Strong as Death | Page 4

to repeat all the conversations
and chit-chat. Both were really interested in all these futile and familiar
details of fashionable life. The little rivalries, the flirtations, either well
known or suspected, the judgments, a thousand times heard and
repeated, upon the same persons, the same events and opinions, were
bearing away and drowning both their minds in that troubled and
agitated stream called Parisian life. Knowing everyone in all classes of
society, he as an artist to whom all doors were open, she as the elegant
wife of a Conservative deputy, they were experts in that sport of
brilliant French chatter, amiably satirical, banal, brilliant but futile,

with a certain shibboleth which gives a particular and greatly envied
reputation to those whose tongues have become supple in this sort of
malicious small talk.
"When are you coming to dine?" she asked suddenly.
"Whenever you wish. Name your day."
"Friday. I shall have the Duchesse de Mortemain, the Corbelles, and
Musadieu, in honor of my daughter's return--she is coming this evening.
But do not speak of it, my friend. It is a secret."
"Oh, yes, I accept. I shall be charmed to see Annette again. I have not
seen her in three years."
"Yes, that is true. Three years!"
Though Annette, in her earliest years, had been brought up in Paris in
her parents' home, she had become the object of the last and passionate
affection of her grandmother, Madame Paradin, who, almost blind,
lived all the year round on her son-in-law's estate at the castle of
Roncieres, on the Eure. Little by little, the old lady had kept the child
with her more and more, and as the De Guilleroys passed almost half
their time in this domain, to which a variety of interests, agricultural
and political, called them frequently, it ended in taking the little girl to
Paris on occasional visits, for she herself preferred the free and active
life of the country to the cloistered life of the city.
For three years she had not visited Paris even once, the Countess
having preferred to keep her entirely away from it, in order that a new
taste for its gaieties should not be awakened in her before the day fixed
for her debut in society. Madame de Guilleroy had given her in the
country two governesses, with unexceptionable diplomas, and had
visited her mother and her daughter more frequently than before.
Moreover, Annette's sojourn at the castle was rendered almost
necessary by the presence of the old lady.
Formerly, Olivier Bertin had passed six weeks or two months at

Roncieres every year; but in the past three years rheumatism had sent
him to watering-places at some distance, which had so much revived
his love for Paris that after his return he could not bring himself to
leave it.
As a matter of custom, the young girl should not have returned home
until autumn, but her father had suddenly conceived a plan for her
marriage, and sent for her that she might meet immediately the Marquis
de Farandal, to whom he wished her to be betrothed. But this plan was
kept quite secret, and Madame de Guilleroy had told only Olivier
Bertin of it, in strict confidence.
"Then your husband's idea is quite decided upon?" said he at last.
"Yes; I even think it a very happy idea."
Then they talked of other things.
She returned to the subject of painting, and wished to make him decide
to paint a Christ. He opposed the suggestion, thinking that there was
already enough of them in the world; but she persisted, and grew
impatient in her argument.
"Oh, if I knew how to draw I would show you my thought: it should be
very new, very bold. They are taking him down from the cross, and the
man who has detached the hands has let drop the whole upper part of
the body. It has fallen upon the crowd below, and they lift up their arms
to receive and sustain it. Do you understand?"
Yes, he understood; he even thought the conception quite original; but
he held himself as belonging to the modern style, and as his fair friend
reclined upon the divan, with one daintily-shod foot peeping out, giving
to the eye the sensation of flesh gleaming through the almost
transparent stocking, he said: "Ah, that is what I should paint! That is
life--a woman's foot at the edge of her skirt! Into that subject one may
put everything--truth, desire, poetry. Nothing is more graceful or more
charming than a woman's foot; and what mystery it suggests: the
hidden limb, lost yet imagined beneath its veiling folds of drapery!"

Sitting on the floor, /a la Turque/, he seized her shoe and drew it off,
and the foot, coming out of its leather sheath, moved