Monsieur De Phocas (Decadence From Dedalus)

by Jean Lorrain

  ‘No, not Baudelaire, I’m rather fed up with him,’ simpered Miss White, a dab hand at fashionable slang. ‘Isn’t that right, Reggie?’ Reginald chipped in, seconding his sister’s nomination of Albert Samain’s Au jardin de I’Infante – a book so fully charged with thunder and lust that its charm is altogether oppressive and unhealthy.

  ‘On feverish evenings as strong as venison,’ she quoted, ‘My soul is burdened with the ennui of an ancient Herod — that’s true enough, isn’t it? Personally, I find that every image smacks of treachery. It’s the same for all of us, isn’t it?’ She lingered coquettishly over every word: ‘I’d like to read you Lust, if I may – you know the wonderful litany:

  ‘Lust, fruit of death upon the tree of life!

  ‘Lust, advent of the sense of splendour!

  ‘I salute you, O most secret and most profound

  ‘Lust, idol and terror of the world.’

  Roguishly extending her tongue between the white rows of her teeth, she added: ‘The ode to Lust is certainly well suited to the occasion, and to the frame which your studio provides, dear Claudius – isn’t that so?’

  THE LARVAE

  ‘The black Goat fades away into unhealthy shadows,

  ‘The evening is red and naked! The last vestiges of your modesty

  ‘Dissolve in an enervating pool of odours;

  ‘And midnight sounds in the hearts of obscene witches.

  ‘The desert simoom has swept over the plain!…

  ‘Plunged in your tresses replete with bitter vapour,

  ‘My flesh covers yours and ponders drowsily

  ‘The love which tomorrow might turn to hatred.

  ‘Face to face, our Senses, as yet unsated,

  ‘Devour one another with stigmatised eyes;

  ‘And our desiccated hearts are like stones.

  ‘The Ardent Beast has made litter of our bodies;

  ‘And, as prescribed for those who watch over the dead,

  ‘Our kneeling souls – up there – are at prayer.’

  In a monotous voice, shading slightly into a sob at the end of each stanza, Maud White proceeded to read a third sonnet. It was like the chanting of liturgical prose; and set as she was against the backcloth of the floating tapestry and its vague congregation the tragedienne seemed indeed to be in a church, her performance an incarnation of the sacred rite of some long-forgotten religion resuscitated in her gestures and in the solid curve of her breasts.

  The black Goat fades away into unhealthy shadows,

  ‘An appeal to ghouls, a summoning of larvae,’ murmured the sardonic voice of Ethal from behind me. And, indeed, while Miss White assumed her priestly role – her two pale arms reaching out, as though the long fingers were plucking invisible flowers, her exposed armpits dotted by golden rust – the studio of the painter had increased its population. More visitors had entered silently, supplementing the crowd of hennaed women and helmeted cavaliers which ranged about the walls. It seemed as if they had been evoked by Maud’s slow voice.

  Thanks to Maud White, the atmosphere had acquired a dream-like quality; it was not until the Irishwoman stopped speaking, her deathly figure slightly brightened by the nacreous trace of a smile and an oblique glance, that I recognised the newcomers.

  The fat shoulders and heavy jaws of the Marquise Naydorff sat atop a gleam of satin and pearls: the Marquise Naydorff who had once been Letitia Sabatini. In spite of the fact that she was over forty her profile, like the face on some Sicilian medal, was helmeted by glistening black tresses. Princess Olga Myrianinska was at her side, her eyelids lowered in her swarthy face. Age had made her stout and she was rendered more bestial still by the fatigue of her face; once a bacchante, she was now a ruminant. Although the two were of different races, they had come to resemble one another; they had the same faded complexion, and the same drawn-out daze in their eyes and in their smiles. They were both puffed up and weighed down by morphine, indelibly marked by its stigmata.

  The Slav and the Sicilian had entered almost at the same time. The Princess of Seiryman-Frileuse had followed a few seconds after, accompanied by a man of means: the Comte de Muzarett. This svelte pair also resembled one another; it was as if they were two sharp silhouettes neatly cut from the same template, like a couple of tall and elegant greyhounds. On closer inspecton, however, the slimness of the woman was slightly more muscular, and the lines of her profile were more wilful. The obstinacy of the overlong chin and the forehead which exploded beneath the pale gold of her light tresses, and the hard and surly grey of the steely eyes complemented the stiffness of her attitude, sheathed as she was in an upright scabbard of pearly satin!

  The man, with a little hawkish head bearing a thick and frizzy shock of hair, carried a wilful affectation and a knowing litheness in the elegance of his body. His skin was very fine and intricately creased; the thousand little wrinkles at the temples and the chiselling of his tight lips were reminiscent of a portrait by Porbus. His translucent and protruding ears were decorated with earrings; his taut and thin neck seemed freshly-milled, like one of the Valois. An astonishing family, the Comtes de Muzarett! So affected was his hauteur that with the three females gathered about him he had the air of a museum-piece illustrating the text of three naughty books. Four hundred years of nobility without a single dilution by mismarriage was spattered by the mud of their cosmopolitan company.

  This group was quick to surround the tragedienne. The evocatrice accepted the compliment gracefully. The women had a hard gleam in their fixed eyes, their jaws contracted in spite of their evident effort to smile. All three had become singularly pale. Muzarett, on the other hand, with a lithe inclination of his slim and elegant being, affected the eagerness and enthusiasm of a dilettante passion conspicuously free of all desire.

  ‘Look at those ogresses!’ said Ethal, scathingly. ‘What a lustre they lend to the youth of Maud White, and how they undress her with their eyes! Follow the sharp glances of the American; they plunge like daggers into the bare bosom of the Irishwoman! If those eyes had the cutting-edge of their steel it would be a long time before the lovely girl would bare her bosom again! How they stab their two rivals! Youthful flesh draws them like a magnet; they have only come for her sake.

  ‘As for the dear Comte, he is all sublime indifference. He pays court to none but the reciter. The entire display of idolatry is designed to the sole end of placing in Maud’s hands certain items of verse. Tomorrow he will send to her, with an appropriate inscription, his ten volumes – and the Winged Rats of Comte Aimery de Muzarett will have one more Muse to their account. His fame as an artist requires very tender care. Look what a mask of diplomacy is painstakingly formed by the whole of that fine profile; he is as wily as a cardinal. He has scented in Miss White a useful agent of celebrity, and he has come solely to harness her to the cause of his glory. It is himself that he courts by means of the salaams he offers to her; he only ever flirts with himself. He is the Narcissus of the inkpot…

  ‘Oh good – look who’s coming to stir things up!’

  This remark was occasioned by the smooth-stepping entrance of a handsome little man, slender and ethereal, with bright blue eyes and blond eyelashes set in a diaphanously pale face. His cheeks were slightly touched with pink – so gently that one might have thought it a dash of rouge – and his light, disorderly hair was the colour of oats. This young and delicate Saxon threaded his way towards the group of socialites ecstatically gathered around Maud; the Marquise Naydorff introduced him to her. The Comte de Muzarett, who had been shaken by a perceptible shiver when the newcomer appeared, stepped aside slightly to make room for him but continued to monopolise the tragedienne, airily ignoring the new admirer.

  ‘An amusing encounter!’ said Ethal, bursting into laughter. ‘It was Muzarett who discovered him, two years ago, and now no longer condescends to notice him. He found that the musician had more talent than the poet, and the melodies of Delabarre were better appreciated than the verses they accompanied. The dear com
te launched the composer in order to provide backing for his rhymes, but did not anticipate that the world might give a better welcome to the pizzicati than the pentameters. He dismissed him for ingratitude – ‘ingratitude’ is the name which avatars of Narcissus give to the success of others – but the little one has a good head for tact and intrigue. He is a pupil who does honour to his master: he has climbed over the back of the comte. He has the advantages of his youth and his physique; it would hardly be possible to find anyone more handsome.

  ‘See, even the ogresses are looking at him! He’s as merry as a clown, and Maud herself has deigned to favour him with the distant regard of her green eyes. She is no longer listening to the dear comte; it’s the little one who is making the pace. He has come to push his music just as the comte has come to push his poems; they’re both counting on Maud to make them fashionable in London – and in Paris too. Will Miss White, this winter, recite the verses of the one or declaim the virtues of the other’s music? A clash of interests! The entertainment will be that their interests will bring them together, and perhaps – who knows? – repair the the break. Perhaps they will leave together, reconciled by Maud White. If Muzarett sees that it is in his interest, he will stifle his rancour; he is a very strong man.’

  With a strangled laugh, like the clucking of a hen, Ethal continued: ‘Little Delabarre is driving each and every one of them crazy. Look at the Duchess of Althorneyshare, showering Maud with compliments and drawing ever closer to her – and look at Herr Schappman and the English clan! They’re all coming to breathe the air around the young rose-bud. The larvae! The scent of young blood entices and draws them closer. There’s no need to venture into antiquity to evoke the shades of the dead. Do you remember the doves whose throats Odysseus slit as an offering to the Stygian deities? Look! Even the Hindu mingles with them, in his turban embroidered with gold. Now, at last, the princesses have ceded their place. He is committed to the duchess – a one-time dancer, a woman who has slept with men for money. Shame on her! A Messalina, but not a Thaïs! And yet, Messalina is a good enough name; we apply it to priestesses of the Great Goddess, don’t we? No man was ever initiated into the mysteries of Isis.’

  Maud White and her brother were now receiving the adulation of the grovelling frock-coats decked with gardenias and the German with his string of opals. The spectral duchess, her face varnished like a doll’s, had drawn the pianist to a divan. Wallowing there, a mass of flaccid flesh submerged in mauve silk, she loomed over him. The diamonds arrayed upon her bosom hung like brilliant stalactites over the handsome smiling man; he recoiled slightly, moving away. Behind the divan, the black eyes of the Hindu were inflamed. In the shadows, vaguely animated by the glow of the candles, the phantom procession of armoured knights and embroidered ladies made its patient way along the tapestry.

  ‘But Thomas Welcome has not arrived!’ grumbled Claudius, inspecting his window-display. ‘It was his acquaintance that I particularly wanted you to make. It is important that you see him. The others …’ – a careless gesture finished off the phrase. ‘Princess Seiryman-Frileuse is the only exception; she is interesting. Very ostentatious. What a clever contrivance it was to marry – in name, at least – the old prince, settling eighty thousand francs on him in order that she should carry his name while parading before the world her depravity and her independence. She is honest and passionate, that one! There is so much snobbery and morphine in the perversion of the others. The marquise was badly married, brought to her present condition by the hostility of the world and the vileness of her husband. Myrianinska is almost broke; her daughters maintain her now that she can no longer earn her keep in the bedroom. Enervated, intoxicated, tired of themselves and everyone else, they are no longer disturbed, even rarely, by the sensations which would provide the only excuse for their aberrations; their level of intelligence does not go much beyond the brutality of the habituées of brothels and drinking-dens. Princess Seiryman is beautiful in her perverse fashion – look at the bitter wilfulness of her proud profile, and look how those hard and mournful grey eyes, the colour of melting ice, shelter the energy of thought and obstinacy!

  ‘Look at her! How attentively she studies the Duchess of Althorneyshare, although everything about that woman ought to horrify her: her decreptitude and her past. But Aliette Montaud was delectably beautiful once; thirty years ago she was one of those who can move hearts and millions. Princess of Seiryman, knowing that, seeks regretfully among the ruins for the adorable but long-lost instrument which was once incarnated by sensuality and desire.

  ‘Napoleon must have looked in like fashion at the field of battle when someone other than himself had won the victory. By the way, do you know the princess’s surname?’

  He whispered the joke.

  ‘Lesbos?’

  ‘Absolutely: Lesbos, land of warm and languorous nights. But Welcome has not come! In that case, perhaps I should ask Maud to recite another poem for us? All this coming and going has caused a cold draught, for which Baudelaire seems to me to be the obvious remedy. Come with me then, Fréneuse, and we will beg her to favour us with Les femmes damnées. We have a few of them here tonight. Like pensive livestock lying on the sand … Ah, but the other duchess is here now. This one is a veritable innocent, a seer who lost her way in life. We can’t possibly risk Baudelaire before Her Royal Highness. You must excuse me.’

  Another woman had indeed entered, escorted by two men.

  TOWARDS THE SABBAT

  Who could have failed to recognise the newcomer? Her photograph was displayed on hundreds of billboards in the boulevards and featured in reports of all the receptions of ministers of state. There was no mistaking the classic shoulders, uplifted bosom and pretty Austrian head of the Duchess of Meinichelgein.

  This evening, like every other, Her Royal Highness was accompanied by Dario de la Psara, the painter commissioned by all the fashionable cosmopolites. His sallow complexion and large velvety black eyes – like those of a Portugese Christ – provided a perfect compliment to the blonde fragility and pearly splendour of the duchess. The other man was Chasteley Dosan, the tragedian of the Comédie-Française. It was claimed that Her Highness Sophie had a positive passion for the actor’s work – that she assiduously followed all Dosan’s performances at the Comédie, and even, it was said, passed part of her evenings in the tragedian’s dressing-room: The overbearing snobbery of Germany considers the glories of the Parisian monde to be more than a little faded; but the fashions of Berlin even lag behind those of London. Apart from La Psara, whose authentic talent and exotic profile had seduced Her Highness, Duchess Sophie was an also admirer of the trite works of Benjamin Constant, Carolus Duran, des Falguière and other common-or-garden hacks.

  Her honesty was, however, legendary. She was as straight and as trustworthy as an épée, universally respected in spite of the unexpectedness of her caprices: she was wont to depart abruptly to continue her wandering existence, which carried her throughout Europe during the six months of every year which she spent far from her own country and her conjugal palace.

  Claudius rushed to meet her. A high-backed armchair was brought forward. Seated approximately in the middle of the hall, isolated from the other women, with a smile in her eyes and on her lips, Duchess Sophie greeted the queue of men which her host led to meet her: Muzarett, Delabarre, Monsieur White, Mein Herr Schappmann, and the well-scrubbed Englishmen. Not a single woman was presented to her.

  Although the Duchess Sophie was new to Parisian society, she was sufficiently well-informed to know what kind of company she was in. Shunted to one side, the Marquise Naydorff and Princess Olga simulated an animated discussion; the Princess of Seiryman-Frileuse absorbed herself in the contemplation of a bust, her back turned to the Austrian; the old Duchess of Althorneyshare contrived to monopolise Maud White.

  Standing behind the milky shoulders of Her Highness, La Psara and Chasteley Dosan formed a discreet and smiling guard of honour, assisting with the introductions.

 
‘I shall have to ask her to recite some Heinrich Heine, or a song by Goethe,’ Claudius said, derisively, while wending his way towards Maud White. ‘We are now in German territory.’

  He gripped my arms firmly. ‘Hein! How they detest one another, a reunion of those who have come down in the world, like this evening’s, provides a fine focus of hatred. There is an extensive spectrum of contempt, with the German at the top of the ladder and poor Aliette Montaud at the bottom. Even that one can be ferociously contemptuous of the innocent Mein Herr Schappman, who is the only one here contemptuous of no one, having the soul of a Gretchen.’

  ‘But what could possibly bring the duchess here?’

  ‘To my studio? Why, nothing – except the desire to be painted by me. La Psara launches, but Ethal consecrates. La Psara is a Parisian talent, but not a European one; he is of some account in New York, but he simply does not exist in Vienna. The Museum does not want him, while the Champ-de-Mars … but she is completely Delabarre’s for now – they must be debating as to whether Wagner or Glück is the greater musician. I will wait before making Maud declaim … Ah, the tea!’

  ‘The famous green tea?’

  ‘Yes – but we shall be drinking another soon, once the spoilsports have gone.’

  Seeming almost naked beneath floating gauzes and shell-like breastplates, two Javanese servants, male or female – their sex was as amibiguous as their race – carried two big copper plates laden with little cups into the room. They were impeccably harmonious in their form and their light brown colouring. The ivory whites and carnal pinks of the scallop-shells seemed to be engraved in cameo upon their skin. Jade rings embraced their slim ankles and strange bronzed necklaces made entirely of minerals, glittering greenly like the bodies of cantharid beetles, ran around their necks.