The woman whose adventure I am about to relate was a little person from the provinces, who had been insipidly respectable till then. Her life, which was apparently so calm, was spent at home, with a busy husband and two children, whom she brought up like an irreproachable woman. But her heart beat with unsatisfied curiosity and unknown longing. She was continually thinking of Paris, and read the fashionable papers eagerly. The accounts of parties, of the dresses and various entertainments, excited her longing; but, above all, she was strangely agitated by those paragraphs which were full of double meaning, by those veils which were half raised by clever phrases, and which gave her a glimpse of culpable and ravishing delights, and from her home in the provinces she saw Paris in an apotheosis of magnificent and corrupt luxury.
During the long nights, when she dreamed, lulled by the regular snores of a husband, sleeping on his back by her side, with a silk handkerchief tied round his head, she saw in her sleep those well-known men whose names appeared regularly on the first page of the newspapers like stars in the dark sky. She pictured to herself their lives—continual excitement, constant debauches, orgies such as they practised in ancient Rome, which were horribly voluptuous, with refinements of sensuality so complicated, that she could not even imagine them.
The boulevards seemed to her to be a kind of abyss of human passions, and there could be no doubt that the houses there concealed mysteries of prodigious love. But she felt that she was growing old, without having known life, except in those regular, horribly monotonous, everyday occupations which constitute the happiness of the home. She was still pretty, for she was well preserved by a tranquil existence, like winter fruit in a closed cupboard; but she was consumed, agitated and upset by her secret desires. She used to ask herself whether she should die without having experienced any of those damning, intoxicating joys, without having plunged once, just once, into that flood of Parisian voluptuousness.
By dint of much perseverance, she paved the way for a journey to Paris, found a pretext, got some relatives to invite her, and as her husband could not go with her, she went alone. As soon as she arrived, she invented a reason for remaining for some days, or rather for some nights, if necessary, as she told him that she had met some friends who lived a little way out town.
And then she set out on a voyage of discovery. She went up and down the boulevards, without seeing anything except roving and licensed vice. She looked into the large cafés, and read the Agony Column of the Figaro, which every morning seemed to her like a tocsin, a summons to love. But nothing put her on the track of those orgies of actors and actresses; nothing revealed to her those temples of debauchery which opened, she imagined, at some magic word, like the cave in the Arabian Nights, or the catacombs in Rome, where the mysteries of a persecuted religion were secretly celebrated.
Her relatives, who were quite middle-class people, could not introduce her to any of those well-known men, of whose names her head was full; and in despair she was thinking of returning, when chance came to her aid. One day, as she was going along the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, she stopped to look into a shop full of those coloured Japanese knickknacks, which attract the eye by their colour. She was looking at the grotesque little ivories, the tall vases of flaming enamel, and the curious bronzes, when she heard the shopkeeper inside dilating, with many bows, on the value of an enormous, potbellied, comical figure—which was quite unique, he said—to a little, bald-headed, grey-bearded man.
Every moment the shopkeeper repeated his customer’s name, which was a celebrated one, in a voice like a trumpet. The other customers, young women and well-dressed gentlemen, gave a swift and furtive but respectful glance at the celebrated writer, who was looking admiringly at the china figure. They were both equally ugly, as ugly as two brothers who had sprung from the same mother.
“To you the price will be a thousand francs, Monsieur Varin, and that is exactly what it cost me. I should ask anybody else fifteen hundred, but I think a great deal of literary and artistic customers, and have special prices for them. They all come to me, Monsieur Varin. Yesterday, Monsieur Busnach bought a large, antique goblet from me, and the other day I sold two candelabra like this (aren’t they beautiful?) to Monsieur Alexandre Dumas. If Monsieur Zola were to see that Japanese figure he would buy it immediately, Monsieur Varin.”
The author hesitated in perplexity, as he wanted to have the figure, but the price was above him, and he thought no more about being stared at than if he had been alone in the desert. She came in trembling, with her eyes fixed shamelessly upon him, and she did not even ask herself whether he were good-looking, elegant, or young. It was Jean Varin himself, Jean Varin. After a long struggle and painful hesitation, he put the figure down on to the table.
“No, it is too expensive,” he said.
The shopkeeper’s eloquence redoubled. “Oh! Monsieur Varin, too expensive? It is worth two thousand francs, if it is worth a sou.”
But the man of letters replied sadly, still looking at the figure with
