Part 7 (2/2)
A few days later there was a great performance at the Opera Comique. The first person I saw in one of the boxes was Marguerite Gautier.
The young man whom I was with recognised her immediately, for he said to me, mentioning her name: ”Look at that pretty girl.”
At that moment Marguerite turned her opera-gla.s.s in our direction and, seeing my friend, smiled and beckoned to him to come to her.
”I will go and say 'How do you do?' to her,” he said, ”and will be back in a moment.”
”I could not help saying 'Happy man!'”
”Why?”
”To go and see that woman.”
”Are you in love with her?”
”No,” I said, flus.h.i.+ng, for I really did not know what to say; ”but I should very much like to know her.”
”Come with me. I will introduce you.”
”Ask her if you may.”
”Really, there is no need to be particular with her; come.”
What he said troubled me. I feared to discover that Marguerite was not worthy of the sentiment which I felt for her.
In a book of Alphonse Karr ent.i.tles Am Rauchen, there is a man who one evening follows a very elegant woman, with whom he had fallen in love with at first sight on account of her beauty. Only to kiss her hand he felt that he had the strength to undertake anything, the will to conquer anything, the courage to achieve anything. He scarcely dares glance at the trim ankle which she shows as she holds her dress out of the mud.
While he is dreaming of all that he would do to possess this woman, she stops at the corner of the street and asks if he will come home with her. He turns his head, crosses the street, and goes sadly back to his own house.
I recalled the story, and, having longed to suffer for this woman, I was afraid that she would accept me too promptly and give me at once what I fain would have purchased by long waiting or some great sacrifice. We men are built like that, and it is very fortunate that the imagination lends so much poetry to the senses, and that the desires of the body make thus such concession to the dreams of the soul. If any one had said to me, You shall have this woman to-night and be killed tomorrow, I would have accepted. If any one had said to me, you can be her lover for ten pounds, I would have refused. I would have cried like a child who sees the castle he has been dreaming about vanish away as he awakens from sleep.
All the same, I wished to know her; it was my only means of making up my mind about her. I therefore said to my friend that I insisted on having her permission to be introduced to her, and I wandered to and fro in the corridors, saying to myself that in a moment's time she was going to see me, and that I should not know which way to look. I tried (sublime childishness of love!) to string together the words I should say to her.
A moment after my friend returned. ”She is expecting us,” he said.
”Is she alone?” I asked.
”With another woman.”
”There are no men?”
”No.”
”Come, then.”
My friend went toward the door of the theatre.
”That is not the way,” I said.
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