“Who goes to Tortoni’s now?”
“All the same people, except those who have died.”
I looked at him closely, haunted by a vague memory. Assuredly I had seen this face somewhere. But where? but when? He seemed weary though active, melancholy though determined. His big fair beard fell to his chest, and now and then he took hold of it below the chin and, holding it in his closed hand, let the whole length of it run through his fingers. A little bald, he had heavy eyebrows and a thick moustache that merged into the hair covering his cheeks. Behind us the sun sank in the sea, flinging over the coast a fiery haze. The orange-trees in full blossom filled the air with their sweet heady scent. He had eyes for nothing but me, and with his intent gaze he seemed to peer through my eyes, to see in the depths of my thoughts the far-off, familiar, and well-loved vision of the wide shady pavement that runs from the Madeleine to the Rue Drouot.
“Do you know Boutrelle?”
“Yes, well.”
“Is he much changed?”
“Yes, he has gone quite white.”
“And La Ridamie?”
“Always the same.”
“And the women? Tell me about the women. Let me see. Do you know Suzanne Verner?”
“Yes, very stout. Done for.”
“Ah! And Sophie Astier?”
“Dead.”
“Poor girl! And is … do you know …”
But he was abruptly silent. Then in a changed voice, his face grown suddenly pale, he went on:
“No, it would be better for me not to speak of it any more, it tortures me.”
Then, as if to change the trend of his thoughts, he rose.
“Shall we go in?”
“I am quite ready.”
And he preceded me into the house.
The rooms on the ground floor were enormous, bare, gloomy, apparently deserted. Napkins and glasses were scattered about the tables, left there by the swart-skinned servants who prowled about this vast dwelling all the time. Two guns were hanging from two nails on the wall, and in the corners I saw spades, fishing-lines, dried palm leaves, objects of all kinds, deposited there by people who happened to come into the house, and remaining there within easy reach until someone happened to go out or until they were wanted for a job of work.
My host smiled.
“It is the dwelling, or rather the hovel, of an exile,” said he, “but my room is rather more decent. Let’s go there.”
My first thought, when I entered the room, was that I was penetrating into a secondhand dealer’s, so full of things was it, all the incongruous, strange, and varied things that one feels must be momentoes. On the walls two excellent pictures by well-known artists, hangings, weapons, swords and pistols, and then, right in the middle of the most prominent panel, a square of white satin in a gold frame.
Surprised, I went closer to look at it and I saw a hairpin stuck in the centre of the gleaming material.
My host laid his hand on my shoulder.
“There,” he said, with a smile, “is the only thing I ever look at in this place, and the only one I have seen for ten years. Monsieur Prudhomme declared: ‘This sabre is the finest day of my life!’ As for me, I can say: ‘This pin is the whole of my life!’ ”
I sought for the conventional phrase; I ended by saying:
“Some woman has made you suffer?”
He went on harshly:
“Put it that I suffer like a wretch. … But come on to my balcony. A name came to my lips just now, that I dared not utter, because if you had answered ‘dead,’ as you did for Sophie Astier, I should have blown out my brains, this very day.”
We had gone out on to a wide balcony looking towards two deep valleys, one on the right and the other on the left, shut in by high sombre mountains. It was that twilight hour when the vanished sun lights the earth only by its reflection in the sky.
He continued:
“Is Jeanne de Limours still alive?”
His eye was fixed on mine, full of shuddering terror.
I smiled.
“Very much alive … and prettier than ever.”
“You know her?”
“Yes.”
He hesitated:
“Intimately?”
“No.”
He took my hand:
“Talk to me about her.”
“But there is nothing I can say: she is one of the women, or rather one of the most charming and expensive gay ladies in Paris. She leads a pleasant and sumptuous life, and that’s all one can say.”
He murmured: “I love her,” as if he had said: “I am dying.” Then abruptly:
“Ah, for three years, what a distracting and glorious life we lived! Five or six times I all but killed her; she tried to pierce my eyes with that pin at which you have been looking. There, look at this little white speck on my left eye. We loved each other! How can I explain such a passion? You would not understand it.
“There must be a gentle love, born of the swift mutual union of two hearts and two souls; but assuredly there exists a savage love, cruelly tormenting, born of the imperious force binding together two discordant beings who adore while they hate.
“That girl ruined me in three years. I had four millions which she devoured quite placidly, in her indifferent fashion, crunching them up with a sweet smile that seemed to die from her eyes on to her lips.
“You know her? There is something irresistible about her. What is it? I don’t know. Is it those grey eyes whose glance thrusts like a gimlet and remains in you like the barb of an arrow? It is rather that sweet smile, indifferent and infinitely charming, that dwells on her face like a mask. Little by little her slow grace invades one, rises from her like a perfume, from her tall slender body, swaying a little as she moves, for she seems to glide rather than walk, from her lovely drawling voice that seems the music of her smile, from the very motion of her body, too, a motion that is always restrained, always just right, taking the eye with rapture, so exquisitely
