Villette
“Then limited are your powers, for in tending one idiot you fell sick.”
“Not with that, Monsieur; I had a nervous fever: my mind was ill.”
“Vraiment! Vous valez peu de chose. You are not cast in an heroic
mould; your courage will not avail to sustain you in solitude; it
merely gives you the temerity to gaze with sang-froid at pictures of
Cleopatra.”
It would have been easy to show anger at the teasing, hostile tone of
the little man. I had never been angry with him yet, however, and had
no present disposition to begin.
“Cleopatra!” I repeated, quietly. “Monsieur, too, has been looking at
Cleopatra; what does he think of her?”
“Cela ne vaut rien,” he responded. “Une femme superbe—une taille
d’impératrice, des formes de Junon, mais une personne dont je ne
voudrais ni pour femme, ni pour fille, ni pour sœur. Aussi vous ne
jeterez plus un seul coup d’oeil de sa côté.”
“But I have looked at her a great many times while Monsieur has been
talking: I can see her quite well from this corner.”
“Turn to the wall and study your four pictures of a woman’s life.”
“Excuse me, M. Paul; they are too hideous: but if you admire them,
allow me to vacate my seat and leave you to their contemplation.”
“Mademoiselle,” he said, grimacing a half-smile, or what he intended
for a smile, though it was but a grim and hurried manifestation. “You
nurslings of Protestantism astonish me. You unguarded Englishwomen walk
calmly amidst red-hot ploughshares and escape burning. I believe, if
some of you were thrown into Nebuchadnezzar’s hottest furnace you would
issue forth untraversed by the smell of fire.”
“Will Monsieur have the goodness to move an inch to one side?”
“How! At what are you gazing now? You are not recognising an
acquaintance amongst that group of jeunes gens?”
“I think so—Yes, I see there a person I know.”
In fact, I had caught a glimpse of a head too pretty to belong to any
other than the redoubted Colonel de Hamal. What a very finished, highly
polished little pate it was! What a figure, so trim and natty! What
womanish feet and hands! How daintily he held a glass to one of his
optics! with what admiration he gazed upon the Cleopatra! and then, how
engagingly he tittered and whispered a friend at his elbow! Oh, the man
of sense! Oh, the refined gentleman of superior taste and tact! I
observed him for about ten minutes, and perceived that he was
exceedingly taken with this dusk and portly Venus of the Nile. So much
was I interested in his bearing, so absorbed in divining his character
by his looks and movements, I temporarily forgot M. Paul; in the
interim a group came between that gentleman and me; or possibly his
scruples might have received another and worse shock from my present
abstraction, causing him to withdraw voluntarily: at any rate, when I
again looked round, he was gone.
My eye, pursuant of the search, met not him, but another and dissimilar
figure, well seen amidst the crowd, for the height as well as the port
lent each its distinction. This way came Dr. John, in visage, in shape,
in hue, as unlike the dark, acerb, and caustic little professor, as the
fruit of the Hesperides might be unlike the sloe in the wild thicket;
as the high-couraged but tractable Arabian is unlike the rude and
stubborn “sheltie.” He was looking for me, but had not yet explored the
corner where the schoolmaster had just put me. I remained quiet; yet
another minute I would watch.
He approached de Hamal; he paused near him; I thought he had a pleasure
in looking over his head; Dr. Bretton, too, gazed on the Cleopatra. I
doubt if it were to his taste: he did not simper like the little Count;
his mouth looked fastidious, his eye cool; without demonstration he
stepped aside, leaving room for others to approach. I saw now that he
was waiting, and, rising, I joined him.
We took one turn round the gallery; with Graham it was very pleasant to
take such a turn. I always liked dearly to hear what he had to say
about either pictures or books; because without pretending to be a
connoisseur, he always spoke his thought, and that was sure to be
fresh: very often it was also just and pithy. It was pleasant also to
tell him some things he did not know—he listened so kindly, so
teachably; unformalized by scruples lest so to bend his bright handsome
head, to gather a woman’s rather obscure and stammering explanation,
should imperil the dignity of his manhood. And when he communicated
information in return, it was with a lucid intelligence that left all
his words clear graven on the memory; no explanation of his giving, no
fact of his narrating, did I ever forget.
As we left the gallery, I asked him what he thought of the Cleopatra
(after making him laugh by telling him how Professor Emanuel had sent
me to the right about, and taking him to see the sweet series of
pictures recommended to my attention.)
“Pooh!” said he. “My mother is a better-looking woman. I heard some
French fops, yonder, designating her as ‘le type du voluptueux;’ if so,
I can only say, ‘le voluptueux’ is little to my liking. Compare that
mulatto with Ginevra!”
CHAPTER XX.
THE CONCERT.
One morning, Mrs. Bretton, coming promptly into my room, desired me to
open my drawers and show her my dresses; which I did, without a word.
“That will do,” said she, when she had turned them over. “You must have
a new one.”
She went out. She returned presently with a dressmaker. She had me
measured. “I mean,” said she, “to follow my own taste, and to have my
own way in this little matter.”
Two days after came home—a pink dress!
“That is not for me,” I said, hurriedly, feeling that I would almost as
soon clothe myself in the costume of a Chinese lady of rank.
“We shall see whether it is for you or not,” rejoined my godmother,
adding with her resistless decision: “Mark my words. You will wear it
this very evening.”
I thought I should not; I thought no human force should avail to put me
into it. A pink dress! I knew it not. It knew not me. I had not proved
it.
My godmother went on to decree that I was to go with her and Graham to
a concert that same night: which concert, she explained, was a grand
affair to be held in the large salle, or hall, of the principal musical
society. The most advanced of the pupils of the Conservatoire were to
perform: it was to be followed by a lottery “au bénéfice des pauvres;”
and to crown all, the King, Queen, and Prince of Labassecour were to be
present. Graham, in sending tickets, had enjoined attention to costume
as a compliment due to royalty: he also recommended punctual readiness
by seven o’clock.
About six, I was ushered upstairs. Without any force at all, I found
myself led and influenced by another’s will, unconsulted, unpersuaded,
quietly overruled. In short, the pink dress went on, softened by some
drapery of black lace. I was pronounced to be en grande tenue, and
requested to look in the glass. I did so with some fear and trembling;
with more fear and trembling, I turned away. Seven o’clock struck; Dr.
Bretton was come; my godmother and I went down. _She_ was clad in brown
velvet; as I walked in her shadow, how I envied her those folds of
grave, dark majesty! Graham stood in the drawing-room doorway.
“I _do_ hope he will not think I have been decking myself out to draw
attention,” was my uneasy aspiration.
“Here, Lucy, are some flowers,” said he, giving me a bouquet. He took
no further notice of my dress than was conveyed in a kind smile and
satisfied nod, which calmed at once my sense of shame and fear of
ridicule. For the rest; the dress was made with extreme simplicity,
guiltless of flounce or furbelow; it was but the light fabric and
bright tint which scared me, and since Graham found in it nothing
absurd, my own eye consented soon to become reconciled.
I suppose people who go every night to places of public amusement, can
hardly enter into the fresh gala feeling with which an opera or a
concert is enjoyed by those for whom it is a rarity: I am not sure that
I expected great pleasure from the concert, having but a very vague
notion of its nature, but I liked the drive there well. The snug
comfort of the close carriage on a cold though fine night, the pleasure
of setting out with companions so cheerful and friendly, the sight of
the stars glinting fitfully through the trees as we rolled along the
avenue; then the freer burst of the night-sky when we issued forth to
the open chaussée, the passage through the city gates, the lights there
burning, the guards there posted, the pretence of inspection, to which
we there submitted, and which amused us so much—all these small matters
had for me, in their novelty, a peculiarly exhilarating charm. How much
of it lay in the atmosphere of friendship diffused about me, I know
not: Dr. John and his mother were both in their finest mood, contending
animatedly with each other the whole way, and as frankly kind to me as
if I had been of their kin.
Our way lay through some of the best streets of Villette, streets
brightly lit, and far more lively now than at high noon. How brilliant
seemed the shops! How glad, gay, and abundant flowed the tide of life
along the broad pavement! While I looked, the thought of the Rue
Fossette came across me—of the walled-in garden and school-house, and
of the dark, vast “classes,” where, as at this very hour, it was my
wont to wander all solitary, gazing at the stars through the high,
blindless windows, and listening to the distant voice of the reader in
the refectory, monotonously exercised upon the “lecture pieuse.” Thus
must I soon again listen and wander; and this shadow of the future
stole with timely sobriety across the radiant present.
By this time we had got into a current of carriages all tending in one
direction, and soon the front of a great illuminated building blazed
before us. Of what I should see within this building, I had, as before
intimated, but an imperfect idea; for no place of public entertainment
had it ever been my lot to enter yet.
We alighted under a portico where there was a great bustle and a great
crowd, but I do not distinctly remember further details, until I found
myself mounting a majestic staircase wide and easy of ascent, deeply
and softly carpeted with crimson, leading up to great doors closed
solemnly, and whose panels were also crimson-clothed.
I hardly noticed by what magic these doors were made to roll back—Dr.
John managed these points; roll back they did, however, and within was
disclosed a hall—grand, wide, and high, whose sweeping circular walls,
and domed hollow ceiling, seemed to me all dead gold (thus with nice
art was it stained), relieved by cornicing, fluting, and garlandry,
either bright, like gold burnished, or snow-white, like alabaster, or
white and gold mingled in wreaths of gilded leaves and spotless lilies:
wherever drapery hung, wherever carpets were spread, or cushions
placed, the sole colour employed was deep crimson. Pendent from the
dome, flamed a mass that dazzled me—a mass, I thought, of rock-crystal,
sparkling with facets, streaming with drops, ablaze with stars, and
gorgeously tinged with dews of gems dissolved, or fragments of rainbows
shivered. It was only the chandelier, reader, but for me it seemed the
work of eastern genii: I almost looked to see if a huge, dark, cloudy
hand—that of the Slave of the Lamp—were not hovering in the lustrous
and perfumed atmosphere of the cupola, guarding its wondrous treasure.
We moved on—I was not at all conscious whither—but at some turn we
suddenly encountered another party approaching from the opposite
direction. I just now see that group, as it flashed—upon me for one
moment. A handsome middle-aged lady in dark velvet; a gentleman who
might be her son—the best face, the finest figure, I thought, I had