The Nabob

A >> Alphonse Daudet >> The Nabob


Just then a smell of caramel and warm pastry filled the studio, where
the shadows were falling like a fine gray dust, and the fairy appeared,
a dish of sweetmeats in her hand. She looked more fairy-like than ever,
bedecked and rejuvenated; dressed in a white gown which showed her
beautiful arms through sleeves of old lace; they were beautiful still,
for the arm is the beauty that fades last.

"Look at my _kuchen_, dearie; they are such a success this time. Oh! I
beg your pardon. I did not see you had friends. And it is M. Paul! How
are you M. Paul? Taste one of my cakes."

And the charming old lady, whose dress seemed to lend her an
extraordinary vivacity, came towards him, balancing the plate on the
tips of her tiny fingers.

"Don't bother him. You can give him some at dinner," said Felicia
quietly.

"At dinner?"

The dancer was so astonished that she almost upset her pretty pastries,
which looked as light and airy and delicious as herself.

"Yes, he is staying to dine with us. Oh! I beg it of you," she added,
with a particular insistence as she saw he was going to refuse, "I beg
you to stay. Don't say no. You will be rendering me a real service by
staying to-night. Come--I didn't hesitate a few minutes ago."

She had taken his hand; and in truth might have been struck by a strange
disproportion between her request and the supplicating, anxious tone in
which it was made. Paul still attempted to excuse himself. He was not
dressed. How could she propose it!--a dinner at which she would have
other guests.

"My dinner? But I will countermand it! That is the kind of person I am.
We shall be alone, just the three of us, with Constance."

"But, Felicia, my child, you can't really think of such a thing. Ah,
well! And the--the other who will be coming directly.

"I am going to write to him to stay at home, _parbleu_!"

"You unlucky being, it is too late."

"Not at all. It is striking six o'clock. The dinner was for half past
seven. You must have this sent to him quickly."

She was writing hastily at a corner of the table.

"What a strange girl, _mon Dieu! mon Dieu!_" murmured the dancer in
bewilderment, while Felicia, delighted, transfigured, was joyously
sealing her letter.

"There! my excuse is made. Headaches have not been invented for Kadour."

Then, the letter having been despatched:

"Oh, how pleased I am! What a jolly evening we shall have! Do kiss me,
Constance! It will not prevent us from doing honour to your _kuchen_,
and we shall have the pleasure of seeing you in a pretty toilette which
makes you look younger than I do."

This was more than was required to cause the dancer to forgive this new
caprice of her dear demon, and the crime of _lese-majeste_ in which she
had just been involved against her will. To treat so great a personage
so cavalierly! There was no one like her in the world--there was no one
like her. As for Paul de Gery, he no longer tried to resist, under the
spell once more of that attraction from which he had been able to fancy
himself released by absence, but which, from the moment he crossed the
threshold of the studio, had put chains on his will, delivered him over,
bound and vanquished, to the sentiment which he was quite resolved to
combat.

Evidently the dinner--a repast for a veritable _gourmet_, superintended
by the Austrian lady in its least details--had been prepared for a guest
of great mark. From the lofty Kabyle chandelier with its seven branches
of carved wood, which cast its light over the table-cloth covered with
embroidery, to the long-necked decanters holding the wines within their
strange and exquisite form, the sumptuous magnificence of the service,
the delicacy of the meats, to which edge was given by a certain
unusualness in their selection, revealed the importance of the expected
visitor, the anxiety which there had been to please him. The table was
certainly that of an artist. Little silver, but superb china, much unity
of effect, without the least attempt at matching. The old Rouen, the
pink Sevres, the Dutch glass mounted in old filigree pewter met on this
table as on a sideboard devoted to the display of rare curios collected
by a connoisseur exclusively for the satisfaction of his taste. A little
disorder naturally, in this household equipped at hazard, as choice
things could be picked up. The wonderful cruet-stand had lost its
stoppers. The chipped salt-cellar allowed its contents to escape on the
table-cloth, and at every moment you would hear, "Why! what is become of
the mustard-pot?" "What has happened to this fork?" This embarrassed de
Gery a little on account of the young mistress of the house, who for her
part took no notice of it.

But something made Paul feel still more ill at ease--his anxiety,
namely, to know who the privileged guest might be whom he was replacing
at this table, who could be treated at once with so much magnificence
and so complete an informality. In spite of everything, he felt
him present, an offence to his personal dignity, that visitor whose
invitation had been cancelled. It was in vain that he tried to forget
him; everything brought him back to his mind, even the fine dress of the
good fairy sitting opposite him, who still maintained some of the grand
airs with which she had equipped herself in advance for the solemn
occasion. This thought troubled him, spoiled for him the pleasure of
being there.

On the other hand, by contrast, as it happens in all friendships
between two people who meet very rarely, never had he seen Felicia so
affectionate, in such happy temper. It was an overflowing gaiety that
was almost childish, one of those warm expansions of feeling that are
experienced when a danger has been passed, the reaction of a bright
roaring fire after the emotion of a shipwreck. She laughed heartily,
teased Paul about his accent and what she called his _bourgeois_ ideas.
"For you are a terrible _bourgeois_, you know. But it is that that I
like in you. It is an effect of contraries, doubtless; it is because I
myself was born under a bridge, in a gust of wind, that I have always
liked sedate, reasonable natures."

"Oh, my child, what are you going to have M. Paul think, that you were
born under a bridge?" said the good Crenmitz, who could not accustom
herself to the exaggeration of certain metaphors, and always took
everything literally.

"Let him think what he likes, my fairy. We are not trying to catch him
for a husband. I am sure he would not want one of those monsters who are
known as female artists. He would think he was marrying the devil. You
are quite right, Minerva. Art is a despot. One has to give one's self
entirely up to him. To toil in his service, one devotes all the ideal,
all the energy, honesty, conscience, that one possesses, so that you
have none of these things left for real life, and the completed labour
throws you down, strengthless and without a compass, like a dismantled
hulk at the mercy of every wave. A sorry acquisition, such a wife!"

"And yet," the young man hazarded timidly, "it seems to me that art,
however exigent it be, cannot for all that entirely absorb a woman.
What would she do with her affections, of that need to love, to devote
herself, which in her, much more than in us, is the spring of all her
actions?"

She mused a moment before replying.

"Perhaps you are right, wise Minerva. It is true that there are days
when my life rings terribly hollow. I am conscious of abysses, profound
chasms in it. Everything that I throw in to fill it up disappears. My
finest enthusiasms of the artist are engulfed there and die each time
in a sigh. And then I think of marriage. A husband; children--a swarm of
children, who would roll about the studio; a nest to look after for them
all; the satisfaction of that physical activity which is lacking in
our existences of artists; regular occupations; high spirits, songs,
innocent gaieties, which would oblige you to play instead of thinking in
the air, in the dark--to laugh at a wound to one's self-love, to be
only a contented mother on the day when the public should see you as a
worn-out, exhausted artist."

And before this tender vision the girl's beauty took on an expression
which Paul had never seen in it before, an expression which gripped his
whole being, and gave him a mad longing to carry off in his arms that
beautiful wild bird, dreaming of the home-cote, to protect and shelter
it in the sure love of an honest man.

She, without looking at him, continued:

"I am not so erratic as I appear; don't think it. Ask my good godmother
if, when she sent me to boarding-school, I did not observe the rules.
But what a muddle in my life afterward. If you knew what sort of an
early youth I had; how precocious an experience tarnished my mind, in
the head of the little girl I was, what a confusion of the permitted and
the forbidden, of reason and folly! Art alone, extolled and discussed,
stood out boldly from among it all, and I took refuge in it. That is
perhaps why I shall never be anything but an artist, a woman apart
from others, a poor Amazon with heart imprisoned in her iron cuirass,
launched into the conflict like a man, and as a man condemned to live
and die."

Why did he not say to her, at this:

"Beauteous lady-warrior, lay down your arms, resume the flowing robe and
the graces of the woman's sphere. I love you! Marry me, I implore you,
and win happiness both for yourself and for me."

Ah, there it is! He was afraid lest the other--you know him, the man who
was to have come to dinner that evening and who remained between them
despite his absence--should hear him speak thus and be in a position to
jest at or to pity him for that fine outburst.

"In any case, I firmly swear one thing," she resumed, "and it is that if
ever I have a daughter, I will try to make a true woman of her, and not
a poor lonely creature like myself. Oh! you know, my fairy, it is not
for you that I say that. You have always been kind to your demon, full
of attentions and tenderness. But just see how pretty she is, how young
she looks this evening."

Animated by the meal, the bright lights, one of those white dresses the
reflection from which effaces wrinkles, the Crenmitz, leaning back
in her chair, held up on a level with her half-closed eyes a glass of
Chateau-Yquem, come from the cellar of the neighbouring Moulin-Rouge;
and her dainty little rosy face, her flowing garments, like those you
might see in some pastel, reflected in the golden wine, which lent to
them its own piquant fervour, recalled to mind the quondam heroine of
gay little suppers after the theatre, the Crenmitz of the brave old
days--not an audacious creature after the manner of the stars of our
modern opera, but unconscious, and wrapped in her luxury like a fine
pearl in the delicate whiteness of its shell. Felicia, who decidedly
that evening was anxious to please everybody, turned her mind gently
to the chapter of recollections; got her to recount once more her great
triumphs in _Gisella_, in the _Peri_, and the ovations of the public;
the visit of the princes to her dressing-room; the present of Queen
Amelia, accompanied by such a charming little speech. The recalling of
these glories intoxicated the poor fairy; her eyes shone; they heard
her little feet moving impatiently under the table as though seized by
a dancing frenzy. And in effect, dinner over, when they had returned to
the studio, Constance began to walk backward and forward, now and
then half executing a step, a pirouette, while continuing to talk,
interrupting herself to hum some ballad air of which she would keep
the rhythm with a movement of the head; then suddenly she bent herself
double, and with a bound was at the other end of the studio.

"Now she is off!" said Felicia in a low voice to de Gery. "Watch! It is
worth your while; you are going to see the Crenmitz dance."

It was charming and fairy-like. Against the background of the immense
room lost in shadow and receiving almost no light save through the
arched glass roof over which the moon was climbing in a pale sky of
night blue, a veritable sky of the opera, the silhouette of the famous
dancer stood out all white, like a droll little shadow, light and
imponderable, which seemed rather to be flying in the air than springing
over the floor; then, erect upon the tips of her toes, supported in the
air only by her extended arms, her face lifted in an elusive pose, which
left nothing visible but the smile, she advanced quickly towards the
light or fled away with little rushes so rapid that you were constantly
expecting to hear a slight shivering of glass and to see her thus mount
backward the slope of the great moonbeam that lay aslant the studio.
That which added a charm, a singular poetry, to this fantastic ballet
was the absence of music, the sound alone of the rhythmical beat the
force of which was accentuated by the semi-darkness, of that quick and
light tapping not heavier on the parquet floor than the fall, petal by
petal, of a dahlia going out of bloom.

Thus it went on for some minutes, at the end of which they knew, by
hearing her shorter breathing, that she was becoming fatigued.

"Enough! enough! Sit down now," said Felicia. Thereupon the little white
shadow halted beside an easy chair, and there remained posed, ready
to start off again, smiling and breathless, until sleep overcame her,
rocking and balancing her gently without disturbing her pretty pose,
as of a dragon-fly on the branch of a willow dipping in the water and
swayed by the current.

While they watched her, dozing on her easy chair:

"Poor little fairy!" said Felicia, "hers is what I have had best and
most serious in my life in the way of friendship, protection, and
guardianship. Can you wonder now at the zig-zags, the erratic nature of
my mind? Fortunate at that, to have gone no further."

And suddenly, with a joyous effusion of feeling:

"Ah, Minerva, Minerva, I am very glad that you came this evening! But
you must not leave me to myself for so long again, mind. I need to have
near me an honest mind like yours, to see a true face among the masks
that surround me. A fearful _bourgeois_, all the same," she added,
laughing, "and a provincial into the bargain. But no matter! It is you,
for all that, whom it gives me the most pleasure to see. And I believe
that my liking for you is due especially to one thing: you remind me of
some one who was the great affection of my youth, a sedate and sensible
little being she also, chained to the matter-of-fact side of existence,
but tempering it with that ideal element which we artists set aside
exclusively for the profit of our work. Certain things which you say
seem to me as though they had come from her. You have the same mouth,
like an antique model's. Is it that that gives this resemblance to your
words? I have no idea, but most certainly you are like each other. You
shall see."

On the table laden with sketches and albums, at which she was sitting
facing him, she drew, as she talked, with brow inclined and her rather
wild curly hair shading her graceful little head. She was no longer the
beautiful couchant monster, with the anxious and gloomy countenance,
condemning her own destiny, but a woman, a true woman, in love, and
eager to beguile. This time Paul forgot all his mistrusts in presence
of so much sincerity and such passing grace. He was about to speak, to
persuade. The minute was decisive. But the door opened and the little
page appeared. M. le Duc had sent to inquire whether mademoiselle was
still suffering from her headache of earlier in the evening.

"Still just as much," she said with irritation.

When the servant had gone out, a moment of silence fell between them,
a glacial coldness. Paul had risen. She continued her sketch, with her
head still bowed.

He took a few paces in the studio; then, having come back to the table,
he asked quietly, astonished to feel himself so calm:

"It was the Duc de Mora who was to have dined here?"

"Yes. I was bored--a day of spleen. Days of that kind are bad for me."

"Was the duchess to have come?"

"The duchess? No. I don't know her."

"Well, in your place I would never receive in my house, at my table, a
married man whose wife I did not meet. You complain of being deserted;
why desert yourself? When one is without reproach, one should avoid the
very suspicion of it. Do I vex you?"

"No, no, scold me, Minerva. I have no objection to your ethics. They
are honest and frank, yours; they do not blink uncertain, like those of
Jenkins. I told you, I need some one to guide me."

And tossing over to him the sketch which she had just finished:

"See, that is the friend of whom I was speaking to you. A profound and
sure affection, which I was foolish enough to allow to be lost to me,
like the bungler I am. She it was to whom I appealed in moments of
difficulty, when a decision required to be taken, some sacrifice made. I
used to say to myself, 'What will she think of this?' just as we artists
may stop in the midst of a piece of work to refer it mentally to some
great man, one of our masters. I must have you take her place for me.
Will you?"

Paul did not answer. He was looking at the portrait of Aline. It was
she, herself to the letter; her pure profile, her mocking and kindly
mouth, and the long curl like a caress on the delicate neck. Felicia had
ceased to exist for him.

Poor Felicia, endowed with superior talents, she was indeed like those
magicians who knot and unknot the destinies of men, without possessing
any power over their own happiness.

"Will you give me this sketch?" he said in a low, quivering voice.

"Most willingly. She is nice--isn't she? Ah! her indeed, if you should
meet, love her, marry her. She is worth more than all the rest of
womankind together. And yet, failing her--failing her----"

And the beautiful sphinx, tamed, raised to him, moist and laughing, her
great eyes, in which an enigma had ceased to be indecipherable.




THE EXHIBITION


"SUPERB!"

"A tremendous success! Barye has never done anything so good before."

"And the bust of the Nabob! What a marvel. How happy Constance Crenmitz
is! Look at her trotting about!"

"What! That little old lady in the ermine cape is the Crenmitz? I
thought she had been dead twenty years ago."

Oh, no! Very much alive, on the contrary. Delighted, made young again
by the triumph of her goddaughter, who had made what is decidedly the
success of the exhibition, she passes about among the crowd of artists
and fashionable people, who, wedged together and stifling themselves in
order to get a look at the two points where the works sent by Felicia
are exhibited, form as it were two solid masses of black backs and
jumbled dresses. Constance, ordinarily so timid, edges her way into the
front rank, listens to the discussions, catches, as they fly, disjointed
phrases, formulas which she takes care to remember, approves with a
nod, smiles, raises her shoulders when she hears a stupid remark made,
inclined to murder the first person who should not admire.

Whether it be the good Crenmitz or another, you will always see it at
every opening of the _Salon_, that furtive silhouette, prowling near
wherever a conversation is going on, with an anxious manner and alert
ear; sometimes a simple old fellow, some father, whose glance thanks you
for any kind word said in passing, or assumes a grieved expression by
reason of some epigram, flung at the work of art, that may wound some
heart behind you. A figure not to be forgotten, certainly, if ever
it should occur to any painter with a passion for modernity to fix on
canvas that very typical manifestation of Parisian life, the opening of
an exhibition in that vast conservatory of sculpture, with its paths
of yellow sand, and its immense glass roof beneath which, half-way up,
stand out the galleries of the first floor, lined by heads bent over to
look down, and decorated with improvised flowing draperies.

In a rather cold light, made pallid by those green curtains that
hang all around, in which one would fancy that the light-rays become
rarefied, in order to give to the vision of the people walking about
the room a certain contemplative justice, the slow crowd goes and comes,
pauses, disperses itself over the seats in serried groups, and yet
mixing up different sections of society more thoroughly than any other
assembly, just as the weather, uncertain and changeable at this time of
the year, produces a confusion in the world of clothes, causes to brush
each other as they pass, the black laces, the imperious train of the
great lady come to see how her portrait looks, and the Siberian furs of
the actress just back from Russia and anxious that everybody should know
it.

Here, no boxes, no stalls, no reserved seats, and it is this that gives
to this _premiere_ in full daylight so great a charm of curiosity.
Genuine ladies of fashion are able to form an opinion of those painted
beauties who receive so much commendation in an artificial light;
the little hat, following a new mode of the Marquise de Bois l'Hery,
confronts the more than modest toilette of some artist's wife or
daughter; while the model who posed for that beautiful Andromeda at the
entrance, goes by victoriously, clad in too short a skirt, in wretched
garments that hide her beauty beneath all the false lines of fashion.
People observe, admire, criticise each other, exchange glances
contemptuous, disdainful, or curious, interrupted suddenly at the
passage of a celebrity, of that illustrious critic whom we seem still to
see, tranquil and majestic, his powerful head framed in its long hair,
making the round of the exhibits in sculpture followed by a dozen young
disciples eager to hear the verdict of his kindly authority. If the
sound of voices is lost beneath that immense dome, sonorous only under
the two vaults of the entrance and the exit, faces take on there an
astonishing intensity, a relief of movement and animation concentrated
especially in the huge, dark bay where refreshments are served, crowded
to overflowing and full of gesticulation, the brightly coloured hats
of the women and the white aprons of the waiters gleaming against the
background of dark clothes, and in the great space in the middle where
the oval swarming with visitors makes a singular contrast with
the immobility of the exhibited statues, producing the insensible
palpitation with which their marble whiteness and their movements as of
apotheosis are surrounded.

There are wings poised in giant flight, a sphere supported by four
allegorical figures whose attitude of turning suggests some vague
waltz-measure--a total effect of equilibrium well conveying the illusion
of the sweeping onward of the earth; and there are arms raised to give
the signal, bodies heroically risen, containing an allegory, a symbol
which stamps them with death and immortality, secures to them a place in
history, in legend, in that ideal world of museums which is visited by
the curiosity or the admiration of the nations.

Although Felicia's group in bronze had not the proportions of these
large pieces, its exceptional merit had caused it to be selected to
adorn one of the open spaces in the middle, from which at this moment
the public was holding itself at a respectful distance, watching, over
the hedge of custodians and policemen, the Bey of Tunis and his suite,
an array of long bernouses falling in sculptural folds, which had the
effect of placing living statues opposite the other ones.

The Bey, who had been in Paris since a few days before, and was the
lion of all the _premieres_, had desired to see the opening of the
exhibition. He was "an enlightened prince, a friend of art," who
possessed at the Bardo a gallery of remarkable Turkish paintings and
chromo-lithographic reproductions of all the battles of the First
Empire. The moment he entered, the sight of the big Arab greyhound
had struck him as he passed. It was the _sleughi_ all over, the true
_sleughi_, delicate and nervous, of his own country, the companion of
all his hunting expeditions. He laughed in his black beard, felt the
loins of the animal, stroked its muscles, seemed to want to urge it on
still faster, while with nostrils open, teeth showing, all its
limbs stretched out and unwearying in their vigorous elasticity, the
aristocratic beast, the beast of prey, ardent in love and the chase,
intoxicated with their double intoxication, its eyes fixed, was already
enjoying a foretaste of its capture with a little end of its tongue
which hung and seemed to sharpen the teeth with a ferocious laugh. When
you only looked at the hound you said to yourself, "He has got him!" But
the sight of the fox reassured you immediately. Beneath the velvet of
his lustrous coat, cat-like almost lying along the ground, covering it
rapidly without effort, you felt him to be a veritable fairy; and his
delicate head with its pointed ears, which as he ran he turned towards
the hound, had an expression of ironical security which clearly marked
the gift received from the gods.