Part 4 (1/2)
”My dear colleague,” said Sulpice, gayly, ”we will talk elsewhere about your communities. This is hardly the place. _Non est hic locus!_ Good-bye!”
”Good-bye, your Excellency,” replied Pichereau with forced politeness.
Vaudrey drew Lissac away, saying with a suppressed laugh:
”Oh! oh! the Quaker! He has laid down his portfolio, but he has kept the key to the greenroom, it seems.”
”It would appear,” replied Guy, ”that the door leading into the greenroom may open to scenes of consolation for fallen greatness. The blue eyes of Marie Launay always serve as a sparadrap to a fallen minister!”
”Was the fat Molina right? To lose the votes of the majority is perhaps the malady of the knee of ministers,” said Vaudrey merrily.
He laughed again, very much amused at the irritable, peevish yet cringing att.i.tude of Pichereau, the Genevan doctrinaire, who sought consolation in the greenroom of the ballet, whilst his five or six daughters sat at home, probably reading some chaste English romance, or practising sacred music within the range of the green spectacles of their governess.
”But!” said he gayly, ”to fall from power is nothing, provided one falls into the arms of ballet-girls.”
_Molina burst out laughing ... when he ran his eye over the list and found accompanying the names of ballet-dancers and members of the chorus, the distinguished particles of some habitues._
[Ill.u.s.tration: IN THE GREENROOM OF THE OPERA]
II
Madame Marsy was awaiting Guy de Lissac's return from the greenroom.
From the moment she caught sight of Vaudrey standing within the range of her opera-gla.s.ses, she was seized with the eager desire to make him an habitue of her salon, the new salon that had just been launched. Madame Marsy was bitten by that tarantula whose bite makes modern society move as if afflicted with Saint Vitus's dance. A widow, rich and still young, very much admired, she had set herself to play the role of a leader in society to pa.s.s away the time. She was one of those women forever pa.s.sing before the reporters' note-book, as others pa.s.s in front of a photographic apparatus. Of her inner life, however, very little was known to the public. But the exact shade of her hair, the color of her eyes, the cut of her gowns, the address of her tradesmen, the _menu_ of her dinners, the programme of her concerts, the names of her guests, the visitors to her salon, the address of her mansion, were all familiar to every one, and Madame Marsy was daily reported by the chroniclers to the letter, painted, dressed and undressed.
There was some romantic gossip whispered about her. It was said that she had formerly led Philippe Marsy, the artist, a _hard life_. This artist was the painter of _Charity_, the picture so much admired at the Luxembourg, where it hangs between a Nymph by Henner and a Portrait of a Lady by Carolus Duran. She was pretty, free, and sufficiently rich since the sale of the contents of Philippe Marsy's studio. His slightest sketches had fetched enormous sums under Monsieur Pillet's hammer at the Hotel Drouot, and Sabine after an appropriate interval of mourning, opened her salon.
Solitary, though surrounded by friends, she created no jealousy among her admirers, whose homage she received with perfect equanimity, as if become weary and desirous of a court but not of a favorite. She had a son at college who was growing up; he, however, was rarely to be met with in his mother's little hotel in the Boulevard Malesherbes. This pale, slender youth in his student's uniform would sometimes steal furtively up the staircase to pay his mother a visit as a stranger might have done, never staying long, however, but hurrying off again to rejoin an old woman who waited at the corner of the street and who would take him by the arm and walk away with him--Madame Marsy, his grandmother.
It was the grandmother who was bringing up the boy. She and a kind-hearted fellow, Francois Charriere, a sculptor, who as he said himself, was nothing of a genius, but who, however, designed models and advantageously sold them to the manufacturers of lamps in the Rue Saint-Louis au Marais. It was Charriere who, in fulfilment of a vow made to his friend Marsy, acted as guardian to the boy.
n.o.body in Paris now remembered anything about Philippe Marsy. In the course of time, all the little rumors are hushed in the roar and rattle of Parisian life. Only some semi-flattering rumors were connected with Sabine's name, together with some mysterious reminiscences. Moreover, she had the special attraction of a hostess who imparts to her salon the peculiar charm and flavor of unceremonious hospitality. One was only obliged to wear a white cravat about his throat, he did not have to starch his wits.
Only very recently had Sabine Marsy's salon acquired the reputation of being an easy-going one, where one was sure of a welcome, a sort of rendezvous where every one could be found as in the corridor of a theatre on the night of a first appearance, or on the sidewalk of a boulevard; a salon well-filled, that could rank with the semi-official and very distinguished one presided over by Madame Evan, and those others quieter, more sober--if a little Calvinistic--of the select Alsatian colony.
Sabine Marsy must have had a great deal of tact, force of character and perseverance in carrying out her plans, to have reached this point, more difficult to her, moreover, than it would have been to any other, as she had no political backing whatever. Her connection with society was entirely through the world of artists. Many of these, however, had brought to her salon some of the Athenians of the political world, connoisseurs, good conversationalists, handsome men, who freely declared with Vaudrey, that a republic could not exist without the a.s.sistance of women, that to women Orleanism was due, and those charming fellows had made Madame Marsy's hospitable salon the fas.h.i.+on.
Besides it is easy enough in Paris to have a salon if one knows how to give dinners. Some squares of Bristol board engraved by Stern and posted to good addresses, will attract with an almost disconcerting facility, a crowd of visitors who will swarm around a festive board like bees around a honeycomb.
Paris is a town of guests.
Then too, Madame Marsy was herself so captivating. She was always on the watch for some new celebrity, as a game-keeper watches for a hare that he means to shoot presently. One of her daily tasks was to read the _Journal Officiel_ in order to discover in the orator of to-day the Minister of State of to-morrow. She was always well informed beforehand which artist or sculptor would be likely to win the medal of honor at the Salon, and was the first to invite such a one and to let him know that it was she who had discovered him. In literature, she encouraged the new school, liking it for the attention it attracted. It was also her aim to give to her salon a literary as well as a political color.
Artists and statesmen elbowed one another there.
For some days now, she had thought of giving a reception which was to be a surprise to her friends. She had heard of j.a.panese exhibitions being given at other houses. She herself was determined to give a _soiree exotique_. It happened just then that a friend of Guy de Lissac, Monsieur Jose de Rosas, a great lounger, had returned from a journey around the world. What a piece of good fortune! She too had known De Rosas formerly, and if she could only get him to consent, she could announce a most attractive soiree: the travels of such a man as Monsieur de Rosas: a rare treat!
”The Comtesse d'Horville gives literary matinees,” said Sabine, quite on fire with the idea; ”Madame Evan has poems and tragedies read at her receptions, I shall have lecturers and savants, since that is fas.h.i.+onable.”