Paul Bourget

“ I repented of these two weaknesses before I was down the staircase of the house in the Place Delaborde, but not enough, alas, to return and take back my note, which Jacques had promised to deliver. My remorse increased as directly I entered my studio I saw Camille’s head upon my easel. Delicious in her phantom and unfinished life, she smiled at me from her frameless canvas. “No, you will never finish me,” she seemed to say to me with her sad eyes, her fine oval face, and her mouth framed in a melancholy smile. ”

“ I unconsciously forgot my wise resolution and my remorse at leaving my work, to picture to myself the renewal of the soul which a liaison such as the one satiated Jacques Molan held so cheaply would instil into me. Then the irresistible demon of irony took possession of me.
“Yes,” I actually or almost said to myself, “what a dream it would be to be loved by a woman like Camille! Just free enough to give long hours to her lover and not free enough to absorb his time; enough of an artist to understand the most delicate and subtle shades of impression ”

“ The only actress who thinks differently must needs meet with Molan, the cold machine for producing prolific copy. But what is the use of my understanding and appreciating her like this, when I am on my way to contribute to the closeness of their intimacy? What absurd chance made me meet Jacques yesterday evening? That must happen to me: it is the symbol of our whole lives, his and mine. I am, or rather am ready to be, the man who really loves; he is the lover. I have the sensibility of a real artist, while he achieves works and reaps the glory of them. ”

“ Was I to keep my word to the poor girl and not warn Molan? I knew too well the value of lovers’ oaths to believe that, after assisting in concealment at this rendezvous between her lover and her rival, she would keep to her resolution of a silent rupture without vengeance. It is in vain for a woman to try and bear in her heart that sentimental pride, of which she had given proof in a very unlikely fashion by remaining in her hiding-place; she is still a woman, and sooner or later the pressure of her instinct will overcome her reason and dignity. ”

“ Camille said, and a gleam of cruelty passed into her blue eyes, which deepened in colour almost to black. “Do you think I should have moved my little finger to help her the day before yesterday, if it had not been necessary to save her to save Jacques? Ah! that Jacques has not even called to inquire after me this morning. He knows, too, that I have not acted for two consecutive evenings. He knows me and that emotion makes me ill. Vincent,” she added, taking my hand in her feverish grasp, “never love. It is such madness to have a heart in this cruel world. ”

“ I told Malvina Ducras, my stupid model with a common voice and such sad eyes, to take a little rest, and while the girl smoked cigarettes and read a bad novel, my mind went far away from my studio and I could see Camille again. I had read too many books, as my custom was, about this fable of Psyché for it not to make me dream. The idea represented by this story, this cruel affirmation that the soul can only love in unconsciousness, has always appeared to me to be a theme of inexpressible melancholy. ”

“ The artist has always gained by being treated almost like an outcast. His natural taste for the brilliant, which is the inevitable ransom of his powers of imagination, so soon turns to vanity when it is the dupe of decorum, luxury and the praises of the smart woman in particular, which is also a flattery irresistible to his self-respect and senses! When he does not succumb to the temptation, he goes to the other excess, quite as natural to this irritable class and no less dangerous, that of revolted and misanthropic pride. ”

“ I went on telling him with all the eloquence at my command the discoveries I had made and omitted to tell him a week before: the troubles of the pretty actress, what he had been, what he was to her, the ideal of passion and art she believed she was realizing in their liaison, the temptations of luxury which surrounded her, and the crime it is to provoke the first great deception in a human being. At last I was expending, in defending the little Blue Duchess to her lover, the warmth of the unfortunate love I myself felt for her. ”

“ Yes, all the sorrows and joys of love, all the emotions which must exalt the artiste and make me into a rival of Rachel, Desclée, Sarah Bernhardt and Julia Bartet, I desired to feel for some one whom they would exalt while they exalted me, for a man of genius whom I would inspire in inspiring myself, and who would write sublime plays which I should afterwards act with a genius equal to his own. How difficult it is to clearly describe what one feels! I am searching for a name in the history of the theatre which will explain to you these chimeras more clearly than my poor gossip. ”

“ I was convinced that no one could be a great artiste without passion. Even now I don’t think I was wrong. This evening, for example, I acted my last scene as I have never done before. There was nervousness in all my words and gestures. I gave myself up to my part madly! Why? Because I had seen Jacques leave your box and I did not understand. If you only knew what anguish I suffered at the moment I looked at that frightful Madam de Bonnivet’s box! How I hate that woman! She is my bad genius and that of Jacques as well. ”

“ I have promised myself to fret no more over vain ambitions. I will be a mediocre painter; that is all. In that case why should I deny myself the pleasure of writing, a thing which formerly discipline forbade? As it is certain that the name of M. Vincent la Croix will never shine in the sky of glory with the names of Gustave Moreau, of Puvis de Chavannes, and of Burne-Jones, why should M. Vincent la Croix deprive himself of this compensation: wasting his time after his own fashion, like the rich amateur, the dilettante and the critic he is? ”

“ I called upon Madam de Bonnivet directly after lunch to-day. I was uneasy. It is in vain that we know that women are like cats, and always fall on their feet, keeping something in their disposition with which to twist a husband who loves them round their fingers when and as often as they please—do you understand me?—we have to be so very careful! I was afraid that Bonnivet had made a scene with his wife after Camille’s escapade last evening. Now you will admire my foolishness and cease to reproach me with heartlessness. ”

“ Love, hate, joy and sorrow is the soil to make the flower of their talent grow, this flower of delicacy and of passion, for which they do not hesitate a moment to kill in themselves all real delicacy and living passion. For a word to speak on the stage, for a phrase to write in a book, this woman and this man would sell their father and their mother—Camille had not even mentioned hers ”

“ I said to myself, “and to-morrow these foolish ideas will be gone; besides she is a friend’s mistress. I know myself. The thought of their caresses simply would prevent me from becoming amorous of her, if I desired to. But I shall not have this desire. She has moved me this evening in her real life as she moved me at the theatre, as she would have moved me in a novel. But that is pure imagination. To-morrow I shall not think of her, and if I think of her, I shall not see her nor Molan again. That is all.”
Pure imagination is an expression easily used. ”

“ She spoke well of all the women we knew, and I spoke well of all my colleagues. We declared in agreement that the great awkward Madam de Sauve has never had a lover, and that Dorsenne’s novels are his masterpieces, that the demon Madam Moraines is an angel of disinterestedness, and that the noodle, René Vincy is a great poet. Judge of our sincerity. It was as if neither she nor I had ever suspected that one writer could slander another, that a woman of the world could commit adultery. ”

“ If I had raised the covers from the furniture I should have seen that the quality of the upholstery and the gilded wood betokened former opulence. A beautiful tapestry covered one of the walls. It had been necessary to double it up to adapt it to the size of the room, the ceiling of which I could almost reach with my cane. The grand piano, the great bronze clock, and the too lofty candelabra had also come from a financier’s mansion. These mute witnesses of vanished splendour told by their presence alone of the melancholy of the ruin with more eloquence than any phrases could do. ”

“ When she emerged from the furious crisis which had sent her to the bed of a man like Tournade, the contempt she would feel for herself would vilify her so in her own eyes and her inner nausea would have two results equally frightful to imagine: either she would not bear her life a day longer and kill herself, or else she would take a sorrowing pride in incarnating in herself that outrageous type of luxury and triumphant shamelessness which become a great actress who is also a great courtesan. ”

“ Camille took for the marks of passionate ardour the fever of excitation into which Madam de Bonnivet had thrown Jacques without gratifying it. When a woman has, as the pretty actress so nicely put it, her twenty years of age and her youth to offer, she cannot guess that in her arms her lover is thinking of another woman, and exalting his senses by her image! ”

“ This little actress, of whom I knew nothing, except that she spoke well and was the mistress of a fashionable author, had at once touched one of the most vibrating fibres in my heart. In spite of Molan’s boasting, in spite of the childish grace of her reception, she might be a profligate or a schemer. Certainly she was a very cunning innocent, since by my companion’s confession the siege of her virtue had nothing in common, either in length or in difficulty, with the siege of Troy or even the siege of Paris. A person does not reflect much when his heart is captivated as mine was. ”

“ Out of prudence and with the idea of not compromising herself with her husband, Madam de Bonnivet must give her that evening in spite of everything. She, Camille, would appear there! She would see the woman who had stolen her lover tremble before her gaze, the lover himself pale with terror lest she should make a scene, and the fear of the guilty couple was in advance of those atrocious pleasures which hatred conjures up in the mind. ”

“ Yet I find him like the lovers of all my theatre companions, the worst of their lovers, those who have not even the courage of their infidelities and conceal them by girlish untruths, those to whom the love given to them is nothing more than vanity, a woman’s sentiment to be put in the button-hole like a flower. ”

“ Does the aspiring clubman, dressed like a tailor’s fashionplate as Jacques Molan, look any more like Henry Murger’s Bohemians? But do we not live in the days when a successful play brings in an income for years equal to the capital and revenue of a farm in Beauce, when the portrait of an American brings in 15,000, 20,000, or 30,000 98francs, and when an associate of the Comédie Française draws the salary of an Ambassador before retiring with the red ribbon in his button-hole, while actresses on tour abroad are received at monarch’s receptions. ”

“ But I know only too well, I am but half a painter, an artist in intention rather than in temperament, the outline of a Fromentin of 6the twelfth rank. That is a singular feeling of sadness too: the feeling that one is but an inferior double of another, a small and poor proof of a block already printed, a sample of humanity in the likeness of a model who has already lived, and in whose destiny it is possible to read beforehand one’s own destiny! But not all one’s own destiny! For I am only too well aware that I suffer from the same failings as Fromentin without possessing his brilliance. ”

“ Ah, if Colette had only had for Claude, when I accompanied that unfortunate fellow to her dressing-room, the evident love which the Blue Duchess showed for Jacques Molan even in the tones of her most ordinary conversation, the ardour of her most fleeting glances, and the fever of her smallest gestures! She was a delightful child, who loved as she gave herself, with her whole being, naturally and spontaneously. What divine tenderness my companion enjoyed simply out of vanity! I felt how delighted he was while talking to his mistress, at directing this little performance! ”

“ I brave the dangers, railway accidents, runaway horses, typhoid fevers, and jealous husbands because I love to travel quickly, to refresh and amuse myself. Then Madam de Bonnivet knows her tyrant, her Pierre, who rejoices in the idyllic names of Pierre Amédié Placidi; she knows of what he is capable. She amuses herself by exciting him just far enough to procure for herself that little tremor of fear. When she wants to overstep the mark, she will do it like the reasonable creature she is. Suspicious husbands are like vicious animals. ”

“ Let her take her rich lover—you can give her my permission; let him pay for dresses for her by Worth, horses, carriages, a house and jewels! Let her take him this afternoon, to-morrow, 129and I swear to you I shall have no more remorse than I have in lighting this cigarette. It will even amuse me when she does so. In the meantime, accept Madam Bonnivet’s invitation. You will have a good dinner, a thing never to be disdained, and then you can thwart my dirty intrigue, as you call it, as much as you please. In love it is just as at chess. Nothing is so interesting as playing in difficulties. ”