The Nabob, Alphonse Daudet [new books to read .txt] 📗

could--business, a journey. Besides, if he hadn't been there, he had often spoken of her--oh, very often, almost every day.
"Really? And with whom?"
"With----"
He was going to say "With Aline Joyeuse," but a feeling of restraint stopped him, an undefinable sentiment, a sense of shame at pronouncing her name in the studio which had heard so many others. There are things that do not go together, one scarcely knows why. Paul preferred to reply with a falsehood, which brought him at once to the object of his visit.
"With an excellent fellow to whom you have given very unnecessary pain. Come, why have you not finished the poor Nabob's bust? It was a great joy to him, such a very proud thing for him, to have that bust in the exhibition. He counted upon it."
At the Nabob's name she was slightly troubled.
"It is true," she said, "I broke my word. But what do you expect? I am made of caprice. See, the cover is over it; all wet, so that the clay does not harden."
"And the accident? You know, we didn't believe in it."
"Then you were wrong. I never lie. It had a fall, a most awful upset; only the clay was fresh, and I easily repaired it. Look!"
With a sweeping gesture she lifted the cover. The Nabob suddenly appeared before them, his jolly face beaming with the pleasure of being portrayed; so like, so tremendously himself, that Paul gave a cry of admiration.
"Isn't it good?" she said artlessly. "Still a few touches here and there--" She had taken the chisel and the little sponge and pushed the stand into what remained of the daylight. "It could be done in a few hours. But it couldn't go to the exhibition. To-day is the 22nd; all the exhibits have been in a long time."
"Bah! With influence----"
She frowned, and her bad expression came back, her mouth turning down.
"That's true. The _protege_ of the Duc de Mora. Oh! you have no need to apologize. I know what people say, and I don't care _that_--" and she threw a little ball of clay at the wall, where it stuck, flat. "Perhaps men, by dint of supposing the thing which is not--But let us leave these infamies alone," she said, holding up her aristocratic head. "I really want to please you, Minerva. Your friend shall go to the _Salon_ this year."
Just then a smell of caramel and warm pastry filled the studio, where the shadows were falling like a fine gray dust, and the fairy appeared, a dish of sweetmeats in her hand. She looked more fairy-like than ever, bedecked and rejuvenated; dressed in a white gown which showed her beautiful arms through sleeves of old lace; they were beautiful still, for the arm is the beauty that fades last.
"Look at my _kuchen_, dearie; they are such a success this time. Oh! I beg your pardon. I did not see you had friends. And it is M. Paul! How are you M. Paul? Taste one of my cakes."
And the charming old lady, whose dress seemed to lend her an extraordinary vivacity, came towards him, balancing the plate on the tips of her tiny fingers.
"Don't bother him. You can give him some at dinner," said Felicia quietly.
"At dinner?"
The dancer was so astonished that she almost upset her pretty pastries, which looked as light and airy and delicious as herself.
"Yes, he is staying to dine with us. Oh! I beg it of you," she added, with a particular insistence as she saw he was going to refuse, "I beg you to stay. Don't say no. You will be rendering me a real service by staying to-night. Come--I didn't hesitate a few minutes ago."
She had taken his hand; and in truth might have been struck by a strange disproportion between her request and the supplicating, anxious tone in which it was made. Paul still attempted to excuse himself. He was not dressed. How could she propose it!--a dinner at which she would have other guests.
"My dinner? But I will countermand it! That is the kind of person I am. We shall be alone, just the three of us, with Constance."
"But, Felicia, my child, you can't really think of such a thing. Ah, well! And the--the other who will be coming directly.
"I am going to write to him to stay at home, _parbleu_!"
"You unlucky being, it is too late."
"Not at all. It is striking six o'clock. The dinner was for half past seven. You must have this sent to him quickly."
She was writing hastily at a corner of the table.
"What a strange girl, _mon Dieu! mon Dieu!_" murmured the dancer in bewilderment, while Felicia, delighted, transfigured, was joyously sealing her letter.
"There! my excuse is made. Headaches have not been invented for Kadour."
Then, the letter having been despatched:
"Oh, how pleased I am! What a jolly evening we shall have! Do kiss me, Constance! It will not prevent us from doing honour to your _kuchen_, and we shall have the pleasure of seeing you in a pretty toilette which makes you look younger than I do."
This was more than was required to cause the dancer to forgive this new caprice of her dear demon, and the crime of _lese-majeste_ in which she had just been involved against her will. To treat so great a personage so cavalierly! There was no one like her in the world--there was no one like her. As for Paul de Gery, he no longer tried to resist, under the spell once more of that attraction from which he had been able to fancy himself released by absence, but which, from the moment he crossed the threshold of the studio, had put chains on his will, delivered him over, bound and vanquished, to the sentiment which he was quite resolved to combat.
Evidently the dinner--a repast for a veritable _gourmet_, superintended by the Austrian lady in its least details--had been prepared for a guest of great mark. From the lofty Kabyle chandelier with its seven branches of carved wood, which cast its light over the table-cloth covered with embroidery, to the long-necked decanters holding the wines within their strange and exquisite form, the sumptuous magnificence of the service, the delicacy of the meats, to which edge was given by a certain unusualness in their selection, revealed the importance of the expected visitor, the anxiety which there had been to please him. The table was certainly that of an artist. Little silver, but superb china, much unity of effect, without the least attempt at matching. The old Rouen, the pink Sevres, the Dutch glass mounted in old filigree pewter met on this table as on a sideboard devoted to the display of rare curios collected by a connoisseur exclusively for the satisfaction of his taste. A little disorder naturally, in this household equipped at hazard, as choice things could be picked up. The wonderful cruet-stand had lost its stoppers. The chipped salt-cellar allowed its contents to escape on the table-cloth, and at every moment you would hear, "Why! what is become of the mustard-pot?" "What has happened to this fork?" This embarrassed de Gery a little on account of the young mistress of the house, who for her part took no notice of it.
But something made Paul feel still more ill at ease--his anxiety, namely, to know who the privileged guest might be whom he was replacing at this table, who could be treated at once with so much magnificence and so complete an informality. In spite of everything, he felt him present, an offence to his personal dignity, that visitor whose invitation had been cancelled. It was in vain that he tried to forget him; everything brought him back to his mind, even the fine dress of the good fairy sitting opposite him, who still maintained some of the grand airs with which she had equipped herself in advance for the solemn occasion. This thought troubled him, spoiled for him the pleasure of being there.
On the other hand, by contrast, as it happens in all friendships between two people who meet very rarely, never had he seen Felicia so affectionate, in such happy temper. It was an overflowing gaiety that was almost childish, one of those warm expansions of feeling that are experienced when a danger has been passed, the reaction of a bright roaring fire after the emotion of a shipwreck. She laughed heartily, teased Paul about his accent and what she called his _bourgeois_ ideas. "For you are a terrible _bourgeois_, you know. But it is that that I like in you. It is an effect of contraries, doubtless; it is because I myself was born under a bridge, in a gust of wind, that I have always liked sedate, reasonable natures."
"Oh, my child, what are you going to have M. Paul think, that you were born under a bridge?" said the good Crenmitz, who could not accustom herself to the exaggeration of certain metaphors, and always took everything literally.
"Let him think what he likes, my fairy. We are not trying to catch him for a husband. I am sure he would not want one of those monsters who are known as female artists. He would think he was marrying the devil. You are quite right, Minerva. Art is a despot. One has to give one's self entirely up to him. To toil in his service, one devotes all the ideal, all the energy, honesty, conscience, that one possesses, so that you have none of these things left for real life, and the completed labour throws you down, strengthless and without a compass, like a dismantled hulk at the mercy of every wave. A sorry acquisition, such a wife!"
"And yet," the young man hazarded timidly, "it seems to me that art, however exigent it be, cannot for all that entirely absorb a woman. What would she do with her affections, of that need to love, to devote herself, which in her, much more than in us, is the spring of all her actions?"
She mused a moment before replying.
"Perhaps you are right, wise Minerva. It is true that there are days when my life rings terribly hollow. I am conscious of abysses, profound chasms in it. Everything that I throw in to fill it up disappears. My finest enthusiasms of the artist are engulfed there and die each time in a sigh. And then I think of marriage. A husband; children--a swarm of children, who would roll about the studio; a nest to look after for them all; the satisfaction of that physical activity which is lacking in our existences of artists; regular occupations; high spirits, songs, innocent gaieties, which would oblige you to play instead of thinking in the air, in the dark--to laugh at a wound to one's self-love, to be only a contented mother on the day when the public should see you as a worn-out, exhausted artist."
And before this tender vision the girl's beauty took on an expression which Paul had never seen in it before, an expression which gripped his whole being, and gave him a mad longing to carry off in his arms that beautiful wild bird, dreaming of the home-cote, to protect and shelter it in the sure love of an honest man.
She, without looking at him, continued:
"I am not so erratic as I appear; don't think it. Ask my good godmother if, when she sent me to boarding-school, I did not observe the rules. But what a muddle in my life afterward. If you knew what sort of an early youth I had; how precocious an experience tarnished my mind, in the head of the little girl I was, what a confusion of the permitted and the forbidden, of reason and folly! Art alone, extolled and discussed, stood