Ludovic Halévy

“ A hateful little maid brutally tore me from the shoulders of Mme. General, and said to her mistress:
"Well, madame, was it beautiful?"
"No, Victoria," replied Mme. General, "it was too mixed. But do hurry up! tear it off if it won't come. I know where to find others at the same price."
And I was thrown like a rag on a heap of pieces. The heap of pieces was composed of ball-dresses of the little baroness.
One morning, three or four days later, the aide-de-camp rushed in, crying, "The Versaillists! The Versaillists are in Paris!" ”

“ He was rather savage—a son of the soil. He loved his village, and all the old friends of his childhood. A quadrille in a drawing-room caused him unspeakable terror; but every year, at the festival of the patron saint of Longueval, he danced gayly with the young girls and farmers’ daughters of the neighborhood.
If he had seen Mrs. Scott and Miss Percival at home in Paris, in all the splendor of their luxury, in all the perfection of their costly surroundings, he would have looked at them from afar, with curiosity, as exquisite works of art. ”

“ Jean, something has happened. You are a man, and I have no longer the right to treat you as a child; but you know how much I love you; if you have vexations, troubles, why not tell them to me? I could perhaps advise you. Jean, why go to Paris?"
"I did not wish to tell you, it will give you pain; but you have the right to know. I am going to Paris to ask to be exchanged into another regiment."
"Into another regiment! To leave Souvigny!"
"Yes, that is just it; I must leave Souvigny for a short time, for a little while only; but to leave Souvigny is necessary, it is what I wish above all things." ”

“ Some days after that performance of Aida, the two sisters had a rather long conversation on this great, this eternal question of marriage. A certain name had been pronounced by Mrs. Scott which had provoked on the part of Miss Percival the most decided and most energetic refusal, and Susie had laughingly said to her sister:
"But, Bettina, you will be obliged to end by marrying."
"Yes, certainly, but I should be so sorry to marry without love. It seems to me that before I could resolve to do such a thing I must be in danger of dying an old maid, and I am not yet that." ”

“ Mme Derline was seized with a feeling of undefinable confusion. It was a combination of fear and pleasure, of joy and trouble, of satisfied vanity and wounded modesty. Her dressing-gown was a little open; she folded it over with a sort of violence, and crossed it upon, her feet, abruptly drawn back towards the arm-chair. She had a feeling of nudity. It seemed to her that all Paris was there, in her room, and that the Prince de Nérins was in front saying to all Paris, "Look, look! She is the most beautiful woman in Paris." ”

“ Bettina—Countess Bettina de Lavardens! Doesn’t that sound well enough! and what a perfect husband she would have in me! To be the husband of a woman possessing boundless wealth, that is my destiny. It is not so easy as one may suppose. I have already run through something, and—if my mother had not stopped me! but I am quite ready to begin again. Oh, how happy that girl would be with me! I would create around her the existence of a fairy queen. In all her luxury she would feel the taste, the art, and the skill of her husband. ”

“ Bettina heard bursts of laughter and the strains of the waltz; she stopped. She wished to be alone, completely alone, and addressing one of the servants, she said:
"Go and tell your mistress that I am very tired, and have gone to my own room."
Annie, her maid, had fallen asleep, in an easy-chair. She sent her away. She would undress herself. She let herself sink on a couch, she was oppressed with delicious emotion.
The door of her room opened, it was Mrs. Scott.
"You are not well, Bettina?"
"Oh, Susie, is it you, my Susie? how nice of you to come. Sit here, close to me, quite close to me." ”

“ There, again, the Cure was at home. Bernard, the farmer of the Marquise, was his friend; and when the old priest was delayed in his visits to the poor and sick, when the sun was sinking below the horizon, and the Abbe began to feel a little fatigued in his limbs, and a sensation of exhaustion in his stomach, he stopped and supped with Bernard, regaled himself with a savory stew and potatoes, and emptied his pitcher of cider; then, after supper, the farmer harnessed his old black mare to his cart, and took the vicar back to Longueval. ”

“ Irony is one of M. Halévy's chief characteristics, perhaps the chiefest. It is gentle when he deals with the people of the stage—far gentler then than when he is dealing with the people of Society, with fashionable folk, with the aristocracy of wealth. When he is telling us of the young loves of millionaires and of million-heiresses, his touch may seem caressing, but for all its softness the velvet paw has claws none the less. ”

“ Miss Percival was no longer there.
The little organist of the evening before was at that moment much perplexed. On two couches in her dressing-room were spread two frocks— a white and a blue. Bettina was meditating which of these two frocks she would wear to the opera that evening. After long hesitation she fixed on the blue. At half-past nine the two sisters ascended the grand staircase at the opera-house. Just as they entered their box the curtain rose on the second scene of the second act of Aida, that containing the ballet and march. ”

“ Jean was less tranquil; the words of Miss Percival had caused him profound emotion, his heart had not yet quite regained its regular throb.
But the happiest of all was the Abbe Constantin.
This little episode which had caused Jean’s modesty such a rude, yet sweet trial, had brought him exquisite joy, the Abbe bore his godson such affection. The most tender father never loved more warmly the dearest of his children. When the old Cure looked at the young officer, he often said to himself:
“Heaven has been too kind; I am a priest, and I have a son!” ”

“ As to Jean—it is progressing decidedly, here am I also calling him Jean—well! you know what I think of him. I rank him very, very high. But in spite of that, is he really a suitable husband for you?"
"Yes, if I love him."
"I am trying to talk sensibly to you, and you, on the contrary— Understand me, Bettina; I have an experience of the world which you can not have. Since our arrival in Paris, we have been launched into a very brilliant, very animated, very aristocratic society. You might have been already, if you had liked, marchioness or princess." ”

“ A heretic! a Protestant! Poor Cure; it was indeed that of which he had immediately thought on hearing the words, “An American, Mrs. Scott.” The new chatelaine of Longueval would not go to mass. What did it matter to him that she had been a beggar? What did it matter to him if she possessed tens and tens of millions? She was not a Catholic. He would never again baptize children born at Longueval, and the chapel in the castle, where he had so often said mass, would be transformed into a Protestant oratory, which would echo only the frigid utterances of a Calvinistic or Lutheran pastor. ”

“ For half an hour I had been in that hateful position when I perceived in the distance, at the very end of the same alley by which he had gone off, Brutus coming back, with the same long gallop he had used in going. A great cloud of dust accompanied the horse. Little by little, in that cloud, I perceived a tiny carriage—a pony-carriage; then in that little pony-carriage a woman, who drove herself, and behind the woman a small groom. ”

“ Was not Bettina all sprightly and joyous when, on the 14th of June, they took the train for Longueval? As soon as she was alone in a coupe with her sister:
“Ah!” she cried, “how happy I am! Let us breathe a little, quite alone, you and me, for a few days. The Nortons and Turners do not come till the 25th, do they?”
“No, not till the 25th.”
“We will pass our lives riding or driving in the woods, in the fields. Ten days of liberty! And during those ten days no more lovers, no more lovers! And all those lovers, with what are they in love, with me or my money? ”

“ Look at her well; that is true beauty, radiant beauty, blazing beauty! She is a goddess, a young goddess! she will reign long, gentlemen—as long as possible."
The young goddess, for the present, did not go farther than Lannilis, in Poitou, to her husband's home—her home—in a mansion that had seen many Duchesses of Lannilis, but never one more charming, and never, it must be said, one more absolutely in love. This little duchess of nineteen was wild about this little duke of twenty-five, who was jealously carrying her off for himself alone to a quiet and solitary retreat. ”