Rose
The two young women look as though they were buried under a weight of flowers. They are alone in the huge landau, which is loaded with bouquets like a giant basket. Upon the front seat lie two white satin hampers full of violets from Nice, and on the bearskin which covers their knees is a heap of roses, mimosa, pinks, daisies, tuberoses, and orange blossom, knotted together with silk rosettes, seeming about to crush the two slender bodies. Nothing emerges from this brilliant, perfumed bed but their shoulders, their arms, and a wisp of the upper half of their gowns, one blue, the other lilac.
The coachman’s whip is sheathed in anemones, the horses’ traces are covered with wallflowers, the spokes of the wheels blossom with mignonette; where the lamps should be hang two enormous round bouquets that look like the two strange eyes of this wheeled and flower-decked animal.
At a rapid trot the landau passes along the Antibes road, preceded, followed, and accompanied by a crowd of other garlanded vehicles, full of women drowning in a sea of violets. For it is the day of the battle of flowers at Cannes.
When they reach the Boulevard de la Foncière, the battle begins. For the whole length of the immense avenue a double row of garlanded carriages runs up and down like an endless ribbon. Flowers are flung from one to another. They pass through the air like bullets, strike against new faces, flutter, and fall in the dust, where a crowd of urchins picks them up.
A tight-packed crowd on the pavement is looking on, noisy but well-behaved, kept in order by mounted police, who trot arrogantly up and down, forcing back the over-inquisitive, as though they could not permit a plebeian crowd to come too near the aristocrats.
Those in the carriages call to one another, meet, and discharge volleys of roses. A car full of pretty girls dressed as red devils attracts and seduces all eyes. A debonair young man, who looks like the portraits of Henry IV, is throwing with eager gaiety a bouquet held on an elastic string. Before the menace of its impact the women shade their eyes and the men duck their heads, but the lively weapon, swift and obedient, describes a curve in the air and returns to its master, who promptly flings it at a fresh face.
The two young women empty their arsenal in handfuls, and receive a hail of bouquets; at last, tired by an hour of combat, they order the coachman to follow the Juan Bay road, which runs along the sea.
The sun disappears behind the Esterel, silhouetting across the flaming Western sky the black jagged edge of the long mountain. The quiet waters stretch, blue and clear, to the far horizon where they mingle with the sky: the fleet anchored in the middle of the bay looks like a herd of monstrous beasts, motionless upon the water, apocalyptic animals, breastplated and humpbacked, topped with masts frail as feathers, with eyes that gleam in the dusk.
The young women, huddled under the protection of the heavy rug, glance languidly about them. At last one of them speaks:
“There are some marvellous evenings, are there not, Margot, when life seems well worth living?”
“Yes, it’s very lovely,” replied the other, “but there is something missing, all the same.”
“What! I feel perfectly happy; there’s nothing I want.”
“Yes, but there is. You are overlooking it now. However profound the delight which overmasters our bodies, we demand always one thing more … for our hearts.”
“To love a little?” said the other, smiling.
“Yes.”
They fell into silence, looked straight ahead; then she who was called Marguerite murmured:
“Without love, life seems to me insupportable. I need to be loved, were it only by a dog. We are all like that, whatever you may say, Simone.”
“No, my dear. I would rather not be loved at all than by just anyone. Do you think I should enjoy being loved, for instance, by … by …”
She searched her mind for someone by whom she might be loved, and her eyes roved over the wide landscape. After raking the horizon, her glance fell upon the two metal buttons gleaming on the coachman’s back, and with a laugh she continued: “by my coachman?”
Madame Margot smiled faintly and said in a low voice:
“I assure you it’s very good fun to have one of your servants in love with you. It’s happened to me two or three times. They roll their eyes so comically that I could die of laughter. Of course, the more loving they are, the more severe you become, until some day you dismiss them on the first excuse that comes into your head, because you’d look so ridiculous if anyone noticed what was going on.”
Madame Simone listened with her eyes looking straight in front of her, then declared:
“No, my footman’s heart is really not good enough for me. But tell me how you discovered that they were in love with you.”
“Why, just as I do with any other man; when they grew stupid.”
“Well, I don’t think my lovers look so stupid.”
“Why, they’re idiots, my dear, unable to speak, answer, or understand anything at all.”
“But what did you feel like when a servant fell in love with you? Were you affected, flattered … what?”
“Affected? No. Flattered? Yes, a little. One is always flattered by the love of a man, whoever he may be.”
“Really, Margot!”
“It’s quite true, my dear. I’ll tell you a strange thing which happened to me. To make you see how queer and contradictory are one’s feelings in such
