Chasing the Dream

by Liane De Pougy

  I was mad for him, mad for him! I was about to say: ‘I love you, I adore you, I am yours’, and once again the words died on my lips.

  The key grated in the lock.

  Heavens, it was Gérard! It must be midnight then! We had had no sense of time passing.

  I ran to intercept her, to tell her… what? I didn’t know, my one thought was spare her the all too startling sight of ‘the little gentleman’, as she called him, in my house at this time of night.

  ‘Wait for me here,’ I ordered, as she was entering the kitchen.

  Explain this paradoxical situation if you can. Gérard was my confidant, she was almost my friend, she knew everything that went on in rue de Prony, she could name them all, the men who marked like milestones the course of my brilliant life. She had shut the door on one to open it for the next, and now I was playing tricks and concealing things from her!

  Even though I acknowledge that her shrewd mind had no doubt guessed my cherished secret already, or that in any case she would know it by tomorrow, I was jealous enough to want to keep it to myself a little longer.

  ‘My friend,’ I said, coming back into the bedroom, ‘we must separate. It is late, I fear. The hours seemed like nothing to us, time has passed too quickly. You must leave, leave… the better to return.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, and kissed me at length. ‘Tomorrow. I love you, Josiane, I adore you. Farewell!’

  You are probably thinking, my old friend, that after all these strong emotions and joys, I was only too ready to go to bed, to get some rest. Well, not so! I went over them in my mind, one by one; I savoured them, one by one, for if it is lovely to wait in expectation it is even more lovely to remember and to prolong on one’s lips the burning imprint of those kisses.

  Until dawn I dreamed at the window, in the scented cool of that beautiful August night, my eyes lost in its starry infinity.

  Suddenly, like rockets, two bright lights burst across the sky – two shooting stars.

  As you will perhaps remember, lovers have their own little weaknesses, their superstitions. I rapidly made a wish: that I could be his, that he could be mine, and for always!

  XX

  To the Same

  Oh, my friend, what a delirious week! I’d need a whole book to tell you about it.

  God, it’s wonderful when two people love each other! I had not placed too high hopes on the dream I’ve pursued all my life, and never have I been as happy as this. And if I have left certain desirable aspects of our love yet to be consummated, it is because one should not spend all one’s wealth in one go, and how wealthy I was just at that moment!

  He didn’t always share my view, he wanted our delight in each other to have no limits, he wanted it all, without reserve or reticence.

  ‘When will you tell me you love me, then?’ he would exclaim, squeezing the breath out of me by the force of his embraces. ‘Don’t you love me, is that it?’

  Mad with desire, his gaze wild, eyes blazing, chest heaving, he would throw himself on me with a cry: ‘You have to love me! You have to be mine!’

  It was torture to resist him, it broke me in two, but I was so afraid – I, Josiane de Valneige – of seeing my happiness crumble through the very act of fulfilling it. The prospect of turning this love into an affair like the others, of seeing it vanish like them after a night of pleasure, a moment of intoxication, repelled me so much that I stiffened in his embrace as if I were defending my life itself.

  And while he, burying his head in his hands, would begin to weep like a child, I would tell him very gently: ‘Later… love me… I lo…’

  Well, no, my dear Jean, I did not say the word quite yet! I waited…! Waited…

  XXI

  To the Same

  Day follows day and no two are alike. After telling you how wonderful it all was, now comes one terrible afternoon that made me feel ill for a long time afterwards.

  As on the other evenings, I was expecting him after nine o’clock. At this time of evening it was easier for him to escape his mother’s watchful eye, for she retired early. But on this day Mme Duvert was having some friends to dinner and Paul had understood that his presence was essential. So he had come in the afternoon to warn me of this change of plan, which would deprive us of those few hours of happiness.

  But as he was coming up the path, guess who it is he finds at my door? That horrible Baron de Raincourt!

  Truly, I am cursed!

  I was in the drawing room, deep in a book, when Gérard showed them both in.

  I suddenly felt quite sick, but put a good face on it nevertheless.

  ‘Delighted to meet you here once again, madame,’ the baron said, bending his old spine. ‘It’s been such a long time…’

  ‘M. Paul Duvert,’ I said, introducing him.

  And turning to Paul with a determined show of good manners: ‘Baron de Raincourt.’

  I was hoping these formal politenesses would prevent the baron from going any further.

  But he was not to be checked: ‘How very unexpected to find you here, my dear Josiane! Do you enjoy living in this out of the way spot? Can you really have left rue de Prony, such a jewel? Because,’ he continued, turning to Paul Duvert, ‘madame lives in such surroundings there, so artistic, so luxurious…! A home fit for the gods, eh! And I was amazed to think that quiet country lanes… green hedges…’

  ‘But I assure you, baron, that Brunoy is very pleasant,’ I said, still trying to disguise my emotion beneath a veneer of civility.

  I glanced furtively at Paul. He was deathly pale, his lips were trembling and I could see he was incapable of uttering a word.

  The awkwardness was almost tangible and the baron, too much a man of the world not to notice it or let it continue, had the decency to get to his feet.

  ‘I shall leave you, madame… in good company,’ he said with a knowing look. ‘I am invited to a garden party up at the manor, I must be on my way.’

  And falling on the hand I held out to him, he kissed it with exaggerated deference.

  ‘So you lied to me,’ exclaimed Paul Duvert, jumping up. ‘Didn’t you tell me you didn’t know him, that ridiculous, worn-out old fop? And today he walks into your house like an old friend. Explain yourself, explain yourself, I have a right to know! I loved you, Josiane… yesterday. Today, I’ve lost all trust, everything is coming apart.’

  ‘No, no!’ I cried in a passion, and took him in my arms. ‘No, no, not everything!’

  ‘And what is your love to me, if you have given it to others? What are the kisses on your lips to me if your heart lies somewhere else? I have a right to know, yes, to know about your past, or how am I to hope for any future…?’

  ‘Don’t attack me so! I will tell you.’

  ‘Yes, talk to me, talk to me. What sort of person are you who can lie to me like that? What are you hiding?’

  He was beside himself with hurt and anger. He frightened me.

  ‘My poor child, calm down,’ I said, soothing his head against my breast. ‘What woman doesn’t have a little history of her own? Now you will learn mine.’

  I had a flash of genius.

  ‘I was married once. My husband, a bad man who never, by the way, made me happy, ran off a few years ago with the baron’s wife. Where they are now nobody knows, and the humiliated husband has found no better way of taking his revenge than to turn his grotesque attentions on me and make everyone in Paris believe we are in effect a couple. If I told you I didn’t know him it is because, I swear, he has never played any part in my life. As for rue de Prony, I was so miserable there that I think about it and mention it as little as possible… well then, come on! Do you really need to get so upset over any of that?’

  How eager for consolation we are when we suffer, how anxious to believe when we doubt!

  An adorable smile lit up his dear face. His brow relaxed. And as our eyes instinctively sought each other’s, he rediscovered faith and hope.

  ‘Josiane, my Josiane, I do love you. Yes
, I can feel it, I have never loved a woman like you. Some have made my heart beat for a moment, excited my senses, but it was nothing but smoke… without fire. You, Josiane, I love you with a love that is lasting and deep.’

  And he was so exquisitely tender that I wondered if I wasn’t even happier than before.

  I also had the relief of thinking that, satisfied by my explanation, he wouldn’t harbour such dark suspicions again, and our sky would from now on remain cloudless.

  Like a shaft of sunlight after the storm, our restored happiness seemed all the dearer to both of us, and we spent a delicious hour interrupted by kisses, with the anticipation of more to come, by laughter and by renewed protestations of love.

  But, as he was leaving, I became aware of a profound change in his features; his eyes had sunk in their sockets and red patches stood out against his unusually pale cheeks.

  The recent emotional upheaval, I thought, and I suppressed an anxiety that began to rise in my heart.

  XXII

  To the Same

  A week went by.

  ‘My God, my God! What’s wrong?’ I began to wonder.

  For eight long days I had not seen him. I went through terrible agonies, I formed the most unlikely conjectures, I stopped sleeping at night, I stopped eating, stopped living.

  Had the residue of that fatal visit been fermenting in his mind, working on it? Had his heart been assailed by new suspicions? Was he trying to show he was cross with me for my little fabrication so that I would have to love him even more? Oh, God, I just didn’t know.

  Was he ill perhaps? A fearful anguish gripped me. The other day when he was leaving, his face was drawn, his eyes feverish and his hands damp. And when I thought that I, who adored him, who would have given my life for him, could not run to his bedside if he was ill, that I would be kept away as a stranger!

  Oh, my poor Josiane, I told myself, how naïve you were not to make friends with that terrifying mother! You would not now be reduced to such a horrible state of uncertainty and scattered wits, you would be able to see him and look after him perhaps.

  In my agitation I came up with the idea of sending Gérard off – she knew everything by now – to collect the village gossip, to try to learn anything. In a small place like Brunoy it couldn’t be difficult. I trusted her natural shrewdness: she’d maybe get the greengrocer’s wife just along the road to tell her something, the butcher opposite, and certainly contrive an encounter with the woman who ran the ‘Berceau d’Anacréon’, the village’s only inn and a fountainhead of gossip.

  I was full of hope, but her investigations went unrewarded. I leant nothing, nothing!

  So, like a soul in distress, I took myself off, wandering the countryside. I trod again the paths we had taken together, where I could feel I was breathing his air, stepping in his footprints. I walked past the windows of his house, in the vague hope that some chance sign would give me a clue; but there again, nothing! The blinds on the little house were pulled half way down.

  And I was slowly making my way back home, broken in body and spirit, walking in a fog like a drunkard, when I suddenly came across an old woman and my attention was caught by her disreputable clothes, garish and dirty at the same time.

  Deep-set grey eyes which seemed to penetrate the depths of your soul peered from her wizened face and her beaky nose, prominent chin and thin lips suggested a forceful character, a powerful will.

  ‘The summer of life… ah, my beauty, the age of storms,’ she murmured in strange, prophetic tones as she passed.

  Startled, I stopped and stared at her.

  ‘Past, Present And What Is To Come: how about it, fine lady? Costs very little… take advantage while you can!’

  She had chanced on fertile ground: my emotions were in such a state that this vulgar fortune-teller seemed like an oracle to me.

  Yes, yes, she had materialised on this very spot for the express purpose of bringing me enlightenment: through her agency I would know everything. I didn’t hesitate for a moment.

  ‘Will you visit me at home in one hour’s time?’ I said. ‘You can see the house there, on the right, with the tall gates, that’s the one.’

  And the old woman, her grey eyes flickering, made some arcane sign and whispered: ‘In one hour!’

  I warned Gérard, who would certainly have sent this ragged old woman packing, a leftover from the fair – and I waited.

  She arrived an hour later.

  For this consultation, the old woman had combed her tousled grey hair, her face was less dirty and a brand new red scarf covered her collapsing bosom.

  ‘Come in,’ I said. ‘Come in. What do you need?’

  ‘A bit less daylight,’ she said, looking towards the blinds, ‘a table, a chair and that’s all.’

  I arranged these things as best I could, and when we were seated in the mysterious semi-dark she required, ‘Now then,’ she said, ‘I work with the cards. Do you want the little pack or the full one?’

  ‘The full one, the full one!’ I exclaimed. ‘And tell me everything, everything!’

  She drew from under her red scarf an enormous bundle of cards, weird and bizarre, elaborately decorated, grimy where fingers had left their marks and which gave off an odour… that I will not attempt to describe.

  Should I confess, my dear Jean, my emotions were at fever pitch, I was shaking, I was hardly breathing for fear of missing what she might be thinking and above all what she was about to say.

  She lined up her cards with every sign of joy, as if she took pleasure in seeing happy circumstances in them, her small eyes blinked with satisfaction, and after a moment of solemn stillness: ‘Oh, a wonderful life!’ she cried. ‘Loves, riches, fame, it’s all there. And you’ve been adored in your time, haven’t you just! On top of that, such beauty too! All the same, here’s a nine of spades that niggles me. Hum, let’s see… well, yes, something we’re still missing in spite of it all? Cupid not playing fair, eh! So much for the past!’

  And after shuffling the cards and getting me to cut them with my left hand – the heart’s hand: ‘Let’s look at now,’ she said. ‘Ah, yes! It’s going well, it’s going well. I see you happy and fulfilled. You’ve found your dream, you’re madly in love, and he loves you, how about that!’

  I was listening to her open-mouthed, the old flatterer. So far she had got everything so exactly right I was ready to believe whatever she might say about the future.

  But she suddenly frowned, her face went dark again, and mumbling who knows what diabolical formulation, she made the sign of the cross and fell silent.

  ‘Heavens, what is it?’ I said, genuinely impressed. ‘A misfortune, an accident? Tell me, speak up…’

  Her hesitation was a torture in itself.

  ‘Come along now, what is it?’ I demanded impatiently. ‘I said I wanted to know everything.’

  ‘Well then, I see darkness, that’s what it is. Darkness… darkness.’

  ‘He’s going to die!’ I cried. ‘He’s ill… this is no good. Here you are. There’s twenty francs, you’re nothing but an imbecile.’

  And darting her little grey eyes towards the glinting gold coin: ‘Patience, good lady. You will have your triumph… the women you count as enemies…’

  Ah, my friend, don’t make fun of me! I was so unhappy!

  And see how bizarre the human heart is. All the time that old witch had been telling me things I found agreeable, I had considered her amazingly gifted and clairvoyant! And as soon as she predicted misfortunes I didn’t want to contemplate because they tore my soul apart, I called her an imbecile.

  And yet, in spite of myself, I was obsessed, haunted…! Darkness…! Darkness…!

  XXIII

  To the Same

  My friend, I was still in the same state when I had a day of such emotional turmoil that the blow it dealt felt mortal. And if I find the strength to describe it to you here it is because, in spite of everything, talking to you about one’s sufferings helps ease the heart.


  You will tell me no doubt that I am a woman who exaggerates despair as much as she exaggerates love. How could it be otherwise when they go hand in hand?

  The day was torrid, the heat overwhelming. Careless of anything else, my mind taken up with him alone, my thoughts adrift in the vastness of my love, of my anxiety, I was resting on my chaise longue, hair loose, and in a state of personal disorder that closely matched the disarray of my heart when, suddenly, there before me I saw – whom? Mme Duvert.

  Her face was exceptionally pale, her expression haggard, her step unsteady. My difficulty in recognising her at first was accentuated by the sheer surprise of her visit.

  ‘Forgive me, please, madame,’ I said, ashamed to have been discovered – by her especially – in my flimsy garments, ‘forgive me for receiving you in this state.’

  ‘It is of no importance,’ she said, with ill-disguised disdain. ‘A serious matter has arisen, so serious I am compelled to visit you in person. But when one is a mother, one finds the courage, one accepts any humiliation.’

  ‘What do you mean, madame?’

  ‘I have spent nights with no sleep, days with no rest, agonising over this visit, caught between desire and fear. Three times I got half way and turned back, until, worried out of my wits and galvanised by the hope of saving my son, I have bridged the chasm that separates us.’

  ‘I am less and less clear what it is you wish to say,’ I replied in a haughty manner that ill-suited me no doubt. ‘And the tone in which you choose to address me, madame…’

  ‘My God, enough. Let’s put our cards on the table. It is unnecessary to pretend. You love my son. He loves you. And this love is killing him!’

  ‘This is a strange reproach, to say the least. Is it my fault that chance threw us together? Do you blame me for being of assistance to your son?’

  ‘Far from it,’ she said, softening a little. ‘But you have upset his life, upset his health, upset his happiness… and mine. There are many sorts of love…’