第20章 FLORINE(1)

Between the rue Basse-du-Rempart and the rue Neuve-des-Mathurins,Raoul had,on the third floor of an ugly and narrow house,in the Passage Sandrie,a poor enough lodging,cold and bare,where he lived ostensibly for the general public,for literary neophytes,and for his creditors,duns,and other annoying persons whom he kept on the threshold of private life.His real home,his fine existence,his presentation of himself before his friends,was in the house of Mademoiselle Florine,a second-class comedy actress,where,for ten years,the said friends,journalists,certain authors,and writers in general disported themselves in the society of equally illustrious actresses.For ten years Raoul had attached himself so closely to this woman that he passed more than half his life with her;he took all his meals at her house unless he had some friend to invite,or an invitation to dinner elsewhere.

To consummate corruption,Florine added a lively wit,which intercourse with artists had developed and practice sharpened day by day.Wit is thought to be a quality rare in comedians.It is so natural to suppose that persons who spend their lives in showing things on the outside have nothing within.But if we reflect on the small number of actors and actresses who live in each century,and also on how many dramatic authors and fascinating women this population has supplied relatively to its numbers,it is allowable to refute that opinion,which rests,and apparently will rest forever,on a criticism made against dramatic artists,--namely,that their personal sentiments are destroyed by the plastic presentation of passions;whereas,in fact,they put into their art only their gifts of mind,memory,and imagination.Great artists are beings who,to quote Napoleon,can cut off at will the connection which Nature has put between the senses and thought.Moliere and Talma,in their old age,were more in love than ordinary men in all their lives.

Accustomed to listen to journalists,who guess at most things,putting two and two together,to writers,who foresee and tell all that they see;accustomed also to the ways of certain political personages,who watched one another in her house,and profited by all admissions,Florine presented in her own person a mixture of devil and angel,which made her peculiarly fitted to receive these roues.They delighted in her cool self-possession;her anomalies of mind and heart entertained them prodigiously.Her house,enriched by gallant tributes,displayed the exaggerated magnificence of women who,caring little about the cost of things,care only for the things themselves,and give them the value of their own caprices,--women who will break a fan or a smelling-bottle fit for queens in a moment of passion,and scream with rage if a servant breaks a ten-franc saucer from which their poodle drinks.

Florine's dining-room,filled with her most distinguished offerings,will give a fair idea of this pell-mell of regal and fantastic luxury.

Throughout,even on the ceilings,it was panelled in oak,picked out,here and there,by dead-gold lines.These panels were framed in relief with figures of children playing with fantastic animals,among which the light danced and floated,touching here a sketch by Bixiou,that maker of caricatures,there the cast of an angel holding a vessel of holy water (presented by Francois Souchet),farther on a coquettish painting of Joseph Bridau,a gloomy picture of a Spanish alchemist by Hippolyte Schinner,an autograph of Lord Byron to Lady Caroline Lamb,framed in carved ebony,while,hanging opposite as a species of pendant,was a letter from Napoleon to Josephine.All these things were placed about without the slightest symmetry,but with almost imperceptible art.On the chimney-piece,of exquisitely carved oak,there was nothing except a strange,evidently Florentine,ivory statuette attributed to Michael Angelo,representing Pan discovering a woman under the skin of a young shepherd,the original of which is in the royal palace of Vienna.On either side were candelabra of Renaissance design.A clock,by Boule,on a tortoise-shell stand,inlaid with brass,sparkled in the centre of one panel between two statuettes,undoubtedly obtained from the demolition of some abbey.In the corners of the room,on pedestals,were lamps of royal magnificence,as to which a manufacturer had made strong remonstrance against adapting his lamps to Japanese vases.On a marvellous sideboard was displayed a service of silver plate,the gift of an English lord,also porcelains in high relief;in short,the luxury of an actress who has no other property than her furniture.

The bedroom,all in violet,was a dream that Florine had indulged from her debut,the chief features of which were curtains of violet velvet lined with white silk,and looped over tulle;a ceiling of white cashmere with violet satin rays,an ermine carpet beside the bed;in the bed,the curtains of which resembled a lily turned upside down was a lantern by which to read the newspaper plaudits or criticisms before they appeared in the morning.A yellow salon,its effect heightened by trimmings of the color of Florentine bronze,was in harmony with the rest of these magnificences,a further deion of which would make our pages resemble the posters of an auction sale.To find comparisons for all these fine things,it would be necessary to go to a certain house that was almost next door,belonging to a Rothschild.