The Guest of Quesnay | Page 2

parts already, as if in preparation, you
guess the roles they play, and name them comedians, tragedians,
buffoons, saints, beauties, sots, knaves, gladiators, acrobats, dancers;
for all of these are there, and you distinguish the principles from the
unnumbered supernumeraries pressing forward to the entrances. So, if
you sit at the little tables often enough--that is, if you become an
amateur boulevardier--you begin to recognise the transient stars of the
pageant, those to whom the boulevard allows a dubious and fugitive
role of celebrity, and whom it greets with a slight flutter: the turning of
heads, a murmur of comment, and the incredulous boulevard smile,
which seems to say: "You see? Madame and monsieur passing
there--evidently they think we still believe in them!"
This flutter heralded and followed the passing of a white touring-car
with the procession one afternoon, just before the Grand Prix, though it
needed no boulevard celebrity to make the man who lolled in the
tonneau conspicuous. Simply for THAT, notoriety was superfluous; so
were the remarkable size and power of his car; so was the elaborate
touring- costume of flannels and pongee he wore; so was even the
enamelled presence of the dancer who sat beside him. His face would
have done it without accessories.
My old friend, George Ward, and I had met for our aperitif at the
Terrace Larue, by the Madeleine, when the white automobile came
snaking its way craftily through the traffic. Turning in to pass a victoria
on the wrong side, it was forced down to a snail's pace near the curb
and not far from our table, where it paused, checked by a blockade at
the next corner. I heard Ward utter a half-suppressed guttural of what I
took to be amazement, and I did not wonder.
The face of the man in the tonneau detached him to the spectator's gaze
and singled him out of the concourse with an effect almost ludicrous in
its incongruity. The hair was dark, lustrous and thick, the forehead
broad and finely modelled, and certain other ruinous vestiges of youth

and good looks remained; but whatever the features might once have
shown of honour, worth, or kindly semblance had disappeared beyond
all tracing in a blurred distortion. The lids of one eye were discoloured
and swollen almost together; other traces of a recent battering were not
lacking, nor was cosmetic evidence of a heroic struggle, on the part of
some valet of infinite pains, to efface them. The nose lost outline in the
discolorations of the puffed cheeks; the chin, tufted with a small
imperial, trembled beneath a sagging, gray lip. And that this bruised
and dissipated mask should suffer the final grotesque touch, it was
decorated with the moustache of a coquettish marquis, the ends waxed
and exquisitely elevated.
The figure was fat, but loose and sprawling, seemingly without the will
to hold itself together; in truth the man appeared to be almost in a
semi-stupor, and, contrasted with this powdered Silenus, even the
woman beside him gained something of human dignity. At least, she
was thoroughly alive, bold, predatory, and in spite of the gross
embon-point that threatened her, still savagely graceful. A purple veil,
dotted with gold, floated about her hat, from which green-dyed ostrich
plumes cascaded down across a cheek enamelled dead white. Her hair
was plastered in blue-black waves, parted low on the forehead; her lips
were splashed a startling carmine, the eyelids painted blue; and, from
between lashes gummed into little spikes of blacking, she favoured her
companion with a glance of carelessly simulated tenderness,--a look all
too vividly suggesting the ghastly calculations of a cook wheedling a
chicken nearer the kitchen door. But I felt no great pity for the victim.
"Who is it?" I asked, staring at the man in the automobile and not
turning toward Ward.
"That is Mariana--'la bella Mariana la Mursiana,'" George answered; "--
one of those women who come to Paris from the tropics to form
themselves on the legend of the one great famous and infamous
Spanish dancer who died a long while ago. Mariana did very well for a
time. I've heard that the revolutionary societies intend striking medals
in her honour: she's done worse things to royalty than all the anarchists
in Europe! But her great days are over: she's getting old; that type goes

to pieces quickly, once it begins to slump, and it won't be long before
she'll be horribly fat, though she's still a graceful dancer. She danced at
the Folie Rouge last week."
"Thank you, George," I said gratefully. "I hope you'll point out the
Louvre and the Eiffel Tower to me some day. I didn't mean Mariana."
"What did you mean?"
What I had meant was so obvious that I turned to my friend in surprise.