Short Fiction

Perpignan, Nice, and now here I am at Marseilles!”

Tears poured out of her eyes and her nose, wetting her cheeks, and ran down into her mouth.

She went on:

“I thought you were dead too, my poor Célestin.”

He said:

“I would never have known you again, you were so little then, and now you’re so big, but how was it you didn’t recognise me?”

She made a despairing gesture.

“I see so many men that they all look alike to me.”

He was still staring into her eyes in the grip of a confused emotion, an emotion so overwhelming that he wanted to cry like a beaten child. He still held her in his arms, sitting astride his legs, his hands spread out on the girl’s back, and now by dint of staring at her, he recognised her at last, the little sister left in the country with the three she had watched die while he tossed at sea.

All at once he took her newfound face in his great sailor’s paws and began to embrace her as a man embraces his flesh and blood. Then sobs, a man’s terrible sobs, long-drawn surging cries, rose in his throat like the hiccups of a drunken man.

He stammered:

“To see you, to see you again, Françoise, my little Françoise.⁠ ⁠…”

Suddenly he leaped to his feet and began to swear in a dreadful voice, bringing his fist down on the table with such violence that the overturned glasses broke to atoms. Then he took three steps, staggered, flung out his arms and fell face downwards. He rolled on the floor, shouting, beating the ground with arms and legs, and uttering such groans that they were like the death-rattle of a man in agony.

All the sailors looked at him and laughed.

“He isn’t half drunk,” said one.

“Put him to bed,” said another; “if he goes out they’ll stick him in jail.”

Then, as he had money in his pockets, the proprietress offered a bed, and the other sailors, themselves so drunk that they couldn’t stand, hoisted him up the narrow staircase to the bedroom of the woman who had lately received him, and who remained sitting on a chair, at the foot of that guilty couch, weeping over him, until morning.

The Mask

There was a fancy-dress ball that evening at the Élysée-Montmartre. It was to celebrate Mid-Lent, and the crowd was pouring, like the water rushing over a weir, down the illuminated corridor that led to the dance room. The overpowering clamour of the orchestra, crashing like a storm of music, split walls and roof, spread abroad through the neighbourhood, and roused in the streets, and even in the nearby houses, the irresistible desire to leap, to be warm and amused, that slumbers in the depths of the human animal.

The regular frequenters of the place were arriving from all the four corners of Paris, people of all classes, who were fond of vulgar, roistering amusements that were a little vicious and not a little debauched. There were shop assistants, pimps, prostitutes, prostitutes in every sort of dress, from the common cotton to the finest batiste, wealthy prostitutes, the old wealthy ones, old and covered with diamonds, and the penniless sixteen-year-olds longing to enjoy themselves, to find men, to spend money. Elegants in tailed coats, in search of youthful flesh, deflowered of its primal innocence but still desirable, roved through the overheated crowd, peering, seemingly scenting it out, while the masks appeared absorbed in their desire for amusement. The famous quadrilles had already gathered round their caperings a crowded circle of people. The swaying hedge, the quivering mass of women and men who encircled the four dancers, knotted itself round like a serpent, advancing and withdrawing in time to the swerving movements of the dancers. The two women, whose thighs seemed fastened to their bodies by india-rubber springs, executed the most amazing movements with their legs. They flung them up in the air with such vigour that the limbs seemed to be flying towards the sky, then suddenly, parting them as if they were open to the navel, sliding one in front and the other behind, they touched the ground with the centre of their bodies in a quick wide split, revolting and comical to watch.

Their partners leaped, pirouetted on their feet, whirled round, their arms flapping and raised like stumps of featherless wings, and one guessed that under their masks their breath was coming in gasps.

One of them, who had taken a part in the most famous of the quadrilles to replace a celebrated dancer who was absent, the magnificent “Songe-augosse,” and was doing his best to keep pace with the indefatigable “Arête-de-veau,” was executing fantastic solo steps that provoked the joy and ironic mirth of the public.

He was lean, attired like a dandy, with a handsome varnished mask on his face, a mask with a fair curling moustache and topped by a curled wig.

He had the appearance of a model from the Grévin museum, of a strange and fantastic caricature of a charming young man in a fashion-plate, and he danced with an earnest but awkward effort, and with a droll ecstasy. He seemed rusty beside the others as he tried to imitate their gambols: he seemed crippled, as clumsy as a pug-dog playing with greyhounds. Mocking bravos encouraged him, and he, drunk with enthusiasm, leaped about with such frenzy that all at once, carried away by a wild rush, he ran full tilt into the wall of standers-by which parted before him to let him pass, then closed up again round the inert body of the motionless dancer, lying face downwards.

Men picked him up and carried him away. There were shouts for “a doctor.” A gentleman came forward, young, very elegant, in a black coat with enormous pearls in his dress shirt. “I am a professor in the Medical School,” he said, modestly. They made way for him, and in a little room full of cartons, like a business man’s office, he found the still unconscious dancer stretched across