Complete Works of Emile Zola (244 page)

“I tell you, make your mind easy, I shall find out everything,” she said to him, in a voice full of compassion…. “Ah, my poor brother, Angèle would never have betrayed you! So good, so generous a husband! Those Parisian dolls have no heart…. And to think that I always gave her good advice!”

CHAPTER VI

There was a fancy-dress ball at the Saccard’s on the Thursday in mid-Lent. The great event, however, of the evening was the poem of
Les Amours du Beau Narcisse et de la Nymphe Écho
, in three tableaux, which was to be performed by the ladies. The author of the poem, M. Hupel de la Noue, had for more than a month been journeying to and fro between his prefecture and the house in the Parc Monceau in order to superintend the rehearsals and give his advice on the costumes. He had at first thought of writing his work in verse; then he had decided in favour of the tableaux vivants; it was more dignified, he said, and came nearer to the classical ideal.

The ladies had no more rest. Some of them had no less than three changes of dress. There were endless conferences, over which the préfet presided. To begin with, the character of Narcissus was discussed at length. Was it to be enacted by a woman or by a man? At last, at Renée’s entreaties, it was decided that the part should be entrusted to Maxime; but he was to be the only man, and even then Madame de Lauwerens declared she would never have consented to this if “little Maxime had not been so like a real girl.” Renée was to be Echo. The question of the dresses was far more complicated. Maxime was of great assistance to the préfet, who was distracted in the midst of the nine women whose mad imaginations threatened seriously to compromise the purity of outline of his work. Had he listened to them, Olympus would have worn powdered hair. Madame d’Espanet wanted positively to have a train to her dress so as to hide her feet, which were a trifle large, while Madame Haffner had visions of herself clad in the skin of a wild beast. M. Hupel de la Noue was vehement; once he even grew angry; he had made up his mind; he said that the only reason why he had renounced verse was that he might write his poem “in cunningly-contrived fabrics and the most beautiful eclectic poses.”

“The general effect, mesdames,” he repeated at each fresh instance of unreasonableness, “you forget the general effect…. I can’t possibly spoil my whole work for the sake of the furbelows you ask me for.”

The conferences took place in the buttercup drawing-room. Whole afternoons were spent in settling the cut of a skirt. Worms was called in several times. At last all was arranged, the costumes decided on, the positions learnt, and M. Hupel de la Noue declared he was satisfied. Not even the election of M. de Mareuil had given him so much trouble.

Les Amours du Beau Narcisse et de la Nymphe Écho
was to begin at eleven o’clock. At half-past ten the large drawing-room was full, and as there was to be a fancy-dress ball afterwards, the women had come in costume, and were seated on chairs ranged in a semi-circle before the improvised stage, a platform hidden by two broad curtains of red velvet with a gold fringe, running on rods. The men stood at the back, or moved to and fro. At ten o’clock the upholsterers had driven the last nail. The platform was erected at the end of the long gallery of a drawing-room, and occupied a whole section of it. The stage was approached from the smoking-room, which had been converted into a green-room for the actors. In addition, the ladies had a number of rooms at their disposal on the first floor, where an army of ladies’ maids laid out the costumes for the different tableaux.

It was half-past eleven, and the curtains were not yet drawn apart. A loud buzzing filled the drawing-room. The rows of chairs offered a bewildering display of marquises, noble dames, milk-maids, Spanish ladies, shepherdesses, sultanas; while the compact mass of dress-coats set a great black blotch beside that shimmering of bright stuffs and bare shoulders, all flashing with the bright scintillations of jewellery. The women alone were in fancy-dress. It was already getting warm. The three chandeliers lit up the golden flood of the drawing-room.

At last M. Hupel de la Noue was seen to emerge from an opening arranged on the left of the platform. He had been helping the ladies since eight o’clock in the evening. His dress-coat had on the left sleeve the mark of three white fingers, a small woman’s hand which had been laid there after dabbling in a box of rice-powder. But the préfet had other things to think of besides his dress! His eyes were dilated, his face swollen and rather pale. He seemed to see nobody. And advancing towards Saccard, whom he recognized among a group of serious men, he said to him in an undertone:

“Damn it all! Your wife has lost her girdle of leaves…. We’re in a pretty mess!”

He swore, he could have thumped people. Then, without waiting for a reply, without looking at anything, he turned his back, dived under the draperies, and disappeared. The ladies smiled at this queer apparition.

The group amid which Saccard was standing was clustered behind the last row of chairs. An arm-chair had even been drawn out of the row for the Baron Gouraud, whose legs had been swelling for some time past. There were there M. Toutin-Laroche, whom the Emperor had just created a senator; M. de Mareuil, whose second election the Chamber had deigned to confirm; M. Michelin, newly decorated; and, a little further back, the Mignon and Charrier couple, of whom one wore a big diamond in his necktie, while the other displayed a still bigger one on his finger. The gentlemen chatted together. Saccard left them for a moment to go and exchange a whispered word with his sister, who had just come in and was sitting between Louise de Mareuil and Madame Michelin. Madame Sidonie was disguised as a sorceress; Louise was jauntily attired in a page’s dress that made her look quite an urchin; the little Michelin, dressed as an alme, smiled amorously through her veils embroidered with threads of gold.

“Have you learnt anything?” Saccard softly asked his sister.

“No, not yet,” she replied. “But the spark must be here…. I’ll catch them to-night, make yourself easy.”

“Let me know at once, won’t you?”

And Saccard, turning to right and left, complimented Louise and Madame Michelin. He compared the latter to one of Mahomet’s houris, the former to a favourite of Henry III. His Provençal accent seemed to make the whole of his spare, strident figure sing with delight. When he returned to the group of serious men, M. de Mareuil took him aside and spoke to him of their children’s marriage. Nothing was altered, the contract was still to be signed on the following Sunday.

“Quite so,” said Saccard. “I intend even to announce the match to our friends this evening, if you see no objection…. I am only waiting for my brother the minister, who has promised to come.”

The new deputy was delighted. Meantime, M. Toutin-Laroche was raising his voice as though seized with lively indignation.

“Yes, messieurs,” he said to M. Michelin and the two contractors, who drew near, “I was good-natured enough to allow my name to be mixed up in an affair like that.”

And as Saccard and Mareuil came up to them:

“I was telling these gentlemen the regrettable catastrophe of the Société Générale of the Ports of Morocco; you know, Saccard?”

The latter did not flinch. The company in question had just collapsed amid a terrible scandal. Over-inquisitive shareholders had insisted on learning what progress had been made with the establishment of the famous commercial stations on the Mediterranean sea-board, and a judicial enquiry had shown that the Ports of Morocco existed only on the plans of the engineers: very handsome plans hung on the walls of the Company’s offices. Since then M. Toutin-Laroche had been clamouring more loudly than the shareholders, waxing indignant, demanding that his name should be restored to him without a stain. And he made so much noise that the Government, in order to calm this useful man and restore him in the eyes of public opinion, decided to send him to the Senate. It was thus that he fished up the so greatly coveted seat, in an affair that had very nearly involved him in a criminal trial.

“It is very kind of you to be interested in that,” said Saccard, “when you can point to your great work, the Crédit Viticole, a concern that has emerged triumphantly from every crisis.”

“Yes,” murmured Mareuil, “that is an answer to everything.”

As a matter of fact the Crédit Viticole had just issued from a serious but carefully concealed embarrassment. A minister who was very tenderly disposed towards this financial institution, which held the Municipality of Paris by the throat, had forced on a bulling operation which M. Toutin-Laroche had turned to wonderfully good account. Nothing flattered him more sweetly than the praise bestowed upon the prosperity of the Crédit Viticole. As a rule he provoked it. He thanked M. de Mareuil with a glance, and bending over the Baron Gouraud, on whose armchair he was familiarly leaning, he asked him:

“Are you comfortable? You’re not too warm?”

The baron gave a slight grunt.

“He is breaking up, he is breaking up day by day,” added M. Toutin-Laroche, in an undertone, turning towards the other gentlemen.

M. Michelin smiled, threw down his eyelids from time to time, gently, so as to look at his red ribbon. The Mignon and Charrier couple, planted squarely upon their big feet, seemed much more at their ease in their dress-clothes since they had taken to wearing diamonds. However, it was nearly midnight, and the company was growing impatient; it was not so ill-bred as to murmur, but the fans fluttered more nervously, and the sound of conversations increased.

At last M. Hupel de la Noue reappeared. He had passed one shoulder through the narrow opening when he perceived Madame d’Espanet at length ascending the platform; the other ladies, already posed for the first picture, were only waiting for her. The préfet turned round, showing his back to the audience, and he could be seen talking to the marquise, who was concealed by the curtains. He lowered his voice, and with compliments blown from his finger-tips, said:

“My congratulations, marquise. Your costume is delicious.”

“I have a much prettier one underneath!” replied she, bluntly, laughing in his face, so funny did he seem to her, buried as he was in draperies.

“Ah, charming, charming!” he murmured, with an air of rapture.

He dropped the corner of the curtain, he went and joined the group of serious men, desiring to enjoy his work. He was no longer the man running with haggard face in search of Echo’s girdle of leaves. He beamed, and panted, and wiped his forehead. He still had the mark of the little white hand on the sleeve of his coat; and moreover the thumb of his right-hand glove was stained with red at the tip; he had no doubt dipped his thumb into one of those ladies’ make-up boxes. He smiled, he fanned himself, he stammered out:

“She is adorable, enchanting, astounding!”

“Who is?” asked Saccard.

“The marquise. What do you think she said to me just now…?”

And he told the story. It was considered quite perfect. The gentlemen repeated it to one another. Even the dignified M. Haffner, who had drawn nearer, could not prevent himself from applauding. Meanwhile, a piano, which few of the people had noticed, began to play a waltz. Then there came a great silence. The waltz had endless, capricious variations; and a very soft phrase ever mounted from the keyboard, finishing in a nightingale’s trill; then deeper notes took up the theme, more slowly. It was very voluptuous. The ladies, their heads a little to one side, smiled. On the other hand the piano had put a sudden stop to M. Hupel de la Noue’s merriment. He looked anxiously towards the red velvet curtains, he said to himself that he ought to have posed Madame d’Espanet himself, as he had posed the others.

The curtains opened slowly, the piano resumed the waltz, with the soft pedal down. A murmur sped through the drawing-room. The ladies leant forward, the men stretched out their necks, whilst admiration displayed itself here and there by a word too loudly spoken, an unconscious sigh, a stifled laugh. This lasted for fully five minutes, under the glare of the three chandeliers.

M. Hupel de la Noue, relieved, beamed beatifically upon his poem. He could not resist the temptation to repeat to the people around him what he had been saying for a month past:

“I did think of doing it in verse…. But, don’t you agree with me, it’s more dignified like this….”

Then, while the waltz rose and fell in an endless lullaby, he explained. The Mignon and Charrier couple had drawn nearer and were listening attentively.

“You know the subject, don’t you? The beauteous Narcissus, son of the River Cephisus and of the Nymph Liriope, scorns the love of the Nymph Echo…. Echo was an attendant of Juno, whom she amused with her speeches while Jupiter was roving about the world…. Echo, daughter of the Air and the Earth, as you know….”

And he went into transports over the poetry of mythology. Then, more confidentially:

“I thought I might give rein to my imagination…. The Nymph Echo leads the beauteous Narcisse to Venus in a grotto on the sea-shore, so that the goddess may inflame him with her fire. But the goddess is powerless. The young man indicates by his attitude that he is not touched.”

The explanation was not out of place, for few of the spectators in the drawing-room understood the exact meaning of the groups. When the préfet had named the characters in an undertone the admiration increased. The Mignon and Charrier couple continued to stare with wide-open eyes. They had not understood.

On the platform, between the red velvet curtains, yawned a grotto. The scenery was made of silk stretched in large broken plaits, imitating the anfractuosity of rocks, upon which were painted shells, fishes and large sea-plants. The stage, broken up, rose in the shape of a hillock, and was covered with the same silk, upon which the scene-painter had depicted a fine sand ground, constellated with pearls and silver spangles. It was a retreat fit for a goddess. There on the top of the hillock, stood Mme. de Lauwerens as Venus; rather stout, wearing her pink tights with the dignity of an Olympian duchess, she interpreted her part of the Queen of Love with large, severe, devouring eyes. Behind her, showing only her mischievous head, her wings and her quiver, little Mme. Daste lent her smile to the amiable character of Cupid. Then on one side of the hillock, the three Graces, Mmes. de Guende, Teissière and de Meinhold, all in muslin, stood smiling and intertwined as in Pradier’s group; while on the other side, the Marquise d’Espanet and Mme. Haffner, enveloped in the same flow of lace, their arms round each other’s waists, their hair intermingled, gave a risky note to the picture, a reminiscence of Lesbos, which M. Hupel de la Noue explained in a lower voice, for the benefit of the men only, saying that he intended by this to show the extent of Venus’s power. At the foot of the hillock, the Countess Vanska impersonated Voluptuousness; she lay outstretched, twisted by a final spasm, her eyes half closed and languishing, as though satiated; very dark, she had unloosened her black hair, and her bodice, streaked with tawny flames, showed portions of her glowing skin. The scale of colour of the costumes, from the snowy white of Venus’s veil to the dark-red of Voluptuousness’ bodice, was soft, generally pink, flesh-coloured. And under the electric ray, ingeniously cast upon the stage from one of the garden windows, the gauze, the lace, all those light, diaphanous materials mingled so well with the shoulders and tights that those pink whitenesses seemed alive, and one was no longer certain that the ladies had not carried the plastic truth so far as to strip themselves quite naked.