“Has he done what he was supposed to do?”
“Yes,” the young woman answered, affecting a wistfully seductive look, playing the part of the Egyptian dancer to perfection. “I chose the house in Louveciennes, and his business agent sent me the deed. . . . But we’ve broken it off. I don’t see him anymore.”
Louise’s ears were particularly sharp when it came to catching things that other people wanted to keep secret. She looked at Baron Gouraud with the impudence of the page whose costume she wore and then casually dropped a remark directed at Mme Michelin: “Don’t you find the baron hideous?”
Then she burst out laughing and added, “You know what? They ought to have had him play the part of Narcissus. He’d be quite something in apple-green tights!”
The elderly senator had in fact been revived by the sight of Venus and of this voluptuous corner of Olympus. He rolled his delighted eyes and turned partway round to compliment Saccard. In the hubbub that filled the room, the group of serious men continued to discuss business and politics. M. Haffner announced that he had just been named chairman of a jury that was to settle questions of indemnities. The conversation then turned to public works in the capital and in particular on the boulevard du Prince-Eugène, which had begun to attract public notice. Saccard seized the opportunity to speak of someone he knew who owned land that would no doubt be expropriated. He looked the assembled gentlemen in the face. The baron gently shook his head. M. Toutin-Laroche went so far as to say that nothing was more unpleasant than to have one’s property confiscated. M. Michelin nodded approvingly while trying even harder to squint at his decoration.
“The indemnities can never be large enough,” M. de Mareuil sagely concluded in an effort to please Saccard.
The two men had reached an understanding. But now Mignon and Charrier turned the conversation to their own affairs. They intended to retire before too long, probably to Langres, they said, although they would continue to maintain a pied-à-terre in Paris. They made the other men smile by saying that after they had built their splendid mansion on the boulevard Malesherbes, they had found it so beautiful that they hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to sell. The diamonds they were wearing must have been consolation for their loss. Saccard laughed ungraciously. His former partners had just reaped enormous profits from a venture in which he had played the role of dupe. As the intermission wore on, speeches in praise of Venus’ bosom and Echo’s gown interrupted the conversation of the serious men.
More than half an hour later, M. Hupel de la Noue reappeared. He was basking in his success, as the growing disorder of his attire indicated. As he was returning to his place, he encountered M. de Mussy. After shaking his hand in passing, he turned around. “Have you heard the marquise’s witty repartee?” he asked.
And without waiting for Mussy’s answer, he repeated it. His appreciation of the lady’s wit had only increased in the interim. He offered his own commentary, ending with the compliment that the remark was exquisite in its simplicity. “I have a much prettier one underneath.” It was a cry from the heart.
M. de Mussy did not share that opinion, however. He deemed the lady’s remark indecent. He had just been assigned to the embassy in London, and the minister had warned him that sober attire was de rigueur. He now refused to lead the cotillion,7 tried to look older than he was, and no longer spoke of his love for Renée, to whom he bowed gravely whenever they chanced to meet.
As M. Hupel de la Noue rejoined the group that had gathered behind the baron’s chair, the piano struck up a triumphal march. The chords were laid on thick, struck with the fingers vertical on the keys, leading into an expansive melody punctuated at intervals by tinkling metallic sounds. After each phrase, a new voice took up the melody in a higher register, accentuating the beat. The composition was at once aggressive and joyful.
“As you are about to see,” M. Hupel de la Noue murmured. “I may have carried poetic license a bit far, but I believe that my audacity has been rewarded. . . . The nymph Echo, seeing that Venus can do nothing with handsome Narcissus, takes him to Plutus, the god of riches and precious metals. . . . After the temptation of the flesh, the temptation of gold.”
“A stroke worthy of the classics,” replied the wizened M. Toutin-Laroche, with an amiable smile. “You know your period, Monsieur le Préfet.”
The curtains opened; the piano played louder. The scene was dazzling. The electric light revealed a stage ablaze in splendor, which the audience at first took to be a brazier filled with gold bars and precious gems that seemed to melt into one another. Another grotto loomed before them, but this time not the cool lair in which Venus lived on sands strewn with pearls and lapped by the ebbing tide. This second grotto was supposed to be located at the center of the earth, in a fiery region of the underworld, a fissure of Hades, a crevice in a mine of molten metal inhabited by Plutus. The silk that stood for rock revealed broad seams of metal, great flows that were like the veins of the primeval world, bearing incalculable riches and the eternal essence of earth. In M. Hupel de la Noue’s boldly anachronistic vision, the ground was covered with an avalanche of twenty-franc coins, rivers and heaps and swelling mounds of gold louis. Atop this pile of gold sat Mme de Guende as Plutus—a female Plutus, a Plutus who showed her bosom through the strands of a gown woven of every metal imaginable. Arrayed around this god, either standing erect or slightly reclining, clustered together or set apart, were the fantastic effusions of a grotto into which the caliphs of A Thousand and One Nights had poured their treasure: Mme Haffner as Gold, wearing a gown as stiff and resplendent as a bishop’s robes; Mme d’Espanet as Silver, shimmering like a moonbeam; Mme de Lauwerens, all fiery blue, as Sapphire, with little Mme Daste at her side, a smiling Turquoise with a tender bluish tinge. Away from the center of the stage were Emerald, Mme von Meinhold, and Topaz, Mme Teissière, while downstage Countess Wanska lent her somber passion to Coral even as she lay with upraised arms weighed down by red pendants like some monstrous but fascinating polyp exhibiting a woman’s flesh in the gap between nacreous pink shells. Each of the ladies wore necklaces, bracelets, and complete sets of jewelry made of the precious stone her character represented. The novel ornaments worn by Mme d’Espanet and Mme Haffner attracted a great deal of comment, being composed solely of small gold and silver coins fresh from the mint. The foreground drama remained the same: the nymph Echo tempting handsome Narcissus, who again indicated his refusal with a wave. The delighted eyes of the spectators slowly adjusted to this dazzling glimpse of the earth’s blazing entrails, this heap of gold upon which the wealth of a certain society lay sprawled.
This second tableau proved even more successful than the first. The idea seemed particularly ingenious. The boldness of the twenty-franc coins, the dumping of the contents of a modern safe into a corner of Greek mythology, enchanted the imaginations of the ladies and financiers in attendance. “So much gold!” people exclaimed. “So much money!” There were smiles all around, and thrills of satisfaction, as each of the ladies and each of the gentlemen privately dreamt of having all that loot to himself or herself in an underground vault somewhere.
“England has paid its debt, those are your billions,” Louise maliciously whispered in Mme Sidonie’s ear.
Mme Michelin, her lips parted in an expression of rapturous desire, pushed aside her dancer’s veil and with gleaming eyes gazed fondly on the gold, while the group of serious men went into transports. A beaming M. Toutin-Laroche whispered a few words in the ear of the baron, on whose face yellow spots had begun to appear. Meanwhile, Mignon and Charrier, less discreet, expressed themselves in a direct and simple manner: “Good God! There’s enough there to demolish Paris and build it all up again.”
This remark struck Saccard as profound, and he began to think that Mignon and Charrier were thumbing their noses at society when they pretended to be imbeciles. When the curtains had closed, and the piano ended the triumphal march with a great clatter of notes heaped one upon the other like a last shovelful o
f gold coins, applause broke out even louder and longer than before.
Meanwhile, in the middle of the tableau, the minister, accompanied by his secretary M. de Saffré, had appeared in the door of the salon. Saccard, who had been awaiting his brother’s arrival impatiently, started to rush over to greet him. But his brother signaled him to stay where he was and walked slowly over to the group of serious men. When the curtains had closed and people noticed he was there, whispers coursed through the drawing room, and heads turned in the minister’s direction. The success of “The Amours of Handsome Narcissus and the Nymph Echo” depended on his judgment.
“You are a poet, Monsieur le Préfet,” the smiling official told M. Hupel de la Noue. “You previously published a volume of verse entitled Les Volubilis, if I’m not mistaken. . . . I see that the cares of government have not dampened your imagination.”
In this compliment the prefect detected the sting of an epigram. The sudden appearance of his superior disconcerted him all the more when he looked down to check his attire and noticed the small white handprint on his sleeve, which he did not dare to wipe clean. He bowed and stammered a reply.
“Really,” the minister continued, addressing himself to M. Toutin-Laroche, Baron Gouraud, and other personages nearby, “all that gold was a wonder to behold. We could do great things if M. Hupel de la Noue would coin money for us.”
This was the same remark that Mignon and Charrier had made, but in ministerial language. Then M. Toutin-Laroche and the others made flattering comments that played off the minister’s last sentence: the Empire had already worked miracles; there was no shortage of gold, owing to the vast experience of those in power; never had France enjoyed such a splendid position in the eyes of Europe. In the end, these gentlemen prostrated themselves to such a degree that the minister himself changed the subject. He listened to them with his head held high and the corners of his mouth slightly raised, which imparted to his plump, white, carefully shaved face an air of doubt and smiling disdain.
Saccard, who was looking for an opening to announce Maxime’s marriage to Louise, maneuvered in search of a clever transition. He affected a great familiarity, and his brother, with an air of friendly good nature, did him the favor of pretending to like him a great deal. He was truly superior, with his clear gaze, his visible contempt for petty mischief, and his broad shoulders, a shrug from which would have been enough to send everyone in the room reeling. When the subject of the marriage finally came up, he behaved charmingly and let it be known that his wedding gift was ready and waiting: he brought up the matter of Maxime’s appointment as an auditor with the Conseil d’Etat. In the heartiest of tones he twice went so far as to make his brother the promise he had been waiting to hear: “Tell your son that I want to be his witness.”
M. de Mareuil blushed with pleasure. Saccard accepted congratulations. M. Toutin-Laroche offered to serve as a second witness. Then the conversation abruptly turned to the subject of divorce. A member of the opposition had just found what M. Haffner called the “lamentable courage” to defend this social disgrace. This was greeted with cries of protest from all present. Their sense of propriety found profound words in which to express itself. M. Michelin smiled discreetly at the minister, while Mignon and Charrier noted with astonishment that his jacket collar was worn.
Meanwhile, M. Hupel de la Noue continued to lean uncomfortably on Baron Gouraud’s chair after the baron contented himself with a silent shake of the minister’s hand. The poet did not dare move from the spot, held there by an indefinable sentiment, a fear of looking ridiculous and of forfeiting the approval of his superior, despite his burning desire to go backstage to position the women for the final tableau. He was waiting for some clever remark to occur to him and restore him to favor. But none came. He was feeling more and more embarrassed when he spotted M. de Saffré, took him by the arm, and latched on to him as to a life raft. The young man had just arrived; here was a fresh victim.
“Have you heard the Marquise’s witty repartee?” the prefect asked.
But he was so flustered that he found it impossible to tell the story properly. He floundered. “I said to her, ‘You’re wearing a charming costume,’ and she answered—”
“ ‘I have a much prettier one underneath,’ ” M. de Saffré calmly finished his sentence. “That’s an old one, my dear fellow, very old.”
M. Hupel de la Noue looked at him in consternation. The witticism was an old one, yet he had been on the verge of embellishing yet again his commentary on the simplicity of the marquise’s cry from the heart.
“Old, as old as the hills,” the secretary repeated. “Mme d’Espanet has already used that remark twice at the Tuileries.”
That was the last straw. At that point the prefect ceased to care about the minister and the crowd in the drawing room. He was headed for the platform when the piano launched into the prelude, a series of notes played so tremulously that they seemed almost to weep. Then the plangent melody opened out into a more expansive section, which dragged on for quite some time, and the curtains were drawn aside. M. Hupel de la Noue, who had already half-vanished backstage, returned to the salon when he heard the gentle grating of the curtain rings on their rods. He looked pale and exasperated. By dint of immense effort he overcame a violent urge to berate the ladies. They had placed themselves on stage! It must have been the little Espanet woman who had organized the conspiracy to speed up the costume changes and make do without his advice. It was all wrong! What they had done was no good at all!
He returned to his place, muttering to himself. He looked at the stage, shrugged, and mumbled, “Echo is too close to the edge. . . . And there’s no nobility in Narcissus’ leg, none at all.”
Mignon and Charrier, who had come over to hear his “explanation,” ventured to ask “what the young man and young woman are doing lying on the ground.” But M. Hupel de la Noue did not answer. He refused to explain his poem any further, and when the contractors pressed their question, he said, “Why, I have nothing more to do with it, now that those women have gone and placed themselves without me.”
The piano sobbed softly. Onstage, a clearing, dappled with “sunlight ” from the electric arc, opened onto a horizon of foliage. It was a fanciful clearing, a sort of glade with blue trees and big yellow and red flowers that grew as tall as oaks. There, on a grassy knoll, Venus and Plutus stood side by side, surrounded by nymphs from the nearby woods, who had hastened to them to form an escort. Among them were daughters of the trees, daughters of the springs, daughters of the mountains—all the laughing, naked deities of the forest. And the god and goddess stood in triumph, punishing the indifference of the proud youth who had scorned them, while the group of nymphs gazed with sacred terror upon the vengeance of Olympus unfolding in the foreground. Handsome Narcissus, lying beside a stream that seemed to flow out of the backdrop, stared at his image in that limpid mirror. Verisimilitude had been carried to the point of placing an actual mirror at the bottom of the stream. But this was no longer the free-spirited youth who had roamed the forest. Death had caught him by surprise as he lay in rapt admiration of his own image; it had made him weak, and Venus, with her finger outstretched like a fairy in a transformation scene, was casting her fatal spell. He was changing into a flower. His limbs seemed to turn green and grow longer inside his green satin tights. His supple trunk and slightly curved legs seemed to sink into the ground and take root, while the upper part of his body, festooned with wide strips of white satin, opened out into a marvelous corolla. Maxime’s blond hair completed the illusion, as his long curls could be taken for yellow pistils with white petals all around. And this great nascent flower, still human, tilted its head toward the spring—its eyes dimmed, its face smiling in voluptuous ecstasy, as if handsome Narcissus had at last, in death, satisfied the desires he had awakened in himself. A short distance away, the nymph Echo also lay dying—dying of unsatisfied desires. Little by little she felt herself gripped by the rigidity of the earth, as her burning limbs froze an
d hardened. She was no ordinary rock, stained by moss, but white marble by dint of her shoulders and arms and her great snowy white gown, from which the leafy girdle and blue sash had slipped away. Collapsed at the center of her satin skirt, which had gathered around her in wide folds like a block of Paros marble, she thrust herself backward, her body as rigid as a statue with nothing left of life in her other than her gleaming female eyes, which were fixed on the aquatic flower swaying languorously over the mirror of the spring. And already it seemed as if all the love sounds of the forest, all the lingering voices of the glades, all the mysterious quivering of the leaves, all the deep sighs of the great oaks had sought out the nymph’s marble flesh to beat upon, while her heart, still bleeding deep within the block of stone that was her body, continued to echo the least moans of Earth and Air.
“Oh, look at the getup they’ve got poor Maxime in!” Louise whispered. “And Mme Saccard looks as if she’s dead.”
“She’s covered with rice powder,” said Mme Michelin.
Other equally uncomplimentary remarks circulated around the room. This third tableau did not enjoy the same unqualified success as the previous two. Yet it was this tragic ending that made M. Hupel de la Noue most enthusiastic about his own talent. He admired himself in it, as Narcissus admired himself in his mirror. He had conceived it with a host of poetic and philosophical intentions. When the curtains had closed a third time, and the audience had applauded as good manners required, he felt a pang of regret that he had given in to his anger instead of explaining the final page of his poem. He then wanted to let the people around him in on the key to all the charming, grandiose, or merely naughty things that handsome Narcissus and Echo the nymph represented, and he even tried to explain what Venus and Plutus were doing back in the clearing, but the ladies and gentlemen of the audience, whose clear, practical minds had understood the grotto of flesh and the grotto of gold, had no interest in delving into the prefect’s mythological complexities. Only Mignon and Charrier, who were absolutely insistent on knowing what it all meant, had the kindness to question him. He grabbed them and took them off to the embrasure of a window, where for nearly two hours he regaled them with Ovid’s Metamorphoses. 8