The Nabob, Volume 2 | Page 7

earth might come now. Felicia no longer existed for him.
Poor Felicia, a creature endowed with superior powers, was much like those sorceresses who weave and ravel the destinies of others without the power to accomplish anything for their own happiness.
"Will you give me this sketch?" he said almost inaudibly, in a voice that trembled with emotion.
"Very gladly; she is pretty, isn't she? Ah! if you should happen to meet her, love her, marry her. She is worth more than all the rest. But, failing her, failing her--"
And the beautiful tamed sphinx looked up at him with her great tearful, laughing eyes, whose enigma was no longer insoluble.

XIV.
THE EXHIBITION.
"Superb!"
"A tremendous success. Barye never did anything as fine."
"And the bust of the Nabob! What a marvellous likeness! I tell you, Constance Crenmitz is happy. See her trotting about."
"What! is that La Crenmitz, that little old woman in a fur cape? I supposed she was dead twenty years ago."
Oh! no; on the contrary, she is very much alive. Enchanted, rejuvenated by the triumph of her goddaughter, who is decidedly the success of the Exhibition, she glides through the crowd of artists and people of fashion grouped around the two points where Felicia's contributions are exhibited like two huge masses of black backs, variegated costumes, jostling and squeezing in their struggles to look. Constance, usually so retiring, makes her way into the front row, listens to the discussions, catches on the wing snatches of sentences, technical phrases which she remembers, nods her head approvingly, smiles, shrugs her shoulders when she hears any slighting remark, longing to crush the first person who should fail to admire.
Whether it be the excellent Crenmitz or another, you always see, at the opening of the Salon, that shadow prowling furtively about where people are conversing, with ears on the alert and an anxious expression; sometimes it is an old father who thanks you with a glance for a kindly word said in passing, or assumes a despairing expression at the epigram which you hurl at a work of art and which strikes a heart behind you. A face not to be omitted surely, if ever some painter in love with things modern should conceive the idea of reproducing on canvas that perfectly typical manifestation of Parisian life, the opening of the Salon in that vast hothouse of statuary, with the yellow gravelled paths and the great glass ceiling, beneath which, half-way from the floor, the galleries of the first tier stand forth, lined with heads bending over to look, and with extemporized waving draperies.
In a light that seems slightly cold and pale as it falls on the green decorations of the walls, where the rays become rarefied, one would say, in order to afford the spectators an opportunity for concentration and accuracy of vision, the crowd moves slowly back and forth, pauses, scatters over the benches, divided into groups, and yet mingling castes more thoroughly than any other gathering, just as the fickle and changing weather, at that time of year, brings together all sorts of costumes, so that the black lace and superb train of the great lady who has come to observe the effect of her own portrait rub against the Siberian furs of the actress who has just returned from Russia and proposes that everybody shall know it.
Here there are no boxes, no reserved seats, and that is what gives such abiding interest and charm to this first view in broad daylight. The real society women can pass judgment at close quarters on the painted beauties that excite so much applause by artificial light; the tiny hat, latest shape, of the Marquise de Bois-l'Héry and her like brushes against the more than modest costume of some artist's wife or daughter, while the model who has posed for that lovely Andromeda near the entrance struts triumphantly by, dressed in a too short skirt, in wretched clothes tossed upon her beauty with the utmost lack of taste. They scrutinize one another, admire or disparage one another, exchange contemptuous, disdainful or inquisitive glances, which suddenly become fixed as some celebrity passes, the illustrious critic, for instance, whom we seem to see at this moment, serene and majestic, his powerful face framed in long hair, making the circuit of the exhibits of sculpture, followed by half a score of young disciples who hang breathlessly upon his kindly dicta. Although the sound of voices is lost in that immense vessel, which is resonant only under the two arched doorways of entrance and exit, faces assume extraordinary intensity there, a character of energy and animation especially noticeable in the vast, dark recess of the restaurant, overflowing with a gesticulating multitude, the light hats of the women and the waiters' white aprons standing out in bold relief against the background of dark clothing,