prize boldly about, plunging Marianne into the ranks of vulgar mistresses, and had not the mad woman's superior intelligence, will, and even her disgust, ruled at once over this first lover and the equivocal surroundings into which he had thrust her, she would have become a mere courtesan.

Kayser had experienced only astonishment at the flight of his niece. How was it that he had never suspected the cause that disturbed her thoughts? "These diabolical women, nobody knows them, not even those who made them. A father even would not have detected anything. The more excuse therefore for an uncle!" So he resumed his musing on elevated art, quieting his displeasure--for his comrades jeered him--by the fumes of his pipe.

Moreover, all things considered, the painter added, Marianne had followed the natural law. Full liberty for everybody, was still one of Simon Kayser's pet theories. Marianne was of age and could dispose of her lot without the necessity of submitting to a strict endorsement of her conduct. When she had "sounded all the depths of the abyss,"--and Kayser pronounced these words while puffing his tobacco--she would return. Uncle Kayser would always keep a place for her at what he called _his fireside_.

"The fireside of your pipe," Marianne once remarked to him.

So Kayser consoled himself for this escapade by the sacredness of art, the only sacredness he recognized. On that indeed he yielded nothing. What mattered it to the world, if a girl went astray, even if that girl were his niece? Public morality was not hurt thereby. Ah! if he, Kayser, had exhibited to the world a lewd picture, it would have been "a horse of a different color"! The dignity, seriousness, purity of art, that was right enough!--But a woman! Pshaw! a woman!--Nor was he heard once to express any uneasiness as to what might become of Marianne.

In the course of her perilous career, which, however, was not that of a courtesan, but that of a freed woman avenging herself, Marianne had met Guy de Lissac and loved him as completely as her nature allowed her to love. Guy entertained her. With him she talked over everything, she gave herself up to him, and made plans for the future. Why should they ever separate? They adored each other. Guy was rich, or at any rate he lived sumptuously. Marianne was a lovely mistress, clever, in fact, ten women in one. Guy became madly attached to her and he felt himself drawn closer to her day by day. She often repeated with perfect sincerity that she had never loved any one before.

The first lover, then? She did not even know his name now!

There was no reason why they should not live together for ever, a life of mutual joy and happiness, led by the same fancies, stirred by the same desires. Why ever leave each other, even once? But it was just this that induced Guy to abandon this pretty girl. He was afraid. He saw no end to such a union as theirs. The little love-affair that enticed him assumed another name: _The Chain_. He sometimes debated with himself seriously about marrying this Marianne, whose adventures he knew, but who so intoxicated him that he forgot all the past.

Uncle Kayser, entirely engrossed in the "dignity of art," and occupied with the composition of an allegorical production entitled _The Modern Family_,--a page of pure, mystic, social, regenerative art,--had certainly forgotten his niece; nevertheless, Lissac at times felt somewhat tempted to restore her to him. He was grieved at the thought of abandoning Marianne to another. His dread of marriage triumphed over his jealousy. One fine day, Guy suddenly brought about a separation. Feeling ill, he took to his bed, when one morning Marianne came to him and said in passionate tones:

"Now I will never leave you again! You are in danger, and I am here to save you!"

Guy now felt himself lost. His rapid perception, whose operation was as sudden as a blow of the fist, warned him that if he allowed this woman to install herself in his house, he might say good-by to liberty, and probably also to his life. This Parisian had laid down as a principle, that a man should always be _unfettered_. He held in horror this shameful half-marriage that the language of slang had baptized, as with a stain: _Collage_. He therefore decided to play his life against his liberty, and during the temporary absence of this nurse established at his bedside, he packed his clothes in his trunk at random, shivering as he was with fever, threw himself into a hack, and, with chattering teeth and a morbid shudder creeping over his entire body, had himself driven to the railroad station and departed for Italy.

Marianne was heartbroken anew at this unexpected departure. A hope had vanished. She loved Guy very sincerely, and she vainly hoped that she would hold him. He fled from her! Whither had he gone? For a moment, she was tempted to rejoin him when she received his letters. She surmised, however, that Guy, desiring to avoid her, caused his brief notes to be sent by some friend from towns that he had left. To play there the absurd part of a woman chasing her lover would have been ridiculous. She remained, therefore, disgusted, heartbroken for a moment like a widow in despair, then she retraced her steps to the Rue de Navarin, and returned to the fold, where she found Uncle Kayser still quite unruffled, with the almost finished picture of _The Modern Family_.

"That is, I verily believe, the best I have done, the most moral," said Kayser to her. "In art, morality before everything, my girl! Come, sit down and tell me your little adventures."

It was five years--five whole years--since Lissac had seen Marianne. Their passion had subsided little by little into friendship,--expressed though by letters. Marianne wrote, Guy replied. All the bitter reproofs had been exchanged through the post, yet, in spite of this correspondence, neither had sought the opportunity nor felt the desire to meet. The fancy was dead! Nevertheless, they had loved each other well!

Suddenly, without overtures, on this bitingly cold morning, Marianne arrived, half shivering, in the new apartment, warmed her tiny feet at the fire and raised to him the rosy tip of her cold nose.

Guy was somewhat surprised.