Chapter 3

"Mamma had scarcely time to scream 'Marceline, Marceline!' when I was there no more. He had lifted me off, and carried me away; and we were waltzing wildly, furiously!--oh, what a waltz!--and he was saying to me: 'I love you! I adore you! You are grace and beauty itself! There is only one pretty woman here--you; and it is I who will be your husband. I, do you hear? I, and not another!' And I, quite suffocated with surprise, pleasure, and emotion, allowed myself to be nearly carried by him, but I kept begging him to speak lower. 'Anything you wish; yes, I will be your wife; but take care--you will be heard--you will be heard.'"

"That is what I wished; and I continued, 'I love you! I adore you!'"

"Then I, absolutely breathless: 'Not so fast. I pray, not so fast; I shall fall. I assure you everything is going round, everything is going round. Let us stop.' 'No, no; don't let's stop. Keep on still. If we stop your mother will separate us, and I have still so many things to say to you--so many things, so many things. Swear to me that you will be my wife.' 'Yes, I swear it; but enough, enough--' I was smothering. He heard nothing. He was going, going like a madman. We had become a hurricane, a whirlwind, a cyclone. We caused surprise and fright. No one danced any more, but looked at us. And he held me so close, and his face was so near my face, his lips so near my lips, that all at once I felt myself giving way. I slipped, and let myself into his arms. A cloud passed before my eyes; I could not speak nor think; then blankness. Everything had disappeared before me in a vertigo not too disagreeable, I must say. I had fainted, absolutely fainted."

"The next day our marriage was decided, perfectly decided. Our waltz had caused scandal. That was just what I wanted."

"There, Aunt Louise, is the history of our marriage, and I want to-day to draw this conclusion: it is that I was the first to begin to love, and I shall have, consequently, one day, when it pleases me, the right to stop the first."

"Ah, no, indeed; tell her, Aunt Louise, that she will never have that right--"

A new quarrel threatened to break out.

"This, my children," said the old aunt, "is all I have to say: she did, in truth, start the first to love; but it seems to me, Gontran, that you started all at once at such a great pace that you must have caught up with her."

"Passed her, Aunt Louise."

"Oh no!" exclaimed Marceline.

"Oh yes--"

"Oh no--"

"Well," continued Aunt Louise, "try never to have any other quarrels than that one. Try to walk always in life step by step, side by side, and heart to heart. I have seen many inventions since I was born, and the world is no longer what it was then. But there is one thing to which inventions have made no difference, and never will. That thing you have; keep it. It is love! Love each other, children, as strongly and as long as possible."

And Aunt Louise wept another tear, and smiled on looking at the portrait of the officer of the Royal Guard.

THE DANCING-MASTER

I was dining at the house of some friends, and in the course of the evening the hostess said to me:

"Do you often go to the opera?"

"Yes, very often."

"And do you go behind the scenes?"

"Yes, I go behind."

"Then you can do me a favor. In the ballet department there's an old man called Morin, who is perfectly respectable, it seems. He is the little B----'s dancing-master. He gives excellent lessons. I should like to have him for my little girls, so ask him if he could come twice a week."

I willingly undertook the delicate mission.

The next day, February 17, 1881, about ten in the evening, I arrived at the opera, and went behind the scenes to search for Monsieur Morin. "The Prophet" was being played, and the third act had just begun. On the stage the Anabaptists were singing forcibly:

"Du sang! que Judas succombe! Du sang! Dansons sur leur tombe! Du sang! Voila l'hécatombe Que Dieu nous demande encor!"

Axes were raised over the heads of a crowd of hapless prisoners, who were barons, bishops, monks, and grand ladies. In the wings, balanced on their skates, all the ballet-girls were waiting the right moment to

"Effleurer la glace Sans laisser de trace."

I respectfully begged one of the young Westphalian peasant-girls to point out to me the man named Morin.

"Morin," she replied, "is not one of the skaters. Look, he is on the stage. That's he over there, the one who is doing the bishop; that bishop, you see, who is being pushed and pulled. Wait, he will be off directly."

One of the Anabaptist leaders intervened, however, declaring that the nobles and priests who could pay ransom should be spared. Morin escaped with his life, and I had the honor of being presented to him by the little Westphalian peasant-girl.

He had quite a venerable air, with his long gray beard and his fine purple robe with his large pastoral cross. While he was arranging somewhat his costume, which had been so roughly pulled by those violent Anabaptists, I asked him if he would be willing to give lessons to two young girls of good family.

The pious bishop accepted with alacrity. His price was ten francs an hour.

The little skaters had gone on the stage, and were performing wonderful feats. The wings had suddenly become calm and silent. We gave ourselves up, his Reverence and myself, to a little friendly chat.

"Yes, sir," his Highness said to me, "I give dancing lessons. I have many patrons among the aristocracy and the bankers. I have no reason to complain; and yet one must admit things were better once, much better. Dancing is going out, sir, dancing is going out."

"Is it possible?"

"It is as I have the honor of telling you. Women still learn to dance; but no longer the young men, sir, no longer. Baccarat, races, and the minor theatres--that's what they enjoy. It's a little the fault of the Government."

"How can that be?"

"M. Jules Ferry has recently rearranged the curriculum of the University. He has made certain studies obligatory--modern languages, for instance. I don't blame him for that; the study of modern languages has great advantages. But dancing, sir; nothing has been done for dancing, and it is dancing which ought, after all, to have been made obligatory. There ought to be a dancing-master in every high-school, and a normal-school for dancing with examinations and competitions in dancing. Dancing ought to be studied the same as Latin or Greek. Dancing, too, is a language, and a language that every well-bred man ought to be able to speak. Well, do you know what happens nowadays? Sometimes it happens, sir, that diplomatic posts are given to people who get confused in the figures of a quadrille, and who are incapable of waltzing for two minutes. They know very well that their education is incomplete. Quite lately a young man came to me--a young man of great merit, it seems, except in regard to dancing. He had just been attached to a great embassy. He had never danced in his life--never. Do you understand? Never! It is scarcely to be credited, and yet it is true. That's the way M. Barthélémy-Saint-Hilaire picks them out. Oh, this beard smothers me! Will you permit me?"

"Certainly."

He took off his gray beard, and thus looked much less venerable. He then continued:

"I said to this young man: 'We will try, but it will be hard work. One oughtn't to begin dancing at twenty-eight.' I limbered him up as best I could. I had only two weeks to do it in. I begged him to put off his departure, to obtain a reprieve of three or four months--I could have made something of him. He would not. He went without knowing anything. I often think of him. He will represent us out there; he will represent us very badly; he will not be an honor to his country. Please to remember that he may be called upon to take part in some official quadrille--to dance, for instance, with an archduchess. Well, if he slips up in it, with his archduchess, it will be charming! All this is very sad indeed. I am a Republican, sir, an old Republican, and it is painful to think that the republic is represented by diplomats who cannot distinguish between a change of foot and a simple step. Do you know what is said in foreign courts? 'Why, who are those savages that France sends us?' Yes, that's what they say. The diplomatic corps in the time of the Empire was not brilliant. Oh no; those gentlemen did many foolish things. Oh yes; but still they knew how to dance!"

And the good old bishop, seeing that I listened with much interest, went on with his brilliant improvisation.

"Dancing, sir, is not merely a pleasure, an amusement; no, it is of great social interest. Why, the question of marriage is closely connected with dancing. At present, in France, marriage is languishing. That is proved by statistics. Well, I am convinced that if there are fewer marriages it is because there is less dancing. Consider this first of all, that to know how to dance well, very well, is, for an agreeable young man who is without fortune, a great advantage in society. One of my pupils, sir, has recently married extremely well. He was a very ordinary kind of youth, who had tried everything and had succeeded in nothing; but he was a first-rate waltzer, and he danced away with two millions."

"Two millions!"

"Yes, two millions, and they were two cash millions; she was an orphan, no father nor mother--all that can be dreamed of. He clasped that young lady (she was very plump). Well, in his arms, she felt herself light as a feather. She thought of but one thing--waltzing with him. She was as one wild. He gave her a new sensation, and what is it women desire above all things? To have new sensations, in short, she refused marquises, counts, and millionaires. She wanted him only. She got him, and he was penniless, and his name is Durand. Ah, do not repeat his name; I oughtn't to have told you."

"Don't be afraid."

"After all, you can repeat it; it doesn't matter, it's such a common name. There is public policy in love-matches which cause a rich girl to marry a poor man, or a poor girl to marry a rich man. It sets money circulating, it prevents its remaining in the same place, it keeps capital moving. Well, three-fourths of the love-matches were formerly made by the dance. Now there are short interviews in parlors, in galleries, and at the Opéra Comique. They chat; that's all right, but chatting is not sufficient. Wit is something, but not everything. A waltz furnishes much knowledge that conversation cannot. Dress-makers nowadays are so wily. They know how to bring out this point and hide that; they remodel bad figures. They give plumpness and roundness to the thin; they make hips, shoulders--everything, in fact. One doesn't know what to expect, science has made such advances. The eye may be deceived, but the hand of an experienced dancer never! A waltzer with tact knows how to find out the exact truth about things."

"Oh! oh!"

"Remaining all the time, sir, perfectly respectful and perfectly reserved. Good heavens! look at myself, for instance. It is to waltzing that I owe my happiness. Mme. Morin was not then Mme. Morin. I kept my eye on her, but I hesitated. She appeared thin, and--well, I'll admit that to marry a thin woman didn't suit my ideas. You know every one has his ideals. So, sir, I was still hesitating, when one evening, at the wedding of one of my friends, a very capable young man, a deputy manager of a department at the Ministry of Religion, they started a little dance. For the first waltz I asked the one who was to be my companion through life. Immediately I felt in my hand a delightful figure--one of those full but supple figures; and while waltzing, quite enchanted, I was saying to myself, 'She isn't really thin! she isn't really thin!' I took her back to her place after the waltz, and went at once to her mother to ask for her hand, which was granted me. For fourteen years I have been the happiest of men, and perhaps I shouldn't have made that marriage if I hadn't known how to waltz. You see, sir, the results of a waltz?"

"Perfectly."

"That is not all, sir. Thanks to dancing, one discovers not only the agreeable points of a person, the fulness of her figure, the lithesomeness of her waist, but also, in a briskly led waltz, a little examination of the health and constitution of a woman can be had. I remember one evening twelve or so years ago--in the Rue Le Peletier, in the old Opéra-house, which has burned down--I was on the stage awaiting my cue for the dance in 'William Tell,' you know, in the third act. Two subscribers were talking quite close to me, in the wings. One of the gentlemen was an old pupil of mine. I have had so many pupils! Without wishing to, I heard scraps of the conversation, and these two sentences struck my ear: 'Well, have you decided?' 'Oh,' replied my pupil, 'I find her very charming, but I have heard that she is weak in the lungs.' Then, sir, I did a very unusual thing for me. I begged pardon for having heard unintentionally, and I said to my old pupil: 'I think I have guessed that a marriage is in question. Will you authorize me to give you a piece of advice--advice drawn from the practice of my profession? Do they allow this young lady to waltz?' You know there are mothers who do not permit--"

"I know, I know."

We had arrived at this point in that interesting conversation when the ballet ended. The bishop and myself were assailed by an actual whirlwind of skaters, and my little Westphalian peasant-girl found me where she had left me.

"I declare!" she said to me, "so you come to confess at the opera? Give him absolution, Morin, and give it to me, too. Now then, come along to the greenroom."

She took my arm, and we went off together, while the excellent Morin, with gravity and dignity beneath his sacred ornaments, withstood the shock of this avalanche of dancers.

THE CIRCUS CHARGER

After George had related how he had been married off at twenty-two by his aunt, the Baroness de Stilb, Paul said: "_I_ was married off by a circus charger. I was very nearly forty years of age, and I felt so peacefully settled in my little bachelor habits that, in the best faith in the world, on all occasions, I swore by the gods never to run the great risk of marriage; but I reckoned without the circus charger.

"It was in the last days of September, 1864. I had just arrived from Baden-Baden, and my intention was to spend only twenty-four hours in Paris. I had invited four or five of my friends--Callières, Bernheim, Frondeville, and Valreas--to my place in Poitou for the shooting season. They were to come in the first part of October, and it needed a week to put all in order at Roche-Targé. A letter from my overseer awaited me in Paris, and the letter brought disastrous news; the dogs were well, but out of the dozen hunting horses that I had there, five, during my sojourn at Baden, had fallen sick or lame, and I found myself absolutely forced to get new horses.

"I made a tour of the Champs-Elysées sellers, who showed me as hunters a fine collection of broken--down skeletons. Average price, three thousand francs. Roulette had treated me badly of late, and I was neither in the humor, nor had I the funds, to spend in that way seven or eight hundred louis in a morning.

"It was a Wednesday, and Chéri was holding his first autumn sale. I went to the Rue de Ponthieu during the day; and there out of the lot, on chance, without inquiry, blindly, by good-luck, and from the mere declarations of the catalogue--'_Excellent hunter, good jumper, has hunted with lady rider_,' etc.--I bought eight horses, which only cost me five thousand francs. Out of eight, I said to myself, there will always be four or five who will go, and who will be good enough to serve as remounts.

"Among the horses there was one that I had bought, I must confess, particularly on account of his coat, which was beautiful. The catalogue did not attribute to him any special qualifications for hunting, but limited itself to '_Brutus, riding horse_.' He was a large dapple-gray horse, but never, I think, have I seen gray better dappled; the white coat was strewn almost regularly with beautiful black spots, which were well distributed and well marked.

"I left town the next day for Roche-Targé, and the following day, early, they announced to me that the horses had arrived. I at once went down to see them, and my first glance was at Brutus. He had been trotting in my head for forty-eight hours, that devil of a gray horse, and I had a singular desire to know what he was and of what he was capable.

"I had him taken out of the stable first. A groom led him to me with a strap. The horse had long teeth, hollows in the chest, lumpy fetlocks--in short, all the signs of respectable age; but he had powerful shoulders, a large breast, a neck which was both strong and supple, head well held, tail well placed, and an irreproachable back. It wasn't, however, all this that attracted most my attention. What I admired above all was the air with which Brutus looked at me, and with what an attentive, intelligent, and curious eye he followed my movements and gestures. Even my words seemed to interest him singularly; he inclined his head to my side as if to hear me, and, as soon as I had finished speaking, he neighed joyously in answer.

"They showed me successively the seven other horses; I examined them rapidly and absent-mindedly. They were horses like all other horses. Brutus certainly had something in particular, and I was anxious to make in his company a short jaunt in the country. He allowed himself to be saddled, bridled, and mounted like a horse who knows his business, and so we both started in the quietest way in the world.

"I had at first ridden him with the snaffle, and Brutus had gone off at a long easy gait, with rather a stiff neck and projected head; but as soon as I let him feel the curb, he changed with extraordinary rapidity and suppleness, drawing his head back to his breast, and champing his bit noisily; then at the same time he took a short gait, which was light and even, lifting well his feet and striking the sod with the regularity of a pendulum.

"Chéri's catalogue had not lied; the horse was a good rider--too good a rider, in fact. I made him trot, then gallop; the horse at the first suggestion gave me an excellent little trot and an excellent little gallop, but always plunging to the ground and pulling my arms when I tried to lift his head. When I wished to quicken his gait, the horse broke at once. He began to rack in great style, trotting with the fore-feet and galloping with the hind ones. 'Well,' I said to myself, 'I see now; I've bought some old horse of the Saumur or Saint-Cyr school, and it's not on this beast that I'll hunt in eight days.'

"I was about to turn and go home, quite edified as to Brutus's qualities, when the report of a gun was heard twenty yards away in the woods. It was one of my keepers who was shooting a rabbit, and who received some time after a handsome present from my wife for that shot.

"I was then in the centre of the cross-roads, which formed a perfect circle of five or six yards in radius; six long green alleys came to an end at this spot. On hearing the report, Brutus had stopped short, planted himself on his four legs, with ears erect and head raised. I was surprised to find the horse so impressionable. I should have thought that after the brilliant education that very certainly he had received in his youth, Brutus must be an artillery horse, used to gun and cannon. I drew in my legs to urge the horse on, but Brutus didn't move; I spurred him sharply twice, but Brutus didn't move; I whipped him soundly, but Brutus didn't move. I tried to back the horse, to push him to the right, to the left, but I couldn't move him in the slightest degree. Brutus seemed glued to the ground, and yet--don't you dare to laugh, and be assured that my tale is absolutely true--each time that I attempted to put the horse in motion he turned his head and looked at me with an expression which could clearly be read as impatience and surprise; then he would again become as immovable as a statue. There was evidently some misunderstanding between the horse and myself. I saw that in his eyes, and Brutus said to me, with all the clearness he could put in his expression, 'I, as a horse, am doing my duty, and it's you, as a rider, who are not doing yours!'

"I was more puzzled than embarrassed. 'What extraordinary kind of a horse have I bought at Chéri's,' I said to myself, 'and why does he look at me so queerly?' I was, however, going to take strong measures--that is to say, I was preparing to whip him smartly--when another report was heard.

"Then the horse gave a jump. I thought I had the best of it, and, profiting by his bound, I tried to carry him forward with hand and knee. But no; he stopped short after his bound, and again planted himself on the ground more energetically and more resolutely than the first time. Ah, then I grew angry, and my whip came into play; I grasped it firmly and began to strike the horse with all my strength to the right and left. But Brutus, he too lost patience, and, instead of the cold and immovable opposition that at first he had shown, I met with furious retaliations, strange springs, bucking, extraordinary rearing, fantastic whirling; and in the midst of this battle, while the infatuated horse bounded and reared, while I, exasperated, struck with vigor the leather pommel with my broken whip, Brutus still found time to give me glances not only of surprise and impatience, but also of anger and indignation. While I was asking the horse for the obedience which he refused me, it is certain that he expected from me something that I was not doing.

"How did it end? To my shame, to my great shame, I was pitifully unhorsed by an incomparable feat! Brutus understood, I think, that he would not get the better of me by violence, and judged it necessary to try cunning; after a pause which was most certainly a moment of reflection, the horse rose up, head down, upright on his fore-feet, with the skill, the calm, and the perfect equilibrium of a clown who walks on his hands. Thus I tumbled into the sand, which, by good-luck, was thick in that spot.

"I tried to get up. I screamed and fell back ridiculously, flat on my stomach, on my nose. At the slightest movement I felt as though a knife ran through my left leg. It's a slight matter, however--the rupture of a slender sinew; but though slight, the injury was none the less painful. I succeeded, nevertheless, in turning over and sitting up; but just when, while rubbing my eyes, filled with sand, I was beginning to ask myself what in the midst of this tumult had become of my miserable dapple-gray, I saw over my head a large horse's hoof descending. Then this large hoof pressed, with a certain gentleness, however, on my chest, and pushed me delicately back on the ground, on my back this time.

"I was greatly discouraged; and feeling incapable of another effort, I remained in that position, continuing to ask myself what sort of a horse I had bought at Chéri's, closing my eyes, and awaiting death.

"Suddenly I heard a curious trampling around me; a quantity of little hard things struck me on the face. I opened my eyes, and perceived Brutus, who, with his fore-feet and hind-legs, was trying with incredible activity and prodigious skill to bury me in the sand. He was doing his best, poor beast, and from time to time he stopped to gaze at his work; then, raising his head, he neighed and began his work again. That lasted for a good three or four minutes, after which Brutus, judging me doubtless sufficiently interred, placed himself very respectfully on his knees before my tomb--on his knees, literally on his knees! He was saying, I suppose, a little prayer. I looked at him. It interested me extremely.