The Idol of Paris | Page 5

entrance examinations?" he said to Esperance.
She indicated her mother with an impatient movement of her little head. "Yes," said Madame Darbois, "but I come after these other people. I will wait my turn."
The man shrugged his shoulders with an air of assurance. "Please follow me, ladies."
They rose. A sound of discontent was audible.
"Silence," cried the official in fury. "If I hear any more noise, I will turn you all out."
Silence descended again. Many of these women had come a long way. A little dressmaker had left her workshop to bring her daughter. A big chambermaid had obtained the morning's leave from the bourgeois house where she worked. Her daughter stood beside her, a beautiful child of sixteen with colourless hair, impudent as a magpie. A music teacher with well-worn boots had excused herself from her pupils. Her two daughters flanked her to right and left, Parisian blossoms, pale and anaemic. Both wished to pass the entrance examinations, the one as an ingenue in comedy, the other in tragedy. They were neither comic nor tragic, but modest and charming. There was also a small shop-keeper, covered with jewels. She sat very rigid, far forward on the bench, compressed into a terrible corset which forced her breast and back into the humps of a punchinello; her legs hanging just short of the floor. Her daughter paced up and down the long room like a colt snorting impatiently to be put through its paces. She had the beauty of a classic type, without spot or blemish, but her joints looked too heavy and her neck was thrust without grace between her large shoulders. Anyone who looked into the future would have been able to predict for her, with some certainty, an honourable career as a tragedian in the provinces.
Madame Darbois seated herself on the only chair in the little office. When the official had read Esperance's birth certificate, he exclaimed, "What! Mademoiselle is the daughter of the famous professor of philosophy?'"
The two women looked at each other with amazement.
"Why, ladies," went on the official, radiantly, "my son is taking courses with M. Darbois at the Sorbonne. What a pleasure it is to meet you--but how does it happen that M. Darbois has allowed...?" His sentence died in his throat. Madame Darbois had become very pale and her daughter's nostrils quivered. The official finished with his papers, returned them politely to Madame Darbois, and said in a low tone, "Have no anxiety, Madame, the little lady has a wonderful future before her."
The two ladies thanked the official and made their way toward the door. The group of young men bowed to the young girl, and she inclined her head ever so slightly.
"Oh, la-la," screamed the big chamber-maid.
Esperance stopped on the threshold and looked directly at the woman, who blushed, and said nothing more.
"Ho, ho," jeered one of the youths, "she settled you finely that time, didn't she?"
An argument ensued instantly, but Esperance had gone her way, trembling with happiness. Everything in life seemed opening for her. For the first time she was aware of her own individuality; for the first time she recognized in herself a force: would that force work for creation or destruction? The child pressed her hands against her fluttering heart.
M. Darbois was waiting at the window. At sight of him, Esperance jumped from the carriage before it stopped. "What a little creature of extremes!" mused the professor.
When she threw her arms about him to thank him, he loosed her hands quickly. "Come, come, we haven't time to talk of that. We must sit down at once. Marguerite is scolding because the dinner is going to be spoiled."
To Esperance the dinner was of less than no importance, but she threw aside her hat obediently, pulled forward her father's chair, and sat down between the two beings whom she adored, but whom she was forced to see suffer if she lived in her own joy--and that she could not, and would not, hide.
CHAPTER III
The weeks before the long-expected day of the examination went by all too slowly to suit Esperance. She had chosen, for the comedy test to study a scene from Les Femmes Savantes (the r?le of "Henriette"), and in tragedy a scene from Iphygenia. Adhemar Meydieux often came to inquire about his goddaughter's studies. He wished to hear her recite, to give her advice; but Esperance refused energetically, still remembering his former opposition against him. She would let no one hear her recitations, but her mother. Madame Darbois put all her heart into her efforts to help her daughter. Every morning she went through her work with Esperance. To her the r?le of "Henriette" was inexplicable. She consulted her husband, who replied, "'Henriette' is a little philosopheress with plenty of sense. Esperance is right to have chosen this scene from