Parisian Points of View by Ludovic Halevy

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MASTER-TALES

PARISIAN
POINTS OF VIEW

BY
LUDOVIC HALEVY

TRANSLATED BY
EDITH V.B. MATTHEWS

WITH INTRODUCTION BY
BRANDER MATTHEWS

[Illustration]

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON

Copyright, 1894, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

_All rights reserved._

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION vii
ONLY A WALTZ 3
THE DANCING-MASTER 37
THE CIRCUS CHARGER 49
BLACKY 69
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN PARIS 83
THE STORY OF A BALL-DRESS 113
THE INSURGENT 137
THE CHINESE AMBASSADOR 147
IN THE EXPRESS 161

INTRODUCTION

THE SHORT STORIES OF M. LUDOVIC HALEVY

To most American readers of fiction I fancy that M. Ludovic Halevy is
known chiefly, if not solely, as the author of that most charming of
modern French novels, _The Abbe Constantin_. Some of these readers may
have disliked this or that novel of M. Zola's because of its bad moral,
and this or that novel of M. Ohnet's because of its bad taste, and all
of them were delighted to discover in M. Halevy's interesting and
artistic work a story written by a French gentleman for young ladies.
Here and there a scoffer might sneer at the tale of the old French
priest and the young women from Canada as innocuous and saccharine; but
the story of the good Abbe Constantin and of his nephew, and of the girl
the nephew loved in spite of her American millions--this story had the
rare good fortune of pleasing at once the broad public of indiscriminate
readers of fiction and the narrower circle of real lovers of literature.
Artificial the atmosphere of the tale might be, but it was with an
artifice at once delicate and delicious; and the tale itself won its way
into the hearts of the women of America as it had into the hearts of the
women of France.

There is even a legend--although how solid a foundation it may have in
fact I do not dare to discuss--there is a legend that the lady-superior
of a certain convent near Paris was so fascinated by _The Abbe
Constantin_, and so thoroughly convinced of the piety of its author,
that she ordered all his other works, receiving in due season the lively
volumes wherein are recorded the sayings and doings of Monsieur and
Madame Cardinal, and of the two lovely daughters of Monsieur and Madame
Cardinal. To note that these very amusing studies of certain aspects of
life in a modern capital originally appeared in that extraordinary
journal, _La Vie Parisienne_--now sadly degenerate--is enough to
indicate that they are not precisely what the good lady-superior
expected to receive. We may not say that _La Famille Cardinal_ is one of
the books every gentleman's library should be without; but to appreciate
its value requires a far different knowledge of the world and of its
wickedness than is needed to understand _The Abbe Constantin_.

Yet the picture of the good priest and the portraits of the little
Cardinals are the work of the same hand, plainly enough. In both of
these books, as in _Criquette_ (M. Halevy's only other novel), as in _A
Marriage for Love_, and the twoscore other short stories he has written
during the past thirty years, there are the same artistic qualities, the
same sharpness of vision, the same gentle irony, the same constructive
skill, and the same dramatic touch. It is to be remembered always that
the author of _L'Abbe Constantin_ is also the half-author of "Froufrou"
and of "Tricoche et Cacolet," as well as of the librettos of "La Belle
Helene" and of "La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein."

In the two novels, as in the twoscore short stories and sketches--the
_contes_ and the _nouvelles_ which are now spring-like idyls and now
wintry episodes, now sombre etchings and now gayly-colored pastels--in
all the works of the story-teller we see the firm grasp of the
dramatist. The characters speak for themselves; each reveals himself
with the swift directness of the personages of a play. They are not
talked about and about, for all analysis has been done by the playwright
before he rings up the curtain in the first paragraph. And the story
unrolls itself, also, as rapidly as does a comedy. The movement is
straightforward. There is the cleverness and the ingenuity of the
accomplished dramatist, but the construction has the simplicity of the
highest skill. The arrangement of incidents is so artistic that it seems
inevitable; and no one is ever moved to wonder whether or not the tale
might have been better told in different fashion.

Nephew of the composer of "La Juive"--an opera not now heard as often as
it deserves, perhaps--and son of a playwright no one of whose
productions now survives, M. Halevy grew up in the theatre. At fourteen
he was on the free-list of the Opera, the Opera-Comique, and the Odeon.
After he left school and went into the civil service his one wish was to
write plays, and so to be able to afford to resign his post. In the
civil service he had an inside view of French politics, which gave him a
distaste for the mere game of government without in any way impairing
the vigor of his patriotism; as is proved by certain of the short stones
dealing with the war of 1870 and the revolt of the Paris Communists. And
while he did his work faithfully, he had spare hours to give to
literature. He wrote plays and stories, and they were rejected. The
manager of the Odeon declared that one early play of M. Halevy's was
exactly suited to the Gymnase, and the manager of the Gymnase protested
that it was exactly suited to the Odeon. The editor of a daily journal
said that one early tale of M. Halevy's was too brief for a novel, and
the editor of a weekly paper said that it was too long for a short
story.

In time, of course, his luck turned; he had plays performed and stories
published; and at last he met M. Henri Meilhac, and entered on that
collaboration of nearly twenty years' duration to which we owe
"Froufrou" and "Tricoche et Cacolet," on the one hand, and on the other
the books of Offenbach's most brilliant operas--"Barbebleue," for
example, and "La Perichole." When this collaboration terminated, shortly
before M. Halevy wrote _The Abbe Constantin_, he gave up writing for the
stage. The training of the playwright he could not give up, if he
would, nor the intimacy with the manners and customs of the people who
live, move, and have their being on the far side of the curtain.

Obviously M. Halevy is fond of the actors and the actresses with whom he
spent the years of his manhood. They appear again and again in his
tales; and in his treatment of them there is never anything
ungentlemanly as there was in M. Jean Richepin's recent volume of
theatrical sketches. M. Halevy's liking for the men and women of the
stage is deep; and wide is his knowledge of their changing moods. The
young Criquette and the old Karikari and the aged Dancing-master--he
knows them all thoroughly, and he likes them heartily, and he
sympathizes with them cordially. Indeed, nowhere can one find more
kindly portraits of the kindly player-folk than in the writings of this
half-author of "Froufrou"; it is as though the successful dramatist felt
ever grateful towards the partners of his toil, the companions of his
struggles. He is not blind to their manifold weaknesses, nor is he the
dupe of their easy emotionalism, but he is tolerant of their failings,
and towards them, at least, his irony is never mordant.

Irony is one of M. Halevy's chief characteristics, perhaps the chiefest.
It is gentle when he deals with the people of the stage--far gentler
then than when he is dealing with the people of Society, with
fashionable folk, with the aristocracy of wealth. When he is telling us
of the young loves of millionaires and of million-heiresses, his touch
may seem caressing, but for all its softness the velvet paw has claws
none the less. It is amusing to note how often M. Halevy has chosen to
tell the tale of love among the very rich. The heroine of _The Abbe
Constantin_ is immensely wealthy, as we all know, and immensely wealthy
are the heroines of _Princesse_, of _A Grand Marriage,_ and of _In the
Express_.[A] Sometimes the heroes and the heroines are not only
immensely wealthy, they are also of the loftiest birth; such, for
instance, are the young couple whose acquaintance we make in the pages
of _Only a Waltz_.

[Footnote A: Perhaps the present writer will be forgiven if he wishes to
record here that _In the Express (Par le Rapide)_ was published in Paris
only towards the end of 1892, while a tale not wholly unlike it, _In the
Vestibule Limited_, was published in New York in the spring of 1891.]

There is no trace or taint of snobbery in M. Halevy's treatment of all
this magnificence; there is none of the vulgarity which marks the pages
of _Lothair_, for example; there is no mean admiration of mean things.
There is, on the other hand, no bitterness of scourging satire. He lets
us see that all this luxury is a little cloying and perhaps not a little
enervating. He suggests (although he takes care never to say it) that
perhaps wealth and birth are not really the best the world can offer.
The amiable egotism of the hero of _In the Express_, and the not
unkindly selfishness of the heroine of that most Parisian love-story,
are set before us without insistence, it is true, but with an irony so
keen that even he who runs as he reads may not mistake the author's real
opinion of the characters he has evoked.

To say this is to say that M. Halevy's irony is delicate and playful.
There is no harshness in his manner and no hatred in his mind. We do not
find in his pages any of the pessimism which is perhaps the dominant
characteristic of the best French fiction of our time. To M. Halevy, as
to every thinking man, life is serious, no doubt, but it need not be
taken sadly, or even solemnly. To him life seems still enjoyable, as it
must to most of those who have a vivid sense of humor. He is not
disillusioned utterly, he is not reduced to the blankness of despair as
are so many of the disciples of Flaubert, who are cast into the outer
darkness, and who hopelessly revolt against the doom they have brought
on themselves.

Indeed, it is Merimee that M. Halevy would hail as his master, and not
Flaubert, whom most of his fellow French writers of fiction follow
blindly. Now, while the author of _Salamnbo_ was a romanticist turned
sour, the author of _Carmen_ was a sentimentalist sheathed in irony. To
Gustave Flaubert the world was hideously ugly, and he wished it
strangely and splendidly beautiful, and he detested it the more because
of his impossible ideal. To Prosper Merimee the world was what it is,
to be taken and made the best of, every man keeping himself carefully
guarded. Like Merimee, M. Halevy is detached, but he is not
disenchanted. His work is more joyous than Merimee's, if not so vigorous
and compact, and his delight in it is less disguised. Even in the
Cardinal sketches there is nothing that leaves an acrid after-taste,
nothing corroding--as there is not seldom in the stronger and sterner
short stories of Maupassant.

More than Maupassant or Flaubert or Merimee, is M. Halevy a Parisian.
Whether or not the characters of his tale are dwellers in the capital,
whether or not the scene of his story is laid in the city by the Seine,
the point of view is always Parisian. The _Circus Charger_ did his duty
in the stately avenues of a noble country-place, and _Blacky_ performed
his task near a rustic water-fall; but the men who record their
intelligent actions are Parisians of the strictest sect. Even in the
patriotic pieces called forth by the war of 1870, in the _Insurgent_ and
in the _Chinese Ambassador_, it is the siege of Paris and the struggle
of the Communists which seem to the author most important. His style
even, his swift and limpid prose--the prose which somehow corresponds to
the best _vers de societe_ in its brilliancy and buoyancy--is the style
of one who lives at the centre of things. Cardinal Newman once said that
while Livy and Tacitus and Terence and Seneca wrote Latin, Cicero wrote
Roman; so while M. Zola on the one side, and M. Georges Ohnet on the
other, may write French, M. Halevy writes Parisian.

BRANDER MATTHEWS.

ONLY A WALTZ

"Aunt, dear aunt, don't believe a word of what he is going to tell you.
He is preparing to fib, to fib outrageously. If I hadn't interrupted him
at the beginning of his talk, he would have told you that he had made up
his mind to marry me from his and my earliest childhood."

"Of course!" exclaimed Gontran.

"Of course not," replied Marceline. "He was going to tell you that he
was a good little boy, having always loved his little cousin, and that
our marriage was a delightful romance of tenderness and sweetness."

"Why, yes, of course," repeated Gontran.

"Nonsense! The truth, Aunt Louise, the real truth, in short, is this,
never, never should we have been married if on the 17th of May, 1890,
between nine and eleven o'clock, he had not lost 34,000 points at
bezique at the club, and if all the boxes had not been sold, that same
night, at the Bouffes-Parisiens Theatre."

Gontran began to laugh.

"Oh, you can laugh as much as you please! You know very well that but
for this--on what does fate depend?--I should now be married and a
duchess, it is true; but Duchess of Courtalin, and not Duchess of
Lannilis. Well, perhaps that would have been better! At any rate, I wish
to give Aunt Louise the authentic history of our marriage."

"Tell away, if it amuses you," said Gontran.

"Yes, sir, it amuses me. You shall know all, Aunt Louise--all,
absolutely all; and I beg you to be judge of our quarrel."

This scene was taking place eight days after Marceline de Lorlauge, at
the Church of the Madeleine, before the altar, hidden under a mountain
of roses, had answered "yes," with just the right amount of nervousness
and emotion (neither too much nor too little, but exactly right), when
she was asked if she was willing to take for husband her cousin, Jean
Leopold Mathurin Arbert Gontran, Duke of Lannilis.

This marriage had been the great marriage of the season. There had been
an absolute crush under the colonnade and against the railings of the
church to see the bride walk down those fearful steps of the Madeleine.
What an important feat that is! Merely to be beautiful is not all that
is needful; it is necessary besides to know how to be beautiful. There
is an art about being pretty which requires certain preparations and
study. In society, as in the theatre, success rarely comes at once. Mme.
de Lannilis had the good-fortune to make her first appearance with
decisive success. She was at once quite easily and boldly at home in her
beauty; she had only to appear to triumph. Prince Nerins had not a
moment's hesitation concerning it, and he it is, as every one knows,
who, with general consent, has made himself the distributor of the
patents of supreme Parisian elegance; so while the new duchess, beneath
the fire of a thousand eyes and behind the ringing staffs, was taking
her first steps as a young married woman with calm assurance, Nerins,
struck with admiration, was giving way, under the colonnade of the
Madeleine, to veritable transports of enthusiasm. He went from group to
group repeating:

"She is aerial! There is no other expression for her--aerial! She does
not walk, she glides! If she had the fantasy, with one little kick of
her heel, she could raise herself lightly over the heads of those two
tall fellows with spears, cross the Place de la Concorde, and go and
place herself on the pediment of the Chamber of Deputies. Look at her
well; that is true beauty, radiant beauty, blazing beauty! She is a
goddess, a young goddess! she will reign long, gentlemen--as long as
possible."

The young goddess, for the present, did not go farther than Lannilis, in
Poitou, to her husband's home--her home--in a mansion that had seen many
Duchesses of Lannilis, but never one more charming, and never, it must
be said, one more absolutely in love. This little duchess of nineteen
was wild about this little duke of twenty-five, who was jealously
carrying her off for himself alone to a quiet and solitary retreat.

They had arrived Thursday, the 24th of June, at about two o'clock--on an
exquisite night beneath a star-spangled sky--and they were suddenly
astounded at receiving a letter from their Aunt Louise, dated July 1:

"Eight days' steady tete-a-tete," she wrote, "is enough, quite enough.
Trust to the experience of an old countrywoman, who would be delighted
to kiss her little nephew and niece. Don't eat all your love in the
bud--keep a little for the future."

Thursday, the 1st of July! Eight days! They had been eight days at
Lannilis! It was impossible! They tried to put some order in their
reflections. What had they done Friday, Saturday, and Sunday? But all
was vague, and became confused in their minds. The days and the nights,
and the nights and days. What had they done? It was always the same,
same thing; and the same thing had somehow never been the same thing.

They had just loved, loved, loved; and, quite given up to this very wise
occupation, they had completely forgotten that near Lannilis, in the old
residence of Chatellerault, there was dear old Aunt Louise, who was
expecting their first bridal visit--a visit which was due her, for she
had the best claim in the world, on account of her eighty-four years,
her kindness, and also because of the gift of a magnificent pearl
necklace to Marceline.

So it was necessary to be resigned, to leave off dreaming, and to come
back to reality; and it was during this visit that, before the old aunt,
much amused at the quarrel, this great dispute had abruptly burst forth
between the young married couple.

Aunt Louise had accepted the position of arbitrator, and, presiding over
the discussion, she had made the two contestants sit down before her in
arm-chairs, at a respectful distance. Marceline, before being seated,
had already taken the floor.

"Every one agreed upon this point (you know it, Aunt Louise; mamma must
often have told you in her letters)--every one was agreed on this point:
that there were really only two suitable matches for me--the Duke of
Lannilis here present, and the Duke of Courtalin. I had the weakness to
prefer him--him over there. Why? I can scarcely tell-a childish habit,
doubtless. We had played together when we were no higher than that at
being little husband and wife. I had remained faithful to that childhood
love, whereas he--"

"Whereas I--"

"All in due season, sir, and you will lose nothing by waiting. However,
there were all sorts of good reasons for preferring--the other one, who
had a larger fortune and was of more ancient nobility."

"Oh, as to that--in money, maybe, but as to birth--"

"It is indisputable! You are both dukes by patent."

"We in 1663."

"And the Courtalin--"

"In 1666 only."

"Agreed."

"Well, then?"

"Oh, just wait! I am posted on the question; mamma studied it thoroughly
when things looked, three months ago, as if I should be Duchess of
Courtalin. One morning mamma went to the archives with an old friend of
hers, a great historian, who is a member of the Institute. You date
from 1663, and the Courtalin from 1666; that is correct. But Louis
XIV., in 1672, by a special edict, gave the precedence to the
Courtalins; and you have not, I suppose, any idea of disputing what
Louis XIV. thought best to do. Now, Aunt Louise, can he?"

"Certainly not."

"But Saint Simon--"

"Oh, let us leave Saint Simon alone; he is prejudice and inaccuracy
itself! I know he is on your side, but that doesn't count; but I will,
to be agreeable to you, acknowledge that you are better looking and
taller than M. de Courtalin--"

"But--"

"Oh, my dear, I begin to see! You are dying for me to tell you that.
Well, yes, you are a fairly handsome man; but that is only a very
perishable advantage, and you have too much respect for
conventionalities to wish to make that equal to the decree of Louis XIV.
However, I loved you--I loved you faithfully, tenderly, fondly,
stupidly; yes, stupidly, for when I had come out in society, the year
before, in April, 1889, at Mme. de Fresnes's ball, when I had allowed my
poor, little, thin shoulders to be seen for the first time (I must have
been about seventeen), I noticed that the young marriageable men in our
set (they are all quoted, noted, and labelled) drew away from me with
strange, respectful deference. I appeared to be of no importance or
interest, in spite of my name, my dowry, and my eyes. You see, I had
singed myself. I had so ridiculously advertised my passion for you that
I no longer belonged to myself; I was considered as belonging to you. As
soon as I had put on my first long dress, which gave me at once the
right to think of marriage and speak of love, I had told all my friends
that I loved, and would never love or marry any one but you--you or the
convent. Yes, I had come to that! My friends had told their brothers and
cousins, who had repeated it to you (just what I wanted), but it put me
out of the race. Dare to say, sir, that it is not all true, strictly
true!"

"I am saying nothing--?"

"Because you are overcome, crushed by the evidence. You say nothing now,
but what did you say last year? Last year! When I think that we could
have been married since last year! A year, a whole year lost! And it was
so long, and it could have been so short! Well, he was there, at the
Fresnes' ball. He condescended to do me the honor of dancing three times
with me. I came home intoxicated, absolutely intoxicated with joy. But
that great happiness did not last long, for this is what that Gontran
the next day said to his friend Robert d'Aigremont, who told his sister
Gabrielle, who repeated it to me, that he saw clearly that they wished
to marry him to his cousin Marceline. I had, the day before, literally
thrown myself into his arms; he had thought right, from pure goodness of
heart, to show some pity for the love of the little school-girl, so he
had resolved to dance with me; but he had done, quite done--he wouldn't
be caught again. He would keep carefully away from coming-out balls;
they were too dangerous a form of gayety. Marriage did not tempt him in
the least. He had not had enough of a bachelor's life yet--besides, he
knew of nothing more absurd than those marriages between cousins. The
true pleasure of marriage, he said, must be to put into one's life
something new and unexpected, and to call by her first name, all at
once, on Tuesday morning, a person whom one didn't so call Monday night.
But a person whom one already knew well, where would be the pleasure? He
made a movement, Aunt Louise; did you see?"

"I saw--"

"He recognized the phrase."

"True. I remember--"

"Ah! but you did not say that phrase only--you said all the others. But
that is nothing as yet, Aunt Louise. Do you know what was his principal
objection to a marriage with me? Do you know what he told Robert? That
he had seen me in evening-dress the night before for the first time, and
that I was too thin! Too thin! Ah! that was a cruel blow to me! For it
was true. I was thin. The evening after Gabrielle had told me that awful
fact, that evening in undressing I looked at my poor little shoulders,
with their poor little salt-cellars, and I had a terrible spasm of
sorrow--a flood of tears that wouldn't stop--a torrent, a real torrent;
and then mamma appeared. I was alone, disrobed, hair flying, studying my
shoulders, deploring their meagreness--a true picture of despair! Mamma
took me in her arms. 'My angel, my poor dear, what is the matter?' I
answered only by sobbing. 'My child, tell me all.' Mamma was very
anxious, but I could not speak; tears choked my voice. 'My dearest, do
you wish to kill me?' So to reassure mamma I managed to say between my
sobs: 'I am too thin, mamma; last night Gontran thought me too thin!' At
that mamma began to laugh heartily; but as she was good-humored that
evening, after laughing she explained to me that she, at seventeen, had
been much thinner than I, and she promised me in the most solemn manner
that I should grow stouter. Mamma spoke true; I have fattened up. Will
you have the goodness, sir, to declare to our aunt that the salt-cellars
have entirely disappeared, and that you cannot have against me, in that
respect, any legitimate cause of complaint?"

"I will declare so very willingly; but you will permit me to add--"

"I will permit you no such thing. I have the floor, let me speak; but
you will soon have a chance to justify yourself. I intend to put you
through a little cross-questioning."

"I'll wait, then--"

"Yes, do. So last spring I began my first campaign. I do not know, Aunt
Louise, what the customs were in your time, but I know that to-day, at
the present time, the condition of young girls is one of extreme
severity. We are kept confined, closely confined, till eighteen, for
mamma was very indulgent in bringing me out when I was only seventeen;
but mamma is goodness itself, and then she isn't coquettish for a
sou--she didn't mind admitting that she had a marriageable daughter. All
mothers are not like that, and I know some who are glad to put off the
public and official exhibition of their poor children so as to gain a
year. At the same time that they race at Longchamps and Chantilly the
great fillies of the year, they take from their boxes the great
heiresses of the year who are ripe for matrimony, and in a series of
white balls given for that purpose, between Easter Sunday and the Grand
Prix, they are made to take little trial gallops before connoisseurs.
They have to work rapidly and find a buyer before the Grand Prix; for
after that all is up, the young girls are packed back to their
governesses, dancing-masters, and literary professors. The campaign is
over. That is all for the year. They are not seen again, the poor
things, till after Lent. So mamma took me last year to a dozen large
balls, which were sad and sorrowful for me. He was not there! He didn't
wish to marry! He told it to every one insolently, satirically. He would
never, never, never marry! He told it to me."

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