"Don"t you believe in my star, Felicie? You are wrong. I can feel that I am capable of creating great parts. Let them only give me a part, and they"ll see. And I have in me not only comedy, but drama, tragedy--yes, tragedy. I can deliver verse properly. And that is a talent which is becoming rare in these days. So don"t imagine, Felicie, that I am insulting you when I offer you marriage. Far from it! We will marry later on, as soon as it is possible and suitable. Of course, there is no need for hurry. Meanwhile, we will resume our pleasant habits of the Rue des Martyrs. You remember, Felicie; we were so happy there! The bed wasn"t wide, but we used to say: "That doesn"t matter." I have now two fine rooms in the Rue de la Montagne-Saint-Genevieve, behind Saint-etienne-du-Mont. Your portrait hangs on every wall. You will find there the little bed of the Rue des Martyrs. Listen to me, I beg of you: I have suffered too much; I will not suffer any longer. I demand that you shall be mine, mine only."
While he was speaking, Felicie had taken from the mantelpiece the pack of cards with which her mother played every night, and was spreading them out on the table.
"Mine only. You hear me, Felicie."
"Don"t disturb me, I am busy with a game of patience."
"Listen to me, Felicie. I won"t have you receiving that fool in your dressing-room."
Looking at her cards she murmured:
"All the blacks are at the bottom of the pack."
"I say that fool. He is a diplomatist, and nowadays the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the refuge of incompetents." Raising his voice, he continued: "Felicie, for your own sake, as well as for mine, listen to me!"
"Well, don"t shout, then. Mama is asleep."
He continued in m.u.f.fled tones:
"Just get it into your head that I don"t intend that Ligny shall be your lover."
She raised her spiteful little face, and replied:
"And if he is my lover?"
He moved a step closer to her, raising his chair, gazing at her with the eye of a madman, and laughing a cracked laugh.
"If he is your lover, he won"t be so for long."
And he dropped the chair.
Now she was alarmed. She forced herself to smile.
"You know very well I"m joking!"
She succeeded without much difficulty in making him believe that she had spoken thus merely to punish him, because he was getting unbearable. He became calmer. She then informed him that she was tired out, that she was dropping with sleep. At last he decided to go home. On the landing he turned, and said:
"Felicie, I advise you, if you wish to avoid a tragedy, not to see Ligny again."
She cried through the half-open door:
"Knock on the window of the porter"s lodge, so that he can let you out!"
CHAPTER IV
In the dark auditorium large linen sheets protected the balcony and the boxes. The orchestra was covered with a huge dust-cloth, which, being turned back at the edges, left room for a few human figures, indistinctly seen in the gloom: actors, scene-shifters, costumiers, friends of the manager, mothers and lovers and actresses. Here and there shone a pair of eyes from the black recesses of the boxes.
They were rehearsing, for the fifty-sixth time, _La Nuit du 23 octobre 1812_, a celebrated drama, dating twenty years back, which had not as yet been performed in this theatre. The actors knew their parts, and the following day had been chosen for that last private rehearsal which on stages less austere than that of the Odeon is known as "the dressmakers"
rehearsal."
Nanteuil had no part in the play. But she had had business at the theatre that day, and, as she had been informed that Marie-Claire was execrable in the part of General Malet"s wife, she had come to have a peep at her, concealed in the depths of a box.
The great scene of the second act was about to begin. The stage setting represented an attic in the private asylum where the conspirator was confined in 1812. Durville, who filled the part of General Malet, had just made his entrance. He was rehearsing in costume: a long blue frock-coat, with a collar reaching above his ears, and riding-breeches of chamois leather. He had even gone so far as to make up his face for the part, the clean-shaven soldierly face of the general of the Empire, ornamented with the "hare"s-foot" whiskers which were handed down by the victors of Austerlitz to their sons, the bourgeois of July. Standing erect, his right elbow resting in his left hand, his brow supported by his right hand, his deep voice and his tight-fitting breeches expressed his pride.
"Alone, and without funds, from the depths of a prison, to attack this colossus, who commands a million soldiers, and who causes all the peoples and kings of Europe to tremble. Well, this colossus shall fall crashing to the ground."
From the back of the stage old Maury, who was playing the conspirator Jacquemont, delivered his reply:
"He may crush us in his downfall."
Suddenly cries at once plaintive and angry arose from the orchestra.
The author was exploding. He was a man of seventy, br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with youth.
"What do I see there at the back of the stage? It"s not an actor, it"s a fire-place. We shall have to send for the bricklayers, the marble-workers, to move it. Maury, do get a move on, confound you!"
Maury shifted his position.
"He may crush us in his downfall. I realize that it will not be your fault, General. Your proclamation is excellent. You promise them a const.i.tution, liberty, equality. It is Machiavellian."
Durville replied:
"And in the best sense. An incorrigible breed, they are making ready to violate the oaths that they have not yet taken, and, because they lie, they believe themselves Machiavellis. What will you do with absolute power, you simpletons?"
The strident voice of the author ground out:
"You are right off the track, Dauville."
"I?" asked the astonished Durville.
"Yes, you, Dauville, you do not understand a word of what you are saying."
In order to humiliate them, "to take them down a peg," this man who, in the whole course of his life, had never forgotten the name of a dairy-woman or a hall-porter, disdained to remember the names of the most ill.u.s.trious actors.
"Dauville, my friend, just do that over again for me."
He could play every part well. Jovial, funereal, violent, tender, impetuous, affectionate, he a.s.sumed at will a deep or a piping voice; he sighed, he roared, he laughed, he wept. He could transform himself, like the man in the fairy-tale, into a flame, a river, a woman, a tiger.
In the wings the actors exchanged only short and meaningless phrases.
Their freedom of speech, their easy morals, the familiarity of their manners did not prevent their retaining so much of hypocrisy as is needful, in any a.s.semblage of men, if people are to look upon one another without feelings of horror and disgust. There even prevailed, in this workshop in full activity, a seemly appearance of harmony and union, a oneness of feeling created by the thought, lofty or commonplace, of the author, a spirit of order which compelled all rivalries and all illwill to transform themselves into goodwill and harmonious co-operation.
Nanteuil, sitting in her box, felt uneasy at the thought that Chevalier was close at hand. For the last two days, since the night on which he had uttered his obscure threats, she had not seen him again and the fear with which he had inspired her still possessed her. "Felicie, if you wish to prevent a tragedy, I advise you not to see Ligny again." What did those words portend? She pondered deeply over Chevalier. This young fellow, who, only two days earlier, had seemed to her commonplace and insignificant, of whom she had seen a good deal too much, whom she knew by heart--how mysterious and full of secrets he now appeared to her! How suddenly it had dawned upon her that she did not know him! Of what was he capable? She tried to guess. What was he going to do? Probably nothing. All men who are thrown over by a woman utter threats and do nothing. But was Chevalier a man quite like all the rest? People did say that he was crazy. That was mere talk. But she herself did not feel sure that there might not be a spark of insanity in him. She was studying him now with genuine interest. Highly intelligent herself, she had never discovered any great signs of intelligence in him; but he had on several occasions astonished her by the obstinacy of his will. She could remember his performing acts of the fiercest energy. Jealous by nature, there were yet certain matters which he understood. He knew what a woman is compelled to do in order to win a place on the stage, or to dress herself properly; but he could not endure to be deceived for the sake of love. Was he the sort of man to commit a crime, to do something dreadful? That was what she could not decide. She recalled his mania for handling firearms. When she used to visit him in the Rue des Martyrs, she always found him in his room, taking an old shot-gun to pieces and cleaning it. And yet he never went shooting. He boasted of being a dead shot, and carried a revolver on his person. But what did that prove?
Never before had she thought so much about him.
Nanteuil was tormenting herself in this fashion in her box, when Jenny f.a.gette came to join her there; Jenny f.a.gette, slender and fragile, the incarnation of Alfred de Musset"s Muse, who at night wore out her eyes of periwinkle-blue by scribbling society notes and fashion articles. A mediocre actress, but a clever and wonderfully energetic woman, she was Nanteuil"s most intimate friend. They recognized in each other remarkable qualities, qualities which differed from those which each discovered in herself, and they acted in concert as the two great Powers of the Odeon. Nevertheless, f.a.gette was doing her best to take Ligny away from her friend; not from inclination, for she was insensible as a stick and held men in contempt, but with the idea that a liaison with a diplomatist would procure her certain advantages, and above all, in order not to miss the opportunity of doing something scandalous.