Thank God, in the land of the troubadours, there is no lack of poets,” he would add patriotically. And, torn between the Teutonic sonorities of the name of Hahn and the southern ending of his first name Reynaldo, preferring to condemn him out of hatred for Wagner rather than to absolve him because of Verdi, he would conclude, with perfect logic, as he turned to Bouvard:
“Despite the effort of all your fine gentlemen, our lovely land of France is a land of clarity, and French music will be clear or will not be at all,” whereupon he emphasized his verdict by banging on the table to give extra force to his words.
“I pour scorn on your eccentricities from beyond the English Channel and your mists from beyond the Rhine – stop looking to the other side of the Vosges!” he added, gazing at Bouvard with a stern and fixed expression filled with unspoken implications – “Unless it is for the defence of our fatherland! That the Valkyrie can ever give pleasure even in Germany, I very much doubt… But for French ears, it will always be the most infernal torment – and the most cacophonous, not to say the most humiliating for our national pride! Anyway, doesn’t that opera combine the most revolting kind of incest with the most atrocious forms of dissonance?
Your music, Monsieur, is full of monsters, and you never know what people will dream up next! Even in nature – even though she is the mother of simplicity – only what is horrible gives you any pleasure. Doesn’t Monsieur Delafosse* write songs about bats, in which the composer’s extravagance is bound to compromise the pianist’s long-standing reputation? Why couldn’t he choose some nice little bird?
Songs about sparrows would at least be perfectly Parisian; the swallow has lightness and grace, and the lark is so thoroughly French that Caesar, they say, had his soldiers roast them and stick them on their helmets. But bats!!! The French, always athirst for openness and clarity, will always detest that animal of darkness. In the poetry of Monsieur de Montesquiou, maybe… we can just about allow him that: it’s the whim of a rather blasé grand seigneur – but in music! It won’t be long before someone writes a Requiem for Kangaroos!…” This jest smoothed the wrinkles from Bouvard’s brow.
“Admit that I’ve made you laugh,” said Pécuchet (without any reprehensible fatuousness – we can allow men of wit a certain awareness of their own merits). “Let’s shake on it: you are quite disarmed!”
Mme de Breyves’s Melancholy Summer Vacation
Ariadne, my sister, pierced by what love
Did you die on the shores where you were abandoned?*
1
Françoise de Breyves hesitated for a long time, that evening, before deciding whether to go to the reception at the home of Princess Elisabeth of A, to the opera or to the Livrays’ play. At the friends’ house where she had just dined, everyone had left table over an hour ago. She had to make up her mind. Her friend Geneviève, who was meant to be returning with her, was plumping for the reception at the home of Mme d’A, whereas, without altogether knowing why, Mme de Breyves would have preferred one of the other two options, or even a third: going home to bed. Her carriage was announced. She still hadn’t reached a decision.
“Really,” said Geneviève, “it’s not very nice of you – I think Rezké is going to sing and I enjoy that. Anyone would think it would have serious consequences for you if you went to Elisabeth’s. For one thing, you know, you haven’t been to a single one of her big receptions this year, and since you’re so close to her, that’s not very nice of you.”
Ever since the death of her husband, which had left her – four years ago – a widow at the age of twenty, Françoise hardly ever did anything without Geneviève, and liked to please her. She put up no further resistance to her request and, after bidding farewell to her hosts and the other guests, who were all sorry to have had so little chance to enjoy the company of one of the most sought-after women in Paris, she said to the footman:
“Take me to the home of the Princess of A***.”
2
The evening at the Princess’s was extremely boring. At one moment Mme de Breyves asked Geneviève:
“So who’s that young man who took you over to the buffet?”
“That’s Monsieur de Laléande, whom I don’t know at all, actually. Do you want me to introduce him? He asked me to, but I didn’t give a definite reply, as he’s quite insignificant and boring – and since he thinks you’re very pretty, he’d never let go of you.”
“Oh, in that case, no!” said Françoise. “He’s rather plain, actually, and rather commonplace, though he does have quite nice eyes.”
“You’re right,” said Geneviève. “And anyway, you’ll be meeting him quite often, it might be awkward for you if you knew him.”
And she added, jokingly, “Though if you would like to get to know him on a more intimate footing, you’re wasting a very fine opportunity.”
“Yes, a very fine opportunity,” said Françoise – and her mind was already on something else.
“After all,” said Geneviève, no doubt overcome by remorse at having been such an unfaithful go-between, and having deprived that young man of a little pleasure for no reason at all, “this is one of the last receptions of the season, it wouldn’t be really serious and it might perhaps be nicer of you.”
“Oh all right then, if he comes back over this way.”
He did not come over. He was at the other end of the salon, opposite them.
“We have to go,” Geneviève said shortly.
“Just another few minutes,” said Françoise.
And on a whim, above all out of a certain desire to flirt with that young man, who must indeed find her very pretty, she started to fix a lingering gaze on him, then looked away, only to gaze at him again. As she stared at him, she did her best to adopt a caressing manner, she didn’t know why – for no particular reason, for the pleasure of it, the pleasure of charity, and to some extent the pleasure of pride, and the pleasure of doing something useless, the pleasure of those who write a name on a tree for some passer-by whom they will never see, or those who cast a bottle into the waves. Time was passing, it was already late; M. de Laléande headed towards the door, which remained open after he had gone out, and Mme de Breyves could see him at the far end of the entrance hall, handing his number to the cloakroom attendant.
“It’s time to go, you’re quite right,” she said to Geneviève.
They rose to their feet. But as chance would have it, a friend of Geneviève needed to have a word with her, leaving Françoise alone by the cloakroom. The only other person there just then was M. de Laléande, who couldn’t find his walking stick. Françoise allowed her gaze to linger on him one last time. He walked by her, lightly brushed Françoise’s elbow with his own, and, his eyes shining, said as he bumped into her, seemingly still looking for his stick, “Come to my place: 5, Rue Royale.”
This was so unexpected, and M. de Laléande was already so assiduously looking for his walking stick, that subsequently she was never entirely sure if it hadn’t been a hallucination. Above all, she felt very afraid, and as the Prince of A*** was passing by just then, she called him over, and said she wanted to make arrangements for an excursion with him the following day, speaking with great volubility. During this conversation, M. de Laléande had gone. After a while, Geneviève came up and the two women left. Mme de Breyves said nothing of what had happened and remained shocked and flattered, though at bottom quite indifferent. After two days, when by chance she thought back on the incident, she started to doubt the reality of M. de Laléande’s words. When she tried to recall them, she was unable to do so fully; she thought that she had heard them as if in a dream, and told herself that the movement he had made with his elbow had just been an accidental moment of clumsiness. Then she quite stopped thinking spontaneously of M. de Laléande, and when by chance she heard someone saying his name, she fleetingly remembered his face but had altogether forgotten the almost hallucinatory encounter by the cloakroom.
She saw him again at the last evening reception to be given that year (it was towards the end of June), though she did not dare ask for him to be introduced to her; and yet, despite finding him almost ugly, and aware of his lack of intelligence, she would really have liked to get to know him. She went up to Geneviève and said to her:
“You may as well introduce me to Monsieur de Laléande. I don’t like to be impolite. But don’t tell him it was I who asked. That would put the onus on me.”
“I’ll do it a bit later if we see him; he isn’t here just now.”
“Well, look for him.”
“He may have gone.”
“No,”
