nothing could have been more painful to my sensitiveness than to occupy myself, confused with blushes, at the center of the whole world as a living advertisement of the least amusing ballet in paris.
to be the day’s sensation of the boulevards one must possess an eccentricity of appearance conceived by nothing short of genius; and my misfortunes had reduced me to present such to all eyes seeking mirth. it was not that i was one of those people in uniform who carry placards and strange figures upon their backs, nor that my coat was of rags; on the contrary, my whole costume was delicately rich and well chosen, of soft grey and fine linen (such as you see worn by a marquis in the pe’sage at auteuil) according well with my usual air and countenance, sometimes esteemed to resemble my father’s, which were not wanting in distinction.
to add to this my duties were not exhausting to the body. i was required only to sit without a hat from ten of the morning to midday, and from four until seven in the afternoon, at one of the small tables under the awning of the cafe’ de la paix at the corner of the place de l’opera—that is to say, the centre of the inhabited world. in the morning i drank my coffee, hot in the cup; in the afternoon i sipped it cold in the glass. i spoke to no one; not a glance or a gesture of mine passed to attract notice.
yet i was the centre of that centre of the world. all day the crowds surrounded me, laughing loudly; all the voyous making those jokes for which i found no repartee. the pavement was sometimes blocked; the passing coachmen stood up in their boxes to look over at me, small infants were elevated on shoulders to behold me; not the gravest or most sorrowful came by without stopping to gaze at me and go away with rejoicing faces. the boulevards rang to their laughter—all paris laughed!
for seven days i sat there at the appointed times, meeting the eye of nobody, and lifting my coffee with fingers which trembled with embarrassment at this too great conspicuosity! those mournful hours passed, one by the year, while the idling bourgeois and the travellers made ridicule; and the rabble exhausted all effort to draw plays of wit from me.
i have told you that i carried no placard, that my costume was elegant, my demeanour modest in all degree.
“how, then, this excitement?” would be your disposition to inquire. “why this sensation?”
it is very simple. my hair had been shaved off, all over my ears, leaving only a little above the back of the neck, to give an appearance of far-reaching baldness, and on my head was painted, in ah! so brilliant letters of distinctness:
theatre
folie-rouge
revue
de
printemps
tous les soirs
such was the necessity to which i was at that time reduced! one has heard that the north americans invent the most singular advertising, but i will not believe they surpass the parisian. myself, i say i cannot express my sufferings under the notation of the crowds that moved about the cafe’ de la paix! the french are a terrible people when they laugh sincerely. it is not so much the amusing things which cause them amusement; it is often the strange, those contrasts which contain something horrible, and when they laugh there is too frequently some person who is uncomfortable or wicked. i am glad that i was born not a frenchman; i should regret to be native to a country where they invent such things as i was doing in the place de l’opera; for, as i tell you, the idea was not mine.
as i sat with my eyes drooping before the gaze of my terrible and applauding audiences, how i mentally formed cursing words against the day when my misfortunes led me to apply at the theatre folie-rouge for work! i had expected an audition and a role of comedy in the revue; for, perhaps lacking any experience of the stage, i am a neapolitan by birth, though a resident of the continent at large since the age of fifteen. all neapolitans can act; all are actors; comedians of the greatest, as every traveller is cognizant. there is a thing in the air of our beautiful slopes which makes the people of a great instinctive musicalness and deceptiveness, with passions like those burning in the old mountain we have there. they are ready to play, to sing—or to explode, yet, imitating that amusing vesuvio, they never do this last when you are in expectancy, or, as a spectator, hopeful of it.
how could any person wonder, then, that i, finding myself suddenly destitute in paris, should apply at the theatres? one after another, i saw myself no farther than the director’s door, until (having had no more to eat the day preceding than three green almonds, which i took from a cart while the good female was not looking) i reached the folie-rouge. here i was astonished to find a polite reception from the director. it eventuated that they wished for a person appearing like myself a person whom they would outfit with clothes of quality in all parts, whose external presented a gentleman of the great world, not merely of one the galant-uomini, but who would impart an air to a table at a cafe’ where he might sit and partake. the contrast of this with the emplacement of the establishment on his bald head-top was to be the success of the idea. it was plain that i had no baldness, my hair being very thick and i but twenty-four years of age, when it was explained that my hair could be shaved. they asked me to accept, alas! not a part in the revue, but a specialty as a sandwich-man. knowing the english tongue as i do, i may afford the venturesomeness to play upon it a little: i asked for bread, and they offered me not a role, but a sandwich!
it must be undoubted that i possessed not the disposition to make any fun with my accomplishments during those days that i spent under the awning of the cafe’ de la paix. i had consented to be the advertisement in greatest desperation, and not considering what the reality would be. having consented, honour compelled that i fulfil to the ending. also, the costume and outfittings i wore were part of my emolument. they had been constructed for me by the finest tailor; and though i had impulses, often, to leap up and fight through the noisy ones about me and run far to the open country, the very garments i wore were fetters binding me to remain and suffer. it seemed to me that the hours were spent not in the centre of a ring of human persons, but of un-well-made pantaloons and ugly skirts. yet all of these pantaloons and skirts had such scrutinous eyes and expressions of mirth to laugh like demons at my conscious, burning, painted head; eyes which spread out, astonished at the sight of me, and peered and winked and grinned from the big wrinkles above the gaiters of zouaves, from the red breeches of the gendarmes, the knickerbockers of the cyclists, the white ducks of sergents de ville, and the knees of the boulevardiers, bagged with sitting cross-legged at the little tables. i could not escape these eyes;—how scornfully they twinkled at me from the spurred and glittering officers’ boots! how with amaze from the american and english trousers, both turned up and creased like folded paper, both with some dislike for each other but for all other trousers more.
it was only at such times when the mortifications to appear so greatly embarrassed became stronger than the embarrassment itself that i could by will power force my head to a straight construction and look out upon my spectators firmly. on the second day of my ordeal, so facing the laughers, i found myself facing straight into the monocle of my half-brother and ill-wisher, prince caravacioli.
at this, my agitation was sudden and very great, for there was no one i wished to prevent perceiving my condition more than that old antonio caravacioli! i had not known that he was in paris, but i could have no doubt it was himself: the monocle, the handsome nose, the toupee’, the yellow skin, the dyed-black moustache, the splendid height—it was indeed caravacioli! he was costumed for the automobile, and threw but one glance at me as he crossed the pavement to his car, which was in waiting. there was no change, not of the faintest, in that frosted tragic mask of a countenance, and i was glad to think that he had not recognized me.
and yet, how strange that i should care, since all his life he had declined to recognize me as what i was! ah, i should have been glad to shout his age, his dyes, his artificialities, to all the crowd, so to touch him where it would most pain him! for was he not the vainest man in the whole world? how well i knew his vulnerable point: the monstrous depth of his vanity in that pretense of youth which he preserved through superhuman pains and a genius of a valet, most excellently! i had much to pay antonio for myself, more for my father, most for my mother. this was why that last of all the world i would have wished that old fortune-hunter to know how far i had been reduced!
then i rejoiced about that change which my unreal baldness produced in me, giving me a look of forty years instead of twenty-four, so that my oldest friend must take at least three stares to know me. also, my costume would disguise me from the few acquaintances i had in paris (if they chanced to cross the seine), as they had only seen me in the shabbiest; while, at my last meeting with antonio, i had been as fine in the coat as now.
yet my encouragement was not so joyful that my gaze lifted often. on the very last day, in the afternoon when my observances were most and noisiest, i lifted my eyes but once during the final half-hour—but such a one that was!
the edge of that beautiful grey pongee skirt came upon the lid of my lowered eyelid like a cool shadow over hot sand. a sergent had just made many of the people move away, so there remained only a thin ring of the laughing pantaloons about me, when this divine skirt presented its apparition to me. a pair of north-american trousers accompanied it, turned up to show the ankle-bones of a rich pair of stockings; neat, enthusiastic and humorous, i judged them to be; for, as one may discover, my only amusement during my martyrdom—if this misery can be said to possess such alleviatings—had been the study of feet, pantaloons, and skirts. the trousers in this case detained my observation no time. they were but the darkest corner of the chiaroscuro of a rembrandt—the mellow glow of gold was all across the grey skirt.
how shall i explain myself, how make myself understood? shall i be thought sentimentalistic or but mad when i declare that my first sight of the grey pongee skirt caused me a thrill of excitation, of tenderness, and—oh-i-me!—of self-consciousness more acute than all my former mortifications. it was so very different from all other skirts that had shown themselves to me those sad days, and you may understand that, though the pantaloons far outnumbered the skirts, many hundreds of the latter had also been objects of my gloomy observation.
this skirt, so unlike those which had passed, presented at once the qualifications of its superiority. it had been constructed by an artist, and it was worn by a lady. it did not pine, it did not droop; there was no more an atom of hanging too much than there was a portion inflated by flamboyancy; it did not assert itself; it bore notice without seeking it. plain but exquisite, it was that great rarity—goodness made charming.
the peregrination of the american trousers suddenly stopped as they caught sight of me, and that precious skirt paused, precisely in opposition to my little table. i heard a voice, that to which the skirt pertained. it spoke the english, but not in the manner of the inhabitants of london, who seem to sing undistinguishably in their talking, although they are comprehensible to each other. to an italian it seems that many north-americans and english seek too often the assistance of the nose in talking, though in different manners, each equally unagreeable to our ears. the intelligent among our lazzaroni of naples, who beg from tourists, imitate this, with the purpose of reminding the generous traveller of his home, in such a way to soften his heart. but there is some difference: the italian, the frenchman, or german who learns english sometimes misunderstands the american: the englishman he sometimes understands.
this voice that spoke was north-american. ah, what a voice! sweet as the mandolins of sorento! clear as the bells of capri! to hear it, was like coming upon sight of the almond-blossoms of sicily for the first time, or the tulip-fields of holland. never before was such a voice!
“why did you stop, rufus?” it said.
“look!” replied the american trousers; so that i knew the pongee lady had not observed me of herself.
instantaneously there was an exclamation, and a pretty grey parasol, closed, fell at my feet. it is not the pleasantest to be an object which causes people to be startled when they behold you; but i blessed the agitation of this lady, for what caused her parasol to fall from her hand was a start of pity.
“ah!” she cried. “the poor man!”
she had perceived that i was a gentleman.
i bent myself forward and lifted the parasol, though not my eyes i could not have looked up into the face above me to be caesar! two hands came down into the circle of my observation; one of these was that belonging to the trousers, thin, long, and white; the other was the grey-gloved hand of the lady, and never had i seen such a hand—the hand of an angel in a suede glove, as the grey skirt was the mantle of a saint made by doucet. i speak of saints and angels; and to the large world these may sound like cold words.—it is only in italy where some people are found to adore them still.
i lifted the parasol toward that glove as i would have moved to set a candle on an altar. then, at a thought, i placed it not in the glove, but in the thin hand of the gentleman. at the same time the voice of the lady spoke to me—i was to have the joy of remembering that this voice had spoken four words to me.
“je vous remercie, monsieur,” it said.
“pas de quoi!” i murmured.
the american trousers in a loud tone made reference in the idiom to my miserable head: “did you ever see anything to beat it?”
the beautiful voice answered, and by the gentleness of her sorrow for me i knew she had no thought that i might understand. “come away. it is too pitiful!”
then the grey skirt and the little round-toed shoes beneath it passed from my sight, quickly hidden from me by the increasing crowd; yet i heard the voice a moment more, but fragmentarily: “don’t you see how ashamed he is, how he must have been starving before he did that, or that someone dependent on him needed—”
i caught no more, but the sweetness that this beautiful lady understood and felt for the poor absurd wretch was so great that i could have wept. i had not seen her face; i had not looked up—even when she went.
“who is she?” cried a scoundrel voyous, just as she turned. “madame of the parasol? a friend of monsieur of the ornamented head?”
“no. it is the first lady in waiting to his wife, madame la duchesse,” answered a second. “she has been sent with an equerry to demand of monseigneur if he does not wish a little sculpture upon his dome as well as the colour decorations!”
“‘tis true, my ancient?” another asked of me.
i made no repartee, continuing to sit with my chin dependent upon my cravat, but with things not the same in my heart as formerly to the arrival of that grey pongee, the grey glove, and the beautiful voice.
since king charles the mad, in paris no one has been completely free from lunacy while the spring-time is happening. there is something in the sun and the banks of the seine. the parisians drink sweet and fruity champagne because the good wines are already in their veins. these parisians are born intoxicated and remain so; it is not fair play to require them to be like other human people. their deepest feeling is for the arts; and, as everyone had declared, they are farceurs in their tragedies, tragic in their comedies. they prepare the last epigram in the tumbril; they drown themselves with enthusiasm about the alliance with russia. in death they are witty; in war they have poetic spasms; in love they are mad.
the strangest of all this is that it is not only the parisians who are the insane ones in paris; the visitors are none of them in behaviour as elsewhere. you have only to go there to become as lunatic as the rest. many travellers, when they have departed, remember the events they have caused there as a person remembers in the morning what he has said and thought in the moonlight of the night.
in paris it is moonlight even in the morning; and in paris one falls in love even more strangely than by moonlight.
it is a place of glimpses: a veil fluttering from a motor-car, a little lace handkerchief fallen from a victoria, a figure crossing a lighted window, a black hat vanishing in the distance of the avenues of the tuileries. a young man writes a ballade and dreams over a bit of lace. was i not, then, one of the least extravagant of this mad people? men have fallen in love with photographs, those greatest of liars; was i so wild, then, to adore this grey skirt, this small shoe, this divine glove, the golden-honey voice—of all in paris the only one to pity and to understand? even to love the mystery of that lady and to build my dreams upon it?—to love all the more because of the mystery? mystery is the last word and the completing charm to a young man’s passion. few sonnets have been written to wives whose matrimony is more than five years of age—is it not so?
