“Ah! Monsieur Mintié!” she said, “how nice of you not to have forgotten me! Has it been long since you saw that eccentric Lirat?”
“Why, yes, Madame, I have not seen him since the day I had the honor of meeting you at his place.”
“Ah, my God, I thought you two never separated at all.”
“It is true,” I replied, “that I see him quite often. But I have been working all these days.”
As I thought I detected a note of irony in the sound of her voice, I added, to provoke her:
“What a great artist, isn’t he?”
Juliette let this remark pass unanswered.
“So you are always working?” She took up the subject again. “For the rest, I am told you live like a regular recluse. Really, one sees very little of you, Monsieur Mintié!”
The conversation took a quite ordinary turn, the theatre furnishing food for nearly all of it. A remark which I made seemed to astound her, and she was rather scandalized.
“What, you don’t like the theatre? Is it possible—and you an artist? I am passionately fond of it. The theatre is so amusing! We are going to the Varieté tonight, for the fourth time, mind you.”
A feeble yelp came from behind the door.
“Ah, my God!” Juliette exclaimed, hurriedly rising. “My Spy whom I left in my room! Shall I present Spy to you, Monsieur Mintié? Don’t you know Spy?”
She opened the door, drew aside the hangings, which were very wide.
“Come, Spy!” she said coaxingly. “Where have you been, Spy? Come over here, poor thing!”
And I saw a diminutive little animal, with a pointed snout, long ears, advancing, dancing on its thin paws that resembled a spider’s legs and whose whole body, bent and skinny, quivered as though in fever. A ribbon of red silk, carefully tied on the side, encircled its neck in place of a collar.
“Come on, Spy. Say hello to Monsieur Mintié!”
Spy turned on me his round, stupid and cruel eyes which were on a level with his head, and barked viciously.
“That’s right, Spy. Now give your paw. Will you give me your paw? Come, now!”
Juliette bent down and threatened the dog with her finger. Spy finally put his paw in his mistress’ hand. She picked him up, patted and embraced him.
“Oh! the dear little dog! Oh, darling dog! Oh, my love, my dearest Spy!”
She sat up again, still holding the dog in her arms like a child, rubbing her cheek against the snout of the frightful beast, whispering caressing and endearing words into his ears.
“Now show us that you are pleased, Spy! Show it to your little mammy!”
Spy barked again, then licked the lips of Juliette who joyously abandoned herself to these odious caresses.
“Ah, what a dear you are, Spy! Ah, how very, very nice you are!”
And addressing herself to me, whom she seemed to have forgotten completely since Spy’s unfortunate entry, she suddenly asked:
“Do you like dogs, Monsieur Mintié?”
“Very much, Madame,” I answered.
Then she told me, with a wealth of childish detail, the history of Spy, his habits, his urgent needs, his tricks, the scraps with the housekeeper who could not stand him.
“But you ought to see him when he is asleep,” she said to me. “You know he has a bed, sheets, an eiderdown coverlet, like a real person. Every night I put him to bed. And his little head looks so funny on it, all black. Aren’t you very funny, Monsieur Spy?”
Spy chose a comfortable place on Juliette’s dress, and, after turning several times, rolled himself into a black lump, almost entirely lost in the cloth’s silken folds.
“That’s it! Bye-bye, Spy, my little baby!”
During this long conversation with Spy, I had a chance to observe Juliette at leisure. She was indeed very beautiful, even more beautiful than I had dreamed she was under her veil. Her face was truly radiant. It had such freshness, such an aurora-like clearness, that the very air about her seemed illumined. Whenever she turned or bent forward I saw her thick hair, very dark, descending along her dress in an enormous tress, which added something peculiarly virginal and youthful to her appearance. I thought I saw a perpendicular, wilful wrinkle furrowed in the middle of her forehead, at the root of her hair, but it was visible only in certain instances of light reflection, and the luminous sweetness of her eyes, the extremely graceful curve of her mouth tempered its rigid aspect. One felt that under her ample garments quivered a supple, nervous body of passionate pliancy; what delighted me most were her hands, delicate, deft and of surprising agility, whose every movement, even of indifference or anger, was a caress.
It was hard for me to form a definite opinion of her. There was in this woman a mixture of innocence and voluptuousness, of shrewdness and stupidity, of kindness and malevolence, which was disconcerting. And a curious thing! At one moment I saw the horrible image of the singer at the Bouffes taking shape near her. And this image formed Juliette’s shadow, so to speak. Far from vanishing, this image, as I looked at it, was assuming in some way a fixed corporeal form. It grimaced, wriggled, leaped with lurid contortions, its foul, obscene lips distended toward Juliette, who seemed to draw the image toward herself and whose hand sank in its hair and passed tremblingly along its body, happy to sully herself with its impure contact. And the sordid juggler was removing Juliette’s clothes and showing her
