Part 11

Much work, on the contrary, was done in Mme. Belin’s institution, where the pupils went out only on the principal holidays and had no communication with outside except the visits of relatives on Thursdays, in a little garden planted with flowering shrubs or in the immense parlour with carved and gilded work over its doors. The first entry of Felicia into this almost monastic house caused indeed a certain sensation; her dresses chosen by the Austrian dancer, her hair curling to her waist, her gait free and easy like a boy’s, aroused some hostility, but she was a Parisian and could adapt herself quickly to every situation and to all surroundings. A few days later, she looked better than any one in the little black apron, to which the more coquettish were wont to hang their watches, the straight skirt--a severe and hard prescription at that period when fashion expanded women’s figures with an infinity of flounces--the regulation coiffure, two plaits tied rather low, at the neck, after the manner of the Roman peasants.

Strange to say, the regularity of the classes, their calm exactitude, suited Felicia’s nature, intelligent and quick, in which the taste for study was relieved by a juvenile expansion at ease in the noisy good-humour of playtime. She was popular. Among those daughters of wealthy businessmen, of Parisian lawyers or of gentlemen-farmers, a respectable and rather affectedly serious world, the well-known name of old Ruys, the respect with which at Paris an artist’s reputation is surrounded, created for Felicia a greatly envied position, rendered more brilliant still by her successes in the school-work, a genuine talent for drawing, and her beauty, that superiority which asserts its power even among young girls. In the wholesale atmosphere of the boarding-school, she was conscious of an extreme pleasure as she grew feminized, in resuming her sex, in learning to know order, regularity, otherwise than these were taught by that amiable dancer whose kisses seemed always to keep the taste of paint and her embraces somewhat artificial in the curving of her arms. Ruys, her father, was enraptured each time that he came to see his daughter, to find her more grown, womanly, knowing how to enter, to walk, and to leave a room with that pretty courtesy which caused all Mme. Belin’s pupils to long for the trailing rustle of a long skirt.

At first he came often, then, as he had not time enough for all his commissions, accepted and undertaken, the advances on which went to pay for the scrapes, the pleasures of his existence, he was seen more seldom in the parlour. Finally, sickness intervened. Stricken by an incurable anaemia, he would remain for weeks without leaving his house, without doing any work. Thereupon he wished to have his daughter with him again; and from the boarding-school, sheltered by so healthy a tranquility, Felicia returned once more to her father’s studio, haunted still by the same boon companions, the parasites which swarm around every celebrity, into the midst of which sickness had introduced a new personage, Dr. Jenkins.

His fine open countenance, the air of candour, of serenity that seemed to dwell about the person of this physician, already famous, who was wont to speak of his art so carelessly and yet seemed to work miraculous cures, the care with which he surrounded her father, these things made a great impression on the young girl. Jenkins became immediately her friend, confidant, a vigilant and kind guardian. Occasionally, when, in the studio, somebody--her father most likely of all--uttered a risky jest, the Irishman would contract his eyebrows, give a little click of the tongue, or perhaps distract Felicia’s attention.

He often used to take her to pass the day with Mme. Jenkins, endeavouring to prevent her from becoming again the wild young thing she was before going to school, or even something worse, as she threatened to do in the moral neglect, sadder than all other, in which she was left.

But the young girl had as a protection something even better than the irreproachable and worldly example of the handsome Mme. Jenkins: the art that she adored, the enthusiasm which it implanted in her nature wholly occupied with outside things, the sentiment of beauty, of truth, which, from her thoughtful brain, full of ideas, passed into her fingers with a little quivering of the nerves, a desire of the idea accomplished, of the realized image. All day long she would work at her sculpture, giving shape to her dreams with that happiness of instinctive youth which lends so much charm to early work; this prevented her from any excessive regret for the austerity of the Belin institution, sheltering and light as the veil of a novice before her vows, and preserved her also from dangerous conversations, unheard amid her unique preoccupation.

Ruys was proud of this talent growing up at his side. Growing every day feebler, already at that stage in which the artist regrets himself, he found in following Felicia’s progress a certain consolation for his own ended career. He saw the boasting-tool, which trembled in his hand, taken up again under his eye with a virile firmness and assurance, tempered by all those delicacies of her being which a woman can apply to the realization of an art. A strange sensation, this double paternity, this survival of genius as it abandons the man whose day is over to pass into him who is at his dawn, like those beautiful, familiar birds which, on the eve of a death, will desert the menaced roof to fly away to a less mournful lodging.

During the last period of her father’s life, Felicia--a great artist and still a mere child--used to execute half of his works; and nothing was more touching than this collaboration of father and daughter, in the same studio, around the same group. The operation did not always proceed peaceably; although her father’s pupil, Felicia already felt her own personality rebel against any despotic direction. She had those audacities of the beginner, those intuitions of the future which are the heritage of young talents, and, in opposition to the romantic traditions of Sebastien Ruys, a tendency to modern realism, a need to plant that glorious old flag upon some new monument.

These things were the occasion of terrible arguments, of discussions from which the father came out beaten, conquered by his daughter’s logic, astonished at the progress made by the young, while the old, who have opened the way for them, remain motionless at the point from which they started. When she was working for him, Felicia would yield more easily; but, where her own sculpture was concerned she was found to be intractable. Thus the _Joueur de Boules_, her first exhibited work, which obtained so great a success at the Salon of 1862, was the subject of violent scenes between the two artists, of contradictions so strong, that Jenkins had to intervene and help to secure the safety of the plaster-cast which Ruys had threatened to destroy.

Apart from such little dramas, which in no way affected the tenderness of their hearts, these two beings adored each other with the presentiment and, gradually, the cruel certitude of an approaching separation, when suddenly there occurred in Felicia’s life a horrible event. One day, Jenkins had taken her to dine at his house, as often happened. Mme. Jenkins was away on a couple of days’ visit, as also her son; but the doctor’s age, his semi-paternal intimacy, allowed him to have with him, even in his wife’s absence, this young girl whose fifteen years, the fifteen years of an Eastern Jewess glorious in her precocious beauty, left her still near childhood.

The dinner was very gay, and Jenkins pleasant and cordial as usual. Afterwards they went into the doctor’s study, and suddenly, on the couch, in the middle of an intimate and quite friendly conversation about her father, his health, their work together, Felicia felt as it were the chill of a gulf between herself and this man, then the brutal grasp of a faun. She beheld an unknown Jenkins, wild-looking, stammering with a besotted laugh and outraging hands. In the surprise, the unexpectedness of this bestial attack, any other than Felicia--a child of her own age, really innocent, would have been lost. As for her, poor little thing! what saved her was her knowledge. She had heard so many stories of this kind of thing at her father’s table! and then art, and the life of the studio--She was not an _ingenue_. In a moment she understood the object of this grasp, struggled, sprang up, then, not being strong enough, cried out. He was afraid, released his hold, and suddenly she found herself standing up, free, with the man on his knees weeping and begging forgiveness. He had yielded to a fit of madness. She was so beautiful; he loved her so much. For months he had been struggling. But now it was over, never again, oh, never again! Not even would he so much as touch the hem of her dress. She made no reply, trembled, put her hair and her clothes straight again with the fingers of a woman demented. To go home--she wished to go home instantly, quite alone. He sent a servant with her; and, quite low, as she was getting into the carriage, whispered:

“Above all, not a word. It would kill your father.”

He knew her so well, he was so sure of his power over her through that suggestion, the blackguard! that he returned on the morrow looking bright as ever and with loyal face as though nothing had happened. In fact, she never spoke of the matter to her father, nor to any one. But, dating from that day, a change came over her, a sudden development, as it were, of her haughty ways. She was subject to caprices, wearinesses, a curl of disgust in her smile, and sometimes quick fits of anger against her father, a glance of contempt which reproached him for not having known how to watch over her.

“What is the matter with her?” Ruys, her father, used to say; and Jenkins, with the authority of a doctor, would put it down to her age and some physical disturbance. He avoided speaking to the girl herself, counting on time to efface the sinister impression, and not despairing of attaining his end, for he desired it still, more than ever, prey to the exasperated love of a man of forty-seven to one of those incurable passions of maturity; and that was this hypocrite’s punishment. This unusual condition of his daughter was a real grief to the sculptor; but this grief was of short duration. Without warning, Ruys flickered out of life, fell to pieces in a moment, as was the way with all the Irishman’s patients. His last words were:

“Jenkins, I beg you to look after my daughter.”

They were so ironically mournful that Jenkins could not prevent himself from turning pale.

Felicia was even more stupefied than grief-stricken. To the amazement caused by death, which she had never seen and which now came before her wearing features so dear, there was joined the sense of a vast solitude surrounded by darkness and perils.

A few of the sculptor’s friends gathered together as a family council to consider the future of this unfortunate child without relatives or fortune. Fifty francs had been discovered in the box where Sebastien used to put his money, on a piece of the studio furniture well known to its needy frequenters and visited by them without scruple. There was no other inheritance, at least in cash; only a quantity of artistic and curious furniture of the most sumptuous description, a few valuable pictures, and a certain amount of money owing but scarcely sufficing to cover numberless debts. It was proposed to organize a sale. Felicia, when she was consulted, replied that she would not care if everything were sold, but, for God’s sake, let them leave her in peace.

The sale did not take place, however, thanks to the godmother, the excellent Crenmitz, who suddenly made her appearance, calm and gentle as usual.

“Don’t listen to them, my child. Sell nothing. Your old Constance has an income of fifteen thousand francs, which was destined to come to you later on. You will take advantage of it at once, that is all. We will live here together. You will see, I shall not be in the way. You will work at your sculpture, I shall manage the house. Does that suit you?”

It was said so tenderly, with that childishness of accent which foreigners have when expressing themselves in French, that the girl was deeply moved. Her heart that had seemed turned to stone opened, a burning flood came pouring from her eyes, and she rushed, flung herself into the arms of the dancer. “Ah, godmother, how good you are to me! Yes, yes, don’t leave me any more. Stay with me always. Life frightens and disgusts me. I see so much hypocrisy in it, so much falsehood.” And the old woman arranged for herself a silken and embroidered nest in this house so like a traveller’s camp laden with treasures from every land, and the suggested dual life began for these two different natures.

It was no small sacrifice that Constance had made for the dear demon in quitting her Fontainebleau retreat for Paris, which inspired her with terror. Ever since the day when this dancer, with her extravagant caprices, who made princely fortunes flow and disappear through her five open fingers, had descended from her triumphant position, a little of its dazzling glitter still in her eyes, and had attempted to resume an ordinary existence, to manage her little income and her modest household, she had been the object of a thousand impudent exploitations, of frauds that were easy in view of the ignorance of this poor butterfly that was frightened by reality and came into collision with all its unknown difficulties. Living in Felicia’s house, the responsibility became still more serious by reason of the wastefulness introduced long ago by the father and continued by the daughter, two artists knowing nothing of economy. She had, moreover, other difficulties to conquer. She found the studio insupportable with its permanent atmosphere of tobacco smoke, an impenetrable cloud for her, in which the discussions on art, the analysis of ideas, were lost and which infallibly gave her a headache. “Chaff,” above all, frightened her. As a foreigner, as at one time a divinity of the green-room, brought up on out-of-date compliments, on gallantries _a la Dorat_, she did not understand it, and would feel terrified in the presence of the wild exaggerations, the paradoxes of these Parisians refined by the liberty of the studio.

That kind of thing was intimidating to her who had never possessed wit save in the vivacity of her feet, and reduced her simply to the rank of a lady-companion; and, seeing this amiable old dame sitting, silent and smiling, her knitting in her lap, like one of Chardin’s _bourgeoises_, or hastening by the side of her cook up the long Rue de Chaillot, where the nearest market happened to be, one would never have guessed that that simple old body had ruled kings, princes, the whole class of amorous nobles and financiers, at the caprice of her step and pirouettings.

Paris is full of such fallen stars, extinguished by the crowd.

Some of these famous ones, these conquerors of a former day, cherish a rage in their heart; others, on the contrary, enjoy the past blissfully, digest in an ineffable content all their glorious and ended joys, asking only repose, silence, shadow, good enough for memory and contemplations, so that when they die people are quite astonished to learn that they had been still living.

Constance Crenmitz was among these fortunate ones. The household of these two women was a curious one. Both were childlike, placing side by side in a common domain, inexperience and ambition, the tranquility of an accomplished destiny and the fever of a life plunged in struggle, all the different qualities manifest even in the serene style of dress affected by this blonde who seemed all white like a faded rose, with something beneath her bright colours that vaguely suggested the footlights, and that brunette with the regular features, who almost always clothed her beauty in dark materials, simple in fold, a semblance, as it were, of virility.

Things unforeseen, caprices, ignorance of even the least important details, led to an extreme disorder in the finances of the household, disorder which was only rectified by dint of privations, by the dismissal of servants, by reforms that were laughable in their exaggeration. During one of these crises, Jenkins had made veiled delicate offers, which, however, were repulsed with contempt by Felicia.

“It is not nice of you,” Constance would remark to her, “to be so hard on the poor doctor. After all, there was nothing offensive in his suggestion. An old friend of your father.”

“He, any one’s friend! Ah, the hypocrite!”

And Felicia, hardly able to contain herself, would give an ironical turn to her wrath, imitating Jenkins with his oily manner and his hand on his heart; then, puffing out her cheeks, she would say in a loud, deep voice full of lying unction:

“Let us be humane, let us be kind. To do good without hope of reward! That is the whole point.”

Constance used to laugh till the tears came, in spite of herself. The resemblance was so perfect.

“All the same, you are too hard. You will end by driving him away altogether.”

“Little fear of that,” a shake of the girl’s head would reply.

In effect he always came back, pleasant, amiable, dissimulating his passion, which was visible only when it grew jealous of newcomers, paying assiduous attention to the old dancer, who, in spite of everything, found his good-nature pleasing and recognised in him a man of her own time, of the time when one accosted a woman with a kiss on her hand, with a compliment on her appearance.

One morning, Jenkins having called in the course of his round, found Constance alone and doing nothing in the antechamber.

“You see, doctor, I am on guard,” she remarked tranquilly.

“How is that?”

“Felicia is at work. She wishes not to be disturbed; and the servants are so stupid, I am myself seeing that her orders are obeyed.”

Then, seeing that the Irishman made a step towards the studio:

“No, no, don’t go in. She told me very particularly not to let any one go in.”

“But I?”

“I beg you not. You would get me a scolding.”

Jenkins was about to take his leave when a burst of laughter from Felicia, coming through the curtains, made him prick up his ears.

“She is not alone, then?”

“No, the Nabob is with her. They are having a sitting for the portrait.”

“And why this mystery? It is a very singular thing.” He commenced to walk backward and forward, evidently very angry, but containing his wrath.

At last he burst forth.

It was an unheard-of impropriety to let a girl thus shut herself in with a man.

He was surprised that one so serious, so devoted as Constance--What did it look like?

The old lady looked at him with stupefaction. As though Felicia were like other girls! And then what danger was there with the Nabob, so staid a man and so ugly? Besides, Jenkins ought to know quite well that Felicia never consulted anybody, that she always had her own way.

“No, no, it is impossible! I cannot tolerate this,” exclaimed the Irishman.

And, without paying any further heed to the dancer, who raised her arms to heaven as a call upon it to witness what was about to happen, he moved towards the studio; but, instead of entering immediately, he softly half-opened the door and raised a corner of the hangings, whereby the portion of the room in which the Nabob was posing became visible to him, although at a considerable distance.

Jansoulet, seated without cravat and with his waist-coat open, was talking apparently in some agitation and in a low voice. Felicia was replying in a similar tone, in laughing whispers. The sitting was very animated. Then a silence, a silken rustle of skirts, and the artist, going up to her model, turned down his linen collar all round with familiar gesture, allowing her light hand to run over the sun-tanned skin.

That Ethiopian face on which the muscles stood out in the very intoxication of health, with its long drooping eyelashes as of some deer being gently stroked in its sleep; the bold profile of the girl as she leaned over those strange features in order to verify their proportions; then a violent, irresistible gesture, clutching the delicate hand as it passed and pressing it to two thick, passionate lips. Jenkins saw all that in one red flash.

The noise that he made in entering caused the two personages instantly to resume their respective positions, and, in the strong light which dazzled his prying eyes, he saw the young girl standing before him, indignant, stupefied.

“Who is that? Who has taken the liberty?” and the Nabob, on his platform, with his collar turned down, petrified, monumental.

Jenkins, a little abashed, frightened by his own audacity, murmured some excuses. He had something very urgent to say to M. Jansoulet, a piece of news which was most important and would suffer no delay. “He knew upon the best authority that certain decorations were to be bestowed on the 16th of March.”

Immediately the face of the Nabob, that for a moment had been frowning, relaxed.

“Ah! can it be true?”

He abandoned his pose. The thing was worth the trouble, _que diable!_ M. de la Perriere, a secretary of the department involved had been commissioned by the Empress to visit the Bethlehem Refuge. Jenkins had come in search of the Nabob to take him to see the secretary at the Tuileries and to appoint a day. This visit to Bethlehem, it meant the cross for him.

“Quick, let us start, my dear doctor. I follow you.”

He was no longer angry with Jenkins for having disturbed him, and he knotted his cravat feverishly, forgetting in his new emotions how he had been upset a moment earlier, for ambition with him came before all else.

While the two men were talking in a half-whisper, Felicia, standing motionless before them, with quivering nostrils and her lip curled in contempt, watched them with an air of saying, “Well, I am waiting.”

Jansoulet apologized for being obliged to interrupt the sitting; but a visit of the most extreme importance--She smiled in pity.

“Don’t mention it, don’t mention it. At the point which we have reached I can work without you.”

“Oh, yes,” said the doctor, “the work is almost completed.”

He added with the air of a connoisseur:

“It is a fine piece of work.”

And, counting upon covering his retreat with this compliment, he made for the door with shoulders drooped; but Felicia detained him abruptly.

“Stay, you. I have something to say to you.”

He saw clearly from her look that he would have to yield, on pain of an explosion.

“You will excuse me, _cher ami_? Mademoiselle has a word for me. My brougham is at the door. Get in. I will be with you immediately.”

As soon as the door of the studio had closed on that heavy, retreating foot, each of them looked at the other full in the face.

“You must be either drunk or mad to have allowed yourself to behave in this way. What! you dare to enter my house when I am not at home? What does this violence mean? By what right--”