The Blue Duchess

very good. He looked you in the face to make you understand that if you court Madam de Bonnivet, you run the risk of getting in your head one

pages were finished to ask for the classic egg and cutlet, a thing he had never done before. This curious haste proved

force me to accept an invitation to dinner which is odious to

rt to be angry any more. After he had very minutely questioned me as to the diverse attitudes of dif

ee? Yes, you painters do not understand, but you know how to see. N

nneterre had met you, Machault gave me a singular look.

ready risked a false st

hine, while she herself is such a fine woman, though a little too angular for my taste, and so aristocr

d she knows that I know. I have not concealed the fact from her. Consequently, the presence of Machault last evening was designed to produce 151upon me exactly the same effect which I produced upon her by my absence. I took the initiative, and I was right. Besides,” he added with almost

diagnosed in her the signs of the most complete absence of temperament, which are a little throat, small hips, skin without down, thin lips, the lower one receding a little, hard and lea

ply a question of persuading them that one is of the kind who become attached 152in this way, when one is not. Then, too, there are cold women who are hunters, and then! Sometimes I place Madam de Bonnivet in the first group, sometimes in the second. I do not pretend to solve the riddle of this sphinx. But failing the answer to the riddle of this sphinx, I will have the sphinx in person, or my name is not Jacques Molan. Then, as you have

t them with her great laughing eyes. She would suddenly ask me what was the net cost of a picture, and what 153did it fetch, with as much simplicity as if it were a question of a dress or a curio. Camille sat down opposite a copy of “L’Allégorie du Printemps,” which I had made in Florence so lovingly. In the long and supple dancers of the divine Sandro, who lent with tender grace their blonde and dreamy though bitter faces, the little Blue Duchess could recognize her sisters. She did not see them, absorbed as she was in a memory, the nature of which I could easily guess, seeing that she had not acted the previ

ncent has not been to see you again as

for my future picture,” I stammered.

u?” Molan went on ev

h I loved best. “You see,” she said, “that in spite of your prohibition, this picture which is such a bad liken

graph she looked at it in her turn. Then putting it by the side of her face so that I coul

arranged with me the details of that series of sittings which began the following day and were for me a strange and sorrowful Calvary! Yes, however, perhaps you did guess, for there was sadness 155and pity in your smile—sorrow for yourself and pity for me. You saw so clearly from that moment that I bore an affection for you which was too quickly awakened to be the reasonable and simple friendship of a comrade! You saw it without wishing to admit it, for love is an egoist. Yours had need of being related, to be encouraged in its hopes, comforted in its doubts, and pitied in its grief. Who would have rendered you the service of lending himself as a complaisant echo of your passion like I did? If it cost me my rest for we

Chorus, the ineffectual witness of catastrophies, who deplored them without preventing them. Let us 156employ the only remedy for this useless elegy. Let us note the little facts clearly. I have

confidences which were ceaselessly interrupted, repeated and prolonged by the interruptions till the details were multiplied and complicated to infinity. Yes, many little facts come into my mind in trying to recall these private sittings which were always somewhat bitter to me. This liberty proved to me how many favourab

real and terrible drama. When I reflect again, it was the difference between these three groups of emotions which justified me in not making a success of this portrait. Had I been an artist who was an imperturbable master of execution, in place of being what I am, half an amateur, always

fury of her jealousy and the fever of her indignation; and yet to-day I do not know before which of the three women, and during which of the three periods I suffered the most, my suffering being the greater because I was obliged to be silent; and behind each of the confidences little Favier gave me, whether she were happy, melancholy, or angry, I could see the hard silhouette of the elegant rival,

most of the same golden tint as her beautiful hair, others as red as her pretty mouth with its lower lip so tightly rolled, others dark, which by contrast appeared to light up her bloodless colour that morning. The question was, which of these flowers I should choose for her to hold in her hand. I wished to paint her in an absolute unity of tone, like Gainsborough’s blue boy. She had to stand weari

to me that morning while we studied the pose together; “

any more evil tempta

. She does not come to the theatre, and the other day Jacques ought to have dined with her, but he did not go. I am quite sure of that, for he wrote his letter of excuse in my presence. It was the evening Bressoré could not act: there was a change of bill and I was free for the even

ss on the other woman’s part was certainly the cause of it. 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! That morning I kept

er’s neck in the painter’s presence, “if that is the cas

r now leaning her loving head upon the knave’s shoulder, the latter being condescending, indulgent, almost tender, because I was there to a

some days that my model’s expression had changed. I had not dared to question her, for I was just as much afraid to learn that Jacques treated her well as that he treated her badly. That morning she was to come at half-past ten, and it was not ten yet. I was engaged in looking through a portfolio of drawings after the old Florentine masters, without succeeding in engrossing myself in their study

with battlements and campaniles upon the eminences, roads bordered 162by cypress trees and valleys glistening with running water—all this charm of primitive art was there imprisoned in this portfolio of sketches and ready to emerge from it to charm my fantasy. But my imagination was elsewhere, occupied with this prob

ther morning, knowing his rule to write four pages before midday, and the vigour with which this methodical purveyor of literature conformed to it. So when his voice disturbed me I was for a moment really apprehensive. The servant had opened the door without me hearing him, reclini

or that she has thrown herself into the Seine because of my bad conduct. By the way, the portrait is not a bad one. You have made progress, much progress, with it. But that is not

lving me in your lies,” I replied irritably “I

matters progress in the other direction, and if you had been able to assist me, Bonnivet would no longer pass under the Arc de Triomphe. Excuse the pleasantry worthy of th

t it was a sorro

y, give me one and I will leave it for you on my next visit. As the flirtation is at the moment very accentuated, Camille is very, very jealous and very distrustful. In short, yesterday there was the inverse of the other comedy. You recall the dinner trick, don’t you? I received about four o’clock two notes, one from Madam de B—— signifying that ... But the contents of this note would make you jump if I told them to you. In reality you are very na?ve and still believe

adam de B——, and told Camille

ill be here directly. Be careful not to mention my visit this morning. Say incidentally, without appearing to intend to do so, that you had some friends to dinner yesterday,

terre to do wit

y, to introduce him, and four or five times afterwards I found him in her dressing-room. Has she not mentioned it to you? No. He is quite likely to have told her, before last evening, as if by accident, that Bonnivet was leaving Paris with the sole object of letting her loose at me and of putting a spoke in the wheel

four pages?” I asked as I a

is coup I shall give myself quite ten days’ holiday. What do you think of my luck? How fortunate t

n the charming girl appeared I could see at a glance that she was again experiencing an acute crisis of sorrow. Insomnia had encircled her eyes with bluish rings. Fever had cracked and dried up her lips, which were generally so fresh, young and full. A sombre flame burned in the depths of her eyes. Insomnia had made her cheeks livid, and with her fingers she was mechanically twisting a little cambric handkerchief with red flowers on it from which her

e for the same motive which made the other Duchess say, a hundred years ago, that life is too short to have one’s portr

ut I did not close my eyes all

ell him of your conduct, and I w

ashes. “He looks after me well, does Jacques,” and she shrug

y remorse at my own tender hypocrisy. “You ought to ha

g shoulders with a movement which shamed me. It betrayed such

d, “and we separated at an im

d that you are my friend. I will explain it to you now how I heard that Bonnivet, you know, the husband of that horrible woman, was away. Then I got the idea into my head that they would take advantage of his absence, Jacques and her, to spend the evening together; I freed myself by lying to my mother, the f

which had been so natural to me, constituted a real crime in the presence of such profound passion. The heart which loves and suffers has a right to know the entire truth whatever it may be. The thankful 169smiles which Camille gave me through her tears were almost physically intolerable to me. Besides, one does not deceive for long the lucidity of justified jealousy. Can it be blinded even for a minute? It is soothed by being misled as regards the facts. What are facts? When a woman feels herself to be loved even the most convincing count for nothing. When a woman feels, as Camille did, treachery hovering around her in the atmosphere, illusion is no