La Fanfarlo

Samuel Cramer, who formerly, under the signature of Manuela de Monteverde, was r
esponsible for a few romantic follies in the hey-day of romanticism is the contradic
tory product of a pallid German and dark Chilean mother. Add to this double orig
in a French upbringing and a literary civilization, and the queer complications
of his character will be less surprising to you if they do not satisfy or edify yo
u. Samuel has a pure and noble brow, eyes as brilliant as drops of coffee, a tea
sing and mocking nose, impudent and sensual lips, a square despotic chin and pre
tentiously republican hair. He is at once very lazy, mournfully ambitious, and i
llustriously unfortunate; for all his life he has scarcely ever had any complete
ideas. The sun of his idleness which shines with constant splendour within him,
vaporizes and consumes that moiety of genius with which Heaven has endowed him.
Among all those demi-great men whom I have known in this terrible Parisian life
, Samuel was, more than any other, the man of beautiful abortive works: a sickly
fantastic creature, whose poetry shines much more in his person than in his wor
ks, and who towards one o clock in the morning, between the blaze of a coal fire a
nd the tic-toc of a clock, always appeared to me like the God of Impotence a moder
n hermaphroditic god Impotence so colossal and so enormous that it becomes epic.
How can I explain, how can I let you clearly see the depths of that tenebrous na
ture, striped with vivid lightning flashes, lazy and at the same time enterprisi
ng, fertile in difficult schemes and in ridiculous abortions; a mind in which pa
radox often assumed the proportions of naiveté, yet whose imagination was as vast
as absolute solitude and laziness? One of Samuel s most natural foibles was to con
sider himself the equal of those whom he had contrived to admire. After passiona
tely reading a fine book his involuntary conclusion was: Here s something fine eno
ugh to be my own! and from that to thinking, Therefore it is my own , is merely a ma
tter of omitting the inverted commas.
In the world of to-day a character of this type is more common than one thinks;
the streets, the public walks, the estaminets, and all the refuges of idlers swa
rm with creatures of this sort. They identify themselves so completely with the
latest model, as to believe almost that they have invented it. To-day you find t
hem painfully deciphering the mystic pages of Plotinus or Porphyry; to-morrow th
ey will admire how well Crébillon the younger has expressed the French and flighty
side of their nature. Yesterday they were conversing familiarly with Jerome Car
dan; now they are playing with Sterne or wallowing with Rabelais in all the glut
tony of hyperbole. Besides, they are so happy in each of their metamorphoses tha
t they are not in the slightest annoyed with all those fine geniuses for having
anticipated them in the esteem of posterity. What naive and respectable impudenc
e! Such was poor Samuel.
By birth a very gentlemanly fellow, and a bit of a rogue for diversion an actor by
temperament he played, for his private benefit and in camera, incomparable traged
ies, or rather tragicomedies. If the wing of gaiety brushed and tickled him, he
had, of course, to impress the fact upon himself, so our man used to practise bu
rsting into fits of laughter. Did a tear but well up in the corner of his eye at
some memory, he went to the mirror to watch himself cry. If some trollop in a f
it of brutal and childish jealousy scratched him with a penknife or a needle, Sa
muel glorified it into a dagger thrust, and when he owed a few wretched twenty t
housand francs he used to shout joyously:
What a sad and lamentable fate to be a genius harassed by a million of debts!
By the way, please don t believe that he was incapable of knowing true sentiments,
or that passion merely brushed his epidermis. He would have sold his shirt for
an almost complete stranger whose hands and countenance he had examined and yest
erday made his bosom friend. To the things of the mind and soul he brought the i
dle contemplativeness of Germanic natures; to matters of passion, the rapid and
fickle ardour of his mother; and to the practice of life all the foibles of Fren
ch vanity. He would have fought a duel for an author or an artist two centuries
dead. Just as he had been furiously devout, he was passionately atheistic. He wa
s at once all the artists he had studied and all the books he had read, and yet,
despite this protean faculty, he remained profoundly original. He was always th
e gentle, the fantastic, the lazy, the terrible, the erudite, the ignorant, the
Bohemian, the dandy Samuel Cramer, the romantic Manuela de Monteverde. He raved
over a friend as over a woman, loved a woman as a comrade. He possessed the logi
c of all the good sentiments, and the science of all sorts of knavishness, and n
evertheless he never succeeded in anything because he believed too much in the i
mpossible. Why should it be astonishing? He was always conceiving the impossible
.
Samuel, one evening, hit on the idea of going out; it was beautiful, scented wea
ther. He had, in accordance with his natural taste for the excessive, equally vi
olent and prolonged habits of seclusion and dissipation, and for a long time he
had remained faithful to his house. The maternal laziness, the Creole love of do
ing nothing which flowed in his veins prevented him from finding anything intole
rable in the disorder of his room, his linen, and his greasy, excessively tangle
d hair. He combed it, washed himself, managed in a few moments to recover the dr
ess and aplomb of people for whom elegance is an everyday affair; then he opened
the window. The warm golden light rushed into the dusty study. Samuel was aston
ished to see how quickly and noiselessly spring had come. A mild air, impregnate
d with sweet odours, made his nostrils twitch. One part of it mounting to his br
ain filled him with dreaminess and desires, the other naughtily stirred his hear
t, his stomach and his liver. Resolutely, he blew out his two candles, one of wh
ich was still palpitating on a volume of Swedenborg, and the other flickered out
on one of those shameful books the reading of which is profitable only to minds
possessed of an immoderate taste for truth.
From the height of his solitude, cluttered with documents, paved with old books
and peopled with his dreams, Samuel often observed whilst walking in an allée of t
he Luxembourg, a face and form which he had loved in the provinces, at an age wh
en one really loves. Her features, though matured and blunted by some years of u
se, had the profound and decent grace of the respectable woman; in the depths of
her eyes there still shone occasionally a humid, virginal dreaminess. She used
to come and go, always escorted by quite a smart maid, whose face and demeanour
revealed the confidante and companion rather than the servant. She seemed to see
k out the deserted spots, and used to sit down sadly in widow-like attitudes, ab
sently holding in her hand a book which she did not read.
Samuel had known her in the neighbourhood of Lyons, when she was young, alert, s
prightly and thinner. By dint of watching her, and so to speak recognizing her,
he had revived one by one all the tiny memories which attracted him to her in hi
s imagination: he had recounted to himself, detail by detail, the whole of this
youthful romance, which since that time had lost itself in the preoccupations of
his life and in the labyrinth of his passions.
On that particular evening he raised his hat to her with more care and ceremony.
Passing in front of her he heard behind him this snatch of dialogue.
What do you think of that young man, Mariette?
But this was said in such an absent-minded tone that the most malicious observer
could have found no fault with the lady.
Oh, I think he is very nice, madame. Madame knows that it is M. Samuel Cramer?
And more severely:
 Now how do you happen to know that, Mariette?
Chapter 2
That is why next day Samuel took great care to bring her back her handkerchief a
nd her book, which he found on a bench, and which she had not lost, since she wa
s close at hand watching the sparrows squabbling for crumbs, or seeming to conte
mplate the inner workings of the vegetation. As often happens between two beings
whose souls by a complicity of destiny have been brought into tune with one ano
ther, opening the conversation rather abruptly, he had, nevertheless, the good f
ortune to find a person disposed to listen and to reply to him.
Is it possible, madame, that I am fortunate enough to be still esconced in a corn
er of your memory? Have I changed so much that you cannot recognize in me a comr
ade of your childhood with whom you deigned to play at hide-and-seek, and to pla
y truant?
A woman , replied the lady with a half smile, has not the right to remember people s
o easily; that is why I thank you, sir, for being the first to afford me the opp
ortunity of recalling those beautiful and joyous memories. And then each year of l
ife contains so many events and thoughts and really it seems to me that it is many
years ago?
Years, replied Samuel, which for me have been sometimes very slow, sometimes very q
uick to flee away, but all diversely cruel!
And poetry? said the lady with a smile in her eyes.
Always, madame! replied Samuel laughing. But what is that you are reading?
A novel of Walter Scott s.
Now I understand your frequent interruptions. Oh, what a tiresome writer! A dusty
unearther of chronicles! A wearisome pile of description and bric-a-brac, a hea
p of all sorts of old things and costumes: armour, crockery, furniture, Gothic i
nns and melodramatic castles, through which stalk a few puppets on strings, dres
sed in motley doublet and hose; hackneyed types which no eighteen-year-old plagi
arist will look at in ten years; impossible ladies and lovers completely devoid
of actuality, no truth of the heart, no philosophy of the sentiments! How differ
ent from our good French novelists, where passion and morality are always prefer
red to the material descriptions of objects! What does it matter whether the lad
y wears ruff or panniers or an Oudinot underskirt provided she sobs or betrays p
roperly? Does the lover interest you much more because he carries a dagger in hi
s waistcoat instead of a visiting card, and does a despot in a black coat terrif
y you less poetically than a tyrant encased in leather and mail?
Samuel, as you see, was drifting into the category of intense people, intolerabl
e and passionate men whose profession ruins their conversation, and for whom eve
ry occasion is a good one, even an acquaintanceship struck up under some tree or
at some street corner were it with a rag-picker obstinately to develop their ideas.
The only difference between commercial travellers, roving industrials, hopeful
commission agents, and intense poets is the difference between advertising and p
reaching; the latter vice is quite disinterested.
Now, the lady answered him simply.
My dear Monsieur Samuel, I am merely the public, that is sufficient to tell you t
hat I have an innocent soul. Consequently pleasure is for me the easiest thing i
n the world to find. But let s talk of yourself: I should esteem myself fortunate
were you to judge me worthy of reading some of your productions.
 But, madame, how does it happen ? exclaimed the swollen vanity of the astonished p
oet.
The proprietor of my circulating library says that he does not know you!
And she smiled sweetly as if to deaden the effect of this fleeting, teasing thru
st.
Madame, said Samuel sententiously, the true public of the nineteenth century is the
women; your support will make me greater than twenty academies.
Well, sir, I count on your promise. Mariette, the parasol and the scarf. Somebody
is perhaps getting impatient at home. You know your master is coming back early
.
She made him a graceful, abrupt little bow, which was not in the slightest compr
omising, and the familiarity of which was not without a certain dignity.
Samuel was in no wise astonished to discover a former youthful love chained by t
he conjugal tie. In the universal history of sentiment, that is in order. She wa
s called Madame de Cosmelly and lived in one of the most aristocratic streets in
the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
Next day he found her, head inclined, in a graceful, almost studied melancholy,
towards the flowers in the border, and he offered her his volume of The Ospreys,
a collection of sonnets such as we all have written, and all have read in the d
ays when our judgment was so short and our hair so long.
Samuel was very curious to know whether his Ospreys had charmed this beautiful m
elancholy soul, and whether the screams of these nasty birds had disposed her fa
vourably towards him; but a few days later she said to him with despairing cando
ur and honesty:
Sir, I am only a woman, and consequently my judgment is of little account; but it
seems to me that the sorrows and loves of authors have very little resemblance
to the sorrows and loves of other men. You address gallantries, excellent no dou
bt and exquisitely chosen, to ladies whom I esteem sufficiently to believe that
they must sometimes be frightened by them. You sing of the beauty of mothers in
a style which is bound to deprive you of their daughters suffrage. You inform the
world that you are madly in love with the foot or hand of Madame So-and-so, who
, let us suppose for her honour, spends less time in reading you than in knittin
g stockings and mittens for the feet and hands of her children. By a most peculi
ar contrast, the mysterious cause of which is still unknown to me, you reserve y
our most mystic incense for queer creatures who read still less than ladies, and
you go into Platonic ecstasies before low-born sultanas who, it seems to me, at
the sight of the delicate person of a poet must open eyes as big as those of ca
ttle awakening in a conflagration. Again, I do not know why you are so fond of f
unereal subjects, and anatomical descriptions. When one is young, and when, like
you, one possesses fine talent and all the presumed conditions of happiness, it
seems to me much more natural to celebrate health and the joys of decent men th
an to practise anathemas and talking with Ospreys.
This was his reply to her:
Madame, pity me, or rather pity us, for I have many brothers of my kind; it is ha
tred of all the world and of ourselves which led us to those lies. It is from de
spair at not being noble and beautiful according to natural means, that we have
so strangely painted our faces. We were so busy sophisticating our hearts, we ha
ve so much abused the microscope to study the hideous excrescences and the shame
ful warts with which they are covered, growths we arbitrarily magnify, that it i
s impossible for us to speak the language of other men. They live for the sake o
f living, and we, alas! we live for the sake of knowledge. There lies the whole
mystery. Age changes but the voice, destroying only the teeth and hair: we have
altered the accent of nature, one by one, we have eradicated the virginal puriti
es with which our innate decency bristled. We psychologized like madmen who incr
ease their mania by striving to understand it. The years merely distort the limb
s, and we have deformed the passions. Woe, thrice woe to the weakly sires who ma
de us rickety and abnormal, predestined as we are to give birth only to still-bo
rn offspring!
More Ospreys! said she. Come, give me your arm and let us admire the poor flowers t
he spring has made so happy!
Instead of admiring the flowers, Samuel Cramer, whose phase and period had arriv
ed, began to turn into prose and to declaim a few bad stanzas composed in his fi
rst manner. The lady let him run on.
What a difference there is, and how little is left of the same man, save the memo
ry! But memory is only a fresh suffering. What a beautiful time was that when mo
rning never found us with knees stiff and racked by the fatigue of dreams, when
our bright eyes laughed at all nature; when our sighs flowed gently without nois
e or pride! How many times in the leisure of imagination I have seen again one o
f those beautiful autumnal evenings when young souls make progress comparable to
those trees which shoot up several handbreadths in a thunderstorm. Then I see,
I feel, I understand! The moon awakens the big moths; the warm wind opens the pe
tals of the belles-de-nuit; the water sleeps in the great fountains. Listen in s
pirit to the sudden valses of that mysterious piano. The perfumes of the storm c
ome in at the windows; it is the hour when the gardens are full of pink and whit
e dresses that do not fear the rain. The complaisant bushes catch at the fleetin
g skirts; dark hair and blond curls mingle in a whirling dance. Do you remember,
madame, the enormous haystacks, so swift for sliding down, the old nurse so slo
w to pursue you, and the bell so prompt to call you back to your aunt s watchful e
ye, in the great dining- room?
Madame de Cosmelly interrupted Samuel by a sigh, made as if to open her lips, no
doubt to beg him to stop, but he had already resumed.
Chapter 3
The most desolating thing of all, he said, is that every love always ends badly, al
l the more badly the more divine, the more winged was its beginning. There is no
dream, however ideal, which one does not rediscover with a greedy brat fastened
to its breasts; there is no retreat, no cottage however delightful and secluded
which the pickaxe does not raze to the ground. And yet this destruction is quit
e material: but there is another, more pitiless and more secret, which attacks i
nvisible things. Imagine at the moment when you lean upon the being of your choi
ce and say: Let us flee together and seek the depths of the sky! an implacable and
serious voice broods over your ear to tell you that our passions are liars, tha
t it is our short-sightedness that creates the beautiful faces, and our ignoranc
e the beautiful souls, and that necessarily there comes a day when the idol, for
more clairvoyant eyes, is now a mere object, not of hatred, but of contempt and
astonishment.
For mercy s sake sir! said Madame de Cosmelly.
At the same time she was moved; Samuel had noticed that he had thrust the steel
into an old wound, and he persisted cruelly.
Madame, he said, the salutary sufferings of the memory have their charms, and, in t
his intoxication of grief, one sometimes finds a solace. At this funereal warnin
g, all loyal souls would cry: Lord, take me hence with my dream intact and pure:
I want to give back to nature my passion with all its virginity, and carry elsew
here my unwithered crown . Besides, the results of disillusion are terrible. The s
ickly children of a dying love are sad debauch and hideous impotence; debauch of
the mind, impotence of the heart, the result of which is that the one no longer
lives save from curiosity, and the other pines away daily from lassitude. All o
f us resemble more or less some traveller who has traversed a great country, and
each evening watches the sun, which once superbly gilded the beauties of the ro
ute, go down in a drab horizon. Resignedly, he sits down on dirty hills covered
with unknown litter and says to the perfumes of the heather that it is no use th
eir rising towards the empty heaven; to the sparse and wretched seeds that it is
no use sprouting in a dried-up soil; to the birds which think their marriages b
lessed by someone, that they are wrong to build nests in a country swept by cold
and violent winds. Sadly he goes on his way towards a desert which he knows is
similar to that just traversed, escorted by a pale ghost called Reason, which, w
ith pale lantern, lights the aridity of his road, and, to quench the ever rising
thirst of passion that seizes him from time to time, pours into him the poison
of ennui.
Suddenly, hearing a deep sigh and a repressed sob, he turned again towards Madam
e de Cosmelly. She was weeping copiously and had no longer the strength to hide
her tears.
For some time he considered her in silence, with the most sympathetic and the mo
st unctuous air he could assume: the brutal and hypocritic actor was proud of th
ose beautiful tears; he considered them as his work and his literary property. H
e was mistaken as to the inward meaning of this grief, just as Madame de Cosmell
y, drowned in this candid desolation, was mistaken as to the purport of his look
. It was a peculiar play of misunderstandings, as a result of which Samuel Crame
r, with a decisive gesture, stretched out both his hands, which she took with te
nder confidence.

Madame, continued Samuel, after some moments of silence, the classic silence of em
otion, true wisdom consists less in malediction than in hope. Without the truly d
ivine gift of hope, how could we cross the hideous desert of ennui which I have
just described to you? The ghost which accompanies us is really a ghost of reaso
n; one can drive him away by sprinkling him with the holy water of the first the
ological virtue. There is an amiable philosophy which contrives to find consolat
ions in the apparently most unworthy objects. Just as virtue is better than inno
cence, and as there is more merit in sowing a desert than in carelessly rifling
the sweets of a fruitful orchard, so it is really worthy of a choice soul to pur
ify itself and to purify its neighbour by contact. As there is no treachery one
does not forgive, there is no fault for which one cannot obtain absolution, no o
versight which one cannot remedy; there is a science of loving one s neighbour and
finding him lovable, as there is a science of correct living.
The more delicate a mind is, the more original beauties it discovers; the more te
nder a soul, the more open to divine hope, the more reasons for love it finds in
others, however sullied they may be; this is the work of charity, and more than
one traveller, desolate and lost in the arid deserts of disillusionment, has be
en seen to reconquer faith and fall more deeply in love with what she had lost,
and with all the more reason, since she then possesses the knowledge of how to d
irect her passion, and that of her beloved.
Little by little Madame de Cosmelly s face had lit up; her sadness shone with hope
like a watery sun, and scarcely had Samuel finished his speech than she said to
him quickly and with the naive candour of a child:
Is it really true that this is possible, and that there are branches so easy to s
eize for those in despair?
But certainly, madame!
Ah, what a happy woman you would make me if you would please teach me your recipe
s!
Nothing easier, he replied brutally.
In the midst of this sentimental marivaudage, confidence had arrived and indeed
had joined the hands of the two characters; so much so that after some hesitatio
ns and little prudish gestures which to Samuel appeared very promising, Madame d
e Cosmelly in her turn took him into her confidence, beginning thus:
I understand everything that a poetic soul can suffer from this isolation, and ho
w quickly a spiritual ambition like yours must consume itself in its solitude; b
ut your griefs, which belong to none but you, come, as far as I have been able t
o discern through the pomp of your language, from strange and unsatisfied needs
which are almost impossible to satisfy. You suffer, it is true; but possibly you
r suffering constitutes your grandeur, and is as necessary to you as happiness i
s to others. Now will you deign to listen to and sympathize with sorrows more ea
sy to understand, a provincial grief? M. Cramer, I expect from you, the scholar,
the man of wit, the advice and perhaps the help of a friend.
You know that at the time you knew me, I was a good little girl, already a little
dreamy like you, but timid and obedient, that I looked at myself in the mirror
less often than you did, and that I always hesitated to eat or pocket the peache
s and grapes you went boldly and stole for me in our neighbours orchards. To me a
pleasure was never really agreeable and complete save in so far as it was permi
tted, and I much preferred kissing a nice boy like you in front of my old aunt t
han in the middle of the fields. The coquetry and the attention that every marri
ageable girl ought to pay to her person only came to me later. When I could almo
st sing a romance at the piano they dressed me with more care, they forced me to
stand up straight; they made me do gymnastics and forbade me to spoil my hands
planting flowers or bringing up birds. I was allowed to read other things than B
erquin and taken in evening dress to the local theatre to hear bad operas.
When M. de Cosmelly came to the château, I at once took a great liking to him. Comp
aring his flourishing youth with my grandmother s rather carping old age, I though
t he looked noble and upright, and his attitude towards me was one of the most r
espectful gallantry. Then they talked of wonderful things he had done; his arm s
mashed in a duel for a rather cowardly friend who had entrusted him with his sis
ter s honour, enormous sums lent to old and penniless comrades, and I don t know wha
t else. He had with everybody a commanding air, both affable and irresistible, w
hich won me over too. How had he lived before leading this château life with us? H
ad he known other pleasures then than those of hunting with me, or singing virtu
ous romances on my bad piano? Had he had mistresses? Of that I knew nothing, and
I never even dreamed of inquiring. I began to love him with all the credulousne
ss of a girl who has never had time to make comparisons, and I married him, whic
h pleased my aunt very much indeed. When I was his wife in the eyes of the Churc
h and of God, I loved him still more. I loved him far too much, of course. Was I
wrong, was I right? Who can tell? I was happy in that love, and I was wrong not
to realize that it might be disturbed. Did I know him well before marrying him?
Of course not; but it seems to me that one can no more accuse a nice girl who w
ants to get married for making an unwise choice than an abandoned woman for taki
ng a cad for a lover. Both of us wretched creatures that we are are equally ignorant
. What these unfortunate victims called marriageable girls need is a shameful ed
ucation I mean the knowledge of men s vices. I should like each one of those poor li
ttle things, before assuming the marriage tie, to hear in some secret place, wit
hout being seen, two men talking together about the things of life and especiall
y about women. After that first and formidable test they could abandon themselve
s with less danger to the terrible hazard of marriage, knowing the strength and
weakness of their future tyrants.
Chapter 4
Samuel did not exactly see what this charming victim was driving at, but he bega
n to find that she was talking too much about her husband for a disillusioned wo
man.
After a pause of a few moments as if she feared to approach the fatal spot, she
resumed thus:
One day M. de Cosmelly wanted to return to Paris; it was necessary that I should
shine in my own light and be in a setting worthy of my merit. A beautiful and cl
ever woman, he said, owes herself to Paris. She must know how to pose before soc
iety, and shed some of her reflected light on her husband. A woman of noble mind
and good sense knows that she has no glory to expect in the world save in so fa
r as she shares the glory of her travelling companion, serves the virtues of her
husband, and above all, that she obtains respect only in so far as she makes hi
m respected. Of course, it was the simplest, surest way of getting himself obeye
d almost joyously. To know that my efforts and my obedience would make me more b
eautiful in his eyes: it did not require even as much as that to decide me to fa
ce this terrible Paris, of which I was instinctively afraid, and the black, dazz
ling ghost of which, looming on the horizon of my dreams, sent a shudder through
my poor girlish heart. That then, according to him, was the real reason for our
journey. A husband s vanity constitutes the virtue of a loving wife. Perhaps he w
as lying to himself in a sort of well-meaning way, and cheating his conscience w
ithout being aware of it.
In Paris we had days reserved for close friends of whom, in the long run, M. de
Cosmelly got bored as he had got bored with his wife. Perhaps he had got a littl
e disgusted with her because she was too loving; she kept none of her love back.
He got disgusted with his friends for the opposite reason. They had nothing to
offer him save the monotonous pleasures of conversations where passion has no sh
are. Henceforth, his activity took another direction. After his friends came hor
ses and cards. The hum and stir of society, the sight of those who had remained
unfettered, and who gave endless accounts of the memories of a mad, busy youth,
snatched him from his fireside and our long intimate talks. He who had never had
any business but his heart, became a busy man. Rich and without profession, he
managed to create a crowd of bustling, frivolous occupations which filled all hi
s time. Where are you going? At what time shall I see you again? Come back quickly
se wifely questions I had to thrust back again down into the depths of my heart:
for English life that death of love the life of clubs and meetings absorbed him
completely. The exclusive care he took of his person, and the dandyism he affec
ted, shocked me to begin with; obviously I was not the object of it. I tried to
be like him, to be more than beautiful, that is to say to be coquettish, attract
ive for him as he was for everybody; where formerly I used to offer everything a
nd give everything, now I wanted to be pleaded with. I wanted to rekindle the as
hes of my dead happiness by shaking and stirring them; but apparently I am not v
ery clever at deception, and very awkward at vice. He did not even condescend to
notice it. My aunt, cruel like all old and envious women, who are reduced to ad
miring a show in which they were formerly actresses, took great care to let me k
now, through the interested medium of a cousin of M. de Cosmelly s, that he had fa
llen in love with an actress who was then the rage. I made them take me to all t
he plays, and, at the appearance on the stage of every good-looking woman I trem
bled lest I was admiring my rival. Finally, by the charity of the same cousin, I
learned that it was Fanfarlo, an actress as stupid as she was beautiful. You wh
o are an author, you know her of course. I am not very vain or proud of my looks
, but I swear to you, M. Cramer, that many a time at night, about three or four
in the morning, tired of waiting for my husband, my eyes red with tears and lack
of sleep, after long and beseeching prayers for his return to fidelity and duty
, I asked God, my conscience, and my mirror, if I was as beautiful as that wretc
hed Fanfarlo. My mirror and my conscience replied Yes . God forbade me to be proud
of it, but did not forbid me to derive a legitimate victory from the fact. Why,
then, between two equal beauties, do men often prefer the flower whose perfume e
very one has inhaled to that which had always kept aloof from passers-by in the
darkest walks of the conjugal garden? Why is it, then, that women who are prodig
al with their bodies, a treasure of which only one sultan should have the key, p
ossess more adorers than we others, unfortunate martyrs of a solitary love? What
is the magic charm which vice sets like a halo on the brow of certain creatures
? What awkward and repulsive aspect does virtue lend to certain others? Tell me,
you who from your profession must know all the sentiments of life and their var
ious reasons.
Samuel had no time to reply, for she continued ardently:
M. de Cosmelly has very grave things on his conscience if the loss of a young and
virginal soul interests the God who created it for the happiness of another. If
M. de Cosmelly were to die this very evening he would have a great many pardons
to implore; for, by his fault, he has taught his wife dreadful sentiments, susp
icion of a loved one, and the thirst for revenge. Ah, monsieur, I spend nights o
f great sorrow and sleepless anxiety: I pray, I curse, I blaspheme. The priest t
ells me I must bear my cross with resignation, but you cannot teach resignation
to insane love and shattered faith. My confessor is not a woman, and I love my h
usband; I love him with all the passion and all the grief of a mistress beaten a
nd trodden under foot. There is nothing I have not tried. Instead of the dark an
d simple dresses that formerly pleased his eye, I have worn dresses as crazy and
sumptuous as those of actresses. I, the chaste wife whom he had discovered hidd
en in an old château, I paraded before him dressed like a courtesan. I made myself
witty and gay when death was in my heart. I spangled my despair with glittering
smiles. I put on rouge, sir, I put on rouge! You see it is a banal story, the s
tory of all unhappy women, a provincial novel!
Whilst she was sobbing, Samuel looked like Tartuffe in the grasp of Orgon, the u
nexpected husband who springs from his hiding place, as the virtuous sobs of the
lady sprang from her heart, seizing our poet s tottering hypocrisy by the scruff
of the neck.
Madame de Cosmelly s extreme self-abandonment, her freedom and confidence had prod
igiously emboldened, without astonishing him. Samuel Cramer, who has often aston
ished the world, scarcely ever was astonished. In his life he seemed to try to p
ractise and demonstrate the truth of that thought of Diderot s: Incredulity is some
times the vice of a fool, and credulity the defect of a man of wit. The man of w
it sees far into the immensity of the possible. The fool scarcely ever conceives
as possible anything save what actually is. It is that perhaps which makes the
one timid and the other bold . This is the reply to everything. No doubt some scru
pulous readers, who love probable truth, will find many objections to this story
, in which, however, all I have had to do was to change the names and accentuate
certain details; how is it, they will say, that Samuel Cramer, a poet of doubtf
ul tone and morals, can so quickly approach a woman like Madame de Cosmelly? And
how can he, apropos of a Scott novel, flood her with a torrent of romantic and
banal poetry? How can Madame de Cosmelly, the discreet and virtuous spouse, pour
out to him, without shame or mistrust, the secret of her sorrows? To which I re
ply that Madame de Cosmelly was a simple, beautiful soul, and that Samuel was bo
ld like all butterflies, cockchafers and poets: he threw himself into all sorts
of flames and entered all sorts of windows. Diderot s thought explains why one was
so abandoned, and the other so brusque and so shameless. It explains, too, all
the blunders Samuel committed in his life, blunders which a fool would not have
committed. That portion of the public which is essentially pusillanimous will ha
rdly understand the character of Samuel, who was essentially credulous and imagi
native, to the point of believing as a poet, in his public as a man, in his own pass
ions.
Now he perceived that this woman was stronger, more precipitous than she seemed,
and that he must not dash, bull-headed, at this candid piety. Once more he serv
ed up his romantic jargon. Ashamed at having been stupid, he tried to be a roué; f
or a time he still spoke to her in a jesuitical strain of wounds to be closed or
cauterized by opening fresh wounds which would bleed freely and painlessly. Any
body who, without possessing the absolutory power of Valmont or Lovelace, has de
sired to possess a decent woman who was not very interested, knows with what rid
iculous and emphatic awkwardness every one says, showing his heart: Take my bear .
This will dispense me from explaining to you how stupid Samuel was. Madame de Co
smelly, that amiable Elmire, who had the clear and prudent vision of virtue, saw
promptly what advantage she could gain from this novice of a scoundrel, for her
own happiness and for her husband s honour. She therefore paid him in the same co
in; she let him squeeze her hand; she spoke of friendship and Platonic matters.
She murmured the word, vengeance; she said that in these painful crises of a wom
an s life, one would willingly give to the avenger whatever was left of a heart ab
andoned by perfidy, and other dramatic sillinesses and marivaudage. In short, sh
e played the coquette for a worthy purpose, and our young roué, who was simpler th
an a savant, promised to snatch Fanfarlo from M. de Cosmelly and rid him of the
courtesan, hoping to find in the arms of the decent woman the reward of this mer
itorious work. It is only poets who are naive enough to invent monstrosities of
this sort.
Chapter 5
A rather comic detail of this story, a sort of intermezzo to the painful drama w
hich was about to be played between these four characters, was the misunderstand
ing about Samuel s sonnets; for in the matter of sonnets he was incorrigible; one
for Madame de Cosmelly, in which he praised, in mystic style, her Beatrice- like
beauty, her voice, the angelic purity of her eyes, the chastity of her gait, et
c., the other for Fanfarlo, in which he served her up a ragout of gallantries wi
th enough seasoning to sting the most experienced palate, a type of poetry, by t
he way, in which he was a past master, and in which he had long ago outstripped
the most Andalusian of Andalusians. The first morsel went to the creature, who t
hrew this dish of cucumber into her cigar-box; the second to the poor deserted o
ne, who first stared, then finally understood, and, despite her grief, could not
help bursting out laughing as in better days.
Samuel went to the theatre and began to study Fanfarlo on the boards. He found h
er light, magnificent, vigorous, full of taste in her accoutrements, and conside
red M. de Cosmelly very lucky to be able to ruin himself for such a piece.
He presented himself twice at her house, a villa with velvety staircase, full of
portieres and carpets, in a new and leafy district, but under no reasonable pre
text could he gain admission. A declaration of love was a profoundly useless and
dangerous thing. One rebuff would have prevented him from returning. As for get
ting himself introduced, he learnt that Fanfarlo never received. A few close fri
ends saw her from time to time. What could he say or do in the house of a dancer
magnificently salaried and maintained, and adored by her lover? What could he b
ring her, he who was neither tailor nor dressmaker, ballet master, or millionair
e? He therefore took a brutal and simple decision: Fanfarlo must come to him. At
this period, critical and eulogistic articles had more value than now. The faci
lities of the feuilleton, as a worthy lawyer recently said in a sadly celebrated
case, were much greater than to-day; a few talented artists having sometimes ca
pitulated to the journalists, the influence of these adventurous and hair- brain
ed youths no longer knew any bounds. So Samuel undertook he who did not know a wor
d of music the special work of criticizing lyrical plays.
Henceforth Fanfarlo was weekly and savagely slated in the bottom columns of an i
mportant paper. It was impossible to say, or even hint that her legs, ankles, or
knees were badly shaped; the muscles played beneath the stocking, and every ope
ra-glass would have cried blasphemy. She was accused of of being brutal, common,
devoid of taste, of wanting to import to our stage habits from beyond the Rhine
or the Pyrenees, castanets, spurs, high heels, not to mention the fact that she
drank like a trooper, was too fond of little dogs and her caretaker s daughter, a
nd other dirty linen of private life which is the daily meat and relish of certa
in little newspapers. With those tactics peculiar to journalists, who insist on
comparing dissimilar things, he held up against her an ethereal dancer, always d
ressed in white, whose chaste movements left every conscience at rest. Sometimes
, Fanfarlo shouted and laughed very loudly to the pit when she finished a bound
at the footlights; she dared to walk while dancing. Never did she wear those ins
ipid gauzy dresses which show everything and leave nothing to the imagination. S
he loved stuffs that made a noise, long, crackling, spangled, tinselled dresses,
which have to be lifted very high with a vigorous knee, the kind of corsages wo
rn by mountebanks; she danced not with curls, but with ear-rings, I might say ca
ndelabras. She would have liked to have tied a crowd of little dolls to the bott
om of her skirts, like those old gipsies who tell your fortune with a threatenin
g air, and who are to be met at high noon under the arcades of Roman ruins; drol
leries all of which the romantic Samuel, one of the last romantics possessed by
France, very much adored.
So much so, that having run down Fanfarlo for three months, he fell madly in lov
e with her, and she finally wanted to know who was the monster, the heart of bro
nze, the pedant, the half-wit who so obstinately denied the royalty of her geniu
s.
This much justice must be accorded to Fanfarlo; all that actuated her was idle c
uriosity, nothing more. Had such a man really a nose in the middle of his face,
and was he shaped quite like his fellow-beings? When, after having made one or t
wo inquiries about Samuel, and learnt that he was a man like any other, of some
sense and some talent, she understood vaguely that there was some mystery, and t
hat this terrible Monday article might very well be only a peculiar sort of week
ly bouquet, or the visiting card of an obstinate suitor.
He found her one evening in her box. Two great candles and a big fire made their
lights flicker on the motley costumes which littered this boudoir.
The queen of the place, about to leave the theatre, was reassuming the garb of a
n ordinary mortal and, crouched in a chair, was putting on her shoes, shamelessl
y revealing an adorable leg; her hands, plumply slender, made the lace of the bu
skin play through the eyelet holes like an agile shuttle, without a thought of t
he skirt which should have been pulled down. The leg was already for Samuel an o
bject of eternal desire. Long, slender, strong, plump yet sinewy, it had all the
correctness of the beautiful, and all the wanton allure of the pretty. Had it b
een dissected perpendicularly at its widest place, this leg would have offered a
sort of triangle whose apex would have been situated on the tibia, and of which
the rounded line of the calf would have furnished the convex base. A regular ma
n s leg is too hard, the women s legs drawn by Devéria are too soft to give you an ide
a of it.
In this agreeable attitude, her head, bent towards her foot, displayed a procons
ular neck, broad and strong, and allowed one to guess at the line of the shoulde
r-blades covered with brown abundant flesh. The thick, heavy hair fell forward o
n both sides, tickling her bosom and blinding her eyes, so that at every other m
oment she had to disturb and toss it back. A petulant, charming impatience, like
that of a spoiled child who finds that things are not going fast enough, animat
ed the whole creature and her clothing, and at every instant disclosed new point
s of view, new effects of line and colour.
Samuel stopped respectfully, or pretended to stop respectfully; for with this co
nfounded fellow the great problem is always to know where the actor begins.
Ah! there you are, monsieur! she said to him without disturbing herself, though sh
e had been told a few minutes previously about Samuel s visit.
You ve something to ask me, haven t you?
The sublime impudence of these words went straight to poor Samuel s heart; he had
chattered like a romantic magpie for a whole week at Madame de Cosmelly s; here he
quietly replied:
Yes, madame!
And tears came to his eyes.
That had an enormous success. Fanfarlo smiled.
And what insect has been stinging you, monsieur, that you bite at me so savagely?
What a frightful profession
Frightful indeed, madame. The fact is, I adore you.
I thought as much, replied Fanfarlo. But you are a monster. These are abominable ta
ctics. Poor girls that we are! she added laughing. Flore, my bracelet. Give me you
r arm to my carriage, and tell me whether you liked me this evening.
They went off thus, arm in arm, like two old friends. Samuel was in love, or at
least felt his heart beating hard. He was perhaps odd, but certainly, this time
he was not ridiculous.
In his joy, he had almost forgotten to warn Madame de Cosmelly of his success, a
nd to bring hope to her deserted home.
A few days afterwards, Fanfarlo was playing the part of Columbine in a huge pant
omime created for her by some men of genius. Here, by an agreeable succession of
transformations, she appeared in the characters of Columbine, Marguerite, Elvir
e and Zépherine, and, in the gayest possible way, received the kisses of several g
enerations of personages borrowed from various countries and various literatures
. A great musician had not disdained to write a fantastic score appropriate to t
he queerness of the subject. Fanfarlo was, in turn, respectable, fairy-like, mad
, mirthful; she was sublime in her art, as much an actress with her legs as a da
ncer with her eyes.
In our country the art of dancing is too much despised, let me say in passing. A
ll great nations, first of all those of the ancient world, those of India and Ar
abia have cultivated it to the same extent as poetry. Dancing is as much above m
usic, for certain pagan temperaments at least, as the visible and created are ab
ove the invisible and uncreated: only those can understand me to whom music give
s pictorial ideas. Dancing can reveal all the mystery hidden in music, and it ha
s, moreover, the merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms
and legs: it is matter, graceful and terrible, beautified by movement. Terpischo
re is a southern muse; I presume she was very dark, and often shook her feet in
the golden wheat; her movements, full of precise cadence, are so many divine mot
ifs for the sculptor. But Fanfarlo, the Catholic, not content with rivalling Ter
pischore, called to her aid all the art of more modern divinities. Commingled in
the mists are forms of fairies and water-sprites less diaphanous and less nonch
alant. She was at once a Shakespearean caprice and an Italian drollery.
The poet was delighted; he thought he saw before his eyes the dream of his earli
est days. He would willingly have cut ridiculous capers in his box and bumped hi
s head against something in the mad intoxication that possessed him.
A low, close-curtained carriage rapidly carried the poet and the dancer towards
the villa of which I have spoken.
Our man expressed his admiration by silent kisses which he fervently showered on
her hands and feet. She too admired him very much, not that she was ignorant of
the power of her charms, but she had not met a man so odd or a passion so elect
ric.
Chapter 6
The weather was black as the grave, and the wind, rocking together masses of clo
uds, from their joltings drew down a shower of rain and hail.
A great tempest shook the attics, and made the steeples moan; the gutter, that f
unereal bed which swallows up the love letters and orgies of last night, foaming
ly swept along its thousand secrets to the sewers: mortality swooped joyously do
wn on the hospitals, and the Chattertons and Savages of the Rue Saint-Jacques cl
enched their frozen fingers over their writing decks, when the most false, the m
ost greedy, the most sensual, the most witty of our friends sat down before a fi
ne supper and a good table in the company of one of the most beautiful women eve
r fashioned by nature for the pleasure of the eyes. Samuel wanted to open the wi
ndow to cast a conqueror s glance over the accursed town; then lowering his gaze t
o the various felicities which he had beside him, he hastened to enjoy them.
In the company of such things he had to be eloquent; so despite his too high bro
w, his hair like a virgin forest and his snuff-taker s nose, Fanfarlo found that h
e was almost right.
Samuel and Fanfarlo had exactly the same ideas about cooking and the diet necess
ary to creatures of the élite. Silly meats, insipid fish were excluded from the su
ppers of this siren.
Champagne rarely dishonoured her table. The most celebrated and most perfumed Bo
rdeaux yielded place to the heavy serried battalion of the Burgundies, the wines
of Auvergne, of Anjou and the south, and of the foreign wines, German, Greek, S
panish. Samuel was accustomed to say that a glass of real wine should resemble a
bunch of black grapes, and that in it there was as much meat as drink. Fanfarlo
loved bleeding meats, and wines laden with intoxication. However, she never got
drunk. Both professed a sincere and profound esteem for the truffle. The truffl
e, that secret and mysterious vegetation of Cybele s, that savoury malady which sh
e has hidden in her entrails longer than the most precious metal, that exquisite
matter which defies the science of the agronomist, as did gold that of the Para
celsuses; the truffle which marks the distinction between the old and the modern
world, and which, before a glass of Chian, produces the effect of several zeros
after a figure.
As to the question of sauces, ragouts, and seasonings, a grave question which wo
uld demand a chapter as grave as a scientific paper, I can assure you that they
were in perfect agreement, especially upon the necessity of calling in the whole
pharmacy of nature to the aid of the kitchen. Pimentos, English powders, saffro
ns, colonial substances, exotic dusts, all would have seemed good to them, nay,
even musk and incense.
Were Cleopatra alive now, I am certain she would have liked to do up fillets of
steak or roebuck with Arabian perfumes. It is certainly deplorable that the cord
ons bleus of to-day are not constrained by a special law to know the chemical pr
operties of matter, and are incapable of discovering, for special cases, like th
at of an amorous banquet, almost inflammable culinary ingredients swift to invad
e the organic system, like prussic acid, or to volatilize, like ether.
Curiously enough, this harmony of opinions on the question of good living, this
similitude of tastes, formed a strong bond of union; that profound understanding
of sensual life which shone in every one of Samuel s looks and words, struck Fanf
arlo very forcibly. That speech, now brutal as a numeral, now delicate and perfu
med as a flower or a sachet, that strange conversation, the secret of which was
known to him alone, completely won for him the good graces of this charming lady
. Besides, it was not without deep and lively satisfaction that he recognized, o
n inspecting the bedroom, a perfect confraternity of taste and sentiments in the
matter of furniture and interior arrangements. Cramer hated profoundly, and in
my opinion he was perfectly right, the straight line in apartments, and the intr
oduction of architecture into the house. The huge rooms of old châteaux terrify me
, and I pity the châtelaines for having been forced to make love in great dormitor
ies which looked like cemeteries, in huge catafalques calling themselves beds, o
r great monuments which used to assume the pseudonym of arm-chairs. The apartmen
ts of Pompeii are the size of your hand; the Indian ruins that cover the coast o
f Malabar reveal the same system. Those great, voluptuous and wise races underst
ood the question perfectly. The intimate sentiments can only be evoked in a very
narrow space.
Fanfarlo s bedroom, then, was very little, very low, cluttered up with soft things
, perfumed and dangerous to touch; the air, laden with queer miasmas, made one w
ant to expire slowly as if in a hot-house. The light of the lamp played on a con
fusion of laces and stuffs of a violent but equivocal hue. Here and there, on th
e wall, it lit up a few paintings full of Spanish voluptuousness; very white fle
sh-tints against very dark backgrounds. It was in the depths of this delightful
hovel, which smacked at once of the bagnio and the sanctuary, that Samuel saw, a
dvancing towards him, the new goddess of his heart in the radiant and sacred spl
endour of her nudity.
Where is the man who, even at the cost of half a lifetime, would not wish to see
his dream, his real dream, pose unveiled before him, and the adored phantom of
his imagination drop, one by one, the garments designed as a protection against
the vulgar gaze? But here was Samuel, seized by a queer caprice, beginning to sh
out like a spoiled child: I want Columbine. Give me back Columbine! Give her back
to me as she appeared to me the evening she made me mad with her fantastic trap
pings and her mountebank s corsage!
Fanfarlo, at first astonished, was quite willing to lend herself to the eccentri
city of the man she had chosen, and Flore was summoned; it was no use the latter
representing that it was three o clock in the morning, that everything was locked
up at the theatre, the concierge asleep, the weather frightful the storm was stil
l raging; she who herself obeyed, had to be obeyed, and the chambermaid went out
. Suddenly Cramer, seized with a new idea, clung to the bell-pull, and shouted i
n a voice of thunder:
Hey, don t forget the rouge!
This characteristic trait, which was related by Fanfarlo herself one evening whe
n her comrades were asking her about the beginning of her liaison with Samuel, i
n no way astonished me; I well recognized in this the author of the Ospreys. He
will always love rouge and ceruse, chrysocolla and tinsel of every sort. He woul
d be quite prepared to repaint the trees and the sky, and if God had entrusted h
im with the plan of nature, perhaps he would have spoiled it.
Though Samuel had a depraved imagination, and perhaps for that very reason, love
was with him less an affair of the senses than of the reason. It was, above all
, admiration and appetite for beauty; reproduction he regarded as a vice of love
, pregnancy a spiderish disease. Somewhere he has written: Angels are hermaphrodi
tic and sterile . He loved a human body like a material harmony, like a fine piece
of architecture plus movement; and this absolute materialism was not far remove
d from the purest idealism. But, as in beauty, which is the cause of love, there
were, according to him, two elements: line and appeal and because all this conc
erns only line the appeal for him, at least that evening, was rouge.
So Fanfarlo summed up for him line and appeal: and when, seated on the edge of t
he bed, in the care- free, victorious tranquillity of the loved woman, her hands
delicately resting upon him, Samuel looked at her, it seemed to him that he saw
the infinite behind the bright eyes of this beauty, and that gradually his own
looked down on immense horizons. Besides, as often happens with exceptional men,
he was often alone in his paradise, none being able to inhabit it with him. And
if, by chance, he ravished and dragged her thither almost by force, she always
lagged behind; consequently in the heaven where it held sway, his love began to
be sick and sad of an azure melancholy like a solitary king. However, he never g
ot tired of her; never, on leaving his amorous retreat, walking briskly on a pav
ement in the fresh morning air, did he experience that selfish cigar and hands-i
n-pocket enjoyment of which our great novelist somewhere speaks.
If he had no heart, Samuel had a noble intelligence and, instead of gratitude, e
njoyment had engendered in him that luscious contentment, that sensual dreamines
s which is perhaps better than love as the vulgar understand it. Besides, Fanfar
lo had done her best and dispensed her most cunning caresses, having observed th
at the man was worth the trouble: she had grown accustomed to that mystic langua
ge variegated with impurities and enormous crudities. That had for her at least
the attraction of novelty.
The dancer s escapade had made its scandal. There were several no performances on th
e bill; she had neglected rehearsals; many people envied Samuel.
One evening when chance, M. de Cosmelly s ennui, or some complicated manouvre of h
is wife s, had brought them together at the fireside; after one of those long sile
nces which occur in household where husband and wife have nothing more to say to
each other, or a great deal to conceal; after having made him the best possible
tea in a very modest and very cracked teapot, perhaps still the one from her au
nt s château; after having sung at the piano a few selections from music in vogue te
n years ago; she said to him, with the sweet and prudent voice of virtue anxious
to be amiable and afraid of scaring the object of its affections, that she piti
ed him very much, that she cried a lot, more about him than about herself; that
she would have liked at least, in her very submissive and devoted resignation, t
hat he might have found elsewhere than with her the love which he no longer want
ed from his wife; that she had suffered more at seeing him deceived than at bein
g herself abandoned; that, besides, she was very much to blame, that she had for
gotten her tender, wifely duties in not warning her husband of the danger; that,
besides, she was quite ready to close that bleeding wound, and by herself alone
to repair an imprudence committed by both, etc., and all the honeyed words sugg
ested by a cunning authorized by love. She wept, and wept well: the fire lit up
her tears and a face beautified by sorrow.
M. de Cosmelly did not say a word and went out. Men caught in the snare of their
faults dislike making an offering of their remorse to clemency. If he went to F
anfarlo s he would doubtless find traces of disorder, cigar ends, and newspapers.
One morning Samuel was awakened by the roguish voice of Fanfarlo, and slowly rai
sed his tired head from the pillow where it was resting to read a letter which s
he handed to him.
Thanks, monsieur, a thousand thanks; my happiness and gratitude will be noted to
your credit in a better world. I accept. I am taking back my husband from your h
ands and am carrying him off this evening to our estate at C , where I am going to
recover the health and the life I owe to you. Receive, monsieur, the promise of
an eternal friendship. I have always believed you to be too fine a man not to p
refer one more friendship to any other reward.
Samuel, wallowing in lace, and leaning over one of the coolest and most beautifu
l shoulders it is possible to see, felt vaguely that he was tricked, and had som
e difficulty in marshalling in his memory the elements of the plot, the dénouement
of which he had brought about; but he said to himself quietly:
Are our passions really sincere? Who can know with certainty what he wants, and k
now exactly the barometer of his heart?
What s that you re muttering? What is it? I want to see, said Fanfarlo.
Oh, nothing, said Samuel. A letter from a nice woman to whom I promised that I d make
you love me.
I ll make you pay for that, she hissed.
It is probable that Fanfarlo loved Samuel, but with that love known to so few so
uls, with spite at the bottom of it. As for him, he had been punished where he s
inned. He had so often aped passion, he was forced to know it; but it was not th
e tranquil, calm and strong love that decent girls inspire, it was the terrible,
desolating and shameful love, the sickly love of the courtesan. Samuel knew all
the tortures of jealousy, and the degradation and sadness into which we are cas
t by the consciousness of an incurable, constitutional malady; in short, all the
horrors of that vicious marriage which is called concubinage. As for her, she i
s getting stouter every day; she has become a plump, fresh, shining, and artful
beauty, a sort of ministerial tart. One of these days she will take the Easter C
ommunion and will hand out the consecrated bread to the parish. At that period p
erhaps, Samuel, killed by hard labour, will be nailed down by the planks, as he
used to say in the good old days, and Fanfarlo, looking like a canoness, will tu
rn the head of some young heir. Meantime she is learning how to have children; s
he has just been happily delivered of twins. Samuel has given birth to four lear
ned books: a book on the four evangelists, another on the symbolism of colours,
a memoir on a new advertising system, and a fourth, the title of which I do not
wish to remember. The most frightful thing about the last one is that it is full
of verve, energy, and curiosities. Samuel had the nerve to give it the epigraph
: Auri sacra fames! Fanfarlo wants her husband to get into the Academy, and she
is intriguing at the Ministry to procure him the cross.
Poor singer of the Ospreys! Poor Manuela de Monteverde! He has fallen very low.
I recently learned that he was founding a socialist newspaper, trying to enter p
olitics. Intellectually dishonest! to quote that honest man, M. Nisard.