"A young man who carries his diploma in his pocket can enterevery door," Monsieur Servien observed, as he imbibed the winewith fitting respect; it had been good stuff once, but was pastits prime.
Jean polished off the family repast rapidly and hurried away tothe theatre. His only ideas as yet of what a play was like werederived from the posters he had seen. He selected for tonightone of the big theatres where a tragedy was on the bill. He tookhis ticket for the pit with a vague idea it would be the talismanadmitting him to a new wonder-world of passion and emotion. Everytrifle is disconcerting to a troubled spirit, and on his entrancehe was surprised and sobered to see how few spectators there werein the stalls and boxes. But at the first scraping of the violinsas the orchestra tuned up, he glued his eyes to the curtain,which rose at last.
Then, then he saw, in a Roman palace, leaning on the back of achair of antique shape, a woman who wore over her robe of whitewoollen the saffron-hued _palla_. Amid the trampling of feet, therustle of dresses and the shifting of stools, she was recitinga long soliloquy, accompanied by slow, deliberate gestures. Hefelt, as he gazed, a strange, unknown pleasure, that grew moreand more acute till it was almost pain. As scene followed scene,there entered a confidante, then a hero, then a crowd of supers.
But he saw nothing but the apparition that had first fascinatedhim. His eyes fastened greedily on her beauty, caressing the twobare arms, encircled with rings of metal, gliding along the curveof the hips below the high girdle, plunging amid the brown locksthat waved above the brow and were tied back with three whitefillets; they clung to the moving lips and the white, moist teeththat ever and anon flashed in the glare of the footlights. Helonged to feel, to seize, to hold this lovely, living thing thatmoved before his eyes; in imagination he enfolded and embracedthe beautiful vision.
The wait between the acts (for the tragedy involved a change ofscenery) was intolerably tedious. His neighbours were talkingpolitics and passing one another quarters of orange across him;the newspaper boy and the man who hired out opera-glasses deafenedhim with their bawling. He was in terror of some sudden catastrophethat might interrupt the play.
The curtain rose once more, on a succession of scenes of politicalintrigue à la Corneille which had no meaning for Servien. Tohis joy the lovely being in the white robe came on again. Buthe had strained his sight too hard; he could see nothing; bydint of riveting his gaze on the long gold pendants that hungfrom the actress's ears, he was dazzled; his eyes swam and closedinvoluntarily, and he could hear no sound but the beating ofthe blood in his temples.
By a supreme effort, in the last scene, he saw and heard her againclearly and distinctly, yet not as with his ordinary senses, forshe wore for him the elemental guise of a supernatural vision.
When the prompter's bell tinkled and the curtain descended for thelast time, he had a feeling as though the universe had collapsedin irretrievable ruin.
_Tartuffe_ was the after-piece; but neither the spirit and perfectionof the acting, nor the pretty face and plump shoulders of Elmire,nor the _soubrette_'s dimpled arms, nor the _ingénue_'s innocenteyes, nor the noble, witty lines that filled the theatre androused the audience to fresh attention, could stir his spiritthat hung entranced on the lips of a tragic heroine.
As he stepped out into the street, the first breath of the coolnight air on his face blew away his intoxication. His senses cameback to him and he could think again; but his thoughts never leftthe object of his infatuation, and her image was the only thinghe saw distinctly. He was entranced, possessed; but the feelingwas delicious, and he roamed far and wide in the dark streets,making long detours by the river-side quays to lengthen out hisreveries, his heart full, overfull of passionate, voluptuousimaginings. He was content because he was weary; his soul laydrowned in a delicious languor that no pang of desire troubled;to look and long was more than sufficient as yet to still thecravings of his virgin appetites.
He threw himself half dressed on his bed, overjoyed to cherishthe picture of her beauty in his heart. All he wanted was tolose himself in the enchanted sleep that weighed down his boyishlids.
On waking, he gazed about him for something--he knew not what.
Was he in love? He could not tell, but there was a void somewhere.
Still, he felt no overmastering impulse, except to read the verseshe had heard the actress declaim. He took down from his shelvesa volume of Corneille and read through émilie's part. Every lineenchanted him, one as much as another, for did they not all evokethe same memory for him?
His father and his aunt, with whom he passed his days, had grownto be only vague, meaningless shapes to him. Their broadestpleasantries failed to raise a smile, and the coarse realities ofa narrow, penurious existence had no power to disturb his happyserenity. All day long, in the back-shop where the penetratingsmell of paste mingled with the fumes of the cabbage-soup, helived a life of his own, a life of incomparable splendours. Hislittle Corneille, scored thickly with thumb-nail marks at everycouplet of émilie's, was all he needed to foster the fairestof illusions. A face and the tones of a voice were his world.
In a few days he knew the whole tragedy by heart. He would declaimthe lines in a slow, pompous voice, and his aunt would remarkafter each speech, as she shredded the vegetables for dinner:
"So you're for being a _curé_, are you, that you preach like theydo in church?"But in the main she approved of these exercises, and when MonsieurServien scratched his head doubtfully and complained that hisson would not make up his mind to any way of earning a living,she always took up the cudgels for the "little lad" and silencedthe bookbinder by telling him roundly he knew nothing about it--orabout anything else.
So the worthy man went back to his calf-skins. All the same,albeit he could form no very clear idea of what was in his son'shead, for the latter having become a "gentleman" was beyond hispurview, he felt some disquietude to see a holiday, legitimateenough no doubt after a successful examination, dragging out tosuch a length. He was anxious to see his son earning money insome department of administration or other. He had heard speakof the _H?tel de Ville_ and the Government Offices, and heracked his brains to think of someone among his customers whomight interest himself in his son's future. But he was not theman to act precipitately.
One day, when Jean Servien was out on one of the long walks he hadgot into the habit of taking, he read on a poster that his émilie,Mademoiselle Gabrielle T----, was appearing in that evening'spiece. This time, ignoring his aunt's disapproval, he donned hisSunday clothes, had his hair frizzed and curled, and took hisseat in the orchestra stalls.
He saw her again! For the first few moments she did not seemso beautiful as he had pictured her. So long had he labouredand lain awake over the first image he had carried away of herthat the impression had become blurred, and the type that hadoriginally imprinted it on his heart no longer corresponded withthe result created by his mind's unconscious working. Then hewas disconcerted to see neither the white _stola_ and saffronmantle nor the bracelets and fillets that had seemed to him partand parcel of the beauty they adorned. Now she wore the turbanof Roxana and the wide muslin trousers caught in at the ankle.
It was only by degrees he could grow reconciled to the change.
He realized that her arms were a trifle thin, and that a toothstood back behind the rest in the row of pearls. But in the endher very defects pleased him, because they were hers, and he lovedher the better for them. This time, by the law of change which isof the very essence of life, and by virtue of the imperfectionthat characterizes all living creatures, she made a physicalappeal to his senses and called up the idea of a human being offlesh and blood, a creature you could cling to and make one withyourself. His admiration was lost in a flood of tenderness andinfinite sadness--and he burst into tears.
The next day he conceived a great desire to see her as she wasin everyday life, dressed for the streets. It would be a sort ofintimacy merely to pass her on the pavement. One evening, when shewas playing, he watched for her at the stage-door, through whichemerged one after the other scene-shifters, actors, constables,firemen, dressers, and actresses. At last she appeared, muffledin her fur cloak, a bouquet in her hand, tall and pale--so palein the dusk her face seemed to him as if illumined by an inwardlight. She stood waiting on the doorstep till a carriage wascalled.
He clasped both hands on his breast and thought he was going todie.
When he found himself alone on the deserted _Quai_, he pluckeda leaf from the overhanging bough of a plane tree. Then, settinghis elbows on the parapet of the bridge, he tossed the leaf intothe river and watched it borne away by the current of the streamthat lay silvery in the moonlight, spangled with quivering lights.
He watched it till he could see it no longer. Was it not theemblem of himself? He, too, was abandoning himself to the watersof a passion that shone bright and which he thought profound.