Olivier was thinking, “What a huge joke! There’s Faust, the mysterious and sublime Faust, who sings of the horrible disgust and nothingness of everything, and the crowd’s anxiously asking itself whether Montrosé is losing his voice.” Then he listened, like the others, and behind the commonplace words of the libretto, through music that rouses profound perceptions in the depth of the soul, he had a sort of revelation of Goethe’s conception of Faust’s heart.
He used to read the poem, which he considered quite beautiful, without being at all moved by it, and suddenly discovered its unfathomable depth, for now it seemed to him that on this particular evening he himself was becoming a Faust.
Leaning over the front of the box, Annette listened carefully; murmurs of satisfaction were beginning to rise from the audience, for Montrosé’s voice was richer and better placed than it used to be.
Bertin had closed his eyes. For the last month, all he saw, all he felt, all he encountered in life he immediately made into a sort of accessory to his passion. Whatever he found beautiful he offered to the world, and regarded himself as nourishment to this idée fixe. He no longer had a thought that he didn’t bring back to his love.
Now he listened fervently to the echo of Faust’s lamentations, and the desire to die suddenly possessed him, the desire to be done with all his disappointments, with all the misery of his hopeless tenderness. He glimpsed Annette’s delicate profile, and behind her he also saw the Marquis de Farandal, who was contemplating Annette as well. He felt old, done for, lost! Ah! To expect no more of life, to have no hope, no further expectations, to be waiting for nothing more, to be hoping for nothing more, no longer to have even the right to desire. Now he listened deep in his heart to the echo of Faust’s lamentations, and the desire to die sprang up within him, the desire to have done with all his sorrows, with all the misery of his hopeless love. To feel out of his sphere, retired from life, like a super-annuated functionary whose career is finished: What intolerable torture.
There was a burst of applause: Montrosé was already triumphant, and Mephistopheles (Labarrière) sprang out of the ground. Olivier, who had never heard him in this character, listened with revived attention. The recollection of d’Aubin, so dramatic with his bass tones, then of Faure, his baritone voice so charming, distracted him for a few moments.
But suddenly a phrase sung with irresistible power by Montrosé moved his very heart. Faust was saying to Satan:
I seek a treasure
To entrance them all!
I seek youth!
And the tenor appeared in a silken doublet, a sword at his side, a plumed cap on his head, elegant, young, and handsome, with all the affected beauty of the singer.
A murmur went up: He looked very fine and pleased the ladies. Olivier, on the contrary, felt a chill of disappointment, for in this metamorphosis the poignant evocation of Goethe’s dramatic poem vanished altogether. What he had before his eyes was a fairy scene full of pretty bits of song and talented actors whose voices alone he was now listening to. That man in a doublet, that fine-looking fellow with his roulades, who exhibited his thighs and his notes, displeased him. He was not the true, the irresistible and wicked knight, he who was about to seduce Marguerite.
He sat down again, and the strain he had just heard returned to his mind:
I seek a treasure
To entrance them all!
I seek youth!
He murmured it between his teeth, sang it sorrowfully in his soul, and with his eyes fixed upon Annette’s blond head, which appeared in the square opening of the box, he felt all the bitterness of that unattainable desire.
But Montrosé had just finished the first act with such perfection that the enthusiasm burst forth: for several minutes the noise of applause, of the stamping feet and shouted bravos, filled the theater like a storm. In all the boxes the women were seen tapping their gloves one against the other, while the men, standing behind them, shouted as they clapped their hands.
The curtain fell, but it was raised twice before the excitement had subsided. Then, when the curtain was lowered for the third time, separating the stage and the inside boxes from the audience, the duchess and Annette still continued to applaud for some seconds and were specially rewarded with a discreet little bow from the tenor.
“Oh, he saw us,” said Annette.
“What an admirable artist!” exclaimed the duchess.
And Bertin, who had been leaning forward, looked with a confused feeling of irritation and scorn upon the applauded actor as he disappeared between two sidelights, waddling a little, his leg stiff under his hand on his hip, in the guarded pose of a theatrical hero.
They began to speak of him. His successes aroused as much interest as his talent. He had appeared in all the capitals, in the rapturous presence of women who, knowing beforehand that he was irresistible, felt their hearts beat as he appeared onstage. He seemed to care very little, however, some people said, for this sentimental delirium, and was content with musical triumphs. Musadieu was relating in rather ambiguous terms, because of Annette, the career of this handsome singer, and the duchess, carried away, understood and approved all the follies within his power to create—this great musician whom she found so charming, elegant, and distingué. And she concluded, laughing, “Besides, how can one resist such a voice!”
Olivier was displeased and severe. He did not understand really how anyone might care for a strolling actor, for that perpetual representation of human types which he never fulfilled, that delusive personification of imaginary men, that nocturnal and painted manikin who plays characters at so much per night.
“You’re jealous of them,” said the duchess, “you men of the world, and you artists are all envious of actors because they’re more successful than you.” Then turning toward Annette: “Now you tell me, little one, you who are entering life and looking at it with healthy eyes, what do you think of this tenor?”
Annette answered with conviction, “Why, I think he’s very fine.”
The three strokes were sounding for the second act, and the curtain rose upon the Kermesse.
Hellson’s passage was superb. She too seemed to have more voice than formerly and to handle it with more certainty. She had truly become the great, excellent, exquisite singer whose reputation in the world equaled that of Bismarck or Lesseps.
When Faust rushed upon her, having addressed to her with his bewitching voice these words so full of charm:
My lovely young lady, will you not allow me
To offer you my arm and escort you on your way?
Whereupon the lovely blond singer responded courteously:
No thank you, sir: I am neither a lady, nor lovely,
And I really have no need for a supporting arm!
The entire auditorium was thrilled with a deep impulse of pleasure, and acclamations, as the curtain fell, were deafening; our Annette applauded so long that Bertin was tempted to take hold of her hands to stop her. His heart was wrung by a new torment. He didn’t speak between the acts, for he was pursuing in the wings, with his fixed mind now full of hatred, following to his room, where he saw him replacing the powder on his cheeks, the odious singer who was so overexciting the child.
Then the curtain rose on the garden scene.
At once a sort of fever of love overspread the house, for never had that much music, which seems but a breathing of kisses, found two such interpreters. They were no longer just two illustrious actors, Montrosé and Hellson, but two beings from the ideal world, hardly two beings but two voices—the eternal voice of man who loves, the eternal voice of woman who yields—and they sighed together with all the poetry of human tenderness.
When Faust sang “Let me gaze on your face,” there was in the notes that soared from his mouth such an accent of adoration, of rapture, and of supplication, that for a moment all hearts were actually stirred with a desire to love.
Olivier remembered that he himself had murmured these words under the castle windows in the park at Ro
ncières. Till then he had thought them rather commonplace, but now they came to his lips like a last passionate cry, a last prayer, the last hope, and the last favor he might expect in this light.
Then he listened to nothing more, heard nothing more: he was attacked by a sharp paroxysm of jealousy, for he had just seen Annette putting her handkerchief up to her eyes. She was weeping! Therefore her heart was awakening, becoming animated, excited, her little woman’s heart which as yet knew nothing. There, quite near him, without dreaming of him, she was having a revelation of the manner in which love may overwhelm a human being, and that revelation, that initiation had come to her from a miserable strolling singer.
Ah, yet he had little spite against the Marquis de Farandal, a simpleton who saw nothing, knew nothing, understood nothing! But how he hated that man in tights, who was illuminating that young girl’s soul!
He was tempted to rush up to her the way one rushes up to someone who risks being trampled by an unmanageable horse, seizes her by the arm, leads her, hurries her away, saying to her, “Come with me, come with me now, I implore you!”
How she listened, how her heart throbbed! He had suffered this before, but not so cruelly! He remembered, because the pangs of jealousy revive like reopened wounds.
It happened first at Roncières, on the way back from the cemetery, when he felt for the first time that she was escaping him, that he had no power over her, over that little girl as independent as a young animal. But later, when she had vexed him by leaving him to gather flowers, he had felt a sort of brutal desire to check her impulses, to keep her presence near him.
Today it was her very soul that was escaping, intangible. Ah, that gnawing irritation he had just recognized, how often had he felt it through all the little inexpressible contusions by which a loving heart is continually bruised.
He recalled all the painful impressions of this petty jealousy falling upon him by little blows day by day. Each time she had noticed, admired, liked, desired something, he had been jealous of it; jealous of everything in an imperceptible and continuous fashion, of everything that absorbed the time, Annette’s glances, attention, gaiety, astonishment, affection—anything that took a little of her from him. He had been jealous of all she did without him, of all he did not know, of her outings, her readings, of all that seemed to afford her pleasure, jealous of an heroic officer wounded in Africa and who was the talk of Paris for about a week, jealous of the author of a highly praised novel, of a young poet she hadn’t seen but whose verses Musadieu recited; and finally jealous of all men praised before her, even in an indifferent sort of way, for when one loves a woman one cannot tolerate without anguish that she should even think of anyone else with an appearance of interest. One feels at heart the imperious need of being the only one in the world in her eyes. One wants her to see, to know, to appreciate no one else. As soon as she manifests a desire to turn around to look at or recognize anybody, one throws himself before her vision, and if unsuccessful in turning it aside or entirely absorbing it, one suffers to the bottom of one’s soul.
So Olivier suffered before this singer, who seemed to scatter and gather love in that opera house, and he felt spite against everybody on account of the tenor’s success, against the overexcited women in the boxes, and against the fools who were giving an apotheosis to this coxcomb.
An artist! They called him an artist, a great artist! And he had successes, this hireling, this paltry interpreter of a foreign master such as no creator had ever known! Ah, that was like the justice and intelligence of people of fashion, those ignorant and pretentious amateurs for whom the masters of human art labor unto death. He gazed at them as they applauded, shouted, went into ecstasies; and that early hostility which had always been dormant in the bottom of the proud and haughty heart of a parvenu became exasperated, a furious rage against those imbeciles, all powerful by virtue of wealth and rank alone.
He remained silent, a prey to his thoughts, till the end of the performance. Then, when the final storm of enthusiasm had subsided, he offered his arm to the duchess, while the marquis offered his to Annette. They descended the grand staircase, floating down in a stream of men and women, in a sort of magnificent and slow cascade of bare shoulders, sumptuous dresses, and black coats. Then the duchess, the young girl, her father, and the marquis stepped into the same landau, and Olivier Bertin remained alone with Musadieu upon the place de l’Opéra.
Suddenly he experienced an impulse of affection for this man, or rather that natural attraction we feel for a fellow countryman whom we meet in a distant land, for he felt now lost in that strange, indifferent, tumultuous crowd, while with Musadieu he might still speak of her.
He therefore took his arm and said, “You’re not going home immediately. The weather is fine; let us take a walk.”
“Willingly.”
They went down toward La Madeleine, mixed with the crowd of night strollers in that short and violent midnight which shakes the boulevard as people come out of the theaters.
Musadieu had a thousand things in his mind, all his subjects for conversation from the instant that Bertin should name his “bill of fare,” and he let his loquacity flow upon the two or three themes that interested him most. The painter let him go on without listening to him, holding him by the arm, sure to lead him presently to speak of her, and he walked without seeing anything around him, imprisoned in his love. He walked, exhausted by that paroxysm of jealousy which had bruised him like a fall, crushed by the conviction that he had nothing more to do in the world.
He would suffer thus, more and more without expecting anything. He would go through empty days, one after the other, looking from afar to see her living, happy, loved, loving. A lover! She would have a lover perhaps, as her mother had one. He felt in himself such numerous sources of suffering, so different and complicated, such an afflux of misfortunes, so many inevitable torments, he felt so completely lost, so far launched, from this very moment, into an unimaginable agony, that he could not suppose anyone had ever suffered like him. And he thought at once of the puerility of poets who have invented the useless labor of Sisyphus, the material thirst of Tantalus, the devoured heart of Prometheus! Oh, had they foreseen, had they probed the distracted love of an aged man for a young girl, how would they have expressed the frightful and secret striving of a being who can no longer inspire love, the torments of fruitless desire, and, worse than a vulture’s beak, the face of a little blonde tearing an old heart to pieces!
Musadieu continued to talk and Bertin interrupted him, murmuring almost in spite of himself, under the power of his idée fixe, “Annette was charming this evening.”
“Yes, delightful.”
To prevent Musadieu from resuming the broken thread of his thoughts, the painter added, “She is prettier than her mother ever was.”
His companion assented absentmindedly, repeating several times in succession “Yes . . . yes . . . yes . . .” without his mind having yet embraced this new idea.
Olivier endeavored to keep him there, and in order to anchor him with one of Musadieu’s favorite preoccupations, he cunningly continued, “She will have one of the first salons in Paris after her marriage.”
That was sufficient, and the inspector of fine arts, the satisfied man of the world, began learnedly to formulate an opinion of the position that the Marquise of Farandal would occupy in French society.
Bertin was listening to him now, and he imagined Annette in a large, brilliantly lit drawing room surrounded by women and men. This vision again made him jealous. They were walking up the boulevard Malesherbes now. When they passed in front of the Guilleroy mansion the painter looked up.
Lights seemed to be shining at the windows through the opening in the curtains. He had a suspicion that the duchess and her nephew had perhaps been invited to come in and take a cup of tea. And he was seized with a rage that caused him horrible suffering.
He was still clinging to Musadieu’s arm and occasionally revived, by a contradiction, his views on th
e future marquise. This banal voice speaking of her caused her image to flit about them in the night. When they reached the avenue de Villiers, in front of the painter’s door, Bertin asked, “Are you coming in?”
“No, my friend, thank you, no. It’s late, and I’m going to bed.”
“My dear fellow, come in for half an hour, we still have things to talk about.”
“No. Truly. It’s too late.”
“Do come up. I want you to choose one of my latest studies—I’ve wanted you to have something of mine for the longest time.”
His companion, knowing that painters are not always in a giving mood, grasped the opportunity. In his official capacity in fine arts, he owned a gallery of paintings he had collected with skill.
“Very well, then. I’ll follow you up.”
The valet, being roused, brought them some liqueur, and the conversation dragged along on painting for a while. Bertin showed his guest some studies, begging Musadieu to choose the one he liked best. Musadieu hesitated, confused by the gaslight, which deceived him in the matter of tones. Finally he chose a group of little girls jumping rope on a sidewalk, and almost immediately afterward he was ready to take his leave and carry away his gift.