The Nabob - Alphonse Daudet (read ebook pdf TXT) 📗

other, in which she was left.
But the young girl had as a protection something even better than the irreproachable and worldly example of the handsome Mme. Jenkins: the art that she adored, the enthusiasm which it implanted in her nature wholly occupied with outside things, the sentiment of beauty, of truth, which, from her thoughtful brain, full of ideas, passed into her fingers with a little quivering of the nerves, a desire of the idea accomplished, of the realized image. All day long she would work at her sculpture, giving shape to her dreams with that happiness of instinctive youth which lends so much charm to early work; this prevented her from any excessive regret for the austerity of the Belin institution, sheltering and light as the veil of a novice before her vows, and preserved her also from dangerous conversations, unheard amid her unique preoccupation.
Ruys was proud of this talent growing up at his side. Growing every day feebler, already at that stage in which the artist regrets himself, he found in following Felicia's progress a certain consolation for his own ended career. He saw the boasting-tool, which trembled in his hand, taken up again under his eye with a virile firmness and assurance, tempered by all those delicacies of her being which a woman can apply to the realization of an art. A strange sensation, this double paternity, this survival of genius as it abandons the man whose day is over to pass into him who is at his dawn, like those beautiful, familiar birds which, on the eve of a death, will desert the menaced roof to fly away to a less mournful lodging.
During the last period of her father's life, Felicia--a great artist and still a mere child--used to execute half of his works; and nothing was more touching than this collaboration of father and daughter, in the same studio, around the same group. The operation did not always proceed peaceably; although her father's pupil, Felicia already felt her own personality rebel against any despotic direction. She had those audacities of the beginner, those intuitions of the future which are the heritage of young talents, and, in opposition to the romantic traditions of Sebastien Ruys, a tendency to modern realism, a need to plant that glorious old flag upon some new monument.
These things were the occasion of terrible arguments, of discussions from which the father came out beaten, conquered by his daughter's logic, astonished at the progress made by the young, while the old, who have opened the way for them, remain motionless at the point from which they started. When she was working for him, Felicia would yield more easily; but, where her own sculpture was concerned she was found to be intractable. Thus the _Joueur de Boules_, her first exhibited work, which obtained so great a success at the Salon of 1862, was the subject of violent scenes between the two artists, of contradictions so strong, that Jenkins had to intervene and help to secure the safety of the plaster-cast which Ruys had threatened to destroy.
Apart from such little dramas, which in no way affected the tenderness of their hearts, these two beings adored each other with the presentiment and, gradually, the cruel certitude of an approaching separation, when suddenly there occurred in Felicia's life a horrible event. One day, Jenkins had taken her to dine at his house, as often happened. Mme. Jenkins was away on a couple of days' visit, as also her son; but the doctor's age, his semi-paternal intimacy, allowed him to have with him, even in his wife's absence, this young girl whose fifteen years, the fifteen years of an Eastern Jewess glorious in her precocious beauty, left her still near childhood.
The dinner was very gay, and Jenkins pleasant and cordial as usual. Afterwards they went into the doctor's study, and suddenly, on the couch, in the middle of an intimate and quite friendly conversation about her father, his health, their work together, Felicia felt as it were the chill of a gulf between herself and this man, then the brutal grasp of a faun. She beheld an unknown Jenkins, wild-looking, stammering with a besotted laugh and outraging hands. In the surprise, the unexpectedness of this bestial attack, any other than Felicia--a child of her own age, really innocent, would have been lost. As for her, poor little thing! what saved her was her knowledge. She had heard so many stories of this kind of thing at her father's table! and then art, and the life of the studio--She was not an _ingenue_. In a moment she understood the object of this grasp, struggled, sprang up, then, not being strong enough, cried out. He was afraid, released his hold, and suddenly she found herself standing up, free, with the man on his knees weeping and begging forgiveness. He had yielded to a fit of madness. She was so beautiful; he loved her so much. For months he had been struggling. But now it was over, never again, oh, never again! Not even would he so much as touch the hem of her dress. She made no reply, trembled, put her hair and her clothes straight again with the fingers of a woman demented. To go home--she wished to go home instantly, quite alone. He sent a servant with her; and, quite low, as she was getting into the carriage, whispered:
"Above all, not a word. It would kill your father."
He knew her so well, he was so sure of his power over her through that suggestion, the blackguard! that he returned on the morrow looking bright as ever and with loyal face as though nothing had happened. In fact, she never spoke of the matter to her father, nor to any one. But, dating from that day, a change came over her, a sudden development, as it were, of her haughty ways. She was subject to caprices, wearinesses, a curl of disgust in her smile, and sometimes quick fits of anger against her father, a glance of contempt which reproached him for not having known how to watch over her.
"What is the matter with her?" Ruys, her father, used to say; and Jenkins, with the authority of a doctor, would put it down to her age and some physical disturbance. He avoided speaking to the girl herself, counting on time to efface the sinister impression, and not despairing of attaining his end, for he desired it still, more than ever, prey to the exasperated love of a man of forty-seven to one of those incurable passions of maturity; and that was this hypocrite's punishment. This unusual condition of his daughter was a real grief to the sculptor; but this grief was of short duration. Without warning, Ruys flickered out of life, fell to pieces in a moment, as was the way with all the Irishman's patients. His last words were:
"Jenkins, I beg you to look after my daughter."
They were so ironically mournful that Jenkins could not prevent himself from turning pale.
Felicia was even more stupefied than grief-stricken. To the amazement caused by death, which she had never seen and which now came before her wearing features so dear, there was joined the sense of a vast solitude surrounded by darkness and perils.
A few of the sculptor's friends gathered together as a family council to consider the future of this unfortunate child without relatives or fortune. Fifty francs had been discovered in the box where Sebastien used to put his money, on a piece of the studio furniture well known to its needy frequenters and visited by them without scruple. There was no other inheritance, at least in cash; only a quantity of artistic and curious furniture of the most sumptuous description, a few valuable pictures, and a certain amount of money owing but scarcely sufficing to cover numberless debts. It was proposed to organize a sale. Felicia, when she was consulted, replied that she would not care if everything were sold, but, for God's sake, let them leave her in peace.
The sale did not take place, however, thanks to the godmother, the excellent Crenmitz, who suddenly made her appearance, calm and gentle as usual.
"Don't listen to them, my child. Sell nothing. Your old Constance has an income of fifteen thousand francs, which was destined to come to you later on. You will take advantage of it at once, that is all. We will live here together. You will see, I shall not be in the way. You will work at your sculpture, I shall manage the house. Does that suit you?"
It was said so tenderly, with that childishness of accent which foreigners have when expressing themselves in French, that the girl was deeply moved. Her heart that had seemed turned to stone opened, a burning flood came pouring from her eyes, and she rushed, flung herself into the arms of the dancer. "Ah, godmother, how good you are to me! Yes, yes, don't leave me any more. Stay with me always. Life frightens and disgusts me. I see so much hypocrisy in it, so much falsehood." And the old woman arranged for herself a silken and embroidered nest in this house so like a traveller's camp laden with treasures from every land, and the suggested dual life began for these two different natures.
It was no small sacrifice that Constance had made for the dear demon in quitting her Fontainebleau retreat for Paris, which inspired her with terror. Ever since the day when this dancer, with her extravagant caprices, who made princely fortunes flow and disappear through her five open fingers, had descended from her triumphant position, a little of its dazzling glitter still in her eyes, and had attempted to resume an ordinary existence, to manage her little income and her modest household, she had been the object of a thousand impudent exploitations, of frauds that were easy in view of the ignorance of this poor butterfly that was frightened by reality and came into collision with all its unknown difficulties. Living in Felicia's house, the responsibility became still more serious by reason of the wastefulness introduced long ago by the father and continued by the daughter, two artists knowing nothing of economy. She had, moreover, other difficulties to conquer. She found the studio insupportable with its permanent atmosphere of tobacco smoke, an impenetrable cloud for her, in which the discussions on art, the analysis of ideas, were lost and which infallibly gave her a headache. "Chaff," above all, frightened her. As a foreigner, as at one time a divinity of the green-room, brought up on out-of-date compliments, on gallantries _a la Dorat_, she did not understand it, and would feel terrified in the presence of the wild exaggerations, the paradoxes of these Parisians refined by the liberty of the studio.
That kind of thing was intimidating to her who had never possessed wit save in the vivacity of her feet, and reduced her simply to the rank of a lady-companion; and, seeing this amiable old dame sitting, silent and smiling, her knitting in her lap, like one of Chardin's _bourgeoises_, or hastening by the side of her cook up the long Rue de Chaillot, where the nearest market happened to be, one would never have guessed that that simple old body had ruled kings, princes, the whole class of amorous nobles and financiers, at the caprice of her step and pirouettings.
Paris is full of such fallen stars, extinguished by the crowd.
Some of these famous ones, these conquerors of a former day, cherish a rage in their heart; others, on the contrary, enjoy the past blissfully, digest in an ineffable content all their glorious and ended joys, asking only repose, silence, shadow, good enough for memory and contemplations, so that when they die people are quite astonished to learn that they had been still living.
Constance Crenmitz was among these fortunate