The Beautiful Lady | Page 5

travellers, when they have departed, remember the events they
have caused there as a person remembers in the morning what he has
said and thought in the moonlight of the night.
In Paris it is moonlight even in the morning; and in Paris one falls in
love even more strangely than by moonlight.
It is a place of glimpses: a veil fluttering from a motor-car, a little lace
handkerchief fallen from a victoria, a figure crossing a lighted window,
a black hat vanishing in the distance of the avenues of the Tuileries. A
young man writes a ballade and dreams over a bit of lace. Was I not,
then, one of the least extravagant of this mad people? Men have fallen
in love with photographs, those greatest of liars; was I so wild, then, to

adore this grey skirt, this small shoe, this divine glove, the
golden-honey voice--of all in Paris the only one to pity and to
understand? Even to love the mystery of that lady and to build my
dreams upon it?--to love all the more because of the mystery? Mystery
is the last word and the completing charm to a young man's passion.
Few sonnets have been written to wives whose matrimony is more than
five years of age--is it not so?



Chapter Two
When my hour was finished and I in liberty to leave that horrible corner,
I pushed out of the crowd and walked down the boulevard, my hat
covering my sin, and went quickly. To be in love with my mystery, I
thought, that was a strange happiness! It was enough. It was romance!
To hear a voice which speaks two sentences of pity and silver is to have
a chime of bells in the heart. But to have a shaven head is to be a monk!
And to have a shaven head with a sign painted upon it is to be a pariah.
Alas! I was a person whom the Parisians laughed at, not with!
Now that at last my martyrdom was concluded, I had some shuddering,
as when one places in his mouth a morsel of unexpected flavour. I
wondered where I had found the courage to bear it, and how I had
resisted hurling myself into the river, though, as is known, that is no
longer safe, for most of those who attempt it are at once rescued,
arrested, fined, and imprisoned for throwing bodies into the Seine,
which is forbidden.
At the theatre the frightful badge was removed from my head-top and I
was given three hundred francs, the price of my shame, refusing an
offer to repeat the performance during the following week. To imagine
such a thing made me a choking in my throat, and I left the bureau in
some sickness. This increased so much (as I approached the Madeleine,

where I wished to mount an omnibus) that I entered a restaurant and
drank a small glass of cognac. Then I called for writing-papers and
wrote to the good Mother Superior and my dear little nieces at their
convent. I enclosed two hundred and fifty francs, which sum I had
fallen behind in my payments for their education and sustenance, and I
felt a moment's happiness that at least for a while I need not fear that
my poor brother's orphans might become objects of charity--a fear
which, accompanied by my own hunger, had led me to become the joke
of the boulevards.
Feeling rich with my remaining fifty francs, I ordered the waiter to
bring me a goulasch and a carafe of blond beer, after the consummation
of which I spent an hour in the reading of a newspaper. Can it be
credited that the journal of my perusement was the one which may be
called the North-American paper of the aristocracies of Europe? Also,
it contains some names of the people of the United States at the hotels
and elsewhere.
How eagerly I scanned those singular columns! Shall I confess to what
purpose? I read the long lists of uncontinental names over and over, but
I lingered not at all upon those like "Muriel," "Hermione," "Violet,"
and "Sibyl," nor over "Balthurst," "Skeffington-Sligo," and
"Covering-Legge"; no, my search was for the Sadies and Mamies, the
Thompsons, Van Dusens, and Bradys. In that lies my preposterous
secret.
You will see to what infatuation those words of pity, that sense of a
beautiful presence, had led me. To fall in love must one behold a face?
Yes; at thirty. At twenty, when one is something of a poet--No: it is
sufficient to see a grey pongee skirt! At fifty, when one is a
philosopher--No: it is enough to perceive a soul! I had done both; I had
seen the skirt; I had perceived the soul! Therefore, while