The Beautiful Lady

The Beautiful Lady

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Tarkington #13 in our series by Booth Tarkington
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Title: The Beautiful Lady
Author: Booth Tarkington
Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5798] [Yes, we are more than one

year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on September 3,
2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
BEAUTIFUL LADY ***

The Beautiful Lady
Booth Tarkington



Chapter One
Nothing could have been more painful to my sensitiveness than to
occupy myself, confused with blushes, at the center of the whole world
as a living advertisement of the least amusing ballet in Paris.
To be the day's sensation of the boulevards one must possess an
eccentricity of appearance conceived by nothing short of genius; and
my misfortunes had reduced me to present such to all eyes seeking
mirth. It was not that I was one of those people in uniform who carry
placards and strange figures upon their backs, nor that my coat was of
rags; on the contrary, my whole costume was delicately rich and well
chosen, of soft grey and fine linen (such as you see worn by a marquis
in the pe'sage at Auteuil) according well with my usual air and
countenance, sometimes esteemed to resemble my father's, which were
not wanting in distinction.

To add to this my duties were not exhausting to the body. I was
required only to sit without a hat from ten of the morning to midday,
and from four until seven in the afternoon, at one of the small tables
under the awning of the Cafe' de la Paix at the corner of the Place de
l'Opera--that is to say, the centre of the inhabited world. In the morning
I drank my coffee, hot in the cup; in the afternoon I sipped it cold in the
glass. I spoke to no one; not a glance or a gesture of mine passed to
attract notice.
Yet I was the centre of that centre of the world. All day the crowds
surrounded me, laughing loudly; all the voyous making those jokes for
which I found no repartee. The pavement was sometimes blocked; the
passing coachmen stood up in their boxes to look over at me, small
infants were elevated on shoulders to behold me; not the gravest or
most sorrowful came by without stopping to gaze at me and go away
with rejoicing faces. The boulevards rang to their laughter--all Paris
laughed!
For seven days I sat there at the appointed times, meeting the eye of
nobody, and lifting my coffee with fingers which trembled with
embarrassment at this too great conspicuosity! Those mournful hours
passed, one by the year, while the idling bourgeois and the travellers
made ridicule; and the rabble exhausted all effort to draw plays of wit
from me.
I have told you that I carried no placard, that my costume was elegant,
my demeanour modest in all degree.
"How, then, this excitement?" would be your disposition to inquire.
"Why this sensation?"
It is very simple. My hair had been shaved off, all over my ears, leaving
only a little above the back of the neck, to give an appearance of
far-reaching baldness, and on my head was painted, in ah! so brilliant
letters of distinctness:
Theatre

Folie-Rouge
Revue
de
Printemps
Tous les Soirs
Such was the necessity to which I was at that time reduced! One has
heard that the North Americans invent the most singular advertising,
but I will not believe they surpass the Parisian. Myself, I say I cannot
express my sufferings under the notation of the crowds that moved
about the Cafe' de la Paix! The French are a terrible people when they
laugh sincerely. It is not so much the amusing things which cause them
amusement; it is often the strange, those contrasts which contain
something horrible, and when they