What a difference! He was just himself, the great poet--the most ordinary of beings except for his luminous forehead. He was heavy-looking, although very active. His nose was common, his eyes lewd, and his mouth without any beauty; his voice alone had n.o.bility and charm. I liked to listen to him whilst looking at Theophile Gautier.
I was a little embarra.s.sed, though, when I looked across the table, for at the side of the poet was an odious individual, Paul de St. Victor.
His cheeks looked like two bladders from which the oil they contained was oozing out. His nose was sharp and like a crow"s beak, his eyes evil-looking and hard; his arms were too short, and he was too stout. He looked like a jaundice.
He had plenty of wit and talent, but he employed both in saying and writing more harm than good. I knew that this man hated me, and I promptly returned him hatred for hatred.
In answer to the toast proposed by Victor Hugo thanking every one for such zealous help on the revival of his work, each person raised his gla.s.s and looked towards the poet, but the ill.u.s.trious master turned towards me and continued, "As to you, Madame----"
Just at this moment Paul de St. Victor put his gla.s.s down so violently on the table that it broke. There was an instant of stupor, and then I leaned across the table and held my gla.s.s out towards Paul de St.
Victor.
"Take mine, Monsieur," I said, "and then when you drink you will know what my thoughts are in reply to yours, which you have just expressed so clearly!"
The horrid man took my gla.s.s, but with what a look!
Victor Hugo finished his speech in the midst of applause and cheers.
Duquesnel then leaned back and spoke to me quietly. He asked me to tell Chilly to reply to Victor Hugo. I did as requested. But he gazed at me with a gla.s.sy look, and in a faraway voice replied:
"Some one is holding my legs." I looked at him more attentively, whilst Duquesnel asked for silence for M. de Chilly"s speech. I saw that his fingers were grasping a fork desperately; the tips of his fingers were white, the rest of the hand was violet. I took his hand, and it was icy cold; the other was hanging down inert under the table. There was silence, and all eyes turned towards Chilly.
"Get up," I said, seized with terror. He made a movement, and his head suddenly fell forward with his face on his plate. There was a m.u.f.fled uproar, and the few women present surrounded the poor man. Stupid, commonplace, indifferent things were uttered in the same way that one mutters familiar prayers. His son was sent for, and then two of the waiters came and carried the body away, living but inert, and placed it in a small drawing-room.
Duquesnel stayed with him, begging me, however, to go back to the poet"s guests. I returned to the room where the supper had taken place. Groups had been formed, and when I was seen entering I was asked if he was still as ill.
"The doctor has just arrived, and he cannot yet say," I replied.
"It is indigestion," said Lafontaine (Ruy Blas), tossing off a gla.s.s of liqueur brandy.
"It is cerebral anaemia," p.r.o.nounced Talien (Don Guritan), clumsily, for he was always losing his memory.
Victor Hugo approached and said very simply:
"It is a beautiful kind of death."
He then took my arm and led me away to the other end of the room, trying to chase my thoughts away by gallant and poetical whispers. Some little time pa.s.sed with this gloom weighing on us, and then Duquesnel appeared.
He was pale, but appeared as if nothing serious was the matter. He was ready to answer all questions.
Oh yes; he had just been taken home. It would be nothing, it appeared.
He only needed rest for a couple of days. Probably his feet had been cold during the meal.
"Yes," put in one of the _Ruy Blas_ guests, "there certainly was a fine draught under the table."
"Yes," Duquesnel was just replying to some one who was worrying him, "yes; no doubt there was too much heat for his head."
"Yes," added another of the guests, "our heads were nearly on fire with that wretched gas."
I could see the moment arriving when Victor Hugo would be reproached by all of his guests for the cold, the heat, the food, and the wine of his banquet. All these imbecile remarks got on Duquesnel"s nerves. He shrugged his shoulders, and drawing me away from the crowd, said:
"It"s all over with him."
I had had the presentiment of this, but the cert.i.tude of it now caused me intense grief.
"I want to go," I said to Duquesnel. "Kindly tell some one to ask for my carriage."
I moved towards the small drawing-room which served as a cloak-room for our wraps, and there old Madame Lambquin knocked up against me. Slightly intoxicated by the heat and the wine, she was waltzing with Talien.
"Ah, I beg your pardon, little Madonna," she said; "I nearly knocked you over."
I pulled her towards me, and without reflecting whispered to her, "Don"t dance any more, Mamma Lambquin; Chilly is dying." She was purple, but her face turned as white as chalk. Her teeth began to chatter, but she did not utter a word.
"Oh, my dear Lambquin," I murmured; "I did not know I should make you so wretched."
She was not listening to me, though, any longer; she was putting on her cloak.
"Are you leaving?" she asked me.
"Yes," I replied.
"Will you drive me home? I will then tell you----"
She wrapped a black fichu round her head, and we both went downstairs, accompanied by Duquesnel and Paul Meurice, who saw us into the carriage.
She lived in the St. Germain quarter and I in the Rue de Rome. On the way the poor woman told me the following story.
"You know, my dear," she began, "I have a mania for somnambulists and fortune-tellers of all kinds. Well, last Friday (you see, I only consult them on a Friday) a woman who tells fortunes by cards said to me, "You will die a week after a man who is dark and not young, and whose life is connected with yours." Well, my dear, I thought she was just making game of me, for there is no man whose life is connected with mine, as I am a widow and have never had any _liaison_. I therefore abused her for this, as I pay her seven francs. She charges ten francs to other people, but seven francs to artistes. She was furious at my not believing her, and she seized my hands and said, "It"s no good yelling at me, for it is as I say. And if you want me to tell you the exact truth, it is a man who supports you; and, even to be more exact still, there are two men who support you, the one dark and the other fair; it"s a nice thing that!"
She had not finished her speech before I had given her such a slap as she had never had in her life, I can a.s.sure you. Afterwards, though, I puzzled my head to find out what the wretched woman could have meant.
And all I could find was that the two men who support me, the one dark and the other fair, are our two managers, Chilly and Duquesnel. And now you tell me that Chilly----"
She stopped short, breathless with her story, and again seized with terror. "I feel stifled," she murmured, and in spite of the freezing cold we lowered both the windows. On arriving I helped her up her four flights of stairs, and after telling the _concierge_ to look after her, and giving the woman a twenty-franc piece to make sure that she would do so, I went home myself, very much upset by all these incidents, as dramatic as they were unexpected, in the middle of a _fete_.
Three days later Chilly died, without ever recovering consciousness.
Twelve days later poor Lambquin died. To the priest who gave her absolution she said, "I am dying because I listened to and believed the demon."
XXII
AT THE COMeDIE FRANcAISE AGAIN--SCULPTURE
I left the Odeon with very great regret, for I adored and still adore that theatre. It always seems as though in itself it were a little provincial town. Its hospitable arcades, under which so many poor old _savants_ take fresh air and shelter themselves from the sun; the large flagstones all round, between the crevices of which microscopic yellow gra.s.s grows; its tall pillars, blackened by time, by hands, and by the dirt from the road; the uninterrupted noise going on all around, the departure of the omnibuses, like the departure of the old coaches, the fraternity of the people who meet there; everything, even to the very railings of the Luxembourg, gives it a quite special aspect in the midst of Paris. Then too there is a kind of odour of the colleges there--the very walls are impregnated with youthful hopes. People are not always talking there of yesterday, as they do in the other theatres. The young artistes who come there talk of to-morrow.
In short, my mind never goes back to those few years of my life without a childish emotion, without thinking of laughter and without a dilation of the nostrils, inhaling again the odour of little ordinary bouquets, clumsily tied up, bouquets which had all the freshness of flowers that grow in the open air, flowers that were the offerings of the hearts of twenty summers, little bouquets paid for out of the purses of students.
I would not take anything away with me from the Odeon. I left the furniture of my dressing-room to a young artiste. I left my costumes, all the little toilette knickknacks--I divided them and gave them away.