At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
their mother, who secretly prided herself on the perfect characters of
her two daughters. It is easy to imagine the results of the training
they had received. Brought up to a commercial life, accustomed to
hear nothing but dreary arguments and calculations about trade, having
studied nothing but grammar, book-keeping, a little Bible-history, and
the history of France in Le Ragois, and never reading any book but what
their mother would sanction, their ideas had not acquired much scope.
They knew perfectly how to keep house; they were familiar with the
prices of things; they understood the difficulty of amassing money; they
were economical, and had a great respect for the qualities that make a
man of business. Although their father was rich, they were as skilled
in darning as in embroidery; their mother often talked of having them
taught to cook, so that they might know how to order a dinner and scold
a cook with due knowledge. They knew nothing of the pleasures of the
world; and, seeing how their parents spent their exemplary lives, they
very rarely suffered their eyes to wander beyond the walls of their
hereditary home, which to their mother was the whole universe. The
meetings to which family anniversaries gave rise filled in the future of
earthly joy to them.
When the great drawing-room on the second floor was to be prepared to
receive company--Madame Roguin, a Demoiselle Chevrel, fifteen months
younger than her cousin, and bedecked with diamonds; young Rabourdin,
employed in the Finance Office; Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, the rich
perfumer, and his wife, known as Madame Cesar; Monsieur Camusot, the
richest silk mercer in the Rue des Bourdonnais, with his father-in-law,
Monsieur Cardot, two or three old bankers, and some immaculate
ladies--the arrangements, made necessary by the way in which everything
was packed away--the plate, the Dresden china, the candlesticks, and the
glass--made a variety in the monotonous lives of the three women, who
came and went and exerted themselves as nuns would to receive their
bishop. Then, in the evening, when all three were tired out with having
wiped, rubbed, unpacked, and arranged all the gauds of the festival, as
the girls helped their mother to undress, Madame Guillaume would say to
them, “Children, we have done nothing today.”
When, on very great occasions, “the portress nun” allowed dancing,
restricting the games of boston, whist, and backgammon within the limits
of her bedroom, such a concession was accounted as the most unhoped
felicity, and made them happier than going to the great balls, to two
or three of which Guillaume would take the girls at the time of the
Carnival.
And once a year the worthy draper gave an entertainment, when he spared
no expense. However rich and fashionable the persons invited might be,
they were careful not to be absent; for the most important houses on
the exchange had recourse to the immense credit, the fortune, or the
time-honored experience of Monsieur Guillaume. Still, the excellent
merchant’s daughters did not benefit as much as might be supposed by the
lessons the world has to offer to young spirits. At these parties, which
were indeed set down in the ledger to the credit of the house, they wore
dresses the shabbiness of which made them blush. Their style of dancing
was not in any way remarkable, and their mother’s surveillance did not
allow of their holding any conversation with their partners beyond Yes
and No. Also, the law of the old sign of the Cat and Racket commanded
that they should be home by eleven o’clock, the hour when balls and
fetes begin to be lively. Thus their pleasures, which seemed to conform
very fairly to their father’s position, were often made insipid by
circumstances which were part of the family habits and principles.
As to their usual life, one remark will sufficiently paint it. Madame
Guillaume required her daughters to be dressed very early in the
morning, to come down every day at the same hour, and she ordered their
employments with monastic regularity. Augustine, however, had been
gifted by chance with a spirit lofty enough to feel the emptiness of
such a life. Her blue eyes would sometimes be raised as if to pierce
the depths of that gloomy staircase and those damp store-rooms. After
sounding the profound cloistral silence, she seemed to be listening to
remote, inarticulate revelations of the life of passion, which accounts
feelings as of higher value than things. And at such moments her cheek
would flush, her idle hands would lay the muslin sewing on the polished
oak counter, and presently her mother would say in a voice, of which
even the softest tones were sour, “Augustine, my treasure, what are
you thinking about?” It is possible that two romances discovered
by Augustine in the cupboard of a cook Madame Guillaume had
lately discharged--_Hippolyte Comte de Douglas_ and _Le Comte de
Comminges_--may have contributed to develop the ideas of the young girl,
who had devoured them in secret, during the long nights of the past
winter.
And so Augustine’s expression of vague longing, her gentle voice, her
jasmine skin, and her blue eyes had lighted in poor Lebas’ soul a
flame as ardent as it was reverent. From an easily understood caprice,
Augustine felt no affection for the orphan; perhaps she did not know
that he loved her. On the other hand, the senior apprentice, with his
long legs, his chestnut hair, his big hands and powerful frame, had
found a secret admirer in Mademoiselle Virginie, who, in spite of her
dower of fifty thousand crowns, had as yet no suitor. Nothing could
be more natural than these two passions at cross-purposes, born in the
silence of the dingy shop, as violets bloom in the depths of a wood. The
mute and constant looks which made the young people’s eyes meet by sheer
need of change in the midst of persistent work and cloistered peace, was
sure, sooner or later, to give rise to feelings of love. The habit of
seeing always the same face leads insensibly to our reading there the
qualities of the soul, and at last effaces all its defects.
“At the pace at which that man goes, our girls will soon have to go on
their knees to a suitor!” said Monsieur Guillaume to himself, as he
read the first decree by which Napoleon drew in advance on the conscript
classes.
From that day the old merchant, grieved at seeing his eldest daughter
fade, remembered how he had married Mademoiselle Chevrel under much the
same circumstances as those of Joseph Lebas and Virginie. A good bit
of business, to marry off his daughter, and discharge a sacred debt
by repaying to an orphan the benefit he had formerly received from
his predecessor under similar conditions! Joseph Lebas, who was now
three-and-thirty, was aware of the obstacle which a difference of
fifteen years placed between Augustine and himself. Being also too
clear-sighted not to understand Monsieur Guillaume’s purpose, he knew
his inexorable principles well enough to feel sure that the second would
never marry before the elder. So the hapless assistant, whose heart was
as warm as his legs were long and his chest deep, suffered in silence.
This was the state of the affairs in the tiny republic which, in the
heart of the Rue Saint-Denis, was not unlike a dependency of La Trappe.
But to give a full account of events as well as of feelings, it is
needful to go back to some months before the scene with which this story
opens. At dusk one evening, a young man passing the darkened shop of the
Cat and Racket, had paused for a moment to gaze at a picture which might
have arrested every painter in the world. The shop was not yet lighted,
and was as a dark cave beyond which the dining-room was visible. A
hanging lamp shed the yellow light which lends such charm to pictures
of the Dutch school. The white linen, the silver, the cut glass, were
brilliant accessories, and made more picturesque by strong contrasts of
light and shade. The figures of the head of the family and his wife, the
faces of the apprentices, and the pure form of Augustine, near whom a
fat chubby-cheeked maid was standing, composed so strange a group; the
heads were so singular, and every face had so candid an expression; it
was so easy to read the peace, the silence, the modest way of life in
this family, that to an artist accustomed to render nature, there was
something hopeless in any attempt to depict this scene, come upon by
chance. The stranger was a young painter, who, seven years before, had
gained the first prize for painting. He had now just come back from
Rome. His soul, full-fed with poetry; his eyes, satiated with Raphael
and Michael Angelo, thirsted for real nature after long dwelling in the
pompous land where art has everywhere left something grandiose. Right or
wrong, this was his personal feeling. His heart, which had long been
a prey to the fire of Italian passion, craved one of those modest
and meditative maidens whom in Rome he had unfortunately seen only
in painting. From the enthusiasm produced in his excited fancy by the
living picture before him, he naturally passed to a profound admiration
for the principal figure; Augustine seemed to be pensive, and did not
eat; by the arrangement of the lamp the light fell full on her face, and
her bust seemed to move in a circle of fire, which threw up the shape of
her head and illuminated it with almost supernatural effect. The artist
involuntarily compared her to an exiled angel dreaming of heaven. An
almost unknown emotion, a limpid, seething love flooded his heart. After
remaining a minute, overwhelmed by the weight of his ideas, he tore
himself from his bliss, went home, ate nothing, and could not sleep.
The next day he went to his studio, and did not come out of it till he
had placed on canvas the magic of the scene of which the memory had, in
a sense, made him a devotee; his happiness was incomplete till he should
possess a faithful portrait of his idol. He went many times past the
house of the Cat and Racket; he even ventured in once or twice, under
a disguise, to get a closer view of the bewitching creature that Madame
Guillaume covered with her wing. For eight whole months, devoted to his
love and to his brush, he was lost to the sight of his most intimate
friends forgetting the world, the theatre, poetry, music, and all his
dearest habits. One morning Girodet broke through all the barriers with
which artists are familiar, and which they know how to evade, went into
his room, and woke him by asking, “What are you going to send to the
Salon?” The artist grasped his friend’s hand, dragged him off to the
studio, uncovered a small easel picture and a portrait. After a long
and eager study of the two masterpieces, Girodet threw himself on his
comrade’s neck and hugged him, without speaking a word. His feelings
could only be expressed as he felt them--soul to soul.
“You are in love?” said Girodet.
They both knew that the finest portraits by Titian, Raphael, and
Leonardo da Vinci, were the outcome of the enthusiastic sentiments
by which, indeed, under various conditions, every masterpiece is
engendered. The artist only bent his head in reply.
“How happy are you to be able to be in love, here, after coming back
from Italy! But I do not advise you to send such works as these to the
Salon,” the great painter went on. “You see, these two works will not
be appreciated. Such true coloring, such prodigious work, cannot yet be
understood; the public is not accustomed to such depths. The pictures
we paint, my dear fellow, are mere screens. We should do better to
turn rhymes, and translate the antique poets! There is more glory to be
looked for there than from our luckless canvases!”
Notwithstanding this charitable advice, the two pictures were exhibited.