Chapter III: Part 3

But to return to the charge we have mentioned, which is still made in some quarters, and which, at the most, will apply less to matter than to manner. Let each individual test the question by his own sentiment and judgment. Who has put down one of George Sand's books and felt himself less pure from the reading? Nay, more, who has gone from its perusal without a quickened admiration of virtue and a corresponding dislike of vice? If our sympathies are frequently aroused for the transgressor, is this something of which to be ashamed in itself? If we look at the offences laid to the charge of the author, is there not found a manifest purpose on her part to present a victim who will arouse interest enough to give force to the author's denunciations of the system she would overthrow, and to whose charge she would ascribe the offence of her victim? Are these victims impure of heart and vicious of purpose? The charge in question is mainly directed at _Indiana_, _Valentine_, and _Lélia_. Let us see what Madame Sand says in a letter in 1842: "I find society abandoned to the most dreadful disorder, and in the front rank of the iniquities to which I see it given over are the relations of the sexes, which I regard as being regulated in the most unjust and ridiculous manner.... Love, fidelity, and motherhood are, notwithstanding, the most necessary, the most important, and the most sacred things in a woman's life." Her attacks were directed, be it understood, not against marriage, but against the debasing and unjust conditions under which, in her judgment, a woman's marriage placed her, and against which Madame Sand revolted, and gloried in her revolt. Her fault, if it must be called such, is that her sentiment was aroused, and the exuberance of her eloquence and the vividness of her imagination impelled her to a directness of attack that spared nothing. Nor were the conditions of society confronting the author such as to suggest concession on her part, and it is difficult to see how the prevailing taste should have been shocked, at least by her matter. But there was another powerful opposition--a religious one.

To certain practices and duties of the Roman Catholic Church, George Sand could not bend her conscience, and her conviction thereon is found in a letter to a curé, written in 1844, in which she says: "Since the spirit of liberty has been suppressed in the Church, since in Catholic doctrine there is no longer a place for discussions, counsels, progress, or light, I regard that doctrine as a dead letter set as a political check under thrones and above peoples. It is for me a dark veil obscuring the word of Christ--a false interpretation of the sublime Gospels, and an insurmountable obstacle to the sacred equality that God promises, which God will grant to men, on earth as in Heaven." Hence it was that our author found herself at variance with the ecclesiastical teaching; but it seems somewhat difficult to find in her works an anti-Christ belief; she is full of faith in the divine love and mercy; hers is a broad, tolerant creed. A great stride has been made toward liberality in religious belief since George Sand wrote the works that were attacked, and it is not likely that on this score they would arouse any serious outcry against their author had they been written in these days.

But to the two points we have indicated--for the pardonable eccentricities of the woman scarcely deserve notice--is due the denunciation of George Sand's works. What, then, must be the power, the rare qualities, which made them triumph over powerful opposition and acquired for the author a world-wide fame, and which during her life secured her the homage and esteem of her nation? Monsieur de Latouche, her first literary mentor, said: "Your qualities transcend your defects." These qualities are a vivid poetic imagination, a passionate love of nature, a sincere and loyal purpose, a tender sympathy for the weak and oppressed, an innate hatred of injustice, a keenly observant mind, a prompt and vigorous power of analysis of the human heart and mind, and an eloquence that is irresistible. It is almost useless to compare George Sand with any other writer. She stands alone; her mind and her energy are virile, her heart is a woman's. When all allowance is made for defects of style, for the family likeness perceived in many of her characters, for the discursive tendency that is at times marked, and for the weakness of the dramatic element--we are conscious of a charm that enchants, an interest that entrains, and a skill that engrosses. She sought no model, looked to no teachers; but presented an ideal. She wrote as she believed; her individuality is inseparable from her works; hence, no little of their charm. To use her own words, the reader "feels he has to do with a living soul, not with a mere instrument."

Of the woman, it is less easy to speak. She was early placed in a singular position; lacking the prudent and consistent training that might have produced more settled views and different tendencies, she was left to form her own opinions out of the chaotic instruction she had obtained. Contradictory elements were at work about and within her. Her heart was loving and tender, her impulses affectionate and good; but before her judgment could be formed, her affections were bruised, her tenderness was slighted.

Buffeted by the storms of passion and grief, George Sand's true life as a woman can hardly be said to have commenced till she settled down at Nohant in the full repossession of her children and her home. In the unrestrained enjoyment of her duties as a mother, we find the woman. How peaceful, how lovely, was that life with her family and friends about her! All the treasures of her soul were lavishly bestowed on her children; their present enjoyment and their future welfare her happiness and care; and, as the years roll on, the same tenderness is bestowed on her grandchildren. Madame Sand's letters throw a brilliant light on this heart-satisfying life, during which her literary work was carried on unceasingly, or only interrupted by occasional visits to Paris on business, or to seek clemency at the hand of the Emperor on behalf of some political victims, or by trips for health.

We find her bestowing of her earnings in charity to those in need about her, and helping modestly to alleviate the sufferings of those with whom she is brought in contact; helping with advice and encouragement those who seek her counsel in literary matters; coming forth from her solitude when national peril threatens, and stirring with the fervor of her eloquence as she had appealed to her countrymen on political and social questions. Happily, these latter wanderings from her true vocation, brilliant as they were, were not for long periods; but it is interesting to note that from first to last she espoused the cause of the people without wavering. Her instincts were wholly democratic, nor, although time and careful observation later imposed restraint on the former impetuous journalist, did she at any time sacrifice an iota of her principles; only, she came to recognize that it was impossible to change the course of society by a theoretical exposition of principles, and abandoned the idea of curing social ills by mere strenuous declamation.

In 1870, when the darkest hours were gathering over her beloved country, and its future government was at stake, her invincible faith in humanity was reiterated. She writes: "Let us believe in humanity, for he who doubts it, doubts himself." She had learned by experience that patient waiting is a virtue, that events cannot be forced to an untimely issue with good results. "I have seen revolutions," she writes in 1872, "and closely observed the actors in them; I sounded the depths of their souls,--I should perhaps say, of their bags: lack of principles!"

In reviewing her life, in 1872, George Sand writes to Gustave Flaubert: "Do not laugh at the principles of a very candid child, principles which I held throughout life, through _Lélia_ and the romantic period, through love and doubt, through enthusiasm and disappointment. Love, self-sacrifice, the repossession of my own self only in cases where my sacrifice was hurtful to the objects of it, and further abnegation with the hope of serving some true cause,--such has been my life, such my conception of love." Madame Sand is not here speaking of personal passion, but of the love of the species, of the extension of the sentiment of self-love, of the horror of _self only_.

In the literary beginnings of younger authors George Sand took the warmest interest, and unsparingly and judiciously advised and encouraged them. Her counsel and tender solicitude in the case of Flaubert and many others show how large was her heart and how untiring her aid. Concerning her views on her art, her opinion is well expressed in a letter written in the last year of her life: "Art should be the seeking for truth, and the latter consists in something more than representing evil or good. The _artiste_ who notices but the blemishes is as incomplete as he who brings forth only good qualities." The imaginative played in Madame Sand a greater part than the real. Love was the force out of which all that is good or just should spring; she says: "He who abstains from love, abstains from justice."

This great writer, whose works have triumphed over prejudice and secured her a homage that rarely falls to the lot of authors, was as unassuming as she was brilliant and fearless. She disliked all parade, and while ever ready and prompt to come to the front when circumstances rendered her prominence necessary or desirable, she preferred retirement. Of her literary claims she says, in her calm old age: "I have never entertained the pretension of being a first-rate writer. My object has been to react on my contemporaries, even were they only a few, and to induce them to partake of my ideal of meekness and poetry."

After an interval of usual reaction from great popularity, which George Sand's works have not escaped, a reawakened interest has come. Time has removed many prejudices, and her aim and intent are better understood. Of the multitude of works she has contributed, it is not too venturesome to assert that posterity will cherish many of her romances as classic treasures. As long as the human heart feels the burden of the real life, so long will men and women take delight and comfort in the ideal life; in wandering amid scenes that will shed a cheering ray to lighten the gloom and brighten the sadness of our real world. Nor will it be found that George Sand takes us so out of the reality that we shall experience only a mere wondering diversion. She indeed pictures life as it should, and might, be; but she also describes it as she sees it; she feels what she writes; she reads and interprets the "never-changing language of nature"; she recognizes that the romance must be human before all else, and assumes that true reality consists in a mixture of good and evil. Her writings are too interestingly human for humanity to lose its appreciation of those of them that are not precluded by special reasons from enjoying lasting fame.

J. A. B.

Philadelphia, 1902.

SHE AND HE

TO MADEMOISELLE JACQUES

"MY DEAR THÉRÈSE:

"Since you permit me not to call you mademoiselle, let me tell you an important piece of news in _the world of art_, as our friend Bernard says. Ah! there's a rhyme;[1] but what I am going to tell you has neither rhyme nor reason.

"Fancy that yesterday, after boring you with my visit, I found, on returning to my rooms, an English milord (by the way, perhaps he isn't a milord; but he surely is an Englishman), who said to me in his dialect:

"'Are you a painter?'

"'Yes, milord.'

"'You paint faces?'

"'Yes, milord.'

"'And the hands?'

"'Yes, milord; also the feet.'

"'Good!'

"'Very good!'

"'Oh! I am sure of it! well, would you like to paint my portrait?'

"'Yours?'

"'Why not?'

"The _why not_ was said with so much good humor, that I ceased to take him for an idiot, especially as this son of Albion is a magnificent man. He has the head of an Antinous on the shoulders of--well, of an Englishman; he is a Greek type of the best epoch on the bust, somewhat strangely dressed and cravatted, of a perfect specimen of Britannic _fashion_.

"'Faith!' said I, 'you are a fine model, that is sure, and I should like to make a study of you for my own benefit; but I cannot paint your portrait.'

"'Why not, pray?'

"'Because I am not a portrait-painter.'

"'Oh! Do you pay here in France for a license to practise this or that specialty in art?'

"'No; but the public doesn't permit us to follow more than one branch. They insist upon knowing what to expect, especially when we are young; and if I who am speaking, and who am very young, should have the ill-luck to paint a good portrait of you, I should find it very difficult to succeed at the next Exposition with anything but portraits; and, in like manner, if I made only a moderately good one, I should be forbidden ever to try another: the public would pass judgment to the effect that I had not the essential qualities of a portrait-painter, and that I was a presumptuous fellow to make the attempt.'

"I told my Englishman much more nonsense, which I spare you, and which made him open his eyes; after which he began to laugh, and I saw clearly that my arguments inspired in him the most profound contempt for France, if not for your humble servant.

"'Let us say the word,' he said. 'You do not like portrait-painting.'

"'What! what sort of a clown do you take me for? Say, rather, that I do not as yet dare to paint portraits, and that I could not do it, since it must be one of two things: either a specialty, which admits no rivals, or perfection, and, as one might say, the crown of talent. Certain painters, incapable of inventing anything, are able to copy faithfully and agreeably the living model. These are sure of success, provided that they have the knack of presenting the model in its most favorable aspect, and of costuming it becomingly while costuming it according to the fashion; but, when one is only a poor historical painter, very much of a novice, and of disputed talent, as I have the honor to be, one cannot contend against the people who make it a business. I confess that I have never studied conscientiously the folds of a black coat and the peculiar idiosyncrasies of a given face. I am unfortunate as an inventor of attitudes, types, and expressions. All these must yield to my subject, my idea, my dream, if you choose. If you would permit me to costume you to suit myself, and to place you in a picture of my own invention---- But no, that would be good for nothing, it wouldn't be you. It would not be a portrait to give your mistress--much less your lawful wife. Neither of them would recognize you. So do not ask me now to do what I may perhaps be able to do some day, if I ever happen to become a Rubens or a Titian, because then I can remain a poet and creator, while grasping, without effort and without fear, the potent and majestic reality. Unfortunately, it is not likely that I shall ever become anything more than a madman or a fool. Read Messieurs So-and-So and So-and-So, who have said as much in their criticisms.'

"You can imagine, Thérèse, that I did not say to my Englishman a word of what I have said to you; one can always arrange one's thoughts better when talking to one's self; but of all that I could say to excuse myself for not painting his portrait, nothing had any effect but these few words: 'Why the devil don't you apply to Mademoiselle Jacques?'

"He said _Oh_! three times, after which he asked me for your address, and off he went without the slightest comment, leaving me exceedingly confused and irritated because I could not finish my dissertation on portrait-painting; for, after all, my dear Thérèse, if that handsome brute of an Englishman comes to see you to-day, as I believe he is capable of doing, and repeats to you all I have written you, that is to say, all that I did not say to him, about the _faiseurs_ and the great masters, what will you think of your ungrateful friend? May he place you among the first, and judge you incapable of painting anything else than pretty portraits which please everybody! Ah! my dear friend, if you had heard all that I said to him about you--after he had gone! You know what it was; you know that in my eyes you are not Mademoiselle Jacques, who paints excellent portraits that are much in vogue, but a superior man disguised as a woman, who, although he has never made the Academy, divines and has the art of making others divine a whole body and a whole soul from a bust, after the manner of the great sculptors of antiquity and the great painters of the Renaissance. But I say no more; you are not fond of having people tell you what they think of you. You pretend to take such talk for mere compliments. You are very proud, Thérèse.

"I am altogether down in the mouth to-day, I don't know why. I breakfasted so poorly this morning--I have never eaten with so little satisfaction since I have had a cook. And then one cannot get any good tobacco nowadays. The government monopoly poisons you. And then I have a pair of new boots which don't fit at all. And then it rains. And then--and then--I don't know what. The days have been as long as days without bread, for some time past, don't you find them so? No, you don't, of course. You know nothing of this feeling of gloom, the pleasure that bores, the boredom that intoxicates, the nameless disease of which I spoke to you the other evening in the little lilac salon where I would like to be now; for I have a horrible light for painting, and not being able to paint, it would please me to bore you to death by my conversation.

"So I shall not see you to-day! You have an insupportable family who steal you from your most delightful friends! In that case I shall be driven to do some foolish thing this evening! Such is the effect of your kindness to me, my dear, tall comrade. It makes me so stupid and so good for nothing when I do not see you, that I absolutely must divert myself at the risk of shocking you. But never fear, I will not tell you how I employ my evening.

"Your friend and servant,

"LAURENT.

"May 11, 183--."

[Footnote 1: Dans le monde des arts, comme dit our friend Bernard.]

TO M. LAURENT DE FAUVEL

"First of all, my dear Laurent, I entreat you, if you have any friendship for me, not to indulge too often in foolish things which injure your health. I will wink at all others. You may ask me to mention one such, and I should be sadly embarrassed to do it; for I know very few foolish things which are not injurious. So I must needs find out what you call by that name. If you mean one of those long suppers you spoke about the other day, I think that they are killing you, and I am in despair. What are you thinking of, in God's name, to ruin thus, with a smile on your lips, an existence so precious and beautiful? But you want no sermons; I confine myself to prayers.

"As for your Englishman, who is an American, I have seen him, and as I shall not see you to-night or to-morrow, to my great regret, I must tell you that you were altogether wrong not to consent to do his portrait. He would have offered you the eyes out of his head, and with an American like Dick Palmer, the eyes out of his head means a goodly number of bank-notes, of which you stand in need to prevent you from doing foolish things, that is to say, from haunting gambling-houses in the hope of a stroke of fortune which never comes to people of imagination, because people of imagination do not know how to play cards, because they always lose, and because they must thereupon appeal to their imagination for the wherewithal to pay their debts--a trade to which that princess does not feel adapted, and to which she cannot adapt herself except by setting fire to the poor body she inhabits.

"You find me very outspoken, do you not? That does not matter to me. Moreover, if we approach the subject from a more exalted standpoint, all the reasons that you gave to your American and me are not worth two sous. That you do not know how to paint portraits is possible, nay, it is certain, if it must be done under the conditions which attend vulgar success in that art; but Monsieur Palmer did not stipulate that it should be so. You took him for a green-grocer, and you made a mistake. He is a man of judgment and taste, who knows what he is talking about, and who has an enthusiastic admiration for you. Judge whether I gave him a warm welcome! He came to me as a makeshift; I saw it plainly enough, and I was grateful to him for it. So I consoled him by promising to do all that I possibly could to induce you to paint him. We will talk about it the day after to-morrow, for I have made an appointment with the said Palmer for that evening, so that he may assist me to plead his own cause, and may carry away your promise.

"And now, my dear Laurent, console yourself as best you can for not seeing me for two days. It will not be difficult for you: you know many bright people, and you have a footing in the best society. For my part, I am only an old sermonizer who is very fond of you, who implores you not to go to bed late every night, and who advises you to carry nothing to excess or abuse. You have no right to do it: genius imposes obligations.

"Your comrade,

"THÉRÈSE JACQUES."

TO MADEMOISELLE JACQUES

MY DEAR THÉRÈSE:

"I start in two hours for the country, with the Comte de S---- and Prince D----. There will be youth and beauty in the party, so I am assured. I promise and swear to you to do nothing foolish and to drink no champagne--without reproaching myself bitterly therefor! What can you expect? I should certainly have preferred to lounge in your great studio, and talk nonsense in your little lilac salon; but since you are in retirement with your thirty-six provincial cousins, you will certainly not notice my absence the day after to-morrow; you will have the delicious music of the Anglo-American accent throughout the evening. Ah! so the excellent Monsieur Palmer's name is Dick? I thought that Dick was the familiar diminutive of Richard! To be sure, in the matter of languages, French is the only one I can claim to know.

"As for the portrait, let us say no more about it. You are a thousand times too motherly, my dear Thérèse, to think of my interests to the detriment of your own. Although you have a fine clientèle, I know that your generosity does not permit you to save money, and that a few bank-notes will be much more suitably placed in your hands than in mine. You will employ them in making others happy, and I should toss them on a card-table, as you say.

"Moreover, I have never been less in the mood for painting. One needs for that two things which you have, reflection and inspiration; I shall never have the first, and I _have had_ the second. So I am disgusted with it, as with an old witch who has exhausted me by galloping me across fields on the skinny back of her horse Apocalypse. I see clearly enough what I lack; with all respect to your good sense, I have not yet lived hard enough, and I am going away for three days or a week with Madame Reality, in the guise of divers nymphs of the Opéra _corps de ballet_. I hope, on my return, to be a most accomplished, that is to say, a most blasé and most reasonable man of the world.

"Your friend,

"LAURENT."

I

Thérèse understood perfectly, at first sight, the spleen and jealousy which dictated this letter.

"And yet," she said to herself, "he is not in love with me. Oh! no; he certainly will never be in love with any one, with me least of all."

But as she read and reread the letter and mused upon it, Thérèse feared lest she might deceive herself in seeking to convince herself that Laurent incurred no danger with her.

"But what danger?" she said to herself; "the danger of suffering for an unsatisfied caprice? Does one suffer much for a caprice? I have no idea myself. I never had one."

But the clock marked half-past five in the afternoon; and Thérèse, having put the key in her pocket, called for her hat, gave her servant leave of absence for twenty-four hours, laid several special injunctions upon her faithful old Catherine, and took a cab. Two hours later, she returned accompanied by a short, slender woman, slightly bent and closely veiled, whose face the driver did not see. She closeted herself with this mysterious individual, and Catherine served them a dainty little dinner. Thérèse waited upon and was most attentive to her guest, who gazed at her with such agitation and ecstasy that she could not eat.

Laurent, for his part, made his preparations for the projected trip to the country; but when Prince D---- called for him with his carriage, Laurent informed him that unexpected business would detain him two or three hours, and that he would join him in the country during the evening.

Laurent had no business, however. He had dressed himself in feverish haste. He had caused his hair to be arranged with special care. Then he had tossed his coat on a chair, and run his fingers through his too symmetrical curls, heedless of the effect he might thus produce. He paced the floor of his studio, now rapidly, now slowly. When Prince D---- had gone, making him promise ten times over that he would soon follow, he ran out to the stairs to ask him to wait and to say that he would throw over his business and go with him; but he did not recall him, but returned to his room, and threw himself on the bed.

"Why does she close her door to me for two days? There is something behind it! And when she makes an appointment with me for the third day, it is to make me meet an American or an Englishman whom I don't know! But she must certainly know this Palmer whom she calls by his diminutive! In that case, why in the deuce did he ask me for her address? Is it a feint? Why should she feign with me? I am not Thérèse's lover, I have no rights over her! Thérèse's lover! that I certainly shall never be. God preserve me from it! A woman who is five years older than I, perhaps more! Who can tell a woman's age, especially this woman's, of whom nobody knows anything? So mysterious a past must cover some monumental folly, perhaps a fully-matured disgrace. And for all that, she is a prude, a devotee, or a philosopher perhaps, who knows? She talks on every subject with such impartiality, or tolerance, or indifference---- Does any one know what she believes, what she doesn't believe, what she wants, what she loves, or even if she is capable of loving?"

Mercourt, a young critic and friend of Laurent, entered the studio.

"I know," he said, "that you are going to Montmorency. So I have simply looked in to ask you for an address, Mademoiselle Jacques's."

Laurent started.

"What the devil do you want of Mademoiselle Jacques?" he rejoined, pretending to be looking for cigarette-papers.

"I? nothing--that is to say, yes, I would like to know her; but I know her only by sight and reputation. I want her address for a person who is anxious to be painted."

"You know Mademoiselle Jacques by sight, you say?"

"_Parbleu_! she is altogether famous now, and who has not noticed her? She is made to be noticed!"

"You think so?"

"To be sure, and you?"

"I? I know nothing about it. I am very fond of her, so I am not a competent judge."

"You are very fond of her?"

"Yes, I admit it, you see; which proves that I am not paying court to her."

"Do you see her often?"

"Sometimes."

"Then you are her friend--seriously?"

"Well, yes, to some extent. Why do you laugh?"

"Because I don't believe a word of it; at twenty-four, one is not the serious friend of a--young and beautiful woman!"

"Bah! she is neither so young nor so beautiful as you say. She is a good comrade, not unpleasant to look at, that's all. But she belongs to a type that I don't like, and I am obliged to forgive her for being a blonde. I don't like blondes, except in painting."

"She is not so very light after all! her eyes are of a soft black, her hair is neither light nor dark, and she arranges it in a peculiar way. However, it's becoming to her: she has the look of an amiable sphinx."

"A very pretty comparison; but--you like tall women, it seems!"

"She is not very tall, and she has small feet and small hands. She is a true woman. I have examined her very carefully, being in love with her."

"I say, what are you thinking about?"

"It makes no difference to you, since, viewed as a woman simply, she doesn't attract you."

"My dear fellow, if she did attract me, it would be all the same. In that case, I should try to be on a more intimate footing with her than I am; but I should not be in love with her, that being a profession which I do not practise; consequently, I should not be jealous. So press your suit, if you think best."

"I shall, if I find the opportunity; but I have no time to seek it, and, at heart, I am like you, Laurent, perfectly disposed to be patient, since I am of an age and a society in which there is no lack of pleasure. But, as we are speaking of that woman, and as you know her, tell me--it is pure curiosity on my part--whether she is a widow or----"

"Or what?"

"I meant to say whether she is the widow of a lover or a husband."

"I have no idea."

"That isn't possible."

"On my word of honor, I never asked her. It makes no difference to me!"

"Do you know what people say?"

"No, I don't care at all. What is it that people say?"

"You see that you do care! They say that she was married to a rich man with a title."

"Married----"

"Married as much as one can be, before the mayor and the priest."

"What nonsense! she would bear her husband's name and title."

"Ah! there you are! There's a mystery about her. When I have time, I propose to investigate it, and I will tell you what I learn. They say that she has no known lover, although she leads a very independent life. But of course you know how that is, don't you?"

"I don't know the first thing about it. Come, come! do you suppose I pass my life watching and questioning women? I am not an idler like you. I find life hardly long enough to live and work."

"As to living, I don't say that you are not right. You seem to live hard enough, my boy. But as to working,--they say that you don't work enough. Let us see, what have you there? Let me look!"

"No, it's nothing; I have nothing started here."

"Yes, you have: that head--that is very fine, deuce take me! Let me look, I say, or I'll give you the devil in my next _salon_."

"You are quite capable of it."

"Yes, when you deserve it; but as to that head, it is superb, and one cannot help admiring it. What is it to be?"

"Do you suppose I know?"

"Do you want me to tell you?"

"You will confer a favor on me."

"Make a sibyl of it. Then you can arrange the hair as you please, it doesn't make any difference."

"Stay! that's an idea."

"And then you don't compromise the person it resembles."

"Does it resemble any one?"

"_Parbleu_! wretched joker, do you think that I don't recognize it? Come, come, my dear fellow, you must have meant to laugh at me, since you deny everything, even the simplest things. You are the lover of that face!"

"And to prove it, I am going to Montmorency!" said Laurent, coldly, taking his hat.

"That doesn't prove anything!" replied Mercourt.

They went out together, and Mercourt saw Laurent enter a cab; but Laurent went no farther than the Bois de Boulogne, where he dined all alone at a small café, and returned at night-fall, on foot and lost in his thoughts.

The Bois de Boulogne of that time was not what it is to-day. It was smaller, more neglected, poorer, more mysterious, and more like the country; one could reflect there.

On the Champs-Elysées, less splendid and less thickly settled than to-day, were tracts of land newly thrown open to building, where one could hire at a reasonable price small houses with gardens, where perfect privacy was attainable. One could live quietly there and work.

It was in one of those neat white cottages, amid flowering lilacs, and behind a tall hedge of hawthorn with a green gate, that Thérèse lived. It was May. The weather was magnificent. How Laurent found himself, at nine o'clock, behind that hedge, in the lonely, unfinished street where no lanterns had as yet been placed, and where nettles and weeds still flourished along the sides, he himself would have been embarrassed to explain.

The hedge was very thick, and Laurent skirted it noiselessly on all sides, but could see nothing save the golden reflection on the foliage of a light which he supposed to be placed on a small table in the garden by which he was accustomed to sit and smoke when he passed the evening with Thérèse. Was somebody smoking in the garden, or were they taking tea there, as sometimes happened? But Thérèse had informed Laurent that she expected a whole family from the provinces, and he could hear only two voices whispering mysteriously together, one of which seemed to belong to Thérèse. The other voice spoke very low; was it a man's?

Laurent listened until he had a ringing in his ears, and at last he heard, or thought he heard, Thérèse say:

"What does all this matter? I have but one love on earth, and that is you!"

"Now," said Laurent to himself, hastily leaving the narrow, deserted street, and returning to the noisy roadway of the Champs-Elysées, "now my mind is at rest. She has a lover! After all, she was under no obligation to tell me of it! But she needn't have talked to me on all occasions in a way to make me think that she did not and never intended to belong to any man. She is like all women: the longing to lie supersedes all else. What difference does it make to me? And yet I would never have believed it. Indeed, I must have been a little cracked over her without realizing it, since I went there and played the spy, the most dastardly of all trades, except when one is driven to it by jealousy! I cannot regret it very much; it saves me from great unhappiness and from a great imposition: that of desiring a woman who has nothing that makes her desirable above other women, not even sincerity."

Laurent stopped an empty cab that was passing, and went to Montmorency. He proposed to pass a week there, and not to darken Thérèse's door for a fortnight. But he remained in the country only forty-eight hours, and arrived at Thérèse's cottage on the evening of the third day, simultaneously with Monsieur Richard Palmer.

"Ah!" said the American, offering him his hand, "I am very glad to see you!"

Laurent could not avoid taking the proffered hand; but he could not refrain from asking Monsieur Palmer why he was so glad to see him.

The foreigner paid no heed to the artist's somewhat impertinent tone.

"I am glad because I am fond of you," he replied, with irresistible cordiality, "and I am fond of you because I have a great admiration for you!"

"What! are you here?" said Thérèse, surprised to see Laurent. "I had given you up for this evening."

And it seemed to the young man that there was an unfamiliar coolness in the tone in which those simple words were spoken.

"Indeed!" he replied in an undertone, "you had become reconciled to it very readily, and I fear that I am disturbing a delightful tête-à-tête."

"That is the more cruel of you," she rejoined in the same playful tone, "because you seemed disposed to arrange it for me."

"You evidently counted upon it, as you did not cancel his appointment. Shall I go?"

"No, stay. I will resign myself to endure your presence."

The American, after saluting Thérèse, had opened his portfolio and taken from it a letter which had been given him to hand to her. Thérèse read it with an unmoved air, and made no comment whatever upon it.

"If you wish to answer," said Palmer, "I have an opportunity to forward a letter to Havana."

"Thanks," Thérèse replied, opening the drawer of a little table by her side, "I shall not answer it."

Laurent, who watched all her movements, saw that she put the letter with several others, one of which he recognized by its shape and superscription. It was the note he had written her two days before. For some reason, I know not what, it vexed him to see that letter in company with the one Monsieur Palmer had just handed her.

"She tosses me in there," he said to himself, "pellmell with her cast-off lovers. And yet I have no claim to that honor. I have never spoken to her of love."

Thérèse began to talk about Monsieur Palmer's portrait. Laurent was deaf to their entreaties, keeping a close watch upon their every glance, upon the slightest inflection of their voices, and imagining every moment that he could detect a secret dread, on their part, of his yielding; but their persistence was so manifestly sincere, that he became calmer, and reproved himself for his suspicions. If Thérèse had relations with this stranger, living alone and perfectly independent as she did, apparently owing nothing to any one, and never seeming to pay any heed to what people might say of her, had she any need of the pretext of a portrait to receive the object of her love or her caprice as often and for as long a time as she chose?

And as soon as he felt perfectly at ease, Laurent was no longer restrained by a sense of shame from gratifying his curiosity.

"Are you an American, pray?" he asked Thérèse, who from time to time repeated in English for Monsieur Palmer's benefit the remarks that he did not clearly understand.

"An American?" replied Thérèse; "have I not told you that I have the honor of being a compatriot of yours?"

"But you speak English so well!"

"You do not know whether I speak it well or ill, as you do not understand it. But I see what is in the wind, for I know that you are an inquisitive fellow. You are wondering whether Dick Palmer and I are acquaintances of yesterday or of long standing. Well, ask him."

Palmer did not wait for a question which Laurent could not readily have made up his mind to ask. He said that this was not his first visit to France, and that he had known Thérèse when she was very young, at the house of some relations of hers. He did not say what relations. Thérèse was accustomed to say that she had never known either father or mother.

Mademoiselle Jacques's past was an impenetrable mystery to the people of fashion who went to her to have their portraits painted, and to the small number of artists whom she received in private. She had come to Paris, whence no one knew, when no one knew, with whom no one knew. She had been known two or three years only, a portrait she had painted having attracted the attention of connoisseurs and been suddenly lauded as the work of a master. Thus, from the patronage of the humble and an unknown existence, she had passed without transition to a reputation of the first rank and to the enjoyment of an ample income; but she had changed not a whit in her simple tastes, her love of independence, and the playful austerity of her manners. She never posed, and never spoke of herself except to declare her sentiments and opinions with much frankness and courage. As for the facts of her life, she had a way of evading questions and going off in another direction which saved her the necessity of replying. If any one chose to insist, she was accustomed to say, after some vague words:

"We are not talking about me. I have nothing interesting to tell, and if I have had sorrows, I have forgotten all about them, as I have no time to think of them. I am very happy now, for I have plenty of work, and I love work above everything."

It was by pure chance, and as a result of being thrown together in an assemblage of artists, that Laurent had made Mademoiselle Jacques's acquaintance. Having been launched as a gentleman and an eminent artist in two different social circles. Monsieur Fauvel possessed, at twenty-four, an amount of experience which all men have not acquired at forty. He prided himself upon it, and mourned over it by turns: but he had no experience in matters of the heart, for that is not acquired in a life of dissipation. Thanks to the scepticism which he affected, he had begun by passing judgment in his own mind that all those whom Thérèse treated as friends must be lovers, and not until he had heard them affirm and demonstrate the purity of their relations with her, did he reach the point of looking upon her as a young woman who might have had passions, but not vulgar intrigues.

Thereupon, he had become intensely curious to ascertain the cause of the anomaly: a young, intelligent, and lovely woman, absolutely free and living alone of her own free will. He had begun to see her more frequently, and of late almost every day; at first on all sorts of pretexts, latterly representing himself as a friend of no consequence, too fond of pleasure to care to talk with a serious-minded woman, but too idealistic, after all, not to feel the craving for affection and the value of disinterested friendship.

In theory that was quite true; but love had stolen into the young man's heart, and we have seen that Laurent was struggling against the invasion of a sentiment which he still desired to disguise from Thérèse and from himself, especially as he felt it for the first time in his life.

"But, after all," he said, when he had promised Monsieur Palmer to undertake his portrait, "why in the devil are you so bent on having a thing that may not be good, when you know Mademoiselle Jacques, who certainly will not refuse to paint a portrait of you that is sure to be excellent?"

"She does refuse," replied Palmer, with much candor, "and I don't know why. I promised my mother, who is weak enough to think me very handsome, a portrait by a master, and she won't consider it a good likeness if it is too true to life. That is why I have applied to you as being an idealist. If you refuse me, I shall have either the grief of not gratifying my mother, or the bother of looking farther."

"That will not take long; there are so many people more capable than I am!"

"I do not think it; but, assuming it to be true, it doesn't follow that they will have the time at once, and I am in a hurry to send the portrait away. It should arrive for my birthday, four months hence, and the transportation will take about two months."

"That is to say, Laurent," added Thérèse, "that you must finish the portrait in six weeks at the outside; and as I know how much time you will need, you must begin to-morrow. Come, it is understood, you promise, don't you?"

Monsieur Palmer held out his hand to Laurent, saying:

"The bargain is made. I say nothing about money; Mademoiselle Jacques is to arrange the terms, I shall not interfere. At what hour to-morrow?"

The hour being fixed, Palmer took his hat, and Laurent felt bound to do the same out of respect to Thérèse; but Palmer paid no heed to him and took his leave, after pressing Mademoiselle Jacques's hand without kissing it.

"Shall I go, too?" said Laurent.

"It isn't necessary," she replied; "everybody whom I receive in the evening, knows me well. But you must go at ten o'clock to-night; for several times lately I have forgotten myself so far as to chatter with you till nearly midnight, and as I can't sleep after five in the morning, I have felt very tired."

"And yet you didn't turn me out!"

"No, it didn't occur to me."

"If I were a conceited donkey, I should be very proud of that!"

"But you are not conceited, thank God! you leave that to the fools. But, despite the compliment, Master Laurent, I have a bone to pick with you. They say you are not working."

"And it was for the purpose of forcing me to work that you held Palmer's head at my throat like a pistol?"

"Well, why not?"

"You are kind, Thérèse, I know; you mean to make me earn my living in spite of myself."

"I don't interfere with your means of existence, I have no right to do it. I have not the good or ill fortune to be your mother; but I am your sister,--_in Apollo_, as our classic Bernard says,--and it is impossible for me not to be grieved by your spasms of indolence."

"But what difference can it make to you?" cried Laurent, with a mingling of irritation and pleasure which Thérèse felt, and which impelled her to reply frankly.

"Listen, my dear Laurent," she said, "we must have an understanding. I have a very great friendship for you."

"I am very proud of it, but I do not know why! Indeed, I am of no use as a friend, Thérèse. I have no more belief in friendship than in love between a man and woman."

"You have told me that before, and it makes no difference to me what you do or do not believe. For my own part, I believe in what I feel, and I feel both interest and affection for you. I am like that: I cannot endure to have any person whatsoever about me without becoming attached to him and wishing that he might be happy. I am accustomed to do my utmost in that direction, without caring whether the person in question is grateful to me or not. Now you are not any person whatsoever, you are a man of genius, and, what is more, a man of heart, I trust."

"I, a man of heart? Yes, if you use the term in the ordinary worldly meaning. I know how to fight a duel, pay my debts, and defend the woman to whom I offer my arm, whoever she may be. But if you consider me tender-hearted, loving, artless----"

"I know that you affect to be old, blasé and corrupt. But your affectation produces no effect on me. It is a very popular fashion at the present time. In your case, it is a disease, genuine it may be and painful, but it will pass away when you choose. You are a man of heart, for the very reason that you suffer because of the emptiness of your heart; a woman will come along who will fill it, if she knows how to go about it and if you will let her. But this is outside of my subject; I am speaking to the artist; the man in you is unhappy, only because the artist is not satisfied with himself."

"Ah! you are wrong, Thérèse," rejoined Laurent earnestly. "The opposite of what you say is true: it is the man who suffers in the artist and stifles him. I do not know what to do with myself, you see. Ennui is killing me. Ennui because of what? you will ask. Because of everything! I cannot, like you, be tranquil and attentive during six hours of work, take a turn in the garden and toss bread to the sparrows, then go back to work again for four hours, and in the evening smile on two or three tiresome creatures, like myself for example, until it is time to go to sleep. My sleep is broken, my work is feverish, my walks are agitated. Invention bewilders me and makes me tremble; execution, always too slow to suit me, makes my heart beat violently, and I weep and have to exert myself not to shriek when I give birth to an idea which intoxicates me, but which I am mortally ashamed of and disgusted with the next morning. If I change it, it is worse, for it leaves me; it is much better to forget it and wait for another; but that arrives in such confusion and of such enormous proportions, that my poor frame cannot hold it. It weighs upon me and tortures me until it has assumed measurable proportions and the other pain returns, the pain of childbirth, a real physical suffering which I cannot describe. And that is how my life goes when I allow myself to be vanquished by this giant of an artist who is within me, and from whom the poor devil who is speaking to you removes one by one, by the forceps of his will, meagre, half-dead mice! So it is much better, Thérèse, that I should live as I have chosen to live, that I should commit excesses of all sorts, and kill this gnawing worm which my fellows modestly call their inspiration, but which I call my infirmity, pure and simple."

"It is decided then," said Thérèse, smiling; "the die is cast, and you are trying to drive your intelligence to suicide? Well, I do not believe a word of it. If some one should propose to you to-morrow to change places with Prince D---- or Comte de S----, with the millions of the first and the fine horses of the other, you would say, referring to your poor despised palette: _Give me back my love_!"

"My despised palette? You do not understand me, Thérèse! It is an instrument of glory, I know that perfectly well; and what people call glory is the esteem accorded to talent, purer and more delicious than that accorded to titles and wealth. Therefore it is a very great privilege and a very great pleasure for me to say to myself: 'I am only a poor, penniless gentleman, and my equals, who do not derogate from their station, lead the lives of gamekeepers and foregather with gleaners of dead wood, whom they pay in fire-wood. But I have derogated, I have adopted a profession, and the result is that when I, at twenty-four years of age, ride a hired horse among the richest and noblest of Paris, mounted on horses worth ten thousand francs, if there happens to be a man of taste or a woman of intelligence among the idlers seated along the Champs-Elysées, I am stared at and pointed out, and not the others----' You laugh! do you think me very vain?"

"No, but very like a child, thank God! You won't kill yourself."