Towards six o’clock, when shouting-matches and calls-to-order had succeeded each other to everyone’s satisfaction, I would go and wait for him in rue de Bourgogne. I sent my carriage away, and there, outside the side door, the artists’ entrance, I paced up and down like a young lover – me, Josiane de Valneige – in the presence nearby of M. Sully, a very stony statue.
At last, my Plantesol appeared… and then, my friend… then we would both walk, in the gathering dusk, to his home, to where my Plantesol lived, in a very un-Parisian district, almost unheard-of, rue Monsieur-le-Prince.
What do you say to that? The height of romance, no?
It was on the third floor of an old grey house, two rooms with books on deal shelves, portraits of M. Thiers and M. Gambetta, a plaster bust of The Republic wearing the deputy’s sash, with his medal on the base; a strip of cheap carpet on the floor; pink calico curtains at the window, almost falling off their rails, a table with newspapers, printed reports, tobacco pipes and, on the back of the chair, his writing jacket; next door, in a box room, his bed, and a plank shelf, upon which stood pots of preserves and jars of goose confit sent up from the Midi, and under which he kept his clothes and the satchel he slung across his shoulders when he went out visiting his supporters.
In this cubby-hole, my Plantesol seemed all the greater to me. Yes, it was exactly where a man like him, rising above the day-to-day, ought to live. It was simple, spartan and evocative.
And I couldn’t begin to tell you the pleasure it gave me to desert my comforts and luxuries from time to time, my busy life and my public face, for this out-of-the-way corner where I truly believed some unused part of my heart was going to start beating.
At first, he was more than ready to allow me that pleasure.
‘Yes, let’s go back,’ he would say, ‘since its impoverished state appeals to you. For me in fact it’s a source of pride.’
For a fortnight we spent many well-filled hours there. I make no complaint about Plantesol, but our pleasures owed nothing to his prowess: who wouldn’t be brilliant with me? Everything points only one way; anything different is out of the question. Yes, I don’t suppose that little bed in rue Monsieur-le-Prince was ever expecting to see such fun!
But that was not what I had come all this way for. It was the visionary expression on my Plantesol’s face when he spoke, as if from the benches, here in his humble home: this was love!
‘Yes, speak some more,’ I would say. ‘Tell me everything in your soul… speak just for me… it moves me, it makes me feel good… it’s what drew me to you in the first place, and it’s why I feel we’ll stay together.’
And, my dear, he did speak… he was as voluble as anyone could ask… but I’ll tell you how easily it came to him!
Oh, Jean, my poor Jean, have you guessed…? It was always the same speech!
All the things he had told me that morning at Les Ambassadeurs he served up to me again in portions, with the same intonation, the same gestures! Not a single new idea, not a single word changed, not a comma…
He had his indignations off by heart, and there was one particular line about the progress of democracy with some especially striking image about the sweat of the people that came up with appalling regularity…!
Ah, commercial traveller, phoney, away with you!
Sometimes, getting towards the end, he would stop, a little worried, and interrupt himself: ‘Was there something you didn’t like…? Do you disagree…? But you see, it’s the fires of inspiration, I’m making it up as I go along… improvising… it’s as if I was in an arena in front of hundreds of thousands…’
The only thing he had in front of him was a woman in distress.
Was this the force that had so stirred me and set me, as I thought, on the road to love? My good qualities, such as they are, a certain enthusiasm and the desire to throw myself into things, had already carried me to lofty heights. I thought I was very close to experiencing something altogether new and now the building on the Capitol was crumbling.
In place of the people’s tribune I had dreamed of, that my imagination and my heart were already celebrating, a second-rate dentist, no better than anyone else!
However, I might perhaps have forgiven him this first let-down. After all, there was some good in him, his ideas were not lies. He was trying to convince me of them through his use of words, as he might the simple-minded wife of an influential voter. But his life was still this mediocre life, which he accepted and which had seduced me, for my part, by seeming genuinely exceptional.
But one day he said to me: ‘Let’s go to your place, do you mind?’
By the next day his own place had become a contemptible dump! The day after that he was suggesting that he loved me even more passionately in my big Louis XIV bed, as I must no doubt have noticed…
Oh, the joker! Now he didn’t want anything more to do with his rue Monsieur-le-Prince!
What Monsieur required was chocolate, served in a cup that had belonged to Marie Antoinette… he wished to read his Drôme and Vaucluse Messenger in the mornings, propped up against my English lace pillow… and he chucked the chin of the angelic Gérard as if she were the chambermaid… and he would have liked nothing better than to know how a certain wine in my cellar was coming on, a wine that the Duc de L*** had sent me from his estate.
It was comic and saddening.
I certainly don’t hold him up for blame in any of this, my Plantesol, I understand it well enough. I admit that people do not have too bad a time of it at Josiane de Valneige’s house. It is the very reason why they come, and I laugh at it.
But I would have preferred my Plantesol a little less susceptible to human nature.
By what right, you will ask? Who am I to say that? By no right at all, my dear, just that I must have been a fool, a fantasist, to work up such a head of steam in his honour.
Ah, my illusion didn’t last long! What I loved in my Plantesol was the very thing he turned out not to be. When I saw I was on the wrong track, that I had been stupid to expect something back in return for my expenditure of idealism and credulity, that once again I would have to give up hope of feeling the little creature astir inside me, I was very quickly cured.
That’s the last time you’ll catch me believing in fine gentlemen of the old school, and I tell you, it’s a shame, because with my very own Plantesol, it would have been charming!
Without explaining any of my causes for disappointment, I dropped him. He was very astonished. And, promptly, he sent me some roses.
Then I applied myself to seeking my happiness elsewhere. Who knows where I shall find it, or if I shall ever find it?
*******
P. S. – I am opening my letter again, dear friend, to say that politics has, however, not always been so disappointing. From a practical point of view, it’s not so bad. The cousin of a minister put me in the way of a deal one day that brought in a net gain of five hundred thousand francs. With which I have the honour to bid you a fond farewell.
VIII
Jean Leblois to Josiane de Valneige
I don’t want to sound flattering, my dear Josiane, or disagreeable, whichever you choose, but you fill me with amazement.
Do you know how much I depend on your letters? They are a feast, and if you had deprived me of them I would have held it against you for ever.
Your envelopes regularly get to me towards the end of the day. These little things, with their distant scent of Paris and of one Parisian in particular, bring me hours of pleasure out here.
But my selfishness is not so advanced that it leaves me indifferent to the painful reversals your heart has endured. It is marvellous and it is touching to be witness to this sort of struggle and to see a woman like you on the quest for the Golden Fleece… of happiness.
Your attempts, up to now, have not been brilliantly successful, I agree, and if I wasn’t certain that a day will come when, at a stroke, you will be fully compensated, I would feel extremely sorry for you…
&nb
sp; But I am confident, the miracle will happen just when you least expect it.
Perhaps the fault is yours, my dear; your demands are too severe, you want amazing things. Alas, they are in short supply. Life is a lot more simple than you imagine, and the true way to be happy, the surest, consists perhaps in not seeking too far.
But I can hear your answer from here: ‘I am the way I am, and nothing will change me!’
Indeed; and deep down I congratulate you for being the way you are; the tiniest change would be a shame!
I expect you’ll be going to the ball at the Opéra tonight. And will Josiane de Valneige make herself beautiful? Who knows, maybe the Opéra is where she will strike gold…
I daren’t admit to you that the idea of a ball at the Opéra keeps buzzing in my head!
Oh, how nice it would be to run off to Paris and have a little fun!
The intrigues, the rustle of silk, bare shoulders, music that lifts the spirits, corks popping! Just thinking about it makes me itch. Lucky Parisians!
As for me, I’m off to play my game of billiards at the café du Commerce and try to win my drinks making pots and cannons off old Grenichet, the deputy mayor.
This, my dear friend, is what makes existence beautiful!
I kiss you on your cheeks, next to that little place of olden days…
IX
Josiane de Valneige to Jean Leblois
You make me smile, my dear friend, with this ball of yours at the Opéra. So you still believe in them!
Dear me! Everyone trying to be desperately smart, and those hired Louis XIII costumes put through their paces by generations of dancers at so much per twirl!
It’s not just a sorry business, it’s soul-destroying.
What makes you think a woman more than usually in need of distraction would look in that direction?
Two circuits, on the arm of a gentleman whose black suit is as stiff as it is inevitable, round corridors packed with thoroughly coarse strangers; half an hour in one’s box spotting through one’s lorgnette club members who haven’t even considered it might be a good idea to adjust their manners for the occasion; then the eternal supper, oysters and cold roast to the fore, along with the eternal ice bucket; and to cap it all, electric lighting, which is undoubtedly for Parisian women’s complexions the worst invention imaginable.
It’s thin stuff, admit it, and the great days are long past. What do we have now? And where does one turn for a little life and vigour?
The occasions when one might feel like being beautiful are becoming rare and to put it bluntly the busiest people in this field at present are the undertakers.
Yet… yes, there is a yet; if these yets didn’t exist life really would be intolerable.
I had received, then, in my role as a pretty woman, an invitation to a party to be given one evening by the Journalists.
I don’t know what you think of them; I have known and spent time with some delightful ones.
For several weeks, as it happened, I accompanied one of our most widely-read theatre critics to the premieres. He had taken a liking to me because I looked very good in one of the two dress circle seats the theatres gave him. He never asked anything of me, what’s more, except to allow it to be thought that he might well be asking something more!
The evenings with him were really very interesting. It was all a question of who might come over to say hello, pay court to him as he sat there, applaud or jeer with him. The actors on stage always had half an eye on him, and, when my friend was kind enough to guffaw with laughter, a success was assured.
I also received my share of homage, of flattery; and the most prominent people would lean across and want to know my opinion, as if I knew all about the theatre. The poor devils imagined I would have some influence over the review!
What power these journalists have! It would make you quake in your boots if you weren’t on their side.
Personally, I always make kind remarks about their cleverness, and they return the compliment!
This one, for example, mentions my name with rare punctiliousness in the gossip pages of his major broadsheet; that other one builds me a reputation as a talented sportswoman, which does no harm to one’s reputation, even in matters of love!
Little Dumontel, especially, favours me with his good offices: in his columns I am everywhere, in different places at the same time: in Monte Carlo and at a first night at the Bouffes, in Trouville and on the Terrace of Saint-Germain! Yesterday I went to a house-warming party at someone’s smart little mansion; today I have disappeared to some jealously guarded love nest out in the sticks. It’s extremely flattering, and it at least gives me the illusion that my existence might be of interest to someone.
There is another journalist who, for his part, never misses an opportunity to be disagreeable: because one day I refused – oh, flatly! – to be his guest of honour at a decadent dinner party. I console myself with the thought that if I had gone it would have turned out exactly the same.
But I did go to this special Journalists’ party. It was being given, apparently, for a good cause, for every journalist these days is a little charity worker.
There is nothing more boring than getting dressed at eleven at night and telling oneself: in an hour from now I shall be having fun!
As a general rule, it is always a waste of effort.
Well, that evening, the rule proved untrue.
The concert before the party came to an end, and all the stars, when their own theatres emptied, had come over to join us.
What was charming about it was the feeling of being together in one big family, those who bask in their reputations mingling with those who make them.
Josiane de Valneige, in these surroundings, nevertheless made her own little impression. Take my word for it!
While the dance floor was being set up, the swarm of familiar worshippers, people eager to impress, fell on me. Fat Taddéma, Baron Taddéma, if you please, the same man who had informed me that he would unhesitatingly bestow on me his Venezuelan barony, along with his hand, in exchange for a little comfort – he had lost all his money in the fleshpots – the baron himself came over to deploy his charms.
But I had had enough of all these old acquaintances. Since this was new territory to me, might not chance send me a semblance of novelty?
Who knows, among all these artists, these writers, these Parisians of a particular type, perhaps there would be one with enough about him to attract me, to cast over me his not too well-used charm, and allow me to cast on him a not too sour eye.
They say that journalists today have willingly become good family men, steady types always home in time for dinner. But it really would be a shame if they were all of the same stamp and if there wasn’t amongst their number at least one left: one funny, enterprising, cheeky little fellow, with sufficient understanding to appreciate when a woman is bored and come to her rescue.
‘Madame de Valneige, may I escort you to the buffet?’
‘Valneige, you won’t refuse me this waltz?’
‘Josiane, a rose for your corsage?’
In those three steps, and their differently modulated tones, I became acquainted with little Carbonnel from the Moniteur des Boulevards, dark-haired, monocle in his eye, dressed to the nines, and with an impertinent little look that suited him perfectly.
I don’t quite know how he did it, but that little man had my attention immediately, set my head spinning with his newspaper chatter, his gaiety, his energy and also… no, I daren’t admit it, his attractively triumphant manner.
From time to time, when he pushed his way through the dancers with me, some of the women threw him admiring glances from under their eye-masks; others caught his hand as he passed, held on to it for a second, and they were not just people out of the crowd but women of standing. And as for him…!
‘You see,’ he said, ‘I’m not too badly thought of here…! I’m fit to be seen in public… you do know, Josiane, it’s you alone I want to love… love the way I
know how, with excitement, with tact, with a bit of devilry… do you think a writer making love is the same as a grocer making love…? But you, my dear, what do you know about it? You’ve only ever known rich people’s way of loving, and so-called smart people’s… you should try the other way, the only real way, the only one that doesn’t go grey as it gets older!’
He filled my ears with these follies, little snippets, again and again, during our endless strolls round the ballroom.
Sometimes he would suddenly whisk me on to the floor to join a quadrille; or at others he would pin me in a corner with his jokes, his remarks on the people passing before us, his funny stories, witticisms and gestures which had a gallantry and a boldness I found very seductive.
‘Love me, I want you to love me, you do love me! And the nicest part is that it will be for myself, isn’t that right, Josiane? I have nothing to offer you but a bit of flattery in my paper… what now? So that’s just a joke to you, I suppose?’
Quite right, it was an absolute joke to me! But Roger Carbonnel was not.
You know, dear friend, I’ve always been an avid reader. So you’ll understand why I’m fond of this particular chapter in my story, the episode with a little journalist, which brings to mind similar characters in Balzac’s books.
Little Carbonnel didn’t actually put his name to many articles, but he told me there were plenty of journalists to whom that applied. What does he do, then? He exercises his wit, he is indiscreet, naughty, just a little bit – and enjoyably – bitchy, and just to hear him talk is to find him adorable. He entertained me, on his own account, better than a dozen gossip columns together, and I laughed as I hadn’t laughed for a long time. So much so that at one point he said: ‘This won’t do…! I hope you don’t imagine I’m here just to amuse Madame…? I’m worth better than that…’
I had wounded his self-esteem, and his vexed little look was a treat. Never mind, never mind, little Carbonnel, no one is taking you for a mere entertainer, a peddler of witticisms… don’t look so cross… here, this is for you…
Chasing the Dream Page 5
