Gerfaut Part 16

"No sarcasm, if you please; not everybody can share your taste for princesses, who make you go a hundred leagues to follow them and then upon your arrival, only give you the tip of a glove to kiss. Such intrigues are not to my fancy.

Je suis sergent, Brave--"

"Again, I say, will you stop that noise? Don't you know that I have n.o.body on my side at present but this respectable dowager on the first floor below? If she supposes that I am making all this racket over her head we shall be deadly enemies by to-morrow."

"Zitto, zitto, piano, piano, Senza strepito e rumore,"

replied Marillac, putting his finger to his lips and lowering his voice.

"What you say is a surprise to me. From the way in which you offered your arm to Madame de Bergenheim to lead her into the drawing-room after supper, I thought you understood each other perfectly. As I was returning, for I made it my duty to offer my arm to the old lady--and you say that I do nothing for you--it seemed to me that I noticed a meeting of hands--You know that I have an eagle eye. She slipped a note into your hand as sure as my name is Marillac."

Gerfaut took the note which he held crumpled up in his hand, and held it in the flame of one of the candles. The paper ignited, and in less than a second nothing of it remained but a few dark pieces which fell into ashes upon the marble mantel.

"You burn it! You are wrong," said the artist; "as for me, I keep everything, letters and hair. When I am old, I shall have the letters to read evenings, and shall weave an allegorical picture with the hair. I shall hang it before my desk, so as to have before me a souvenir of the adorable creatures who furnished the threads. I will answer for it that there will be every shade in it from that of Camille Hautier, my first love, who was an albino, to this that I have here."

As he spoke, he took out of his pocket a small parcel from which he drew a lock of coal-black hair, which he spread out upon his hand.

"Did you pull this hair from t.i.tania's mane?" asked Gerfaut, as he drew through his fingers the more glossy than silky lock, which he ridiculed by this ironical supposition.

"They might be softer, I admit," replied Marillac negligently; and he examined the lock submitted to this merciless criticism as if it were simply a piece of goods, of the fineness of whose texture he wished to a.s.sure himself.

"You will admit at least that the color is beautiful, and the quant.i.ty makes up for the quality. Upon my word, this poor Reine has given me enough to make a pacha's banner. Provincial and primitive simplicity! I know of one woman in particular who never gave an adorer more than seven of her hairs; and yet, at the end of three years, this cautious beauty was obliged to wear a false front. All her hair had disappeared.

"Are you like me, Octave? The first thing I ask for is one of these locks. Women rather like this sort of childishness, and when they have granted you that, it is a snare spread for them which catches them."

Marillac took the long, dark tress and held it near the candle; but his movement was so poorly calculated that the hair caught fire and was instantly destroyed.

"A bad sign," exclaimed Gerfaut, who could not help laughing at his friend's dismayed look.

"This is a day of autos-de-fe," said the artist, dropping into a chair; "but bah! small loss; if Reine asks to see this lock, I will tell her that I destroyed it with kisses. That always flatters them, and I am sure it will please this little field-flower. It is a fact that she has cheeks like rosy apples! On my way back I thought of a vaudeville that I should like to write about this. Only I should lay the scene in Switzerland and I should call the young woman Betty or Kettly instead of Reine, a name ending in 'Y' which would rhyme with Rutly, on account of local peculiarities. Will you join in it? I have almost finished the scenario. First scene--Upon the rising of the curtain, harvesters are discovered--"

"Will you do me the favor of going to bed?" interrupted Gerfaut.

"Chorus of harvesters:

Deja l'aurore Qui se colore--"

"If you do not leave me alone, I will throw the contents of this water-pitcher at your head."

"I never have seen you in such a surly temper. It looks indeed as if your divinity had treated you cruelly."

"She has treated me shamefully!" exclaimed the lover, whose anger was freshly kindled at this question; "she has treated me as one would treat a barber's boy. This note, which I just burned, was a most formal, unpleasant, insolent dismissal. This woman is a monster, do you understand me?"

"A monster! your angel, a monster!" said Marillac, suppressing with difficulty a violent outburst of laughter.

"She, an angel? I must say that she is a demon--This woman--"

"Do you not adore her?"

"I hate her, I abhor her, she makes me shudder. You may laugh, if you like!"

As he said these words, Gerfaut struck a violent blow upon the table with his fist.

"You forget that Mademoiselle de Corandeuil's room is just beneath us,"

said the artist, in a teasing way.

"Listen to me, Marillac! Your system with women is vulgar, gross, and trivial. The daisies which you gather, the maidens from whom you cut handfuls of hair excellent for stuffing mattresses, your rustic beauties with cheeks like rosy apples are conquests worthy of counter-jumpers in their Sunday clothes. That is nothing but the very lowest grade of love-making, and yet you are right, a thousand times right, and wonderfully wise compared with me."

"You do me too much honor! So, then, you are not loved?"

"Truly, I had an idea I was, or, if I was not loved to-day, I hoped to be to-morrow. But you are mistaken as to what discourages me. I simply fear that her heart is narrow. I believe that she loves me as much as she is able to love; unfortunately, that is not enough for me."

"It certainly seems to me that, so far, she has not shown herself madly in love with you."

"Ah, madly! Do you know many women who love madly with their hearts and souls? You talk like a college braggart. There are conquerors like yourself who, if we are to believe them, would devour a whole convent at their breakfast. These men excite my pity. As for me, really, I have always felt that it was most difficult to make one's self really loved.

In these days of prudery, almost all women of rank appear 'frappe a la glace', like a bottle of champagne. It is necessary to thaw them first, and there are some of them whose sh.e.l.ls are so frigid that they would put out the devil's furnace. They call this virtue; I call it social servitude. But what matters the name? the result is the same."

"But, really, are you sure that Madame de Bergenheim loves you?" asked Marillac, emphasizing the word "love" so strongly as to attract his friend's attention.

"Sure? of course I am!" replied the latter. "Why do you ask me?"

"Because, when you are not quite so angry, I want to ask you something."

He hesitated a moment. "If you learned that she cares more for another than for you, what would you do?"

Gerfaut looked at him and smiled disdainfully.

"Listen!" said he, "you have heard me storm and curse, and you took this nonsense for genuine hatred. My good fellow! do you know why I raved in such a manner? It was because, knowing my temperament, I felt the necessity of getting angry and giving vent to what was in my heart. If I had not employed this infallible remedy, the annoyance which this note caused me would have disturbed my nerves all night, and when I do not sleep my complexion is more leaden than usual and I have dark rings under my eyes."

"Fop!"

"Simpleton!"

"Why simpleton?"

"Do you take me for a dandy? Do you not understand why I wish to sleep soundly? It is simply because I do not wish to appear before her with a face like a ghost. That would be all that was needed to encourage her in her severity. I shall take good care that she does not discover how hard her last thrust has. .h.i.t me. I would give you a one-hundred-franc note if I could secure for to-morrow morning your alderman's face and your complexion a la Teniers."

"Thanks, we are not masquerading just at present."

"Nevertheless, all that you have said does not prove in the slightest that she loves you."

"My dear Marillac, words may have escaped me in my anger which have caused you to judge hastily. Now that I am calm and that my remedy has brought back my nervous system to its normal state, I will explain to you my real position. She is my Galatea, I her Pygmalion. 'An allegory as old as the world,' you are about to say; old or not, it is my true story. I have not yet broken the marble-virtue, education, propriety, duty, prejudices--which covers the flesh of my statue; but I am nearing my goal and I shall reach it. Her desperate resistance is the very proof of my progress. It is a terrible step for a woman to take, from No to Yes. My Galatea begins to feel the blows from my heart over her heart and she is afraid--afraid of the world, of me, of her husband, of herself, of heaven and h.e.l.l. Do you not adore women who are afraid of everything? She, love another! never! It is written in all eternity that she shall be mine. What did you wish to say to me?"

"Nothing, since you are so sure of her."

"Sure--more than of my eternal life! But I wish to know what you mean."

"But you won't be told just a suspicion that came to me; something that was told to me the other day; a conjecture so vague that it would be useless to dwell upon it."

"I am not good at guessing enigmas," said Octave, in a dry tone.